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“It is what it is” Isn’t Good Enough

January 15, 2013January 15, 2013 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I hate the phrase “It is what it is”.

When someone uses that phrase while speaking with me, I interpret it as “I don’t think you’re worth it”:

Not worth the time to deal with the issue, or
Not worth fixing the issue for

I’m not so arrogant to assume that every issue I have is important to someone else. I try to solve my own problems, and come up with solutions myself before I ask for help. But after all that thinking and reasoning, if I come to you with an problem, issue, or challenge, don’t brush me off by saying “it is what it is”.

That is just not good enough.

It’s lazy. Disrespectful. Diminishing. I expect more of someone that I am placing my trust in to have a potentially difficult conversation with.

Sometimes there really isn’t anything that can be done. Tell me that. Tell me why. Educate me. I’m not stupid, and I won’t rip your head off if I don’t get my way. Most people won’t. Don’t just brush me off by telling me to go away in a slightly more polite fashion.

I read this article by Katrina Onstad in Chatelaine back in 2009, and it has stuck with me ever since (an eternity is the age of information overload). I knew I wasn’t the only one would couldn’t stand this neutralized version of “Whatever” or even “Meh”. Her theory that IIWII is an “anger snuffer” is an interesting one. It says “don’t get mad at this, you can’t change it”.

IIWII creates complacency and compliance. I keep hearing people say that isn’t good enough either. So why do we encourage it and such passivity in each other?

IIWII is meant to diffuse anger, but most of the time, it incites it.

When someone tells you “it is what it is”, what do you say back to them? How can we eliminate this phrase from our vocabulary?

Do you exercise at home? I need advice.

January 7, 2013 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Sometimes I feel like my body is just something that carries my mind around for me. My mind-body connection is tenuous.

I’ve decided that this is the year I’m going to get more active. I have a sedentary lifestyle – my work and my hobbies are very computer- and technology-based. Except for reading, which exercises my mind. So my mind is reasonably sharp, but my body is…less than sharp.

I’m fat. Most of the time I’m okay with it. Well, maybe ‘okay’ isn’t the right word. I don’t beat myself up about it too much. Not openly anyway. I believe in buying clothes that fit me as I am, not buying clothes I’ll shrink into someday. I believe in small improvements, not complete short-term overhauls I cannot possibly maintain.

But sometimes, I wish I didn’t have to eat to stay alive. That makes me so angry. The act of eating is – and should be – a pleasurable one. A life-sustaining act shouldn’t be filled with such guilt and shame and neurosis.

I know I need to move more. I’ve spent the last few weeks (months? years?) figuring out what I’d like to do to be able to introduce more activity into my life. Everything I want to do seems to have barriers: too expensive, not enough time, worry that I will look stupid in front of people who I wouldn’t give a shit about if I wasn’t feeling so vulnerable in front of them.

I can’t sit at my desk and listen to my ass grow bigger without trying to do something about it. I need this body for a long time.

So for now, I’ve decided to go with streaming fitness videos at home. I don’t want to buy a pile of DVDs, do them a few times and never use them again. I also figure I can start exercising in my bare feet at home – I haven’t had a good pair of running shoes in years. I’ve found a few sites online that I can join to access full-length workout videos in a number of genres. I’m also considering a Fitbit – I’ve heard good things about them, and seeing the stats of how much I move (or don’t move) in a day may encourage me to move a little more. That can’t be a bad thing.

Flora recently discovered my yoga mat and she likes to “ex-ter-cise” on it. (I love how she says exercise, and I never correct it.) She got it out to do some yoga (her latest issue of Chirp magazine came in and it featured simple yoga poses). She’s pretty good. I asked her if she’d do exercises with me, and she said she would. We’ll see if that happens or if it turns into me exercising and her doing colour commentary on my technique.

If you’re a fitness video junkie, which ones do you like? I like yoga and am intrigued by Pilates, but I know I need to do more traditional cardio stuff too.

Any advice is welcome. This stuff is so new to me, and maybe just a bit intimidating.

Living out rockstar dreams in my car

October 28, 2012 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Sometimes I think the only time I get to use my whole voice is when I sing.

I don’t sing professionally and I hate all the singing shows on TV. My singing is limited to my car, games of Rock Band and rare karaoke nights.

I’m not a good singer – I wreck my throat after one karaoke song and I’m completely untrained. I like music but I’m not as up-to-date on current trends as I used to be.

When I was a teenager, I learned to play my favourite songs thanks to OLGA. That site is long gone – a casualty of the ongoing battle of the music industry versus the internet. I even wrote a few songs. I never played them publicly, but if I’d had better self-esteem at seventeen, I may have.

