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The Art Of Hoop Dancing

Published January 2, 2012 by Ashley Pariseau

I have recently mentally immersed myself into a new and totally unexpected interest that will probably become my new hobby for the year. I never even knew what hoop dancing was until maybe a few months ago. I remember watching the video for Justin Timberlake’s song What Goes Around, Comes Around which features a fire hoop dancer and other fire performers at various points in the video and thinking, “How fricking cool is that?!”

More recently however, while I was at the Indy ScreamPark back in October, I saw a girl hooping with a lighted cosmic (LED) hoop, and then she started hooping with torches lit around them. She wasn’t just hooping like we all did when we were kids. She was incorporating all these dance steps and tricks into the mix and I hadn’t really seen anything it much before. I thought it was so cool. I knew at that point that was something that looked fun and I wanted to try it. That night, it was dark so I didn’t immediately recognize who was hooping, but I later discovered that the girl was an old friend/co-worker of mine from Pizza King. Her name is Laura. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in a couple years, so I looked her up on facebook and found out that she makes custom day hoops and sells them. I asked her about pricing and then did some research and found out that the hoops used for dancing are different than the kids toys sold a local stores. Dancing and performing hoops are usually a little bit larger and more weighted than toy hula hoops, so I decided to ask her to make one in my choice colors pink and black. I was able to meet with her yesterday and here is my first hoop that I will be using to practice with.

Thanks Laura! It will probably take me a few months to learn anything, and I hate that because I want to know how  to do it all now. Apparently, hoop dancing is quickly emerging into the mainstream field of performance entertainment as well as a form of exercising. But before I get into all that, I probably just need to learn a thing or two first. So far today I spent about a half an hour getting comfortable with waist hooping and trying to walk while hooping. It appears my garage will have to be my practice space, since it’s January and all. Laura told me about this place that is a music venue and bar where they have hoopers get together and learn and practice on Monday nights, so I plan on getting into some of that later.

Laura doing her thing.

Browsing youtube, I came across this girl whose style and performance I really like.

Has anyone else had experience with hooping? Feel free to share.

Finding The Leader In Me

Published December 22, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

I am the oldest of my sisters, and just like most first born children, there was always this expectation of me to set an example. I was supposed to do everything first and be the most brave, responsible, and nurturing. I think as a child, I held up to that standard pretty well. I got up first to get ready for school. I started waking up to my own alarm at around age 8 pr 9. Then I would get my sister up and fix her breakfast. I made sure she got ready in time, helped her in school and with her homework. I told her all about what it was like to be in my grade, told her what to expect and gave her advice. I didn’t really have anyone to give me the detailed advice I gave her. I had to experience it first. Being the first born out of them was something I identified with.

But the funny thing was, that even though I had always been seen as the “leader of the pack” among my sisters, it wasn’t that way otherwise. I was never the top student in class, or the lead singer in the choir,  or the lead part in the play. And I wasn’t the leader among my groups of friends either. I didn’t know why. I was always out shined by people with stronger personalities and abilities. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t always want all that pressure and extra attention. I was ok with sitting back and observing others being the leader. I was actually kind of relieved that I got to relax and let someone else do the work, I didn’t want to be a leader anymore and I started to identify more with being a follower. That characteristic became more prominent the older I got.

Then as a teenager, I became pretty interested in the zodiac. I would read all about my sign, Leo. There it was again. The Leo is of course the lion. And what is a lion? A leader. Nearly every single description of people born under the Leo sign was supposed to be a “natural born leader” as well as “dramatic, dominant, independent,  loves the spotlight and attention.” Anything that had to do with being alpha.  I always thought, “Well that doesn’t describe me at all!” I began wondering if God messed up in creating me under that sign.

