Swimming for songs.

Grab your wetsuits and your oxygen tanks, people. We're taking a dive into the deepest, most carefully hidden oceans of my mind--waters so firmly entrenched in my psyche that they will never evaporate, no matter how hard I wish they would. In other words, we're going to revisit my former music tastes.

Oh, yes. That's right. If you're already feeling a prickle of apprehension, I don't blame you. Most people cringe at the artists they loved in the past, but I have an especially dark and eclectic history. I doubt you will ever see me the same way again. Nevertheless, let's dive.

As the last rays of light sputter out and die in the murky gloom, all is silent. Then, faintly, we begin to hear the opening strains of songs, singing voices, verging on cacophony, cascading one after another, each chord rear-ending the next. They grow louder the deeper we swim. Is that...Disney era Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez? Victoria Justice? The guy who wrote Bananaphone, Cody Simpson, Aly and AJ, and--the artist I've repressed most of all--Justin Bieber?

You have to understand that my younger self was, up until middle school, musically stunted. I was mostly exposed to two genres: classical and country music. I binged on Lawrence Welk. As a result, any bouncy, cheerful, modern-sounding melody had me instantly hooked. I never considered whether my choices would come to haunt me in my sophisticated high school years. I was young and naive, blissful in my simplicity, blind to refinement, and besides, I listen to classier stuff now, I swear...

But pause. I hope you see what's happening here. I just wrote four paragraphs bashing myself, insulting successful artists, and justifying my preferences to you, all because I used to like music that most people, to seem cool, edgy, aloof, would call commercial junk. Why? Why is it that anytime I express even a smidgen of love for popular, radio butchered material, I must dilute my opinion--"I know this song is overplayed and overrated and superficial, but for some reason, it's stuck in my head"? Why is it that I shame myself and others, that you shame yourself and others, that we shame each other, just for liking some song, some TV show, some hobby?

Let's be honest. We can all feign indifference when it comes to some music, but when a popular song plays at Howdy Hop, I see y'all singing along. You can't hide it, and what's the point of doing so? Unless you like ax-murdering and your favorite song extols the virtues of doing so, your interests have little bearing on your worth as a human being. You are not better than anyone else for appreciating a different set of sound waves. True, some songs may contain more depth, more complexity, more profundity than others. I'm not saying all music is on the same level. However, we shouldn't be snubbing each other over opinions we can't help but make. We shouldn't be hawking our own favorites, peddling them as superior nuggets of genius, pushing ourselves into each others' faces.

Let's not be entirely selfish here, either. After all, this whole issue doesn't just concern us. What about the artists that put time and effort into the albums we're so quick to trash? Teams of people work together to produce music for your enjoyment. They want to engage you, to entertain you, to make you think. If their work doesn't suit you, move on. Slathering hate on their livelihoods is like punching your grandma after she gives you a birthday gift you don't like.

Of course, I'm no exception to the music slandering. Most of us aren't. Certain songs unfailingly trigger eye rolls and grumpy sighs. However, I'm making an effort to curb my scorn. Whatever my opinion may be, I can't allow myself to make unfair assumptions about the people who like songs I don't. I can't allow myself to keep my old preferences in the dark. Maybe someday, my hidden oceans may come to see the light of day. Until then, every once in a while, I'll dive into the person I was, into the music I once loved. Feel free to do the same.

(No post about music should end without actual music, and I have trouble picking favorites, so I've skimmed the surface of my current song library for you. Every x is a link:
For the wintery, Christmas-is-a-way-of-life types: [x] [x] [x]
For all you hardcore, angry people: [x] [x] [x]
For ukulele lovers: [x] [x] [x]
For the chill citizens of the world: [x] [x] [x]
For some head bobbing fun: [x] [x] [x]
For fresh covers on old songs: [x] [x] [x]
One final gem: [x] )

Rapunzel is my favorite superhero.

A few weeks ago, my little brother grappled with that provocative question only October could pose: what to be for Halloween. Being an intrusive older sister, I couldn't watch him make such a critical decision without giving him my advice.

"Be a ninja," I suggested.

"I was a ninja last year."

"Then be Darth Vader."

"Maybe."

"A superhero?"

"I don't want to be a superhero."

"But you've never been one before! You have to be a superhero at least once."

"Then you be one."

"Maybe I will. I'll be...um. Uhhh..."

