Know your worth.

Current Mood:

Let me quickly preface this post with one simply fact about myself. If you make a statement that I don't agree with I need to open the discussion. I'm not a nod and inwardly shake my head kind of person, I'm a grade-A-hey-explain-that-dumbass-thought-to-me-please type of girl.

The other day for example a friend of mine made a comment about another woman's shorts being too slutty.  This lead us down a long road full of pitstops including, "it's her fault if a guy comes up and touches her" and "No, I'm not a feminist....far from it" which ended at our final destination of "what about men? I'm a meninist!"

By this point I had paced the length of 54 football fields and started aggressively clapping every word I spoke. Even as I write this in reflection I can't get my thoughts clear as this very topic enrages me to my core.

The base of this entire post is to make one singular point so let us start there.

Feminism.

The very definition of feminism is the equality of the sexes.

If you are a human (female or otherwise) and you don't consider yourself a feminist, I can't associate myself with you. To simplify this further, if you are a female and don't consider yourself equal to any man on the street, I can't be near someone who doesn't value who they are as a person, and if you are a man who doesn't consider me his equal, well something suddenly came up that involves me being far away from you.

It's a pretty simply idea, and one I'm unapologetically unwavering on. I'm not saying we should all burn our bras and punch every man in the face for fun, I'm simply saying, know your worth and don't expect anything less.

To not consider yourself a feminist when we live in a world where a strong man is labeled a boss, where a strong female is labeled a bitch and where a promiscuous man is a pimp, and a promiscuous female is a slut will never be something I can accept.

Know your worth.

Bloom where you're planted.

Recently I found myself reading one of those overly cliche articles about New York...a battle of new and old, the age long debate about being a "true New Yorker". Now to preface this a little, I am Australian and was raised for the majority in Western Australia.

(Yes we are wearing beanies and coats....it was probably like 21 degrees/70 degrees Fahrenheit....Western Australian winters are hard)

I am very proud of where I come from and even though I am not an American citizen, New York is my current home and after many years of hearing constant rumblings of the essence of a New Yorker, I became curious as to what people consider the qualities of a "true New Yorker." I know for myself if you didn't grow up watching Round the Twist on a rainy day in primary school or burning the shit out of your feet on a hot January day running into the shops barefoot (No shirt, no shoes...no problem!)  are you really Australian?

But what did these all-knowing New Yorkers deem the qualities it takes to be considered one of their own? Well lucky for us Time Out New York complied a handy dandy bucket list to try and help us foreign schleps out!

According to Time Out, to be a true New York one must....

Buy a Dollar Slice at 4am
Great start! I do this often although I don't buy it because I want to be a New Yorker...I buy it because cheap, drunk and pizza.

Cry in the Street
Another +1! This is going great. Also, 2011 was a rough time in my life.

Steak out at Peter Luger
By this point I am throwing intense side eye at what kind of New Yorker wrote this list...I feel like New Yorkers shit on Peter Luger as being too mainstream and rave about some bullshit hole in the wall nobody has every heard of but alas, I have been to Peter Luger so I am currently crushing this assessment. 

Walk the Brooklyn Bridge at Sunrise
I'm counting this because I've walked both the Triboro and Roosevelt Island Bridge at sunrise and that's far more hipster and therefore more New York.

Smell Garbage and think summer
I smell garbage and think, wow I wish someone would move that garbage...is that close enough?

Nab Rolls from a Bakery before it opens
I'm now convinced the writer of this article is not only not from New York, but could also potentially be an alley cat...

Make out in a cab
Of course I've done this but I think it is less about the true New Yorker in me and more about being in your 20's and a perpetual mess. 

Complain about how everyone flakes here, then become a flaker.
I am THE flaker...is that a New York thing? Do I have another excuse to blame this horrible quality on? Success. 

Walk by a celeb without doing a double take
I walked by Sienna Miller yesterday and didn't do a double take...ok that is also because I didn't recognize her until 4 blocks too late but hey....check me out I hang out near Sienna Miller, I'm cool.

Attend an art opening and guzzle free booze
By this point I'm almost certain the writer got confused and started writing a list of how to be 18 year old Jordyn.

Be inconvenienced by a film or TV shoot
Correction: Walk nonchalantly in the background trying to get discovered and made into a movie star....It's called making moves people! 

Head to Staten Island
I got drunk there once

Swim in the Ocean?!?!

Ok that's it, as an Australian this offends me. I can't go any further with this bologna list. Yes, New York you know how to hot dog and your stench game is top notch but I refuse to associate you with any sort of ocean activities.

What I learned from this list is that....well....if eating bread in the wee hours of the morning before casually strolling across famous infastructure is more important than my hectic sleep schedule I guess I will remain #proudlyfromanywhereelse.

Time is money....Time is of the essence....Time is drunk and needs to take a seat.

