sophie69420

[sophie69420]

11/18/2024

I can't remember the last email I wrote to john and hank green but I guess this is really for me:

Dear Brothers Green,

It is truly such an honor to be a part of the Nerdfighter community. I have a signed DFTBA poster in my office from my first Project for Awesome perk in 2016, some eight years ago. I was a teenager then and that was probably around the time I first heard that Dr. King quote about the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice.

I have been thinking a lot about that quote amidst gestures broadly, and how it doesn't feel like the arc is bending much towards anything. And to top it off, I was sick this last weekend! With a cold! Ugh!

Maybe that's why I am feeling overwhelmed by the We're Here newsletter this morning. Why tears are springing to my eyes as I read John's words about making each other feel warm or Hank's gift card dilemma. I am especially feeling overwhelmed by the description of We're Here, that "the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection."

You guys!! That is so good.

Whether or not the arc of the moral universe is bending in any which way is not my problem! Because I am not in charge of the moral universe, I am in charge of me! And the way I treat myself and my husband and my cats and my coworkers and my neighbors.

Here is the moment of kindness I want to share with you. The warmth that was spread to me during a cold Minnesota election cycle.

After Trump won, I text and called a lot of people I love. Because I was worried about how this was making them feel cause it was making me feel pretty shit. So I texted them things like "hey I love you, let's hang out soon" "hey, I love you, any reaction is an appropriate reaction."

And the best text I got back was from my 60 year old beloved Uncle Gary. I should tell you upfront, Gary's daughter, my cousin, died of cancer when she was 16 in 2010. A dark cold moment in our lives that really fucking sucked. Over the last 14 years without Cara here physically, some warmth emerged. I read the Fault in Our Stars and really connected with what I understand the central theme of the book to be, can the lives that have been cut short be meaningful? yes they sure can. And it led me to finding Nerdfighteria and all of that warmth. It also led to me having a relationship with Cara's family to be extremely deep and meaningful. Cara's sister Rachel is my best friend, the maid of honor in my wedding last summer (where we read an expert of the Anthropocene Reviewed as part of the service).

It also led me to reach out to Gary after the election where he sent me back this incredible text I share with you:

"Love you too. If you'd like to drown your sorrow in some ice cream or a shot of whiskey, or if you'd like to go out in the woods where we can scream expletives until our throats hurt, just let me know. I'm available all afternoon and evening."

In that moment, and in the evening when we did hang out and drink and talk about everything and nothing, Gary made warmth for me where there otherwise wasn't any.

This is definitely too long to include in your newsletter but it felt really good to write. Here is a picture of Gary and me enjoying some delicious Minnesota apples.

Thanks for everything.

Don't forget to be awesome, Sophie

[sophie69420]

September 17, 20(16)(24)

Hey 2016 me how’s it going?

Hey 2024 me it’s pretty good, I mean it’s hot as fuck and I’m really nervous and excited about graduating and some weird/hard stuff is happening with our family but, I’m good, I’m taking two choir classes lol. How are you?

Yeah I mean I’m good too, I think that it’s hot here but it’s like 85 and like really green. The leaves are just turning a bit yellow. I’m so excited for fall.

I’m so jealous.

I know.

So why are you writing to me?

Oh John green made a video and it made me think of you.

I’m so relieved to hear John Green still makes videos.

Me too.

What did he say?

He was talking about algorithms and how they use our emotions as their capital and I thought about how you didn’t know that Tik tok exists. Actually I just fucking googled it and musical.ly is rebranding to Tik Tok exactly where and when you are in September of 2016.

Tik tok like the Kesha song?

Yeah exactly like the fucking Kesha song but it’s apparently not related and we are all just ok and accepting of that? Weird I know. Anyway it’s like Vine with the short repeating videos but they can be longer than seven seconds

Oh my god RIP vine I loved vine

I know, road work ahead I sure hope it does when I see those signs

Iconic

Anyways. Everyone is addicted to Tik Tok now even if they don’t have Tik tok every app is trying to do the same thing, make these short form vertical videos that you can just scroll through for ever and ever. Like Instagram has them and YouTube and like fucking twitter which is called X now but I don’t know if people really call it that is trying to do it to

Is it like the endless scrolling feature but for videos?

Yeah exactly

Huh weird. Why are you telling me this?

I don’t know I guess I wanted to talk to you. Also Donald trump is running for President again.

WHAT THE FUCK

[sophie69420]

summer 2024 so far.......