In that moment, searching for a kick-ass heroine to throw in my brother's face, I saw just how limited my options were. The only choices that came to mind were Superwoman, Black Widow, or some over-sexualized knockoff of another hero. I may not be well-versed enough in superhero culture to know other female protagonists, but the very fact that no other heroines were mainstream enough to have triggered my memory is a red flag.

Truth be told, before I had this conversation with my brother, the male monopoly on heroes didn't bother me. My mental image of a superhero was a muscled, caped man. I realized, though, that in the constant tug-of-war between hero and villain, female characters are nowhere to be found on either end of the rope. Instead, they're ushered off to the sidelines, given sparkly pom-poms, and told to cheer. Even when females are given starring roles, most heroines have no powers but for the ability to seduce, slink around mysteriously, or do martial arts. The women who do have powers are reduced to busty versions of their male counterparts. What does this imply about the genders? That females aren't capable of being extraordinary, of being in a position of power? That men can capitalize on their inherently phenomenal traits but women can't?

After I hit upon this gold mine of revelations, I began to focus my attention on Disney princesses--because if superheroes are the male's archetypal models, then Disney princesses are the female's. I was ready to destroy my childhood memories, determined to hate everything those princesses stood for, but I found myself unable to do so. Although it may be hard to see under the frills, sporadic singing, and apparent naivete, most princesses are superheroes, too.

Mulan saves all of China from the Huns while dodging social barbs. Elsa is a snow queen with such potent powers, she freezes and thaws an entire country, gives life to snow beings, and constructs a multi-storied castle in as much time as it took her to sing about letting it go. Rapunzel can magically heal wounds and reverse aging. Cinderella and Snow White can talk to animals and convince creatures to do their bidding (imagine what they could do with that power if they stopped wasting it on domestic chores).

The problem, then, wasn't that female superheroes don't exist. The problem was that I didn't recognize them. True, princesses are not the ideal role models. However, it's not fair that femininity automatically negates any of their heroic or superhero-esque actions. Just because princesses aren't as macho as male superheroes doesn't mean they should be dismissed entirely. Why can't heroines conquer villains and fight crime, but also wear dresses and sing? A man who uses superpowers to save the day is a superhero. Following that line of logic, a woman who uses powers to save the day can be a superhero regardless of her other feminine traits.

This post may have been a jumbled soup of questions and arguments and thoughts, and I apologize for that. Whenever the issue of people enters the equation, things are bound to get messy. In the end, though, that's the one thing I know for certain: we're all people. Superheroes are people, princesses are people, and people are complicated.

The next time I try to categorize the individuals around me into neat little boxes, I need to step back and remember that each person is an ocean of existence. All I ever see is the rippling surface, not the wealth of life teeming just beneath.

Satiating my inner Godzilla.

The night before my first day at Uni, it struck me that I hadn't planned a way to distinguish myself. If I wanted to make friends, I had to be astounding, mysterious, awe-inspiring, magnificent. I couldn't settle for anything less than impressive. I couldn't resign myself to a grayscale high school career of anonymity—and the obvious next step, the key to making a dazzling first impression, was to decorate my binders.

I couldn't walk on water. I couldn't fly. I couldn't shoot lasers from my eyes or webs from my wrists. I couldn't even kickbox in heels like Scarlett Johansson. Pawing through my mental sheaf of skills, though, personalizing stationary hit me as the ultimate way to impress. It was subtle, creative, poised, like chocolate lace perched on a bed of perfectly whipped frosting.

Armed with a fervent belief in the genius of my plan, I made my embellishments from three sheets of loose leaf paper. I penciled the names of my classes in bubbled cursive letters, cut the letters out with an X-acto knife, and slipped each sheet into the corresponding plastic binder sleeve.

Suffice it to say that stationary had no impact on my first year at Uni. The friendliness of my peers and the coziness of the atmosphere quickly assuaged my fears, and I forgot about my misled attempt at individuality. The only silver lining of that panicked evening was the X-acto knife. I didn't realize it at the time, but carving paper would soon become an irreplaceable element of my life.

I absentmindedly devastate every shreddable object within reach. Any flimsy item in my possession—worksheets, styrofoam cups, movie tickets, plastic baggies—is in danger of becoming a mangled mess. Carving paper into art channels these unbridled destructive habits into a rewarding act of self-expression, and the craft forces me to see in terms of space and shadow. I no longer restrict myself to surface level thinking; I search for that which is not but could be.

