Don't be Dark Matter

“Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a F**k.” 
― David Wong, John Dies at the End


I have recently become quite concerned over the direction my life seems to be heading and the person who I have become.

My friends often joke;

"ha there's Ellen, such a cynic"
"Why would you want to go outside? You hate the outdoors!"
"Yeah... but you're too lazy for that you would never actually do it haha"

While I know these jokes are all in good humor I can't help but feel that they are a reflection of the image I have created for myself. I have turned myself into a person who would probably agree with the following statements... and I have to say I'm not proud of it.

"Who would put forth effort towards that? Ha I'm much too lazy... being lazy is hilarious!"
"Why would I go outside when I have the internet and self pity to keep me company?"
"I don't need people. Socializing is for losers hahaha"

This is no way to live a life. And I am done being the person who thinks being pathetic is funny. Or that being a cynic makes you cool. It's not quirky and cool to "hate everyone."

While I think on this and work on becoming a better person I encourage you all to do the same. We seem to be the generation of apathy and cynicism under the impression that not caring is cool and having a deep hatred for other people makes you so alternative and edgy. This needs to stop.

We need stop being lazy. We need to get up, get off the internet, stop laying in bed all day and DO. We need to go outside and breath in fresh air and stop making jokes about how gross the outdoors are. We need to go for runs and explore new things. Stop making excuses, stop saying it's too hard, as cliche as it sounds go grab live by the proverbial horns and take advantage of all it has to offer!

Our generation has so much new technology and opportunities and forms of communication at our fingertips and my greatest fear of this month is that we are going to let it all pass us by because we are too lazy to quite literally stand up and turn off the tv.

Take responsibility, take charge and stop wallowing in self pity. Create, explore, learn and experience life before it's too late.

-Ellen

Anyone Can be A John Green.

" Don't think of it as a problem think of it as a challenge. There can be many forms of John Green . Or wouldn't it be great if there were more people like him in all areas of life."  - My Mom

"I just love him and have such respect for how he’s made the world safe for a lot of kids to be who they are. It took me to age 35 to be who I was; if I were 15 now, John would save me years of angst. He is a holy man."  - Laurie Halse Anderson on John Green. 

I want to be John Green. This is something I have just recently come to terms with. And not just in the, "I make YouTube videos and am working on a book" kind of way. In the, "hey I really like what this guy stands for and would really like to emulate that" kind of way, (okay maybe also a little bit of the making YouTube videos writing way but that's not the point). Upon the discovery that I wanted to be just like a 36 year old man who has an army of teenagers at his command, I started to ask myself some questions.


"What makes me want to be John Green?"


"How could I ever even COMPARE to such a highly regarded person?"


"What do I even mean when I say I want to be John Green?"

~


A little over a year ago I attended John and Hank Green's Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall. It was an experience that effected me in a way that I've never fully expressed, one memory from that night that sticks out to me involves, you guessed it, wanting to be John Green. My friend and I were waiting in the long line to get merch and we struck up a conversation with the girls standing in front of us. They we're extremely friendly and polite (as nerdfighters often are) and were both college students. When I asked them what they were majoring in, one girl responded, "Creative Writing... so basically I'm majoring in being a barista at your local Starbucks haha". Although in the back of my mind I kind of agreed I told her, "that's not fair! You never know what could happen!". She chuckled, sighed, and responded with,"Yeah I guess my problem is I want to be John Green."


I've thought about that a lot since that night. And I've come to the conclusion that we should all want to be a little bit like John Green. Even if this only means finally writing that book you've had the idea for, for years. John and Hank Green have created a safe haven for the different, the dreamers and the people who simply demand more out of life. They do enormous amounts of work for charity, through the annual Project for Awesome, enormous donations from their own profits, and many other things. John himself, suffers from severe anxiety and has only recently overcome a nasty case of depression. He has stated multiple times that he loves meeting his beloved nerdfighters in public, however he only asks that they do not ask for a hug, because the answer will be no. When he was in college he was told that his writing was terrible, and based off of talks and interviews, he would agree.

