I hate when people use the word \”aspiring\” to describe themselves. 

On my first day at work twelve years ago, one woman said to another (not realizing I was right there), \”Did you meet that new little girl, Anna? She will never make it here.\” There was agreement, and laughter.

They knew nothing about me. I was shaken, just a little.  I should have been flattered that my mere existence that day had unsettled the atmosphere. 

 I may have already told this story, but it came up today on a call and I realized how valuable this lesson was for me so I am telling it again!

When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, my mom was letting me help cook dinner by teaching me how to peel potatoes (incidentally also the only thing I know about cooking!). I had a potato in one hand and the peeler in the other, hacking away trying to make it look smooth and easy like my mom always did.

I kept stopping and asking, \”Is this okay?\” \”Does this look right?\” Seeking validation that my efforts were correct. I was a chatterbox, I never shut up. My mom finally said, \”It\’s a potato. Do your best. If you screw this up we\’ll get another and start again.\”

An empowering lesson that I believe has helped me to this day.

I assure you, you can call my boss and ask, he never hears from me. I don\’t feel the need to ask permission for everything I do. I make decisions every day, quite comfortable that I have the skill to do so but if I screw it up, I will just try again. I don\’t need him to constantly validate that I am good enough to do my job. He trusts me and keeps me on his team because I am good enough. Just like my mom knew I was capable of peeling that potato.

People often get stuck in life, spinning their wheels because they don\’t feel empowered to make decisions. And that\’s easy, since everyone is a damn critic so there\’s always some comment coming from the peanut gallery. But unless you\’re about to perform something like brain surgery, not very much is more delicate than that potato. Do your best, learn from your mistakes, start again.

Life is SHORT. Make decisions, live your best damn life, and maybe the result isn\’t pretty every time but indecision and stalling and constantly needing someone to validate what you\’re doing wastes a whole bunch of time in your life you can never get back. You can ask forgiveness and you can try again, but you can never get back time you wasted on inaction.

It\’s really hard to believe that my belief in freedom, peace, and that your rights deserve to be protected even when I disagree could cause someone to be offended.

But people are often offended by things that challenge their perspective. I believe that being easily offended is a sign that you are letting people have too much control over how you feel. I can hear someone speak words to me that I disagree with and I can still respect them, still value them, and not feel personally attacked or injured by it.

I will not stop speaking up in defense of freedom. I will not stop actively cherishing our natural rights. And yes, that has cost me blog subscribers, followers and might even cost me friends. Standing up for our freedom is worth all of that.

I am a libertarian. I believe in freedom for each individual to pursue happiness in their own way so long as it doesn\’t infringe on anyone else\’s rights. I believe in personal responsibility and that in real freedom, we maintain a serious responsibility to respect ourselves and others. And it turns out, some people in this country believe that being a libertarian is on par with terrorism, that it is a threat.

That is sad. But even still, I will not be quiet. Because there are only a few things in my life that matter more to me than freedom does. Without freedom, I cannot have the life I want. Not a single wish or dream that I have involves hurting, oppressing, or stealing from another person. But every dream I have involves my ability to wander freely. To think freely. To love freely. And it turns out, some people hate this.

I feel sad for those people. Those people that preach tolerance but are desperate to cram me into some mold of politically correct nonsense where my language and beliefs and ideals match theirs. I feel sad for them, but I do not feel threatened by them. And I will not be quiet to appease those people.

 This is us versus them.

Not republicans versus democrats. Not left versus right. It\’s far deeper than that. It\’s the authoritarian state against free individuals. And yes, there are democrats and republicans being swept up in the \”us versus them\” narrative perpetuated by the media, namely Trump and Biden. But this is so much bigger than that.

But they want us to be at each other. Reporting each other on social media. Lost in the minutia bickering with one another because it distracts us from the real issue – we are losing our freedom at an alarming rate.

Scapegoating is basically the oldest trick in the political book, so of course, there are scapegoats on both \”sides.\” Butt he sides they are offering us are really the same side – the state. 

You can label me a conspiracy theorist, but I think nearly all of what we see in the mainstream media is staged to incite emotions within the general public. Cause us to react irrationally and take action and take sides that make no sense but rather they cause us to abandon the real fight – a fight for our freedom.

What we need is not a civil war. It is a revolution.

We need to stand up and begin demanding our rights back. We need to stop bickering with idiots on the internet and start focusing on the real target – the authoritarian \”leaders\” that are backed and protected by Big Tech.

