Tumblr

I doubt anyone reads this blog anymore, but just in case, I’d like to tell you I have tired of the traditional blog format and switched over to Tumblr. I know, I’m a hipster. Whatever. I like it and I post on it a lot. So find me there at:

jillianclair.tumblr.com.

Happy blogging!

Jill

failure

I finally know what actual failure is. Real rejection. Up until now if I’m honest, I haven’t ever experienced the real thing. I was always the teacher’s pet, graduated No. 3 in my class, got accepted to Auburn, became an RA, made the Plainsman staff, got scholarships, etc.
But this year, I’m finding out I’m not really all that.
I didn’t make it to the final interview with Teach for America, my section in the newspaper is lackluster, I was entered in a journalism contest and didn’t place and I have e-mailed tons of newspapers asking about jobs, and none of them have responded.
So what does this mean?
Am I depressed? No, not really.
Do I feel worthless? Not usually.

I’m pretty sure all this failure is showing me where I find my self-worth, and it’s not in being the best or landing the perfect job.
It’s in relationships– with God, with friends, with my family, with my coworkers, with my boyfriend– I am happiest when these relationships are healthy. I am happiest when I’m making others’ lives more meaningful and when my life is more meaningful because of them.

Maybe I’ll end up working at some crappy paper wherever my engineer husband gets a job. Maybe I’ll also be a great mom. Maybe life isn’t about money, climbing ladders or being the best. It’s about caring about people and being who God’s created me to be.

Screw you and your expectations, society.

finished

So my friends came and left, and I’m actually really glad they came. It was nice catching up with them.

After they left, I finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and now I’m depressed.

I’m depressed because the book made me feel like the world is much more messed up than I could’ve ever imagined.

It’s not like I learned anything awful about the world I didn’t already know, but the book just made it so personal to me. I loved the main character. I loved all the characters, and in a distant way, I could relate to them. If someone told me the letters Charlie writes to the anonymous person were actual letters, I would believe them.

The worst part was knowing that all the things in the book that I didn’t like reading because it hurt that the characters were hurting actually happen to real people I don’t know. Or they happen to people I do know, and I just don’t know about it.

It makes me feel like my childhood was a cakewalk, when I’ve always thought it was terrible. Although Charlie would disagree:

I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have.

I don’t like that bad things happen to children. I don’t like that so many parents suck at parenting. I don’t like how real psychology is and how parents and other adults can fuck children up so badly.

Sorry for the word, but it’s the only one that feels appropriate for the way I feel right now.

The weird thing is, I don’t feel sad for myself at all because I really feel like I’ve worked through all my childhood problems. I attribute that to God and to talking so much about my feelings my whole life, whether it was to him or to my psychologist or my friends or my mom.

I do wish I had listened more. I feel like I was so worried about my problems, I probably didn’t even ask other kids about their lives because I thought mine was the worst. I admired that about Charlie—he knew his friends so intimately. I always assume I can read people well, but I still think I talk to much and assume too much.

I know I’m gushing, but it’s 2 a.m., and I’m pretty sure everyone is asleep or drunk, so I can’t talk about all of this, so I have to write it down. I think a great writer is transparent anyway, so maybe this is good.

I just hope I can be like Bill someday for some messed up kid. And I hope I don’t miss my kids becoming messed up so I can help them through it like my mom did. I hope no one ever molests my children. I hope somehow our generation gets better instead of worse.

Strangely, after reading that depressing book, I hope.

introverted feelings

I feel guilty when I complain about my old friends never calling me, and then when they do, I would rather just be in my room and read. But I feel like I have to because I complain, and I do miss them. Sometimes, I would still rather just read and go to sleep.

I’m reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I think that’s why I feel strangely introverted. My mood often matches the mood of whatever book I’m reading.

P.S. I definitely recommend the book, but not if you don’t like honesty. It’s extremely honest and will make you think about things. It also may make you temporarily introverted.

Why

Why do we like Taylor Swift?

Why do we always get the same thing at restaurants?

Why do we pay $9 to see a movie?

Why do college students feel more mature when they talk about drinking?

Why are some people repulsed at the mention of poop when everyone does it?

Why are chick flicks cathartic?