^this is a video in which John addresses his depression




http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/65003063968/john-i-have-really-really-bad-anxiety-i-know-in-the

^this is a post John made regarding his anxiety.


To me, being a John Green means following your dreams despite handicaps and hold backs. Being a John Green is showing compassion for others and treating those younger than you with the same respect as you would treat someone of your age or older. It means not getting a big head if you do achieve your dreams. It means having a sense of humor when discussing big issues. Being a John Green means staying energetic and positive in order to inspire and motivate young and old people alike to do something great.

I don't think the girl at Carnegie Hall a little over a year had the problem of "wanting to be John Green".


I think she had the right idea.



I think we should all want to be John Green.

You Need to Calm Down

“Funny girls like you don’t get boyfriends. Funny girls like you get boys who are friends who want to date your boring pretty friends but also have you around to make them laugh.”

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind" - Dr. Suess 

For as long as I can remember I have been the weird kid. I've never quite fit in with a certain group of people, this isn't to say I didn't have friends growing up, I actually had plenty of friends, I just never really seemed to belong in regards to the grand scheme of things.

I would even venture to say that this is still true today.
I can be very loud and obnoxious at times.
I can be very hyper active.
I have absolutely no respect for the status quo.
I care very little what other people think about me.

The funny thing is, all the things listed above are things that people have told me about myself, not things that I have ever consciously thought about myself. While these things are often time brought up to me in a positive light, there have been instances, especially since I've left for college, where I have been told to "calm down", or that I am "making people uncomfortable". A favorite of mine is, "guys aren't interested in you because you're too strong for them, you're too independent.". Seeing as these are positive traits I'm often baffled that guys "wouldn't like me" because of these things. In fact I am often baffled that people would be bothered at all by my "quirky" (in the most non obnoxious hipster way possible) personality, as far as I can tell I don't seem to be causing anyone, or myself, any harm... so why would they even care in the first place? It seemed as if to fit in, in the world I would have to change myself, or rather, "calm down".

I've been told the same sorts of things in regards to romantic relationships.
"boys want to date girls who they feel need them"
"sometimes, you have to let him take charge"
and my all time favorite, "Boys don't like funny girls".
Over time I've honed my "strangeness" into a sense of humor mostly consisting of stupid puns and irony, a sense of humor that I'm actually quite proud of. I've always been able to make people laugh but unfortunately, it seems that this is not a positive trait for someone of the female gender to possess. Boys are supposed to make girls laugh. Not vice versa, this way the boy is, in a sense controlling the girl... but that's a blog post for a different time, I'm getting off track here.

There was a time in my life when I did try to change in order to please the world, this was mainly due to a lack of self confidence and a feeling of inferiority caused by a nasty combination of adolescence, anxiety and bullying. Needless to say during this time I was miserable.
But then I had the epiphany that changed everything.
I realized that if someone is going to want to be my friend or is going to want to be my boyfriend, they should accept ME for who I am. I shouldn't have to change for them! If others are going to hate then fine! Let them hate! I don't have to morph myself into a false person to gain their respect.. because in the end, I don't need it!

After this epiphany I made a lot more friends as well as a lot better friends. I came to realize that if I refused to "calm down" I would actually have a lot more fun and be a lot happier than I would otherwise. Because to quote the late great Dr. Suess, "Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind". So whenever someone asks me; "how do you do it? how do you just not care what other people think". I respond by telling them I do care what other people think, but only those people who treat me with the same respect.

Maybe we should all stop trying to change for society. Maybe society should start changing instead.