It has been two years now, and I still make time for carving. In between homework assignments, over the weekend, watching TV, my fingers itch for an X-acto knife. I don't know how long this hobby will last, and I don't know if I will ever pursue this art in the future. I am saddened by the thought that I might have to stop.

For now, this craft is a comforting reminder that I am capable of doing more than rolling out of bed each morning. I can't walk on water. I can't fly. I can't shoot lasers from my eyes or webs from my wrists. I can't even kickbox in heels like Scarlett Johansson, but I can carve, and that's good enough for me.

Left: my very first carving, right: my latest carving.

That 2 AM magic.

It’s confession time. My skin is as pale and cold as refrigerated milk. The bags under my eyes are the color of blueberries. My sense of smell is superhuman when it comes to detecting chocolate. I can outpace a cheetah when I’m late for class. Occasionally, I even glitter in the sun.

No, I’m not a lame variation on Edward Cullen, but I am nocturnal. I live off of the lifeblood of our information driven society: the internet. I would argue that I’m a non-traditional vampire, an anomaly in the realm of supernatural beings. As a member of that unearthly community, I urge you to join me. In other words, you should try staying up well into the night—I’m talking witching hour and beyond. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not encouraging a habit of late bedtimes. Usually, being awake at 2 AM doesn't bode well on school nights. I can hardly function in class when I have fewer than seven hours of sleep in my system. In the absence of late night panic attacks over coursework and school, though, that bleary post-midnight haze creates a unique pocket of calm. Time stops. I can convince myself that I’m the only waking person in my world. I can relax.

Initially, the urge to crawl into bed is overwhelming, but this exhaustion is soon replaced with meditative, laser like focus. Barriers break down and my mind is free to map the unexplored terrain of my consciousness. Ideas that had been stewing in the deep waters of my brain float to the surface. The first draft of my common app essay, poems, and this blog post have all emerged from those depths. Burrowing deep into the night, I am no longer boxed in by the constraints I feel in the harsh light of day. I am free to think, free to breathe, free to act without fear of failure, expectation, responsibility.

Passing this time with friends can be similarly rewarding. After midnight, we exist in a cocoon of mutual understanding. Mental filters disintegrate, social obligations are null and void. In the dark, we are no longer people. We are voices, hushed, confiding, pleading to be heard. We no longer don our masks, and whether or not we may come to regret it, we reveal layers of ourselves that we usually keep under wraps.

Humans are wired to awaken at dawn and go to sleep at dusk. I should probably avoid manipulating my biological clock by staying up late, and I always kick myself for doing so in the morning. But in the dead of night, swaddled in my 2 AM cocoon, I know I would atrophy without those late hours to myself. No time of day could ever replicate the boundless hush of night.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Lately, my sanity has been crumbling to pieces often and with little provocation. The keening wails that shiver faintly through your bedroom window at night? The wispy shadow that drifts through Uni's halls, leaving a trail of mournful whispers? Direct your quivering finger of blame at me. These are the sounds of a high-strung student coming to terms with that swollen storm cloud of life: the future.

I was blind to my relative instability until I met Tavi Gevinson. By "met," I actually mean "pored over her every interview/news article/life detail in a totally friendly and non-creepy way." This borderline stalker behavior had begun innocently enough. At the time, I'd been holed up in my bedroom, engaged in a TED talk viewing rampage. I came across a video about female identity confusion titled "Still Figuring it Out." While the subject matter was nothing out of the ordinary, the speaker was an anomaly. Tavi was 16 when she gave the talk, and I equate teens in the world of TED with Einstein-esque child prodigies.

In an attempt to uncover a rational explanation for her presence on the TED stage, I googled her name and swiftly discovered that Tavi is, essentially, a goddess. The events leading up to her apotheosis are as follows: 1) she established a fashion blog, 2) the blog attained instant success, 3) she founded an online magazine, 4) this magazine reached god-like echelons of media prosperity, and inevitably, 5) Tavi began acting on Broadway. She has written for the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune; she has interviewed Emma Watson, Aubrey Plaza, Lorde, and 20 other celebrities; she has been featured on The Colbert Report and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in the New York Times and the BBC. She is 18.

