2010-11-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

So here it is: I'm a U0 University student, at the bottom of the heap. I am interested in about the only thing arts undergraduates idealize as a possible future job: International Development. I just received my very first mark in the 60 percent range. I am without the only 5 people I trust. I have absolutely no motivation to live amongst a power-hungry, monetary based society, and I am without a clue as to where I belong in the social order I am supposed to fit. Even though I have no desire to do so, I am bound to this cumbersome and self-doubting life by familial obligation, the ever imprinting mark of North American society, and indecision. I am, as it were, between the bars.

This blog is my venting outlet, and a place where I can discuss what interests or infuriates me. I believe each person is instilled with ideas that create an all-encompassing bias which is hard to break, and affects their ability to open themselves to the world. I am not without doubt that I myself am afflicted with unconscious biases, but I will try to break them and see past what I am experiencing for the purpose of this blog, and "self-making" as my American lit professor refers to as themes of numerous American works of the 19th century.

The theme of self making, as I have studied in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the narrative of Frederick Douglass' life, and further prose readings such as Emerson and Thoreau, have threatened the very view of life I have been brought up to follow. The view, being that of a life lived to have success and happiness, but the ways in which I have been taught involve minimal equations to achieve that ideal of "happiness". What I have decided, from now on, even as I fulfil my obligations and participate in the role society has concocted for me, is to discover what I believe happiness to be, and how I myself shall achieve it.

Between the Bars