As Ani Said

someone do something
anything
soon
i know that i can't be the only whatever-i-am in the room so
why am i so lonely?
why am i so tired?
i need back-up
i need company
i need to be inspired

And on days like today, when work is driving me insane and I want to scream at people that not getting your coffee in a timely manner or not being able to fit in a gym appt is not a life-altering crisis and make them sit in a chair a la A Clockwork Orange and stare at pictures of starving, clean-water deprived children all day, I have to really dig deep to find that inspiration. When I first started thinking about traveling it was mostly because I had realized what I didn't want - which was to live the way I live now. But what did I want? Who did I want to grow up to be like? And what did I admire about the women I wanted to emulate?

Well, my co-conspirator assistant, for one. I would love to grow up to be like her. She kicks ass and takes names so effortlessly it's amazing. I've learned so much from her. So I know I want to grow up to be independent, sexually liberated, and career-oriented. And I want to be the kind of woman who can say no when she wants to. A lot of women, myself frequently included, do not know how to do that.

My aunt is a missionary - I'd like to be like her. There's this calm gravity to her, the kind that comes from a life lived at peace with her God. She's doing exactly what she's felt destined to do since she was 12 years old.

My mother is incredibly giving and selfless. So thoughtful. My cousin has been breaking through the glass ceiling with some serious construction equipment since I was little. My two best friends from college are unique women who live exactly as they please and make themselves happy in wildly different ways - one as a barista traveling around watching bands, experimenting with photography, and bringing art to it's knees in a kinky self-expressionist way, and one as a mother re-defining my image of motherhood.

So I guess what I want to be is a woman who lives for herself in a way that makes her and everyone around her happy, in a fulfilling way, in a way at once giving and selfish. So if I figure that out, I'll draw y'all a formula and maybe some charts and a powerpoint.

Today, a day when I could happily strangle anyone who gets too close but would rather strangle my boss, I am inspired by these two ass-kicking ladies: http://jezebel.com/5209364/girls-gone-wild-two-proper-ladies-who-went-west-and-won

From the text:

According to Dorothy Wickenden's story in this week's New Yorker, Rosamond Underwood and Dorothy Woodruff were both twenty-nine, both well-to-do Smith graduates, and both "uninspired" by their suitors in Auburn, New York, when they responded to a search for schoolteachers in remote Elkhead, Colorado. The mastermind behind this search, cattle rancher Farrington Carpenter, had a secret agenda — luring educated East Coast women to Elkhead to marry local men. It worked — Rosamond married local mine supervisor Bob Perry and, forty years later, Carpenter himself — but this marriage scheme doesn't negate the impact that the women had on Elkhead, or that the town had on them.

Elkhead was a mountain town seventeen miles from the nearest train station, and its school was a single room serving the families of homesteaders in the outlying areas. Dorothy taught the younger children, ten boys and a single girl, while Rosamond instructed the older kids. One former student of Rosamond's wrote, "I don't believe there was ever a community that was affected more by two people than we were by those two girls." Another, who went on to become Missouri's chief forester, wrote, "their impact was immediate, but above all lasting." And although graduation rates in the late teens and early twenties were extremely poor, all six of the ninth-graders Rosamond taught went on to either college or professional school.

But, the article goes on to say, the experience probably had a greater impact on both of these women than they had on the town. If you're lucky, the good work you do will have any impact at all, even a little, and you'll get to hang on for the ride.