I am a libertarian and I believe in the non-aggression principle. However, I also believe we are bound to defend our rights when they come for us.

The answer, no matter what you ask me, freedom. What has the government ever done correctly that we would assume they actually have our best interests at heart? When people simply defending the freedom of speech are being threatened to be de-platformed? This is not an example of the free market run amok. This is corporatism. The big tech companies are armed with wealth and resources and they have bought themselves the protection of the most corrupt organization in the country – the federal government. Who would ever look to these companies to save us?!

No one cared when it was the libertarian pages only being banned off of Facebook. When it was us weird fringe freedom extremists that were getting warned and de-platformed. But if you believe in freedom, they are coming for you. Don\’t wait until you\’re the only one left.

When I was a little girl, I remember my dad pontificating at length (you\’d have to have known my dad to realize I am smiling at this) about the scourge of communism on the world. I may have been six or seven years old but after these conversations, I remember vividly thinking that I was so lucky to have been born where I was, to the parents that I had, and not suffering and oppressed in some other country.

Oppressed. My dad always used that word.

He would talk about the rights that we need to maintain a free society, and one of those of course is the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Reflecting on this as I grew up, I of course noticed there tends to be a media bias, but I have always been reassured that there have always been \”rogue\” outlets for dissenting voices to be heard.

Yesterday we learned that President Trump had been banned from Facebook and Twitter. Some people called him a dictator. But last I checked, and please correct me if I am wrong, dictators do not get censored. Dictators censor others.

I would never, ever have voted for either Trump or Biden. I did not vote for either of them. I do not like Trump. But to have the leader of the free world censored in his own country – well, it\’s starting to sound like the country is being overthrown by big tech in cahoots with the political left.

I don\’t care who you voted for, it doesn\’t matter – you should be horrified that this censorship is occurring. Not just with Trump. Facebook has long been shutting down Libertarian pages, and those pages have moved to smaller, freer platforms. Now, people speaking out in support of free speech are getting censored. Everything we post is \”fact-checked\” and anything that disagrees with the narrative is being covered with a warning – even when the details within are 100% accurate!

You don\’t care when it\’s Trump, because you don\’t like him. And maybe when they start shutting down some outlets that you don\’t use or find helpful, you won\’t care then. But they will eventually come for you. They already are. They are listening through our devices, and they determine what we can post and share freely without these labels. They are censoring you.

And yet, we are entitled and lazy about it, even when we know it\’s happening. I have a small circle where some of us have deleted Facebook or Instagram, but most of us still have at least one. I deleted Facebook over a month ago, but I cling to Instagram still, because I have \”reasons.\” But those of us who continue to maintain Twitter, Google, Facebook, or Instagram accounts (and others) are silently being okay with what is going on. We are saying, \”At this moment, I am looking the other way.\”

We should care. We should be worried. Now is the time to stand up against this, and not after they have taken all of our freedoms. The people we think are in charge (the president) are clearly not, there are other powers at work here and they are working in perfect synchronization to make us feel fear, to make us feel like what they are doing is for our best interest. But anyone who picks up a history book will know this isn\’t knew. This is an old tale being retold.

I keep hearing people say – mostly in response to my outbursts – that they don\’t mind wearing masks. They may even like it. They prefer it, they don\’t find them uncomfortable or annoying, and they don\’t find them to be an infringement on their personal liberty.

But in many cases, these people are like me. Relatively privileged. I don\’t have to go to the office every day and wear a mask for 8-10 hours. I don\’t have to wear a mask when I\’m sweating. I don\’t have to wear a mask when I am trying to have a discussion with my coworkers or clients. 

I am not going to sit here and pretend my situation is typical. I work at home, I have a full gym at home, my groceries are delivered to me, and I can literally go weeks without being obligated to put on a mask. If and when I have to wear a mask, it\’s usually my choice for something I don\’t need to do but want to do.

I think about my family and others I know that wear a mask all day at work. My mom is one of these, working on-site in a laboratory 8-10 hours a day and throughout the COVID peaks, far more. She is sick of the masks. She has to wear them in every meeting while trying to connect with her employees and peers. Trying to build relationships with half their faces covered. I know others too, wearing masks during fairly physical labor jobs, breathing in their carbon dioxide all day, sweating, developing breakouts and rashes, even infections. I don\’t usually hear these people saying they love what masks are doing to our society.

In school, I never tended to look too deeply in literature for symbolism. I am pretty literal and take things at face value. However, with the masks, I am more and more driven to thinking about the symbolism of the masks. 

