Unironically Enthusiastic

Well, this post is inevitable. I simply have to heap loads of praise on the man that's been taking up all my spare time lately--John Green. However, the beauty and accuracy of all the prestigious book reviews have taken the words from me. They have already captured what I love so much about John Green and his writing.

They've captured how he writes to teenage audiences (and us twenty year old college kids, what can I say?) instead of at them. He doesn't patronize his readers. He recognizes that youth doesn't mean shallow and apathetic toward philosophical musings and that young readers can relate to themes more important than love triangles. He writes books with references to literature, and a lot of his readers understand them. He writes books that speak to problems of any age through the highly malleable lens of teenhood; he often says he feels called to write for teenagers and can't imagine his work geared toward any other audience. However, I think his books are suitable for anybody with eyes in their head and thoughts in their brains. I will continue reading them long after my age no longer fits in the prescribed parameters on the title page.

But even greater than the excellent quality of the books is the community sprung up around them. Admittedly, "nerdfighteria" could exist without John's books, but I don't think it would be as awesome. John's books allow a singular thread tying together most members of the community; I'm sure there are nerdfighters who don't read the books, but I am also sure they are in the vast minority. The books give a vehicle for tours and the community publicity, which gives them more leverage to "decrease worldsuck." Anybody who has read the books knows how smart John is (and consequently, attribute similar qualities to his brother Hank), and that he is an adequate role model for nerds everywhere.

The best thing about being part of the community is the encouragement of unbridled passion. John defines nerd: "Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. We don't have to be like, 'Oh yeah that purse is okay' or like, 'Yeah, I like that band's early stuff.' Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'."

I love that. I love being unironically enthusiastic. I love waiting in obnoxiously long lines for book releases, passionately discussing said books loudly in the dining hall (and on facebook and tumblr and blogger and with strangers in the bathroom and strangers on the sidewalk...), keeping quote books, hanging nerdy posters, wearing nerdy shirts, and just plain loving the things I love out loud and proud.

At the Tour de Nerdfighting event, there was plenty of unironic enthusiasm. People wear enthusiastic homemade shirts, enthusiastically sing Hank's songs, and just plain relish in all the things they love.

The world needs John and Hank Green. The idea that teenagers are supposed to be passive, brooding, and generally unattached from life is ridiculous. The vlogbrothers show teenagers that it is okay to be passionate and make nerdy into a positive moniker.

So, without shame or irony, I tell everyone to simply DFTBA.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I've been having trouble writing lately. I have about ten incomplete and unpublished drafts on here. The truth is when I'm at home, I become a lazy shell of a person who doesn't do anything but watch television and play video games and occasionally crack open a book. I really don't like this person. Which is why I can't stay here in this soul sucking little town.

That might seem like a harsh thing to call it. But I'm reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and it's about people with active, introspective, dreaming minds living in a soul sucking little town. The meager, poor town is completely devoid of opportunity and wreaks of ignorance, racism, and hopelessness. I don't live in the World War 2 era South, but I live in the closet modern day approximation. I can relate to the restless souls roaming the unnamed little town's dusty avenues. They feel totally isolated, alone in their thoughts and pining over unachievable dreams.

But the thing that gives me hope is that I'm not a character in the novel--I do have a future and my dreams are attainable. I get to leave. At home, my mind becomes a wasteland of sitcoms and football stats. At school, it's full of poetry and philosophy and grand pictures of what the future has in store for me. If I stayed home, I would never survive. Like Biff, Mick, Singer, and Dr. Copeland in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I am not made for this containment; I am not content with what little this place has to offer me. It stifles me; it kills me.

There are upsides to small town America, and people tend to claim it is only my youth that drives me away; middle age will have me crawling back again with 2.5 kids, a mini-van, and a born again religion. But I know that isn't true. It's more than the slow pace, getting stuck behind tractors, driving hours for entertainment; it's the feel of the people and the despair in the air. There are no possibilities here. People work the same minimum wage jobs from the time they're born to the time they die. There is no room to think, to grow, to evolve. I valued that capacity when I was eight, and I am sure I will still value it when I'm eighty. I can't bear to spend any time more than Christmas vacations and summers here.

I love my parents and brother, and I cherish spending time with them. But outside of my family, I am completely lonely here. There is nothing, no one here for me. I exist in a different space now, and I can't fit in here anymore.

My heart is a lonely hunter, and there's nothing to be hunted in this desolate place.