Why does picking your nose feel good?

Why is the South full of Republicans?

Why do we have favorite colors?

Why do we like antique stores full of old junk?

Why is being different a fad?

Why do Americans love guitars and Indians love sitars?

fairy tale vs. reality

*Not a journalism-related blog, btw. Contains embarrassing, but highly hilarious information about my teenage years.

As I sat in Little Italy drinking a Sweetwater 420 and eating a greasy pizza topped with slippery cheese, pepperonis, mushrooms and bell peppers, fairy tale and reality collided.

It was comical, really, with the pizza wave and everything.

When I was 15 or 16, I had a Xanga account (no, I don’t remember the URL, username or password, nor do I wish to revisit my teenage ramblings). I was already an Auburn fan, so of course I ‘War Eagle’d’ in my ‘About Me’ and had several Auburn-related posts. I got a comment on one of them from some guy I didn’t know, and we randomly started chatting back and forth about Auburn. The conversation innocently turned into AIM chatting, and before I knew it, I had  a new friend.

A 21 or 22-year old male college student friend.

I know. What the hell, right? (Cue Cliff’s scary phone alarm noise signaling, ‘RED FLAG.’)

Admittedly, it was strange, but I so wanted this to be normal. Ah, so naive. This guy never said anything sketchy to me, and looking back, I think he was just socially awkward and needed someone to talk to… but definitely… weird.

It gets better. I meet up with the guy a year or so later at what I thought at the time was the BEST pizza place ever— Mellow Mushroom in Auburn. My mom knew all about it and was OK with it as long as my cousin (an Auburn student at the time) went with me (WHAT was she thinking?!)

I totally had an Internet crush on this guy (anyone can sound amazing through AIM) and a not-so-small portion of me really wanted this guy to just happen to be my knight in shining armor. So what if he was six or seven years older than me and we met through Xanga? Meh.

Of course, the meeting was beyond awkward, and I began to realize that a college student who spends his free time chatting with high school girls is probably not knight-in-shining-armor material.

The fairy tale was nice while it lasted. It would have made a great Taylor Swift song.

Fast-forward six years.

I’m sitting in Little Italy, which I have discovered in my old age is much more delicious—and more importantly—cheaper than Mellow Mushroom, with reality—also known as Scott Gentry.

I had really forgotten about fairy tale Internet boy, granted I’d matured a lot, dated a few guys since then and have a great talent for blocking out unpleasant or embarrassing childhood/teenage memories.

The memories flooded back in the form of a burst of laughter when I saw him sit down with a large group of guys at a table in front of me. We made eye contact.

Then I did the only thing that was appropriate in such a situation: the pizza wave.

The pizza wave (replace pizza with any object, really):

1. Make brief eye contact.

2. Turn pizza so it is facing subject.

3. Move pizza back and forth, accidentally allowing cheese and toppings to fall onto plate.

4. Laugh and ignore subject.

Of course, I had to tell Scott who I was waving at, and he thought this was wildly hilarious. Because reality is amazing, this began an inside joke between us where we now wave using objects instead of hands fairly often.

This happened weeks ago, but the thought just crossed my mind as I was about to fall asleep how funny it is when parts of our lives we don’t connect cross paths. I was thinking about all the goals I made, all the guys I “loved,” all the people I thought I’d never lose touch with and just all the things I was so sure about back then. All of those were the fairy tales, and sure, I still have some fairy tales floating around in my mind.

All I can say is I’m glad my fairy tales don’t usually come true. Reality is so much more fun and so much more perfect than I could have ever imagined.

Right down to Mellow Mushroom vs. Little Italy.

adventure

When presented with a list of options, I generally seem to pick the most complicated, different and sometimes just downright weird choice.

My internship was no different. While my friends spent their summers in Rome, Ga. working for a daily newspaper or in Birmingham interning for Progressive Farmer, I was eating a lot of salad and cheese in France, crossing the Mediterranean sea on a ferry and riding camels in Tunisia.

My travels weren’t just for pleasure, however. I was writing my heart out in a blog, taking photos of strangers to be used on a website, writing a few feature stories and helping local missionaries with childcare, music video shoots and whatever else they needed.

Some days, it was hard.

