Diction: Want versus Need

While searching for the perfect ingredients for a poisoned apple beverage, I informed a shopkeeper that I needed a candy apple. The man replied, "are you sure you need it, or do you just want it?" I'm sure I had to come up with a silly comeback because that is a silly question.

I understand that we teach children this distinction because they tend to exaggerate their desire for a new toy or snack or whatever fancy takes root in their brains at the time. Need is a strong term, but I think that it's foolish to continue questioning need versus want for one simple reason.

Need implies a condition. I need X in order to X. Technically speaking, no one ever needs anything. You might need food, but only in order to survive. If you don't care to survive, eating is no longer a necessity. You might need a raise, but only in order to avoid going broke. If you don't care whether you're homeless and in debt, getting a raise no longer becomes a need.

Need becomes confused with want when the result is something awkward or unecessary. For example, I need to eat a piece of candy so I can enjoy its flavor. I need to see a new movie in order to be able to talk about it with my friends. I need a candy apple in order to make the perfect poisoned apple beverage. Need, therefore, is not about how badly you want the thing you reportedly need, but how important and specific the result is. When a child needs a new toy, they might mean they don't think they can be happy without it. But as an adult, I can look at the situation from a different perspective and note that happiness is entirely possible without the new toy. A "need" for a new toy in order to be happy is not specific (happiness can be achieved in other ways) or important (it's okay to not be happy sometimes). 

Truly, I don't need to concoct the perfect poisoned apple beverage. The result of concocting said beverage is that I will feel slightly more accomplished and will have enjoyed my time with friends at the Halloween party just a little more. But I don't need any of those things. Accomplishment and enjoyment are not necessary to my being. However, if the results clause is "in order to create this beverage" as an end in itself, then, yes, I need a candied apple, because it is impossible to make the drink without one.

Anyway, kiddos, the point is that it's okay to need things. People question your motives and objectives, but if, in order to achieve a desired outcome, you need a certain thing, then it is perfectly appropriate to use that word. Saying, "I want a candied apple" would have been untrue in the above circumstance, because I don't, in fact, like candied apples. Saying you want something makes the thing an end in itself. You don't want something in order to accomplish something else. Want is intransitive.

This distinction between wants and needs is not framed properly when we say, "you need food, but you don't need a new toy." It is equally true that you might want food and want a new toy. However, there is an implied results clause in each. It would be more true to say, "you need food to be comfortable, but you don't need a new toy to be comfortable."

Au Revoir Vacation

There are two common ways of discussing illness. In general, one is either suffering from it or fighting it.

Suffering, undergoing, aching, agonizing, braving, bearing, languishing. Battling, fighting, challenging, resisting, grappling, wrangling, wrestling. Yeah, I just pulled out my thesaurus, but it isn't any less true.

It's funny because when someone has an acute illness, there are things to do. If you get a cold, for example, everyone has a bit of advice. Drink more water (apparently, this cures everything). Rest as much as possible. Take some vitamins. Take a long hot shower. Use this or that device. I suppose these things must be effective to an extent, but the real battle, the one between the invading pathogens and your home cells, is one that you have very little control over. Sure, there are things you can do to aid your immune system. The biggest thing you can do is just to wait.

Waiting to get better is a trial. I wonder if the term, "suffering from an illness" comes from the business of being uncomfortable while your body doesn't function optimally or from the agony of waiting while knowing you can't do anything. Certainly there are illnesses where one does suffer with a physical intensity that is apt for the term, but "suffering" implies a level of anguish that the common cold generally doesn't bring.

It probably sounds like I've come here to rant about diction like I may or may not have done in the past. Words matter, folks. Whether you were teased or assaulted matters. Whether you lost or were defeated matters. Whether you were annoyed or were pestered matters. But today I really just want to explain that neither suffering nor fighting are really great words for chronic illness.