First of all, masks are used to obscure identity. That is why we wear them with a costume. Or to commit crimes. Masks hide who we are. They take away the things that make us identifiable. Secondly, to cover the mouth is like to silence someone. It is a symbolic gesture of limiting our speech. Which, is our speech not being limited? Is it not being censored? I have reshared posts on Instagram where to get into the post you had to acknowledge that fact-checkers deemed the story as fake! The stories were studies from medical journals!

So, putting these two things together is an attempt to assimilate everyone into a silenced, identityless, soft will populace.

It is one thing when members of a society choose to mask for their own health reasons. It is entirely different when they mandate it.

And what business is it of the GOVERNMENT to ensure my health? They can\’t do the things they are supposed to do correctly. I don\’t need the same organization that cannot balance a budget to save their lives trying to protect mine.

I will say it a thousand times: this is not about protecting us, or saving us, or having our best interests at heart. This is about CONTROL.

 When it enough going to finally be enough?

I remember my first meeting that got canceled due to COVID. It was the end of February last year. I had been in the office the week before for a meeting and then suddenly, the risk was too much and the meeting was virtual. You know, just for a few weeks until this goes away.

Then I remember my sister, just a few weeks later, texting me to ask if I had gone to stock up on toilet paper. I was confused, and I had not, and turns out I was remiss. I had no rational thought that people would madly go out and buy all the meat and toilet paper. For a brief time, I was without both food and toilet paper!

Two weeks to flatten the curve became two months, then nine months, and here we are nearly a year into this. I understand the hesitation early on. A new virus, spreading quickly, with no information and no idea what the impact on lives would be.

But now we have over 80 million infections worldwide. We know that in America our survivall rate for this virus is greater than 99%. But we are masked. We are encouraged to stay away from our loved ones. We are letting businesses fail, letting people foreclose on homes, letting people fall into drug addiction, letting people become desperate.

I saw a bunch of kids outside yesterday playing – socially distanced and in masks. This is not how kids should be playing.

The elites in the media are telling us how to live our lives while disregarding their own policies. When lockdowns were in effect, we had politicaisn still getting their hair and nails done. They told us not to celebrate the holidays with our families, but coverage (not mainstream coverage, mind you) showed media elites, politicians and pro-lockdwon celebrities visiting with their families. The rules don\’t apply to them, you see.

None of this – and let me repeat that, NONE OF THIS – is geared toward keeping us safe. This is about control. If this virus was so damn dangerous, then 6 feet apart wouldn\’t be enough, masks (that studies have shown are not effective against particles this small) would not be enough. This is just enough to try to break us. Break our will. Break our economy. Break our society. Make us relinquish our freedom.

We handed over two weeks easily, then months, and now nearly a year. Of our lives. You realize we only get one life to live? When is it enough? When are we fed up with these out of touch elites crushing our will?

If you want to wear a mask, go for it. You want to socially distance, go for it. I believe in freedom, you do you. But don\’t limit me. Don\’t tell me what I have to do. Let me live my life and see the people I love and breathe the fresh air. Something is going to kill me someday, probably not COVID, and I\’d like to make the most of my numbered days until then.

 I don\’t normally set \”New Year\’s Resolutions.\” If I decide on a Tuesday at noon that I have a new resolution, I start then. I don\’t even wait for the next day. That being said, I do sometimes like to think of a theme for a new year. Last year, I said that in 2020 I wanted to live with more intent and purpose and to love people better – I feel very confident that I have acted in accordance with that theme all year long. 

Of course, 2020 brought us COVID but it also brought us suppression. Oppression. A system that is doing its best to dominate us. So as I think of 2021 and a new theme, I keep thinking about the words resistance and freedom. I think we are convinced that if we question anything anymore that we are weird, that we will be labeled a conspiracy theorist, that our friends and family will roll their eyes or shun us. And yet the more I talk about this with people – such as random uber drivers, delivery people, friends, and coworkers – I find that a lot of people are questioning what is happening to our society.

People keep saying things like \”the new normal\” but I cannot accept this. I will be 38 in 2021. I have dreams. I have goals. None of which can be achieved in this new environment. And over the course of this year as we went from a 2-week lockdown to 12 weeks to now going on 9 months of limited freedom, my need to speak out has far exceeded my fear of being ridiculed.

I am fortunate that the people who love me best are like-minded. They think as I do, that freedom should always come before security. And I think they support me speaking out, even if it could put me at risk that organizations and people that I have associations with may want to censor me or cut me off if they are unable to do so. But the life I want to live requires freedom, it requires personal liberty, so what is life to me if I lack those things?

