I moved to Ethiopia when I was six years old and I loved the experiences I had over the 3 years that I lived there. I got to meet many of my family members that I would have never known if I never moved there and am so grateful for that. But I am especially thankful for also learning about my culture and heritage. Throughout the time that I lived there, I was able to experience how holidays are celebrated, the language, traditions, and dances. In Ethiopia, a common traditional dance is eskista and it was the first dance I learned as a kid. The best memory I ever had of dancing was when my family and I would go and visit my grandmother who lived way out of the city. Although we would always be tired by the time we would arrive at her place we would settle down and immediately start talking and catching up. Then before we went to bed we would do a dancing competition about who could do eskita the best and my great grandma would give everyone some money 🤣.
Continue readingAuthor: Wutz
Stigma on Mental Illness
In my freshman year of high school when I was either 14 or 15 years old, my mom found out I had depression. Long story short it was through a situation that happened at school and they had to inform my mom about it. Let’s just say that things didn’t go the best. But for a backstory, I grew up in an Ethiopian household which included my mom, sister, and aunt. It is pretty common for most Ethiopian households to be religious, as religion is deeply rooted in the Ethiopian culture. Although my mom and family have always included me in our religious practices and have taken me to church since I was a kid. I have always felt conflicted when it came to our religion (but that’s a whole other story). But going back to high school, when my mom found out I had depression the school had recommended I get a therapist, which I did. The only thing is that since the second I had gotten the therapist, my mom was against the idea. She kept on telling me that therapy would not help me and would say something along the lines of “Just pray and you will feel better” or “Jesus will help you”. This honestly made me feel more of a burden and I felt that something was wrong with me and that I was causing my mom stress and suffering. So after a while of doing therapy and my mom’s persistence, I finally gave up on therapy.
Continue readingI’m Tired
I am tired of working and having to deal with people. In the past, I’ve mainly worked in food service jobs but now I currently have one desk job on campus and another job where I work as a cashier. Both jobs require me to talk/deal with customers often which is of course fine. The only thing is I find it very draining having to deal with people sometimes especially since some customers can be rude at times. Of my two jobs, I very much prefer the campus job since it doesn’t require any physical labor and just has to deal with people for the most part. But when it comes to my cashier job I absolutely hate it with my whole heart, since it basically has a combination of both physical labor and emotional labor, with having to work 5-7 hours shifts, standing up the whole time, with having the expectations of giving a smile and happy attitude with each and every customer, while also having to deal with some customers complaining about something every 20-30 minutes. By the end of the shift, I’m always so drained and tired, my feet and back hurt and all I wanna do is just go to bed and sleep.
Continue readingObjectification of Women in Anime
Last night I started rewatching an anime called “Soul Eater”. When I first watched the show in Middle School I easily fell in love with it and binge-watched the show over the course of 3 weeks. I found the show interesting with its storyline and also loved the two main characters, Maka and Soul. I just started rewatching the show last night and the way that I’m only less than 10 episodes in and the amount of fan service is actually ridiculous. I know you guys probably know what I mean by “fan service” but it’s basically the “material in a work of fiction or in a fictional series that is intentionally added to please the audience, often sexual in nature, such as nudity.” Fan-service in anime is really common and I feel as though it’s especially common in anime’s that are action based like Fire Force, Fairy Tail, One Piece, Seven Deadly Sins, etc. I think the reason why most action-based anime have a lot of fan service is because the majority of viewers are male.
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