If you weren't already aware, I have chronic nerve pain. Not sure where it came from, but it's here. I have reason to believe that I had clinical depression before the first symptoms of a dysfunctional nervous system ever came into play, but the two certainly don't work together to make me feel better. As I write this, I'm in the process of switching from a tricylic antidepressant to an SSRI, and it's a bit of a difficult journey. I finally feel like I have the right to complain about antidepressants online because I've now tried three of them, and I'm no closer to feeling better. But anyone who has taken a similar journey knows that it's common for antidepressants to take time, so you just kind of deal with it.

In this process, I've been trying to come up with words for what I'm going through. If you've read the preceding paragraphs (as I suspect most of you have), you will guess that "suffering" and "battling" do not make it onto my list of "helpful words" in this case. See, we like words like "battling" because it gives us a sense of control in an otherwise intangible setting. It makes us feel brave and powerful and hopeful. But it isn't true. Not in a literal sense anyway. Because while you can battle a cold and probably win, chronic illness is here for the long game. Any day that you do everything right still has a chance of being a losing day. Every day that could be described as a victory can easily be followed by insurmountable odds the next morning. Sometimes battles are short, but then there are the times that they stretch on for days and weeks and months with no hope of a reprieve.

That's where the suffering comes in. But we don't like to suffer. We don't like to be in a world where we have no control and pain and difficulty are completely out of our hands. We try to fight, but how do you fight your own body? How do you fight the inevitable? How do you endure the agony of knowing that you'll never get better? If you aren't already clinically depressed, it's going to be easy to become so.

Maybe I do suffer from chronic illness. Maybe I do suffer from depression. Maybe "suffering" is an apt word after all. But if I accept that, then what's the point? I can't get better. I can't take control. I can't do anything at all except be.

A nurse once told me to stop saying, "I am depressed" or "I am ill" but instead say, "I have depression" and "I have a chronic illness." And this difference matters. Like any word choice, this one matters.

But saying that I have depression makes it sound like this condition is an unwelcome birthday gift from Aunt Judy that I might be able to stuff in the back closet and forget about or hand off to someone else. It doesn't speak to the days that I have no energy to get out of bed. When smiling hurts. When caring is impossible. It doesn't speak to the ways that I have grown up with depression and physical pain. About how these things have shaped me, taught me, and helped me become myself.

See, my pain isn't going away. My mental illness isn't going away. And even if it did, I don't really know who I would be. The suffering speaks to the fact that my days are more difficult than they would be if I weren't ill. The fighting speaks to how I strive to live fully every day, even though I won't get better. But I can't bring myself to use those terms to describe myself. I simply am. I am a mixture of joy and sorrow, pain and freedom, grace and awkwardness, certainty and anxiety, and so many other components. I don't know if the mixture is just right, but for one day at a time, I just live. I just am.

I take medication. This is designed to help me function despite how I am. It doesn't change who I am, though. It doesn't make it possible to wait it out, to hope I get better, to look on the bright side, or to reassure me that I'll make it through. There is no other side. This isn't an obstacle I can overcome. It's a hard reality that I live in every day, and that I will continue to live in every day of my life. Other than a miracle or death, there is no known cure. I'll spend the rest of my life dealing with the symptoms. There will be days when it's a fight, and there will be days when I suffer.

There are people in my life who get that, and who aren't offended when I have a panic attack and flake out on our social gatherings. But for those of you who aren't in that group, hey, it's okay, I get it. But just know that even if I'm not "fighting" or if I don't appear to be "suffering," I'm no less of a person. I'm not out on a vacation until I get better. I won't be getting better, but I'm still pretty cool.

How To Make Your Own Vash the Stampede Costume

How To Make Your Own Vash the Stampede Costume

I recently made a pretty sweet Vash the Stampede Costume for my cosplaying, and at the suggestion of a friend, here is my DIY Vash the Stampede Guide.