However, it seems that as I go through life I am still expected to be in some kind of a leadership position, and I usually try to avoid it. How am I supposed to be a leader when I don’t even like to walk in front of other people? When I worked at Pizza King a few years ago, I heard from a co-worker that it was in talks of offering me a supervisor position because one of the main ones was leaving, which many of my co-workers at the time sought after, but it scared me more than anything. I wondered if I could handle it or like it. The extra pay and hours sounded nice, but I still wasn’t sure if it was going to be worth what all I knew they had to deal with. Well it turned out the girl didn’t leave after all so I was never officially offered the position, and I was actually relieved.  At my job now, there are team leaders who basically train new people, and every year, I think, they appoint new people who have been working there for a while and they trust  to become a trainer, and I had a feeling for a while that they might ask me to be one, and I tried to show my lack of interest in that. I just didn’t want to have to worry about showing anyone the ropes and wondering if they were understanding what I was doing and saying. I didn’t want to worry about taking the responsibility over the work efficiency of someone else or anyone blaming me if a trainee screws up or slacks around. All I want to do is go to work and worry about my job only, and then leave.

I wonder if my lack of interest in taking lead on things has to do with my hang up about decision making. A great deal of being a leader is about making decisions, and as I have talked about before, I am not particularly good at making decisions, or at least I am not confident about them when I face choices. Just the other day, I was sitting here with my boyfriend and we were trying to figure out what to eat. We knew we wanted pizza, but it was a matter of getting a carry out pizza or buying one from the grocery store. We were listing our options and I exclaimed, “Ugh I don’t know! Too many choices!”  He stated, “Actually there’s only 2.” I jokingly rebuffed, “That’s still too many,” as I smiled and then somehow not long after that we just finally went with getting one from the grocery store. I realized how silly it was that I had trouble making a decision about pizza, and when there were only two choices, but I was making it seem like a much bigger deal.

Something recently has got me thinking about this for some reason. With it being the holidays and all, I am always bummed because I miss the days when my immediate family were together. Now everyone has spread all over the US and is doing their own thing with little means or incentive for getting together. Maybe it bothers them too, but I feel this instinct that it’s my job to try to rally everyone up again and draw us closer together again, literally and figuratively. There are some issues between a couple of my family members, and I have always tried to encourage a makeup between them, I  have been told that there’s nothing I can do. But still, I feel an obligation. I feel like, if I tried, I can have influence to help things between them, and ultimately all of us. But to do that, I am going to have to take the lead, and for this, I am not scared. This isn’t just something I feel like I have to do, but it’s something I want to do. Okay, so I understand I can’t make any of them do anything or make up, but I am willing to try to help encourage better understanding and communication, and then they can make the decisions on their own about how they want to get along.

This is the first time I feel like I actually want to take the lead in something. I think this and other issues than I am passionate about, I am not as reluctant to be a leader so maybe I am starting to break out of the shell from being a cowardly lion. I still need to work on my decision making, so I am going to start with small things, build my confidence in those things and move up to bigger decisions. Hopefully I will one day successfully become the lioness I was born to be.

My Year In Photos

Published December 18, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

My photos from the past year.

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Christmas 2010

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Monster Jam

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At the MAX Bowling Event

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At the radio station

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Calendar photo

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Went to visit my mom for a week down by Bloomington, and dug up some old photos.


Summer fun!

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Indy Screampark

All of these can be found on my Flickr album!

The Art Of Belly Dance

Published November 14, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

Lately I have been seriously considering getting into belly dancing. Now before some of you freak out and think that it’s all about scantily clad women showing off, I invite you to watch a couple of videos I came across if you have a little bit of time.

This first video is a belly dancer named Jalila. This is probably the best routine that I have came across from watching clips of belly dancers on youtube during the past couple of weeks. She’s great!

Next is a video blogger that I have been watching for a while. Her username is SickMouth. She talks mostly about women’s issues and I just love her discussions. She did one about belly dancing a little bit ago because she has been taking classes. I thought she had some really interesting thoughts on the issue.

I have always admired belly dancers and the dance itself as an art form. There is something very sensual and creative that I would love to try out, so I have been doing a little bit of research on the history of belly dance and how it came to be, and it’s really quite interesting.

I decided to learn a bit about it first and then I will start taking classes probably sometime next year. I’m not sure if I will get into performing, but it would at least be something fun to do as a past-time.

Has anyone had any experience with belly dancing?

10 Facts About Me

Published October 13, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

I got this post idea from Helga, and I asked her if I could steal it. I will try to make these not so obvious or boring.

