I'm not worthy

I sometimes like to think that I'm pretty clever.

The other day, my book club decided to take an outing to a bar that was hosting Harry Potter trivia, complete with plastic glasses and delicious vodka-y butterbeer.

After my teammates and I threw around different ideas for team names, I was happy that we ended up using one of my suggestions - The Team Who Shall Not Be Named.

I was also really pleased with one of my other suggestions - Expecto Patron Shots. I don't think anyone else was into it, though.

At the end of the night, the trivia host was reading off the scores, and our team name got a much larger chuckle from the audience than most of the other names, all of which were obviously Harry Potter themed (Whorecrux Hunters, anyone?).

But nothing could have prepared me for the team name that got far and away the best reaction from the crowd. I've been going to bar trivia on and off for about 7 years now, so I'm used to awesome puns or plays on current events, but this had an amazingness that is simply unparalleled.

That team name, my friends, was Snapes on a Plane.

SNAPES ON A PLANE!

I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKIN SNAPES ON THIS MOTHERFUCKIN PLANE.

Sir or Madam, whoever you are that came up with this brilliance, I bow to you. I may never meet you, but you are my hero.

Turning "Can't" Into "Can"

Why yes, I AM wearing a moustache

At a point that seems like forever ago but was probably somewhere closer to 6 months ago, my friend tweeted about wanting to do the Color Run. I replied that it looked insanely fun but that my bad knee prevented me from running. Not just now, but forever and always.

After some back and forths with my friend and some research on the Color Run, I realized that the run is extremely non-competitive and that they don't care if you walk. Or cartwheel. Or crawl. It's about getting covered in paint, not racing. So I collected a team, waited a few more months, and finally, this past Saturday, went to the far reaches of Brooklyn, decked in white and ready to more or less become a rainbow.

My whole team was planning on walking, but when we were released from the starting line we were so full of adrenaline that we all broke into a jog. We all kind of looked around at each other and said, "Are we doing this?" I said I would run as long as my knee held up. Since I sometimes get shooting pains in my leg just from darting across the street to avoid getting hit by cars, I didn't think I would last too long.

3.1 miles later we jogged across the finish line covered in pink, purple, yellow, orange and green, having taken a few brief walking breaks to take pictures, collect lost teammates, or lay down in the paint to make sure our backs were fully covered.

My knee felt...fine. Sure, it's pretty swollen now so I probably won't go running ever again (or at least not until the next Color Run), but that's not the point.

The point, friends, is that the last time I ran 3 miles was in 2005. The reason I stopped running is because I was in ridiculous amounts of pain and went to see my knee doctor, who reminded me that my ACL/MCL surgery in 1999 left me with no cartilage in my knee and "Do not run, at all, ever. Unless you absolutely have to. And don't take stairs. If there's an escalator, use it. Otherwise you're going to get arthritis before you turn 30." So I listened. I don't run and I don't take stairs. And in the 7 years since then I've just grown accustomed to the thought that running is something that I absolutely cannot do.

While the pain I'm in right now reminds me that running is clearly something I SHOULDN'T do, using "can't" as the operative word is just flat out incorrect. I CAN run. And there's a big difference between saying that something isn't a great idea and saying that something is flat out impossible. Because while I realize that 3 miles isn't exactly a long distance, if you had asked me before this race whether or not my knee would hold up for that duration I would have told you with 100% certainty that it would not.

This makes me wonder about what other negative stories I've told myself over the years - ways in which I've convinced myself that I'm incapable or not good enough, when in fact this may not be true at all.

I remember one specific incident in February of this year. I scored some free tickets to a pre-Superbowl party sponsored by Maxim. I was pretty excited to get comped entry to a party with OPEN BAR, but I was also not really looking forward to all the hot Maxim models that would be running around. The friend I took with me to the party thought I was being ridiculous for saying that I wasn't hot enough to go to an event like this, but I truly believed that to be the case.

Obviously I WAS being ridiculous. Because first of all, that night would probably go in my top ten most fun nights out I've had in New York ever, and second of all, WHAT THE FUCK. Like, who makes these horrible self-deprecating comments about themselves?

I think what I've realized is that I need to stop with the whole negative self-talk. It isn't doing me any favors because no one finds self-deprecation all that attractive unless you're doing it for comedy (like Tina Fey in Bossypants - genius).

There are going to be a crapload of people that are going to bring you down. Maybe your significant other doesn't treat you as well as you deserve, maybe your coworker is trying to make you look bad in front of your boss. Plenty of people in life will tell you you aren't good enough.

Don't be one of them.

**This is my new series called Stratejoy Monday. To learn more about all this goodness, see the first 5 months of my Stratejoy journey here. 