Crafting cosplay can be tricky since often fine details are difficult to pin down. For example, Vash's coat features many buttons. Depending on which scene, the lighting, whether anime or manga, and a few other factors, the number of buttons on the front panel of his coat varies from as few as 12 to as many as 18. Other details like where the seams are, how many buckles are on his sleeve and boot, how the straps are held on, and a few other details are similarly arbitrary, but eventually I selected one photo and pretty much followed that.

I used red duck canvas to construct the coat. It's rather stiff, which isn't quite right for the costume, but seemed an appropriate coat material. Other Vash the Stampede cosplay creators have used red leather or tough knit fabric, which would also be fine, but duck canvas is cheap. For my costume, I needed 7 yards. If your model is shorter, you may need less, but I usually get extra in case I mess up.

Making a Pattern for Your Vash the Stampede Coat

The basic pattern includes 19 pieces, not including the repeats that are used on the opposite sides of straps. In my above sketch, you can see that I went with 16 buttons on the front. I later changed this because 18 fit better. The total number of buttons came to 45, which is a lot to hand stitch through 6 layers of canvas! To ensure the coat fit well, I traced a T-shirt that I knew fit my model onto sheer fabric and cut and measured that. I had to adjust a little throughout, but the basic pattern is based off a simple t-shirt shape.

In the sketch below, all the pieces are laid out and graphed. Note that the thigh straps are missing, but I used the same pattern as the shoulder straps.


Before cutting out your pattern, ensure that the shoulder to ankle length is appropriate. My model is 52 inches from top of shoulder to ankle, and wears a size medium-small in mens, so the costume is subsequently quite tall and thin. This sketch also does not allow for seam allowances, so you'll have to add an extra inch and a half or so to make sure your resulting coat doesn't end up 2 inches smaller than intended. Feel free to interpret your Vash the Stampede look as needed to achieve the right amount of love and peace for your model.

I kind of cut and measured as I went along, so I don't have a photo of all the cut out pieces. One thing that made it tricky is that the coat is rather baggy, so I ended up having to make the vest portion several inches larger than originally intended. I also remeasured the collar to ensure that it fit comfortably in the head hole once I had sewn the shoulder seams.
 

Sewing Vash's Coat

If you have zero experience sewing, I'll give you the beginner description of how I put this Vash the Stampede coat together, but I'll bold the cut and dry version for anyone who has sewn several garments in their lifetime and has a good idea of what they're doing already.

First step is to cut the vest and sew the points, turn and topstitch from the armpit to the collar on the front, or the armpit to armpit on the back
The back of the vest is all one piece, whereas the front obviously has to be two pieces. I cut 4 front pieces (two for each side) and two back pieces. Sew from the collar down the front and up to the sleeve hole on the front piece, and the sleeve hole to the sleeve hole on the back piece. This leaves the arm holes, shoulders, and collar raw, but you can flip the bottom inside-out to make a nice finish. Press the seams, roll out the points, and topstitch along the seams you just sewed (turn and topstitch).



Second, cut out the 4 body pieces, sew the back together, finish the front body, and attach the vest to the body at the shoulders. 
I cut the body after sewing the vest to ensure the shoulders would be the same width. The back of the body has a slit that comes up to about the knees, so I sewed the two back pieces together starting at the top and sewing until about 16 inches from the bottom (this may vary if your model has shorter legs). I then finished and topstitched that seam. I also hemmed the front of the body along where I would sew the buttons. After finishing the back and front, I made a huge sandwich with the finished front of the vest, the front of the body, the back of the body, and the back of the vest, all with right sides facing between the front and back body. I double-stitched the shoulders and finished those seams. I should have probably topstitched that as well, but I did not because that's a lot of fabric. And we all know that Vash the Stampede disproves of suicide more than anything.



Next, measure the collar and attach to the main body.
The collar I ended up with was 32 inches long (including seam allowance) and 10 inches tall. I first hemmed the edges that would make up the button-up part. Next, I sewed the outside layer onto the collar (another thick sandwich), and turned the inside in, and stitched that on to finish it. Be careful pinning this inside seam because the inside hem ends up being the outside topstitching. I also topstitched the enclosing ends of the collar.