[sophie69420]

May 2024?!

lova ya

[sophie69420]

2/7/2024

I would like to tell you what it is like to be 25 in 2024. Mostly because I want to remember it and everything is so new yet so tired already. I look back at photos of 2012 and Facebook shit posts that I shared when I was 11 because I had Facebook when I was 11 and it helps me remember what it felt like to be young and in 2012.

So, you’re 25 in 2024. Your computer is your job, your job is on your computer? The real world problems happen in the real world though. You hang out with two third graders at a shelter in a church in the richest country in the world and you feel guilty. You ask their mom, “so, where are you from?” and she says ��why do you need to know?”. She’s right, she’s on her iPhone, those who need to know know. You think to yourself that the whole point of this is to hang out and learn from each other and that that is an easy take to have as you drive home to your four bedroom house. 

You love Taylor Swift lyrics. She sings to you “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still try to find it”, and “it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound” and you buy pizza for your coworker whose 14 year old niece killed herself a year ago today (February 7, 2024). You eat your pizza as you read tweets (on Twitter which is actually X) about how you should actually hate Taylor Swift because she uses her private jet to fly for 14 minutes and is guzzling gas like it isn’t 53 degrees outside today in February. 

Your friends are young and hot and go on dating apps and talk about sex. You’re in love with your husband, you’ve been married for just over half a year. You go out with your friends, you couldn’t do that right after you turned 21 because of the pandemic, and so you party and kiss strangers like you are grateful you still can. You get drunk and you sing loud. You go home and you cuddle with the person who knows you the best. You talk about work and the meaning of life and you play tabletop role playing games and you feel peaceful and happy. 

And then you look on your phone and like 25% of people are really emotional about a genocide happening on a 27 mile stretch of land that is inhabited by kids and grandparents and uncles. They should be emotional, why can’t you stomach it? Is it white supremacy? That feels like a lot for Mankato on a Wednesday.

[sophie69420]

jan 2024

[sophie69420]

dec 2023

[sophie69420]

sept 2023

[sophie69420]

7/15/2023

Wedding memories:

Rachel was barefoot when we got married

Mika and Dr Nick as ushers holding the doors open for nick and I as we walked in

Going to the bar with dad Nick Jack and Rachel right before the wedding

Ms. Gravelle’s gorgeous song

Monty and Will’s adorable walk in together

Megan and Vanessa’s applause sign lol and ms. Gravelle’s kid standing on stage and everyone cheering for her

Nick’s beautiful vows “you deserve it”

Nick sobbing in the basement

Justine doing the SPLITS on the dance floor

Hot hot church

Jean absolutely crushing her reading, LIVE your life, live YOUR life, live your LIFE

Travis the sound guy playing the Joseph mega mix after the speeches

Angie and Erin the pub 500 trivia people surprising nick and I, brought me my topo Chico

Matt dancing just like in his childhood basement

[sophie69420]

6.26.2023

How could I find the right words to say enough about Nick? While avoiding cliche? While trying to invent something that I haven’t told him or Rachel or my mom?

When I was 16 my grandma Re sent me an email with 16 pieces of advice, and the last piece of advice was choosing kindness over being right. That was hard for me to swallow. I was a very opinionated 16 year old. I was sure that I was right about so many things, about feminism, about what bands were good or not, about which teachers were smart and good at their jobs which they loved to hear about.

As someone who grew up with the interent, it didn’t feel like I was alone in having opinions and feeling that expressing them and letting other people know they were wrong was how we were going to right the injustices around us. We could rightously anger ourselves into a better world.

Nick, I love everything more because I love you.

Someday my tattoos will fade, and we will forget about the Mona Lisa but my love for you will have left behind a chain of positive energy that will make the next clover or bug

Hi Nick, I’d like to submit this application to be your sidekick. I think I might have accidently tricked everyone, including you, including me, that it is the other way around. That I’m Batman and you’re Robin, that I’m Penn and you’re Teller.

Nick, you often lament about the right words not coming out of your mouth. That the ideas all sort of push forward at the same time. And that’s usually when you are describing what a story you heard on NPR. Well, I feel the struggle in trying to find words to summize the last five years of dating and how I feel they have set us up for marriage.

[sophie69420]

4/27/23

My name is Sophie

Today I feel like a small bug wandering in the carpet.

Sometimes I am an uninvited guest.

Sometimes I am a specticle.

But always I am loved.

I ask the world, “what do I do?”

And the answer is a small bug wandering the carpet.

