writer – That Lady Cat

I’ve written a few different entries in the past week or so that I ultimately didn’t put up. The content included:

-watching Chrissy Teigen’s “73 questions” video and feeling bad for/about myself

-two friends moving away and how that makes me sad

These are finished entries and who knows maybe I’ll put them up someday. I overanalyze and overanalyze things that I write, sometimes to the point of madness. And eventually, I either get to a point of damp satisfaction or I decide that it’s complete rubbish and delete it. So these works, along with so many others that I’ve created and abandoned, are sitting in some sort of digital purgatory.

So here I go, starting another entry; this time on something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. Dun Dun Duuuuunnnnn. Star Trek. (raised hands emoji)

If you really want to get to the core of me, you’ll need to know that I think the basic problem with humanity is that we aren’t more like Starfleet. That is it, in one neat little intergalactic package. That is my politics.

I’m gonna nerd out about Star Trek now, so hopefully, you’ve seen it and love it as deeply and steadfastly as I do. If you haven’t seen it because you aren’t ‘into science fiction’ or something lame: stop. It’s so much bigger than that. Cue: *you don’t even know* in a muffled whisper. I love it, seriously. And I think if we lived in the world Gene Roddenberry imagined, we’d be better off.

Couple background things:

-I was in college by the time I’d seen my first Star Trek episode. Star Trek: TNG was (and still is) streaming on Netflix, and my favourite mister Todd introduced me

-I have never seen the original series, mainly because I think William Shatner is a giant douchebag

-If I could be any character I would probably be Guinan from TNG or Kes from Voyager

So Starfleet is an organization of spacefarers. They are governed by standards, aka the Prime Directive. Everyone on the ship is assigned a rank and a role depending on their field of study/interest (a purpose, if you will), and their ultimate goal is to “seek out new life and new civilizations”. TO BOLDLY GO WHERE…sorry, sorry. Reigning it in.

As a member of Starfleet, your entire existence is based on the quest for knowledge and awareness, to discover and encounter new things. Your background and appearance are irrelevant; what comes into focus instead is whether or not you can perform the job. Oh yeah, and there’s no money.

If you asked me to list the major problems that I think exist within our society, I would tell you I firmly believe that it’s all rooted in greed. Celebrity culture, consumerism, poverty…the list goes on. It’s all greed in some form.

We also measure our success by things while worshiping false idols (and I mean that in the most secular sense) and our worth by our appearance. It’s really discouraging to see when we could be using our time so differently.

I’m one of those dreamers who thinks that all of humanity could all band together and solve anything if it was so inclined. If we all worked together. If we put our energies into believing not that the world is terrible but that something greater is possible.

It’s that story about the people in hell or whatever trying to feed themselves with long sticks while the people in heaven are just feeding each other. We’re moving further away from one another. The world is so fast and scary. What can we do?

I don’t know, but it’s something I’ll continue to ponder.

Hi, this is me at Ravinia circa three months ago. I was happy and drinking lots of red wine. My name is Lauren, and I’m just a girl/lady/woman/lass trying to make her own distinct impression on something or whatever (insert: Gwen Stefani blasting estrogen into a microphone). I’m a huge Trekkie, as in Captain Kathryn Janeway is my fucking spirit animal. Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager 2020. I love flowers and artistic expression in all forms. I really need a pair of cute rainboots, but I can’t seem to find any. So if you happen to know the kind of cute rainboots I’m talking about, please hit me up.

I get down a lot, and not in the sense of like boogying at a night club with gold chains or whatever more like my anxiety and depression make me feel like garbage. Like I’m pretty much leading a meaningless or incoherent life. A misplaced little dot. I worry that I’m not good enough or pretty enough or popular enough or accomplished enough. I worry I’m too old, too late, too anything, really. I spend a lot of time in that mindset, and it weighs on me hard.

But I like to write. And it helps me tackle difficult experiences in an intentional and meaningful way. I’ve always liked to turn stuff into words. Ever since I was in the third grade and had to write about going to the Olive Garden. Or sperm whales. I get simultaneous satisfaction and comfort from words. But, perhaps more importantly, I go through things, right, like life things, and I think I’m so alone. What’s neat about being human is that chances are there’s someone out there that knows exactly what your experience is like. The reason I love art is that it’s this glorious chance to bridge those little divides. Writing helps me to bear the regular awfulness of the world and connect with people. Hi, friend.

Disclaimer: This blog won’t all be about sad or anxious things, I promise. I have some other topics beyond sadness and self-loathing that might be of interest. I’m keeping this blog so that I can force myself to write about happenings in my life, good and bad; however, it’s important to remember the good things, specifically. These occurrences of joy often just float by unnoticed. I’ll try to catch and write about them as often as I can.

So here we go.

But actually hold on a sec. I don’t want to get into, like, deep stuff or whatever right away. I want to give you some semblance of what to expect. You’re my reader and I’m new, it’s only fair. So I think I’m just going to list some things I might talk about in this blog in no particular order. I’m a little unorganized at this point, but I promise I’ll get it together. ish. Things:

-how much I love Star Trek (i just watched an episode so it’s fresh in my brain)
-my cats (they are being totes cute right now)
-movies, definitely movies
-writing, ideas about process and reflection on my own
-how the human race should be more like Starfleet
-feeling uncomfortable in various social situations
-but also wanting to be a person that bursts out in song in the middle of the street
-music music music
-shows and performances
-this one time I met my idol David Sedaris at a book signing (and insert story)
-how social media is…interesting
-Oak Park, Illinois – represent
-disney WORLD OMG…definitely disney world. but not so much that you’ll be weirded out if for some reason you don’t like happiness
-random topics that just float their way through my corpus callosum
-feeling bad about myself for no apparent reason
-fears/failure
-creating things and the delight it brings me

So I hope you find some or any of that interesting and will thus tune in to my little corner of this earth. It would be real nice to have you along on ma journey.

Tag: writer

Dreams of a Starfleet World

This is me