I'm forever jealous of those people surfing through their early 20's with ease. Who are you mutants? Where did you come from? Are they accepting new applicants? I would love to apply to whatever cult it was, I will gladly drink that Koolaid.

I just realized that I've started to wander down a path in the this blog post I don't want to go down. A path that leads to a 500 word ramble about confusion and direction, when in all actuality I have plenty of one and not much of the other and for once the scale tips in my favour. I am currently confusion-less (actually that is a lie, I am still very confused as to how boys wear skinny jeans without their boxer/briefs/mankini getting all bundled up, but that is for a different post). I know what I want, or at least I know the correct route to take.

If you are an avid reader (aka if you are my mum) you will know I had planned on being in Los Angeles by this point in time, instead I am writing this from sweltering New York City and for once I can say this is out of choice (and let's be honest there are worse places to be.) The Dordyline of yesteryear (ok, yesterday) would have wrote a scathing rant on the perils of being stagnant. The new and improved self is looking at the glass half full of opportunity (and Pinot Grigio.)

Over the last few weeks, I have learned to accept that time is not flying by as fast as I may feel sometimes, yet it is not frozen like it can seem. I can't let it pass me by, but I can't hyperventilate my way through it either. Things happen when they happen, that great opportunity left to make way for something better and hustling is paramount to success.

I will make things happen and that I'm sure of, but they wouldn't happen in the next three seconds no matter how hard I click my heels and this is the most refreshing epiphany I've had in a long time. 

Tune in next time for another episode of You've got this Girl written by a tipsy 22 year old who is really good at stumbling in the right direction. Now if you would please excuse me I have apples to smother in peanut butter and apartments to google. 

Oh Guy Fieri.

Recently I've been watching a lot of Guy's Grocery Games. It was discovered one hungover Sunday, and now I can't control it. Guy Fieri curse you and your addictive, three lettered, hunger inspiring tales. 

"Sorry I really can't stay long I have plans..." I exclaim mysteriously as my friends accuse me of some torrid affair....little do they know...JT +GF= 4EVA.

It's a really horrible addiction I'm forced to balance with my overcrowded work schedule, obsessive friends and strong desire to spend hours looking at puppies online...

It's a really hectic schedule, made only increasingly more difficult by the fact that I'm aging rapidly (it's my birthday next week....so about those puppies...I like Great Danes...) and can no longer fight off sickness, hangovers or sleep deprivation like I used to. Which results in plenty of painful mornings and....well....these kind of texts...

Old age isn't cute.

Oh and how is the cooking going I hear you ask?

Let's just not talk about it...

Different, yet exactly the same.

(In honor of being 12)

2005

When a cranky eight year old Jordyn used to complain about being so tiny, she was told to not be sad at what she was because time would go so quickly. Two blinks later she would be all grown up.

A few weeks ago I gathered with some of my longest friends. It's an odd statement to make, because I could of sworn it was just yesterday we were introduced, yet here we were ten blinks later. We used to spend every day together, just silly 11 year olds who spoke with the voice of false experience. We had our snow globe life completely figured out, before swiftly throwing it up into the air and having it come down with a crack.

We all left that snow globe; leaking out in different directions, towards different cities and down different paths. Months upon months would swirl by in our new worlds but every year we would make it a mission to reassemble in one form or another. 

This time it was different.

We weren't simply hanging out to reminisce and reconnect, we were gathering at the beginning stages of each others next step. To celebrate graduation and change, we were linking arms to pull each other on to our next chapters.

Moving abroad or across the country, going to law school, or jumping feet first into a bonafide big girl career in the big city...we were all taking steps towards our next phase. 

As I drove away that day, slightly (very...) pink from the sun and full of happy memory, I thought of those little girls we once were, bigger than our boots and over confident on life, speaking of the future as if it was forever away.  Now we were so much different, yet exactly the same. Those same young girls but now we had confidence by the hands of experience, closeness by the hands of the past and opportunity by the hands of all we were. 

and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Back on the wagon.

Not dead.

So for some odd reason toady saw an influx of traffic to this little site of mine and I thought I ought to let it shine. It's been four whole months since my last post so I'm not entirely sure why yesterday caused so many of you to stop by, and in all actuality it could have been my Mum simply refreshing the page a million times, who really knows.

But alas, I felt the need to update.

Once upon a time my biggest struggle in life was finding the perfect balance between staying out until 4am, while at the same time being able to make it through the work week. I was young, I was fun, I was exhausted. I've now traded in those struggles. My 7 day a week party schedule has traded to that of 2 at most, and now my biggest struggle is teaching myself how to freaking cook. Still young, not fun, more exhausted.

What I have learned so far is that cooking is hard and adulthood is a myth.

So yes, this is why I haven't been writing. I've been too busy setting off my smoke alarm and eating really awful sweet potatoes.

I'll try and do better.

#Iusedtobefun