Step 4 was to attach the sleeves.
I believe I hemmed both sleeves first and then attached them to the shoulder hole, but  you can do it either way. It's critical to attach and finish all 4 layers: the sleeve, the body, and the two layers of vest. After the sleeves are attached, sew from the sleeve cuff through the shoulder and down the body until about 18 inches from the bottom to leave room for the side slit.I topstitched along the sides,but not along the sleeves because I don't hate myself. Do the same on both sides.



The coat is mostly formed now! You could probably wear it without looking like a weirdo. Anything that has not already been hemmed or finished should now be hemmed or finished. If you've been following me step by step, you should just have the bottom hem to do. Despite my best efforts, one of my body pieces was a good 3 inches longer than the rest of the coat (how does that even happen?) so I just hemmed all the pieces to be the same length and finished up any raw seams that looked like they needed help.

(photo of bottom hem)

The rest of the pieces were entirely made up of turned and topstitched pieces, which are pretty easy once you get the hang of it, especially if they all have right angle corners like these do.
Make the front piece. Make two shoulder straps. Make one cuff strap (I almost made two of these, but Vash does not have a right sleeve, so don't do that). Make two thigh straps. Make one waist strap. Make two looping straps. These pieces are also all held on with buttons. You can make buttonholes for each of these, but honestly I only made 14 button holes out of 45 buttons because the majority of these buttons never have to come undone. The required buttonholes are as follows: 2 in the collar, 8 on the front panel, one on each end of the waist strap, and one on one end of each of the looping waist straps.

Finishing your Trigun Cosplay

Once you've sewn on all the buttons, you should be done with the coat! Next is just the hair, glasses, gun, arm, legs, and boots (yes! that's all!). Once I've had a chance to work on mine and take some photos, I'll either update this post or add a link to another tutorial for you.

I realize that it would have been clever to add pockets so my model could pretend to have a loaded gun in there, but that honestly wouldn't be too hard to add even after the fact. If you do want to add them, you might need another tutorial, but they would fit nicely below the waist strap on either side.

I hope this Vash the Stampede coat tutorial helps you with your next cosplay. Love and Peace!

Para-sailing

There was a time in my life when I was engulfed with missions opportunities, bible studies, christian community, service opportunities, and people willing to invest in my life. This magical time of Christian growth was because of college ministry. I went into college dissatisfied with Christianity and hoping to reinvent myself as agnostic. I came out of college having been baptized, gone on missions trips, participated in street evangelism, taught classes on how to share ones testimony, and leading bible study leader support groups. I started a campus project to reach out to LGBTQ students and helped put together a missions dinner. I personally prayed with more than one person as they decided to turn their life around and pursue Christ, and I mentored several students who weren't sure if they wanted to be Christians anymore. In a way of speaking, I blossomed in this environment. There were rough patches, sure, but never in my life had I ever had access to so much training, experience, and opportunity. And I'm not sure I'll ever have it again.

I graduated, see. I packed up and moved on to the “real world” (though, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there is no such thing as the “real world” just changes in the delusions we convince ourselves to accept). All of a sudden, I had no roommates, no staff workers, no picnics at the crossroads between my housing and the library, no outreach activities, no pizza and worship nights, no anything.

Well, there was the church.

I found myself in a new city with no friends and no connections other than my job. But I did some research and figured I could do worse than the church 5 blocks from my house.

Honestly, I've been very satisfied with this church as a whole. They have a website (and their service time is posted on there so I can check it every other week when I inevitably can't remember if it's 10 or 10:30) The community is 80% old people, true, but while there's still your classic fare of quilting clubs, book clubs, potlucks, and Sunday school, this church actually does something. They have a food pantry. They go on mission trips. They have outreach programs. They have congregation-wide activities such as the “read through the New Testament in 9 months” plan and the coffee and doughnuts after every service.