1. I was born with a clubbed foot. When my mom was pregnant with me, she fell and my foot became twisted and stuck behind her rib and it grew there. When I was born, my foot was twisted backwards and I had to have corrective surgery asap. I wore braces and casts for the first 2 years of my life. Now it’s fine and it doesn’t affect how I do anything, but my left foot is a size 5 and my right foot is a size 6.

2. Me and my boyfriend have 5 snakes. Two pastel ball pythons, one spider ball python, one normal ball python, and one grey banded king. One of the pastels is the snake in my calendar photo. We keep all of them inside plastic tubs on a rack in our bedroom.

3. I am distantly related to Edgar Allan Poe and James Whitcomb Riley. My mom is a great writer and so was my grandma. I believe I inherited the writing gene.

4. I have a birthmark on the back of my neck that is just a dark brown area that looks like dirt. It’s kinda big but not many people ever see it since my hair covers it most of the time.

5. My last name is French Canadian.

6. I used to be in gymnastics when I was 9 and 10. I wish I would have continued with it.

7. I can’t go a day without drinking Pepsi or having something chocolate. Well I can, but I don’t want to.

8. Celebrity gossip is a guilty pleasure. So it watching America’s Next Top Model and Dr. Phil.

9. I want to have a tiger as a pet one day, like Princess Jasmine.

10. I have become quite addicted to dubstep in the past year.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

Published September 29, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

This week marks the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s second studio album called Nevermind. Yes, you heard right. 20 years ago.

I was a teen in the late 90s. I didn’t even discover who Nirvana was until…1996 I think. I was kind of a sheltered kid, growing up listening mostly to pop and R&B music, so I had never heard of them until I turned on the radio that was playing Smells Like Teen Spirit. That song and the Nevermind album changed rock music and it changed my adolescence. More actually, it possibly was the thing that jumpstarted by adolescence.  I heard their songs on the radio. Loved it, had to have it. I went out and bought Nevermind and listened and fell in love. Not long after I bought the CD, I discovered it went missing from my CD collection. Curiously  I started searching the house for it and I found it underneath my mom’s car seat a few days  later. I took it back and confronted her about why she confiscated it.  She told me she didn’t like me listening to angry music by a guy who was a drug addict and suicide case. I couldn’t blame her, actually. I mean I was only like 13. I told her that I didn’t care about all that he did and how I just liked the sound of their music, which was true. She kinda nodded her head in slight understanding while I returned the CD to my collection.

You know a lot of people argue that Nirvana only became so popular because of Kurt’s tragedy. I don’t necessarily think this is true. I think this band still would have been legendary if he was still alive and they were still together. There was something different and unique about them, and to this day I can’t really think of any other band quite like them. This album still remains such a prominent staple of my teen years and I hate it to think of how crappy most of the popular rock bands of today are. When are we going to have another great band to change rock history? I’m still waiting.

What music album or song is most memorable to you from your past? 

What is home to me?

Published September 27, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

Yesterday’s topic on The Daily Post was this:

What does “home” mean to you? How would describe what it feels like to feel “at home”? It may be something specific about the physical details of where you’d like to live, or it could be more about how you feel when you are in the right place.

I found this topic particularly fitting for me right now, as I am about to move to another place I want to call home.

Having been through so many moves in my life, for reasons of all kind, reasons for good, bad, and the down right ugly… I have collected some specific thoughts and ideas as to what I consider a home.

To me, a home is a place of solace and peace.

A place where I feel free to do as I please.

A place where I approve of who enters or stays and any roommates have stable income and help financially with rent and bills so I won’t have to worry if we are going to make rent because someone else isn’t pulling their own weight.

Where any roommates are nothing but responsible, trustworthy friends that I can get along with and live with without many conflicts.

My home is easily kept clean.

My home is quiet most of the time.

A place that is safe from thieves, drug dealers, and people I don’t trust in general.

A place where my cat can run around if he pleases.

A place where when something breaks, I can call the landlord and they will come out and fix it in a reasonable time.

My home is free from noisy neighbors.

A place that is away from neighborhood crime, or safe enough to where I can walk down the street without having to worry about my safety.