[sophie69420]

2/14/2023

I was in the fourth grade when I first heard what meditation is. I heard a rumor that Mr. Sostak, my fourth-grade best friend’s teacher, would lie on the floor during recess and think about nothing. It sounded impossible. Think about nothing? Okay, now looking back at it, what was my fourth-grade mind so busy with that the thought of trying to still my thoughts felt like a monumental task? I guess even in elementary school, my thoughts were filled to the brim and spilling out of my mouth. Bringing them to a standstill felt like it was not going to work.

I took a Women and Health class in my junior year of high school, and it was the next time I would seriously try to meditate. Ms. Barnes, I lovely PE teacher from New Zealand, taught us about yoga and meditation, linking our thoughts to our bodies. It was hard. We would be asked to journal after about how it went for us. Anxieties about tests and friendship drama and college would plague my brain. Life had gotten more complicated since my classroom shared a wall with Mr. Sostak’s. It still sounded impossible to still my brain, link it to my breath, let the worries wash away.

It must have been eighth or ninth grade when I heard that someone’s mom had killed herself by jumping off of a third-floor ledge into the lobby of a hotel. “She had long been struggling with depression,” was the comment used to try and make sense of something so unthinkable. In that moment, depression became much more real and much scarier.

I had heard about depression on the internet. I used Tumblr a lot in my early high school days. At the time, self-harm was really glamorized. It was all too common and openly discussed in online places where it was hard to escape it. It was also hard to look away. Hard not to read those posts or gossip about that person’s mom. Mental health concerns were alluring, terrifying, and shameful, uttered in lowered voices and private convos.

I started therapy my freshman year of college. My therapist, Lindsay, would let me know that I had, I have, anxiety and depression which doesn’t really mean much these days. With rising rates of mental health issues across the US, the experience of someone who has anxiety and depression can be so vastly different that it doesn’t really mean I can relate to the experience of someone who shares a diagnosis with me.

What has been helpful for treating my symptoms is a combination of chatting with Lindsay every other week and a small 10 mg dose of escitalporam everyday. With this combination, I have gotten a lot better at calming my thoughts, identifying how I am feeling, processing my big, rattling emotions.

I guess this is the point in the story where I tell you that Mr. Sostak killed himself this past year. He was a good teacher, he had a badass tattoo sleeve and played the saxophone. He would lay on the floor during recess and try and think about nothing. I wonder what he was trying to quiet.

[sophie69420]

1/16/23

One thing that I find difficult about being a person is that words aren’t enough. Communication is often messy. You can say something with considerable thought and believed clarity to have the opposite interpreted. That is so frustrating.

Even with the limits of language, I am going to muscle through it because I want to tell you about my first pastor. Not the first pastor I ever met, or the priest who baptized me, or the many men in robes that I met in churches around the world, but the first pastor who really heard me.

When Lindsay first met my mom, she told her that I was really special and my mom agreed. I watched both of their eyes spring tears that didn’t fall but lingered for just a moment. I want to remember that feeling forever. Two women who had listened to my failed attempts to tell them about myself and they reached across the limitations and understood me. That understanding did not need much more than shared eye contact and a silent acknowledgment.

Lindsay has a way with words. For several Sundays when I was first hearing Lindsay, I pulled myself out of the warmth of bed and the comfort of home to put myself in a space that I thought was synonymous was hate and conservatism. Instead, I would get goosebumps as she spoke prose into the sanctuary that touched the deepest and toughest parts of me and my world. The goosebumps served as a physical signal that I was being moved in the direction I have always been longing to go, towards love and justice.

I remember I would ask Lindsay a lot of questions about doing “the work”. We talked about “the work” a lot, and we both magically understood it without having to define it, although I’ll try to relay what I felt. Being a flesh person alive on earth means that you see and experience suffering, which often feels inevitable and heavy. And the work is trying to address the suffering that we can control; flawed human systems, loneliness, injustice, and more. Being people who care, being a squeaky wheel is exhausting. The world, nay, capitalism and greed urge you to look away. They try to make it easy to tune out, shut up, sit down. But the work is paying attention, speaking out, and standing up. Lindsay saw that I cared and she comforted me when I got tired. She taught me what Jesus said about the work. And she shared poems and books that talked about the work. And she made me feel like I wasn’t crazy, maybe I was even Christ-like. Maybe. I’m still thinking about it.

One thing that I find difficult about being a person is that words aren’t enough. Jeremiah 17:9 says that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” but the Spirit? For what should we use the flawed tools of language for than to seek out and relay and know the love of all of God’s people?