-Ellen

New Years Regeneration

"we all change.
When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives, and that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving.
So long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
I will not forget one line of this.
Not one day.
I swear."
-Matt Smith as the Doctor


A few weeks ago I was on the popular ipod app "Timehop". The premise of the app is pulling up facebook statuses from 2,3,4 and even 5 years ago creating the oh so beautiful feeling of nostalgia and reminding us all how absolutely idiotic we were in the 7th grade. On this particular day a few weeks ago, Timehop  pulled up a picture that really stroke a cord with me. I was standing with a group of people who I thought were going to be my friends for life and a boy who I thought was the love of my life had his arm around my shoulder. I was skinnier, my friends were cooler and I was yet to gain the reputation of  the crazy fangirl chick who spends far too much time on the internet. But despite all of these things that should have made me yearn for this past life, I found my self glad rather than upset. Although I did miss my old friends and old life, I was so happy that I had moved on and become this new person, who was no more and no less "myself", because if I hadn't have ever been this girl in the picture, I would have never become the person I am today.

   Human beings have a tendency to cling to the past, especially me. We have this need to crawl back into our old selves rather than move forward and become new, even more fantastic people. My favorite show in the entire world is the classic British Sci-fi series, Doctor Who (if you listen closely you can hear all of my friends and family releasing a heavy sigh). For those of you who don't know, the show centers around the Doctor, who rather than dying, "regenerates" into a new face (or rather, when one actor leaves they replace him with a new guy). The character still remains "The Doctor", retaining the same memories and keeping key personality traits but changing a few things. Aside from the change of face, the Doctor also changes things such as how dramatic he is, how energetic he is and how open he is among other minor traits.

     On Christmas day the fabulous Matt Smith, regenerated into Peter Capaldi, forever handing over his keys to the TARDIS. While past doctors have feared this change with cries of "I don't want to go!", Smith's doctor embraced the change, giving the monologue quoted above.  While this was of course meant to be about the change of actor and Doctor, I feel like it was also a message to all of us. A very timely message as it was given as the New Year is fastly approaching. We should not fear becoming new people, but we should not forget who we once were. We are who are because of who we used to be.

We must learn to lay our passed lives down to rest, bet let their memories live on, especially during this time of resolution and regeneration.

 

-Ellen

"There are Children Starving in Africa!"

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.” 
― Randy Pausch

“I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.” 
― Jane Wagner

Before we get into this post lets set the scene.

You're about 9 or 10 years old and it's about 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening. You're sitting in the living room or basement or your bedroom playing Super Mario on your Nintendo 64. You're getting really into it when your mother yells "DINNER!" from the kitchen. A bit irritated  you  yell back, "ONE MORE LEVEL!".

"DINNER. NOW."

"BUT MOOooooOOOOOoooOOM!!"

"NOW!"

You reluctantly put down the controller and join your family for dinner, which to your despair includes a hefty serving of broccoli. You spend most of the dinner pushing the broccoli aside and enjoying the rest of your meal, completely vegetable free. This is when your mother says the thing, the thing that we have all heard at some point in out life, that dreaded phrase, that to be honest, did not make much sense at the time; "Please eat your vegetables! There are starving children in Africa!"

Although this scene is a bit cliche, I feel we, as a generation, could learn from it. The fact of the matter is that there ARE starving children in Africa. There ARE people who have so much less than us. So then why do we all complain so much? Something I've noticed recently is that people seem to complain... simply for the sake of complaining.

You have an essay to write?
UUGHHHHHHHHHHHH

You have to go visit your Great Aunt Beth this weekend?
AARRGHHHHH

Dinner isn't quiet to your liking tonight?
I HAVE LOST THE WILL TO GO ON

When we step back and take a look at things, most of us really don't have it that bad.

For example, and I'm guilty of this too;
At my school one thing students LOVE to complain about is the quality of the food in the cafeteria. But why? You don't have to prepare the food (it magically appears on a counter for you to grab and put on a plate), It's not old or expired or rotten, you don't have to clean the dishes (they magically disappear through a door and come out clean). So then if things are so easy, why do so many people spend so much time complaining about this? What does this complaining accomplish? The answer of course; is nothing.

Another example is the complaints that occur when we are asked to do something that might be a little out of our way. Ironically, these are usually things we signed up for in the first place. If you auditioned for and made it in to a show or musical of some sort, why would you complain when you have to fulfill the expectations of being in this show? If you applied to College/ University and got in, why would you complain when you have to do the work required to achieve your major?