A place where visitors respect our boundaries and don’t overstay their welcome, eat our food without permission, or dirty up our place without picking up after themselves before they leave.

A place where I have enough space for myself and my belongings.

A place where there aren’t so many people living with me that I feel like I am in their way or like they are in mine.

A place where I am neither treated like a child or have to act as a mother.

A place where I can come home to and know what to expect.

Those are probably the important ones.

What is your ideal type of home environment? 

Distractions Everywhere

Published August 26, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

I am pretty frustrated with myself as of lately. There is all this stuff in my head that I have been thinking about, trying to keep track of and organized, and to work on accomplishing, but I can’t seem to get anything done. I never wanted to identify myself as a procrastinator, but when I think about it, that is pretty much what I am. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. I have the drive and determination, but something always stops me. Then it hits me. I don’t get anything done that I want to because I get stopped by distractions. Now this is not to say that it’s any one’s fault. There are just a lot of distractions in my home. I think to myself, “Ok I’m going to write some articles.” I get online and then it’s immediately, “Oh I think I will check my email first. And then this, and then that. Oh crap, I forgot about the articles. Ok going to do that now.” Repeat. The next thing I know, 3 hours has went by.

I feel like if I locked myself in a room with nothing in front of me besides one thing at a time, and nothing else to do besides that one thing, then I would definitely get it done, but with all this other stuff around me that I have such easy access to, how do I stay focused?

Does anyone else have this problem? If you do, how do you overcome it? Please I need some help here!

New Volunteering Job

Published July 27, 2011 by Ashley Pariseau

For a few months I have been thinking about taking on a new volunteering project. Last year and the year before that, I volunteered at the hospital in patient transporting. It was fun while I worked there and I enjoyed helping and talking to patients, staff, and other volunteers. Over the past year, I have decided that I want to keep taking on new volunteer work in areas of interest. I am happy to announce that I have found one that I am really excited to get started in. I signed up to be a caseworker for A Better Way Services here in Muncie, which is primarily a women’s shelter and domestic crisis center. I have heard about this place through the years but I didn’t investigate too much into it until recently. I had my interview last week and signed some paperwork. I will start my training after the 12th which is when I get back into town from visiting my mom. I’m not sure exactly what I will be doing but it sounds like a little bit of everything, probably taking crisis calls and visiting with the intakes and most likely other things too.

Here’s the thing, I chose to do this particularly because the issue of domestic violence is extremely important to me. I have never been abused by or been physically violent with a partner, but I will say that I have close family members who have been, which affected me and my family greatly. It goes as far back as I literally can remember, I would say about age 3, and it has been prominent on and off pretty much ever since. Let me also point out that alcohol was almost always present during these violent times. I don’t remember any time when it wasn’t. Things were fine when no one was drinking.

Throughout my young childhood all the way into recent adulthood, I went through a great deal of emotional anguish, and a whole lot of fear for the well being of my family. I would spend many sleepless, tearful nights wondering if anyone was going to be hurt, or even killed, what would happen to me and my sisters, and when this all would stop. I lost friends due to this. At 7 years old, I would literally jump in the middle to try to stop the fights and calm them down. Sometimes it helped, sometimes not. I wasn’t afraid for myself, I was more afraid for them. It was very rough and stressful for me at times. I wouldn’t wish for any family to go through this, and I vowed to never get into a relationship that turned violent. I never want any child of mine going through that.

So this subject is very personal to me, but I want to talk about it as a way to raise awareness and to help. This is not to “out” anyone. I love every single member of my family and they all love me. Maybe I will go into further detail about it when things progress, but I also want to respect the privacy of my family. I chose this because I want to take something that was negative throughout my life and turn it into something positive. I want to be able to help people who are in physically and mentally abusive relationships that want the help, and also the children involved. I have been following some blogs on domestic violence and doing a bit of research because I want to learn as much as I can and get involved within my own community and then maybe take it further even. I feel like I was meant to do this and I want this issue to be my main personal platform from here on out. I am committing myself to to this cause 100%. Any suggestions as far as reading material or actions I could take would be very appreciated. I will be following up on how my work goes when I start my training. Wish me luck!

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