In one of the first sermons I attended of hers in person, she centered her story around how complicated life is and will be. Within my first weeks of attending church on my own calling, she addressed my hardest question; how can there be a god when bad things happen to good people? She told me about a life I knew well, it is both beautiful and terrible. Lindsay told me something I sort of already knew. That God won’t fix my problems and end all suffering. But, She will meet me there, tell me I’m not alone and that I am loved, and deliver something words wouldn’t even be able to describe if I wanted them to.

[sophie69420]

11/14/22

How's work?

How long have you got?

It’s good!! I work in an international office that works with individuals and families that live on the margins of society. That are often excluded from basic needs and luxuries that would allow them to thrive or flourish. I get to practice advocacy around my local government especially as it relates to economic justice, a topic I care deeply about. I get to hear amazing stories. I make enough to eat and pay my mortgage. I have my own health insurance and it’s okay.

It’s hard. My team is international and with that there are a lot of social norms that make teamwork difficult. Everyone shows up at a different time, everyone has a different idea of what success looks like, everyone is doing 900 things and are organized with about three of them. Not to mention that funding for those 900 things they are doing relies on their organization about them and that that funding is at constant threat of shrinking or disappearing. I long to be connected to a team that works together efficiently towards “wicked problems”. I long to have leadership that sees my potential and pushes me to grow intentionally and with care. I wish I knew what to do when I got my work done. I am excluded from being able to make a difference in the refugee community that I am an outsider of and also belong to the often oppressive group and I have received criticism about being to loud and speaker for instead of with.

I am often volatile in either blaming myself or the situation, switching back and forth between the two options at a rapid pace that often leaves me dizzy and panicky and stuck. I feel like a failure, like a con, like I have convinced everyone that I am this great something that I am not, so when things aren’t immediately successful at work it is the big reveal of what I really am. I criticize myself as someone who hates hard work and is incapable. I think that I should quit and work at the post office so that I am actually helping someone do something instead of sit here and waste foundation and government dollars. I think who am I to fix these complex problems? Why I am special?

Then after blaming myself and the situation, I take a stab at blaming the world. A world where money dictates how and when we care for the vulnerable. One where healthcare is so expensive that young people are afraid to go to the doctor. One where language is never enough to convey how it actually feels to be in this brain and in this body. And then I go on the route of compulsively googling “most effective poverty reduction programs” or “community belonging initiatives” and try to find what others have already done to address the fact that this doesn’t feel like this is working for most people. And it’s never enough information and they never give tools on how to replicate it or who to talk to. And I end up reading some academic journal from 2017 that gives me language to share why this is all so fucked and how this one thing worked in Denmark. And that thing solution is hard and unrelatable,

So, I think to myself, maybe I should get a new job. And I google “Mankato Jobs” and I look at the same shitty jobs that have been online that I am either not qualified for or too qualified for. And I hardly ever submit an application but if I do I feel so guilty and insecure and I hear nothing back. There are so many jobs that pay less than $20 an hour.

At the end of that I think, maybe I don’t have it so bad? I get to practice advocacy around my local government especially as it relates to economic justice, a topic I care deeply about. I get to hear amazing stories. I make enough to eat and pay my mortgage. I have my own health insurance and it’s okay.

And the cycle repeats. About every week, with each mind set, each blaming portion or attempted exit lasting various durations. It happened at the last job, too, sure there was different leadership, different responsibilities. Same thought patterns. Fused in my mind now into the most uncomfortable but familiar path.

And a friend comes up to me and asks me, “how’s work?” and I just don’t know what to say.

How much of this cycle is up to me to control? How much is external based on work, internal based on my response?

[sophie69420]

8/3/22

maybe a life purpose of helping people the most efficiently will only make me and those around me unhappy, but maybe helping people my way and trying to make that way effective and backed by research and data will both fulfill me and make a difference.

John Green mentioned that it’s hard to do anything without a life purpose, and I definitely felt that today. I have a job to pay bills and eat, the job has a community connection program, I am interested in making it the most effective, but is community connection really effective at all? is this a job that is worth it or aligns with my desire to make a difference? should I quit my job?

Community connection is a good thing, it means people are less unkind and more likely to build equal opportunities. Is it a problem in Mankato? Will it create solutions here? Does our program do that?

I ate a mango in my kitchen after biking home from work, later I will kiss my cute and smart boyfriend and we will talk about effectiveness and people who interpret effectiveness different and it will feel like living and it will be purpose enough

[sophie69420]

everything is either math or stories. good stories include math. good math tells a story. ?

[sophie69420]

things I am good at:

enjoying a rainy day

having long chats with someone

attending community meetings

facilitating conversations

things I am not good at:

being satisfied in a job?