Those songs are long gone now. I can hear snippets in my head, but not much else. We’re all probably better off – the songs of a seventeen year old girl with an acoustic guitar pining for boys who wouldn’t understand aren’t songs for the ages.

These days, I sing along with the radio in my car. Now that I’m a commuter, I have more time in the car alone. Most nights the radio goes up loud and I feel free. I feel subversive when I roll into Flora’s school blasting something inappropriate. Then I turn it off and go get my kid. We ride home in silence most days because my girl doesn’t get loud rock music yet.

She may not ever, in the ultimate act of rebellion against her parents.

Fun fact: When I was pregnant, we tried to get Flora to kick by putting headphones on my belly. Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ was on my mp3 player and that’s what we tried with. She completely ignored us. Whatever – babies are fickle and kick when they want to. The day we brought her home, Sean had the radio on and Enter Sandman comes on again. The radio wasn’t loud but as I sat in the back with my newborn in a shell-shocked, WTF-do-I-do-now haze, I smiled because life was still happening even though I was now someone’s mother. I still liked the same loud music I did before I became Her Mother. That comforted me. That it was the same song that we tried to get her to kick for was an added bonus.

It took me a long time to learn to like to sing. On my first day of kindergarten, I decided I didn’t want to sing Head and Shoulders with the class. I did the motions but didn’t sing. My teacher noticed and asked me why I wasn’t singing. I didn’t answer. She then put her hands on her hips and asked me to say sorry for not singing with the class. I didn’t because I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t want to sing and I wasn’t doing it. The teacher didn’t like my silent defiance and I was told to go put my head down at one of the classroom tables.

In third grade, I was one of maybe seven kids in my class that was not invited to join the choir made up of primary-level kids (grades 1-3). Maybe it was because there wasn’t enough room for everyone on the stands. Maybe it was because they thought I was too shy (a reasonable assumption). I took it to mean they thought I was a bad singer. I did my extra reading and was happy but my relationship with singing took a huge hit for years afterward.

I think these stories lead up to why I like karaoke so much. It’s a forgiving medium. You can completely suck and still be cheered at the end. It’s hard to get up in front of people and make yourself vulnerable by singing. I think most people recognize that.

I subscribe to the theory “if you can’t sing it good, sing it loud”. This applies to life as well. Better to get up, own your issues and go for it anyway, than sit in the back and be mad that you wimped out yet again. I’ve done both, and I have lot more fun (or get a lot more said) when I actually get brave enough to potentially make a jackass of myself in public.

I know I’m not as good as I think I am in my head. I’m not as bad as I think I am either. At least I’m trying.

You should too. You don’t have to get on stage to try.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

September 9, 2012 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I’d love to tell you that I’ve been having crazy awesome adventures and that’s why I haven’t written here in the last six weeks. While we had a good summer, it hasn’t been anything extraordinary. No big trips, no life-changing events. Just an ordinary life. And that’s okay.

No big stories, just lots of little ones.

Family life is so routine-based that anything new feels weird and hard. Then we adapt and the change becomes normal.

I’m in the headspace where I’ve got so much to say, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. I have loads of ideas jumbled together in my head and no time to figure them out. Then when the time does show up, I waste it by trying to get everything perfect to Express That Thought. By the time I get my act together, the thought is gone and I’m left disappointed in myself and full of doubt.

I can do better than this. I need to reset my routine too. What do you do when you feel like this?

No one was hurt

May 8, 2012May 8, 2012 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I had a car accident about six weeks ago.

It was minor as far as car accidents go: I was okay, the other guy was okay. Our cars needed some work, but that is long settled and I’m back behind the wheel. I wasn’t sore the next day, but I was exhausted emotionally after spending hours sobbing out of shame, fear and worry. I’m not sure if I’ve ever cried that much all at once.

What if I had hurt the other person?

What if I had been hurt?

What if my kid had been with me?

What if? What if? What if?

I spent a lot of time the day of the accident waiting for someone to yell at me: the other driver, the woman at the body shop, the report taker and cop at the collision centre, Sean, my mom, my colleagues who were waiting for me at the office.

No one yelled – people were almost blasé about it. “Cars get wrecked all the time. No one was hurt and that’s what matters.” This is true and I would say the same thing to someone else, but I had a hard time shaking the shame and the guilt that I. Fucked. Up.

It happened on my way to work so I drive past the spot where it happened twice a day, five days a week. These days, I’m extra vigilant around where it happened, but not overly so. I made sure to get back behind the wheel quickly so I wouldn’t be afraid to when my car was fixed. Two days after the accident, I drove with Sean and Flora to the grocery store. Sean bristled at being a passenger and I got us all there in one piece. This event and the expected reactions to it were a big step to returning back to normal.

And I am back to normal. Mostly.