At this point in my investigative adventure, an existential crisis of biblical proportions came crashing down on my sense of well-being--a merciless boot to my puny ant of happiness. Tavi is only one year older than I am, but she is light years ahead of me. In a world where the chilly waters of society's expectations are accelerating at break neck speeds, there is no room for hesitation. At times, I feel as though I've been left behind, sitting slumped on the shore with no sense of direction, watching my peers skim past me gleefully toward a golden sunset.

For the next hour, I proceeded, in a trance-like state of despair, to absorb every last piece of Tavi that I could glean from the internet. As I feverishly slogged through link after link, I felt the growing presence of time I had lost, time I had let slip from my fingers. Funny, though, how a sense of lost time flung me into a dark pit of distress, for it was this same sense of time that lifted me out again. When I saw how much time I'd spent anguishing over Tavi, incredulity replaced depression.

Tavi, I realized, is one incredible adolescent out of the billions of people in the world. Why should I waste my life obsessing over her success? She found her calling early on, but does that mean I won't find mine at all? Well, maybe I won't, but that doesn't mean I can't try.

The situation boils down to a girl who pursued a passion. This passion became the key to a room of locked doors. I will probably not be as famous as Tavi--I'd be surprised if I could even transcend my current state of near anonymity--but I can still be successful in my own way. I can still find my own passion, my own key, at my own pace. If I must lag one step behind everyone else and wait for the waters to calm beforehand, then so be it. I'd rather be alone on the shore than drowned in the river of life, even if I must suffer a breakdown or two in the process.

Give me non-vehicular transportation, or give me death.

Last week, my father and I went for a drive down a deserted country road. The scenery was so picturesque that our excursion would have made an exceptional opening sequence to a wholesome family movie. Imagine: the camera slowly focuses on a sea of corn rippling off into the horizon, complemented by an artfully arranged sunset peeking out from between the stalks. Cut to a shot of the parental unit inside the car. He's having a blast taking pictures of the landscape with his phone and excitedly gesturing at the scene outside. Then the camera pans to his daughter.

The strength of her grip on the steering wheel is akin to a boa constrictor's stranglehold on its prey. Her hands are clammy and white, but she's too busy staring straight ahead at the road to notice. Her eyes are glazed and feverish as they search for other cars. She thinks she hears a familiar voice, Hey, relax, you're doing fine, but she's forgetting to breathe and the lack of oxygen is making her dizzy. Sweat drips down her back, and...is that dribble running down her chin? Are those tears at the corners of her eyes? She doesn't care, though, because the adrenaline-oxygen deprivation combo is causing hallucinations. Dancing elephants and flashing lights flood her vision. At this point, she lets go of the wheel to embrace the light at the end of the tunnel. She says silent goodbyes to her loved ones.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. I'm not that terrified of driving, but I do have a confession to make: I don't want a driver's license [scandalized gasps commence in the distance]. I've had my permit for year, and I have only driven ten hours out of the mandatory fifty.

Before you judge me, let me describe the world's vehicular way of life as I see it. Drivers are strapped into metal death machines. They then choose to hurtle down roads in these metal death machines, inches away from other hurtling metal death machines, for the sake of transportation, even though biking or walking could accomplish the same goal.

I'm not saying I'm afraid of riding in cars, I'm saying that I'm afraid of controlling one. In my mind, a parent offering me car keys is analogous to Barack Obama handing me a big red button that activates his cache of atomic warheads. I can't handle the responsibility.

I still feel like a five year old, just beginning to puzzle out Barbie as Rapunzel in the backseat of my mother's minivan, incapable of captaining my own vessel. On top of my mental age, I'm currently in the midst of juggling college applications, school, standardized testing, extracurricular activities, and sanity. I don't feel in control of my own life. How could I possibly take control of a car, on a road, where anything could happen?

Yet, before my collegiate career begins, I need to have my license. I know that I will have to overcome my insecurities, that I need to take the wheel. It's hard to take my life, my transportation, into my own hands—it'd be so much easier to bike or walk—but I now realize that getting my license signifies more to me than my ability to drive independently. Once I get my license, I'll know that I trust myself.

Until then, I'll find inspiration in the concluding sentence of William Ernest Henley's "Invictus," and I will use it as a motivational mantra. It reads: "Once I am the master of my car, I am the captain of my soul"—or something along those lines.