As you might imagine, I still feel a little lost though. This isn't new for me. I've moved 13 times in the past 6 years, and during that time, I've attended 14 different churches as a first-time guest. I've attended 9 of these as a second-time guest, and I've been a regular attender for more than 3 months at 5 of them. I would say I have a bit of experience attending new churches.

For those of you into new guest surveys, the things I look for first time in a church do not include how much dust is behind the door of the ladies' room (although, basic cleanliness is of course important, I've never been in a church that I found disgusting due to lack of custodial care). I look to be greeted warmly and given a brief tour of the building. I look for values that agree or contradict with my own beliefs. And I look for food. Food brings people together, folks, and despite the fact that I am now making enough money to stock a few pantries myself, I will always come to a free lunch.

The second visit is just as important as the first, though. I've never stayed at a church who neglected to greet me just as warmly upon the second visit as it did on the first.

So, I attend a church now that meets the above criteria. I attend almost every week... Or every other week… Well, I'm definitely there at least once a month. I've been calling this “my church” for about 4 months now. I feel pretty comfortable here. I'm ready to do something.

Only there's nothing to do.

Hmm. How did this happen? I found a church; I met some people; I signed up for some events and involvement opportunities; but here I am sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon writing about how disappointed I am when I compare my current church with the campus ministry I was a part of not even a year ago.

I don't think it'll do much good to complain. But I'd still like to know what happened.

Maybe it's my fault. Maybe if I attended every single week instead of once a month-- I mean every other week-- I'd be able to connect better. Maybe if I didn't hide in the back row and never introduce myself, I'd know more people. Maybe if I was on the mailing list, I'd know what's going on (where did that envelope go, come to think of it?) Maybe if I volunteered to lead something, there would be something I could be a part of. Maybe.

Church is not campus ministry. Campus ministry is a para-church ministry. They will say in their mission statements that they aren't meant to replace the church, but simply to direct people to Jesus and encourage them to pursue Him after graduation.

But the thing is, I don't want to go to church. I mean, I want to. But I don't want to. I want to be a part of a community of people who share truth and actively love. That's what the church is, right? Except it isn't. There are a lot of things the church is. The church is a community. The church is an institution. The church has programs, activities, services, meals, groups, offices, leadership, kid's services, social events, and singing.

But does the church love? Does the church share truth? Is it a community full of bench warmers and hobby enthusiasts?

How To Ensure the Laundry Gets Done

As the busy person you no doubt find yourself, it can become overwhelming to see the dirty clothes stacking up day after day (or perhaps week after week or month after month or decade after decade). To ensure that you and your household always have something that doesn't smell like a boy's locker room, it is critical to keep on top of the laundry.

If you live alone, I'm afraid you'll have to take responsibility for this job on your own. You may be lucky enough to have parents or relatives that will do the laundry for you if you bring it over and leave it in a noticeable location every time you visit, or you might be rich enough to be able to hire someone to pick it up and clean it for you, however, you still must be the one to take initiative and ensure that the laundry is in the correct location for the obliging laundry doer to do it. Being responsible for laundry may seem like a simple thing, but only to those who have exactly the right amount of time and motivation to do it. For the rest of us, it becomes a matter of simple tricks to get it to work correctly.

1.  To increase motivation, place the laundry in a prominent location so it's impossible to ignore. Suggested locations include on top of your phone or computer, suspended from a closed door so it falls onto you when you open the door, and in front of the refrigerator.

2. Ensure you have sufficient amount of laundry soap at all times. If you do not, you may find it difficult to motivate yourself to run the cycle. However, it can be helpful to realize that most of your clothes probably aren't dirty enough to require soap anyway, so running the cycle without it will work in a pinch.

3. Set reminders for yourself. If you forget to set the reminders, you may have a problem that goes beyond forgetting to do the laundry. Putting post-it notes or digital reminders in likely places or maybe everywhere if you're not sure which would be the best place may make you too tired to actually accomplish anything that day, but might help you remember for tomorrow.