The internship was a challenge because it was tailor-made for us, and there were no real requirements. No one had done what we were doing before. I was my own boss, made my own deadlines and set my own standards. There were times when it was so hard to stay motivated.

I was paired up with a girl I had never met before, and we spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks together—talk about developing interpersonal skills.

I cried a lot this summer. I missed my family, I often didn’t feel like I was being productive and I was downright lonely a lot of days.

But as I look back months later, I realize I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I learned so much—personally and professionally. I didn’t realize until I got back what an impact my photography, writing and communication would have.

Plus, I got to do some cool stuff.

I watched the sun set over the Mediterranean with no land anywhere in sight. I learned a few phrases Arabic. I went into two mosques. I had a cooking lesson with a Tunisian woman. I went to a Tunisian wedding. I visited Roman ruins.

I ate French cheese, ratatouille, authentic Italian food, coos-coos, Tunisian sandwiches, shawarma meat and Lebanese food.

I met a couple who graduated from Oxford and drank Tunisian beer with them on top of the tallest building in Tunisia on my 21^st birthday.

I rode a camel in the Sahara Desert.

Most importantly, though, I made friends from other cultures.

Dancing on the mountain in France with 15 people from seven different countries after filming an Algerian Christian music video was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Being able to provide these people with memories of the time we spent together making the video through photography was a part of the internship I never could have dreamed up.

My photos and writing being used by missionaries on the field to show their friends and family what their lives are like everyday was more rewarding than any paycheck from a traditional internship could have been.

I’ve often wondered if it was a mistake to skip the traditional route.

Will I be able to get a job?

What does my choice about this internship say about me?

I hope it says that I often stray from the norm. I hope it says that I am independent. I hope it says I can easily adapt.

Most of all, I hope it says that I’m not going to settle for average.

I want adventure.

 

justice

At the same time I was working on a story about the Alabama Prison Arts + Education project, I was covering a murder trial.

Not one of those murder trials where it could go either way.

Everyone knew Courtney Lockhart was guilty. He confessed. And everyone wanted blood. Courtney’s blood.

Bastard.

Murderer.

Scum.

I saw it on the faces of Lauren Burk’s family, I saw it on the faces of her sorority sisters and I heard it all around me on campus.

As I listened to the stories of murderers-turned-artists in Alabama prisons, however, I secretly began to think more about Courtney Lockhart the man rather than Courtney Lockhart the cold-blooded killer.

Everyone was saying, “I don’t know how those guys defend garbage like that.”

I saw his mother sitting in the courtroom everyday.

People thought he should get the death penalty.

I thought about his daughter.

What he did was terrible—there’s no doubt about that. I still don’t walk alone on campus at night because of the man. My heart breaks when I think about Lauren dying so young. Hot tears streamed down my supposed-to-be-professional face in the courtroom when her father testified about the night he found out his daughter was dead. I cried all the way home that first day.

As I thought about it more that week, I realized I wasn’t just crying for Lauren.

I was crying for Courtney, too. I wish he hadn’t done it. His life is over.

But does it have to be?

Courtney Lockhart is going to prison for life. But he is still a human being, just like those inmates who write poetry and paint beautiful art. The damage Courtney did is fresh, but after learning about this program, I think he still deserves a chance to live, even if it’s within the walls of a prison.

I’ve never had to truly struggle like so many of these men and women who commit horrible crimes. My dad wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t completely disappear. I never served in the military. I’ve never lived in my car because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I’ve never been alone.

Courtney has.

Now, Courtney will spend the rest of his life in prison—as he should.

I just hope that someone will reach out to him there to help him overcome the issues that drove him to rob and murder Lauren Burk in the first place.

I hope someone like Kyes Stevens will look Courtney Lockhart in the eye one day and tell him it doesn’t matter anymore.

He can still smile. He can still learn. I hope he picks up a paintbrush or writes something he never thought he could write.

I hope Courtney Lockhart finds himself.

One life was already cut short unnecessarily.

I hope another life won’t be completely wasted.

loss

She got up before the sun rose every day, drank her coffee and went running. She participated in marathons and triathlons. She was a member of the same workout class for eight years.

This woman loved exercise. And it killed her.