Complaining for the most point, unless you are starting a revolution of some sort, is a pretty pointless act. It accomplishes nothing and does not improve society in anyway (note that I'm talking about complaints without action).

So sometimes you get handed the short end of life, embrace it! Don't waste time whining about the paint that accidentally got pulled off the ceiling of your dorm room and the fine you'll have to pay for it (it's a long story), pay the fine and move on!

Pointless complaints are something all humans are guilty of, especially including myself. It's something I feel we could all work on. So next time you let out a loud UGGGHHHHHH after having a rough day in class/work, think about whether or not that UUUGHHHH will solve anything.

In short; think about those starving children in Africa.

-Ellen

Sonder

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

—

David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King Have you ever taken a moment to ponder the fact that every person you come in contact with has their own world going on inside of them. Every person you sit next to in class, every person you walk passed on the sidewalk and every person you stand next to in the supermarket has a secret world that defines how they see the outside. This world is built on past experiences, past upbringing and current situations, among other things. People are much more complex then what they seem to be on the outside. The word I used as the title of this post is one of my favorite words in the entire world. The world "sonder" puts a definition to a feeling that has before been very hard to describe in the past. The definition being; Sonder; n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. Now this definition is quite obviously not something you would find in Websters dictionary. That is because Sonder is not in fact a real word, but rather a made up one used to describe the indescribable.      This all being said I find it very important that before I judge another person, I take into consideration what the person's secret inside world might be like. What trials they may have gone through that made them into the person they are today. The hardest, meanest individuals may have been made this way due to a lifetime of hardship that has caused their inside worlds to become a darker place. People who you consider "strange" or "weird" might simply have very different worlds from your's, leaving you little room to judge.       Although I myself still struggle with this as everyone else does, I try to make it a point  to not harshly judge others until I have heard their story and figured out why they are the person they are today. Through this I have discovered that many people I judged harshly at first are some of the most remarkable people I have ever met.  Everyone has been through their own hardships and has their own story to tell; so think before you judge.  -Ellen

Escape the Labyrinth

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

—

Albert Camus, The Stranger Something I have often caught myself doing, is thinking too much. I can't just accept things for the way they are. I feel a need to analyze every social norm, rule and even emotion. Because of this I find myself missing out on "real life" because I am too busy thinking about what "real life" really is and what is the proper way to live it. It's almost as if I get stuck in the "labyrinth" of my own mind. Many of my close friends have told me that they also tend to get stuck in these states of deep thought which often times leads to states of anxiety over the inevitability of death and our insignificance  in the greater scheme of the world. The title of this post can be attributed to a favorite quote of mine by my favorite author of all time; John Green. The quote reads as follows;  “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”                                   - John Green, Looking for Alaska.  Although this is not what the quote was originally meant to be interpreted as, I tend to read this as a warning to not spend your whole life thinking about the future or what would be worth doing, but rather experience the future and experiment with what could be worth doing. The context of the quote is as follows; a young lady called Alaska is talking to her very nervous and uptight (not quite) love interest about her philosophies on life. Alaska believes in living fast and frankly a little irresponsibly. She spends most of the novel smoking cigarettes, having sex and buying illegal wine from a local liquor store. However her male counterpart to whom she is talking to, is completely crazy over her and despite his best interest and typically responsible lifestyle, he finds himself being dragged along on Alaska's crazy adventures. This young man was one of these deep thinkers. One of these people who spend much of their time stuck in their own heads.  SPOILER ALERT  Alaska's life ultimately comes to an early end about half way through the book. Cause of death; a terrible car accident that is suspected to be a suicide.  So the question is, Should you live your life as an "Alaska" (experiencing life to the fullest despite the consequences) or live your life as her male counterpart and narrator of the book, "Pudge" ( always caught up in your own thoughts and plagued with severe anxiety).  I believe that a lot of people I know, including myself, should find a healthy balance between the two.  Step outside of your own thoughts, but still be thoughtful .  -Ellen