Arielle Shrugged

Alternative title for this post: Talking About Stuff I'm Clearly Not Smart Enough to Understand Nor Knowledgeable Enough About to Write a Blog Post On It But That Hasn't Stopped Me Before So If I Sound Like a Moron...Sorry. Just Pat Me on the Head and Carry On Your Merry Way.

If you read this blog post or are my friend on Goodreads, you know that I've been reading some Ayn Rand lately. I wanted to read some of her work not because I have a thirst for conservative literature, but because she's like, famous and stuff? And I feel like as a general rule it's good to read books by well-known authors.

It took me 13 days to power through the the 1200-page tome that is Atlas Shrugged, which I was pretty happy about because I was one day shy of the 14-day library loan deadline and you guys already know about how sometimes trying to read all my library books before they're due is a delicate balancing act where my overzealousness occasionally comes crashing down around my head.

I knew that Rand was something of a Republican icon, but I didn't actually know what specific values her books espouse and I had no idea what any of her books were even about, plot-wise. But after reading Atlas Shrugged, I have some questions about the alignment of her ideology with the ideologies of various and sundry American political parties (well no, really just the main two, but I just enjoy saying "various and sundry"). So, here goes.

For anyone who hasn't read it, here is a really REALLY general summary of what goes on in this book. It centers around the railroad industry. There are railroad company people and copper company people and steel company people. Some of these people are better at their jobs than others. Then there's lots of government regulation that tries to give equal opportunities to everyone in the industry even though some companies are clearly superior to others. It royally fucks everyone over and shit kind of implodes.

So here's the thing. I see why conservatives rally around this book, because conservatives typically hate regulation even though SIDEBAR while I'm liberal mostly for social reasons I still think some good ol' fashioned regulating could have prevented some of our own catastrophes (what up ENRON, LEHMAN BROTHERS, ETCETERAAAAA) but that is not what this post is about anyway.

Right. So Republicans hate regulation and there's lots of regulating in this book and that's why they love it. Check. Moving on.

One of the main points that I got out of this book is that Rand really wants people to earn their keep. Even more than she hates regulation, she hates freeloaders. You don't get something for nothing. If you do well, you get rewarded. If you mess everything up, you don't deserve shit.

This commentary might be coming a few years too late, but throughout this entire book I could think of nothing but, "I wonder what Rand would say about huge Wall Street bonuses. Especially when the economy is in the crapper. DOUBLE ESPECIALLY for the companies that paid out big bonuses even when they were receiving bailout funds." Talk about people messing shit up and not deserving something. I can't imagine she'd be down with that.

Rand also seems to care a lot about blue collar workers - sure, most of the "good guys" in Atlas Shrugged are management types, but it's evident that she respects manual labor and those who work hard at it. I think if this book were written about a white collar industry (like, hey, the financial services sector), her tone would be completely different. Or maybe the book just wouldn't even exist like that. Again, the thing that surprises me here is what seems to me like a disconnect between Rand's beliefs and Republican values which, in this day and age, really seem to be all about pushing the wealth upward (you know, that whole 1% biz-nass). And by "upward" clearly I mean, away from the working class.

The point is, to make another broad generalization (sorry), blue collar + Republicans don't seem to mix, yet Rand + blue collar kind of do. Though I am admittedly a bit confused about her stance on unions. Fortunately, a lot of the internet seems to be in the same camp.

On another kind of side note, there is some really interesting literature out there about why so many working-class people vote Republican despite the fact that it seems to go against their best interests. I didn't collect links while I was researching this but rest assured, if you google it, it's out there.

Okay. So a lot of Republicans are all, "Yay Atlas Shrugged is an awesome book and is a great guide to how capitalism is supposed to work (I've read some stuff about how Paul Ryan is a lover of Ayn Rand, though this post wasn't brought on by any current event aside from the fact that I just happened to read this book recently). My problem here is that this book is sort of realistic but also completely NOT realistic. Like, is there a word that means "extended hyperbole"? Because if so, that's it. Some of the ish that happens here is totally ridiculous and I have a hard time thinking people are taking it 100% seriously.

So after all of this, I'm sitting here kind of like..."What am I not getting?" I couldn't really find anything that talks about these points of disconnect between Rand and the Republican party and while I would love to think that I'm the first person to have this breakthrough thought of "Hey guys Ayn Rand is pretty conservative but maybe not AS conservative as you think she is," the more realistic thing is that there is something here that I'm totally misinterpreting or straight up not understanding because even though I'm sort of intelligent sometimes, other times I'm the kind of person who frantically looks for her cell phone while she's holding it. It seems to me that Rand, if she saw what the Republican party was doing today, might be appalled by a lot of it. But maybe I'm wrong.

End blog post of confusion. Shrug.