At 5:45 a.m. Nov. 5, Marie Wooten was struck by a car and died at the scene.

Even a week later, it makes me shiver and tears well up in my eyes just thinking about it.

Did I know this woman? No. I had never even heard her name before she died.

But I know her now. For the third time this semester, I have gotten to know someone after their death.

Wooten was superwoman.

Her planner was packed with obligations, every day marked full with precise times and names of the people who depended on her to show up.

She always did.

She recently made a groundbreaking connection between Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. NASA, the USDA and the National Science Foundation funded her research. She was the dean of COSAM. She was a wife.

Yet she still found time to make Jay Gogue laugh at meetings, help Shaista Walji with her undergraduate research and ask Ben Samuelson about his dental school application.

She was supposed to run in a race Saturday and teach cell and molecular signal transduction in the spring.

She had ideas about teaching college students about science through video games.

She grew up in Tennessee as an only child and always wanted to be a scientist.

She had a funny laugh.

I’ve never known someone so intimately without actually knowing them. I wish I could meet her and tell her how much I admire her. I wish I could sit down with her and ask her how she stayed so organized and found the time to do everything she did. I wish I could know what her laugh actually sounded like.

But I can’t.

This isn’t like doing a second grade biography project on Amelia Earhart.

I’ve seen the tears in the eyes of her students. I’ve seen her co-workers sigh with disappointment. I’ve heard about the plans she had that will never come to fruition.

I feel silly for crying as I write this. What right do I have to be upset? What kind of relationship did I ever have with Marie Wooten?

I’m just the journalist who tries to capture the essence of who she was and make it into a 700-word article.

Maybe that’s why I’m crying. It can’t be done.

 

 

 

 

glow

This summer, I watched one of the best movies I’ve ever seen: Amèlie.

It’s a French film staring Audrey Tautou, and it’s brilliant.

Tto introduce the characters, the director shows us their quirks. Facts about them no one but them (and not even them, sometimes) know. For instance, Amèlie likes to sit and wonder how many people in her city at that moment are currently having sex (remember, it’s French). Collignon likes to buy a whole chicken every week and cook it. He always eats the meat off one particular bone… every time. The director devotes about five minutes to each character this way–showing us their little secrets, their flaws and the small things in day-to-day life that make them happy. It personalizes the characters and makes them seem real.

Since I watched the movie, I often think (perhaps narcissistically?) “What would my five minute character intro include?” Like I said, most of the things on the list were so minute that the person probably never gave it a second thought.

Honestly, my list isn’t long. There are two things that keep returning to mind.

1. I love walking by people and listening to snippets of their conversations–usually just a phrase like, “And then she just hung up the phone on me!” or “When I saw him I just had the worst word diarrhea (I have no idea how to spell that word… spell check to the rescue. Sorry, Ed Williams).” I don’t read any further into it. It just makes me smile.

2. This is why I wrote this blog. I’ve been dying to get these thoughts written.

I have glow-in-the-dark shapes stuck to my ceiling above my bed in the shape of a star. Whoever lived in Harper Hall room 310 before me left them as a gift for the next lucky soul to inhabit the room.

I try not to look at them. They make me uncomfortable.

I had glow-in-the-dark stars in my room at my dad’s house as a kid. The purple room where I cried myself to sleep so many times. The room where I often felt so alone. The room where I learned that parents can’t always be trusted. The room where I truly found God for myself when I sat on my bed and read James 1:2-4 through tears when I was 13.

Every single time I look at those shapes–the shooting stars, the tiny dots and the lone Saturn-shaped planet– a small part of my mind floats back to that room.

This wasn’t an instantaneous realization, but rather a gradual understanding of why I didn’t like looking at them. The discomfort came first; the memory followed much later.

Oddly enough, when I realized why I didn’t like the stars, I started looking at them more often. I voluntarily plunged into my memories, allowing myself to evaluate what they meant.

I’m glad I had those experiences as a kid. I’m glad I can look back on them now, bewildered that I am who I am despite my childhood. I’m glad the glow-in-the-dark stars are above my bed, serving as a reminder to remember where I came from and to thank God for loving me through the chaos. I’m just thankful.

James 1:2-4– “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, for you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work, so you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”