I am still unsure in what ways my behavior will change as I resist this oppression. But it begins first with speaking out. Because someone reading this may say \”I am not alone.\” And then I am not one, but two. And then more. The voices get louder and harder to ignore. I am committed to doing my best to support small businesses whenever possible going forward as they are hurting the most (I recently just made a very large furniture purchase from a local small business). I am committed to loving the people I love (which, last I checked, includes hugging, kissing, and spending time together in close proximity!). I am committed to resistance. To non-violent civil disobedience where appropriate. And this is not because I am a troublemaker (though my mom may beg to differ here!), but it is because I care about people, and I cherish freedom.

I dread the idea of being seventy years old, looking back and realizing I didn\’t live the life I wanted because I was scared. Fear is fine. Fear is normal. But I will not let fear be the reason I die with regret. Not when I can choose courage instead.

I will not take this sitting down. And I know I am not alone.

I am going to begin with an admission. My new poetry book – Clarity – which I am tremendously proud of, is named Clarity for two reasons. The first is because it is a word that stood out to me in a poem I wrote called \”Higher Standard\” and the word itself has two definitions. One relates to coherency, the other relates to purity. Both of these words stood out to me as important in terms of how I view this collection.

The other reason and I cannot help but chuckle even as I type this, is the lame pun I am making on the year being 2020 and vision!

My first book of poetry was written over the course of nearly two decades, from my teen years until I was thirty. It encompassed the feelings of growth, my hopes for the future, and included the reflections on my parents, the early years of marriage, the close friendships I had with several women and much of it was dedicated to personal growth and my ideals about personal growth for myself.

My second poetry book was written entirely in the year following my father\’s death, and whatever the topic, the common thread throughout is hope. Hope in love. Hope in redemption. Hope even in grief. Tears were shed as I wrote about my father, and more were shed as I reflected on my own humility, my opportunities to grow as a woman, the yearning need to see more kindness in the world.

Both of these books experimented with different writing techniques, mostly classical, lyrical ways of phrasing. I was leaning heavily on the influences I had in my early exposure to poetry growing up. Even now, I thrill to listen to someone with skill read Kipling or Poe. The way the words flow together is incredible to me. 

My third book finds me at a different place in my life. I am reaping the rewards of years of struggle, of being overworked and underpaid, of being undervalued, of struggling to verbalize my vision for myself. The struggles of my past have left me stronger, and not at all entitled but certainly confident about what I want for myself and what I bring to the table. This collection also taps into a very underutilized part of my talents as a writer – and that is the emotional, romantic side. 

I was inspired in the spring, reading the poetry of some very popular modern poets, enjoying their phrasing and their content, but also thinking to myself \”if I was going to write this, this isn\’t how I would say this.\” I like boldness more than suggestion in some ways. A declaration rather than a hint. I would be struck by a particular word and think \”if this was being written about me, or was something I wanted to say, I would not stop short of saying it all.\”

And it was a completely different journey for me. It is unfamiliar to me to be this emotional. It is also written in a more modern tone, in my head I hear the rhythm but it lacks the classical features of my previous poetry, especially the rhyming. I play on words more, I felt very liberated to use words such as climax and penetrate. I am in my late thirties, I refuse to blush at these words!

And in putting this collection together – which was drafted entirely in the notes app on my cell phone, by the way – I started an Instagram page to share it as well. This was particularly challenging for me because I do not enjoy social media. I have all the tendencies of a reclusive writer in me. Just let me write and maybe someone will popularize it after I am dead. However, I started the page in August, and in less than 4 months, and through sharing 139 pieces of poetry, I have over 550 followers, and I am getting such heartwarming feedback. I see my posts being bookmarked and reshared. I see couples tagging their significant others in them flirtatiously. I get messages from people giving their support. It\’s a small audience, and it\’s an art that is widely viewed as being dead (though Mark Anthony has over 400,000 followers so I beg to differ), but I feel like perhaps I am fulfilling a small part of my greater purpose in sharing them openly.

Putting together Clarity, I see my personal growth as a woman. I see my growth as a writer. I see my ideals spelled out in black and white. I see that, for all my growth, I am still in so many ways the girl I was at seventeen – with hopes of pure, undying love, with hopes of kindness in humanity, with dreams that others view as absolutely impossible. I have always been that girl. 

And I love to prove that my dreams are just memories that haven\’t happened to me yet.