If you live with other people with whom you'd like to share the duties of laundry-doing (read: make them do it), your job may be easier. However, housemates have a tendency to be less motivated and less bothered by having dirty laundry dropped on their heads than you, so you may have to up your laundry-motivation if you need to convince others to do it for you.

1. Hide all your housemate's essential clothing so they have to run the washing machine.

2. Strategically "lose" the remote in a heap of laundry.

3. Set up the laundry yourself to encourage your housemate to simply push a button to get the system going.

4. Whine about how the house smells like dirty laundry every time your housemate is in earshot.

5. Wear your housemate's clothing and explain that you, "had nothing else to wear"

Whatever you try, remember that no matter how frazzled your relationship with your housemate becomes, it's most important that you don't have to do all of the work. Even if you end up hating each other, as long as you don't have to take responsibility for your own chores, you've won, and that's all that matters.

Creating Hope

This morning I challenged myself to consider what I consider myself an expert at, so I could write about it for you all. I was recently excited to see that Wikipedia kept the changes I made to information about Wisconsin that I wrote in. It gave me happy feelings to see that I know something many people don't know at all, even if it is just how many gas stations are in my hometown.

I read once that if one reads three books on any given subject, one probably knows more about that subject than 90% of the population. I've read a great many books, but not enough of them were informative. I know a lot about fictional characters, fantasy tropes, what constitutes poor or disappointing literature, and the emotions that a typical writer feels, but I can't say I know much about how to do anything special.

Most of what I do in life, I've never read a book on or taken a class in. Things like waking up in the morning, listening to music, going for walks, or giving hugs don't come with instruction manuals. Nearly everyone does them differently. I imagine instruction manuals exist somewhere for these things, but I can't imagine reading a book about how to correctly go for a walk. It sounds rather boring. I'd rather just go for a walk.

I have reason to believe that I'm good at knitting, cooking, organizing, and teaching. I see evidence that I have skills in these and other areas that many people do not have. I wish I could explain how to do these things. So much of it is simply, do what seems best and think of a way to fix it if you make a mistake. I suppose that's not very instructional.

I don't know if I'm good at being creative. I see some people who never exercise their creativity in a meaningful way, and I see some who exude ideas like carbon monoxide and are constantly building some craft or another. All I do is play at something that feels right and set it aside when it doesn't come out quite how I wanted it to. Maybe that's all anyone ever does. Maybe people love those things anyway, even when they don't turn out as expected.

I don't know if I'm good at being hopeful. I want to be. I try to be. But I can't say I'm an expert, even though I've certainly read more than 3 books on the subject. I suppose there's a difference between knowing how to be hopeful and actually being hopeful. Hope is a fleeting creature.

I hope I won't be depressed.

I hope I become healthy.

I hope today is a good day.

I hope things work out.

I hope we can be friends.

In so many cases, there's something that can be done: I can be less depressed by doing things I enjoy every day, taking care of myself and my body, and going to the doctor. I can become healthier by eating well, sleeping, and exercising. I can work to make the day good, help things work out, and put in effort to be a good friend. Yet no matter how I try, not every day is good, not every night is restful, and not every friend stays for good.

Dare we continue to hope?

Hope is fragile, but no matter how many times it is crushed, the fractured pieces come back alive at the slightest provocation. No matter how many years pass without anyone remembering my birthday, every year a flutter of hope pulls in my chest at the thought that I might finally receive that surprise birthday party I used to dream of as a kid. No matter how many times I am rejected, I still find myself poking in to see if there's any cake left after the children have finished snack time. No matter how dark the nights get, I know I can wait expectantly for the sunrise to come and make everything not quite so bad.

I've begun knitting mittens for the homeless shelter in town. It's rather a hopeless process because I know that no matter what I do, I cannot cure homelessness in my city. Yet there is a flutter of hope in me that even if just one life can be made better...