Eidolon Alternative Lifestyle Career Blog

You May Be Disappointed If You Fail, But You Are Doomed If You Don't Try.

 In this time of lay offs, declining stocks, people so desperate for a good deal that they trample a Wal-Mart employee to death as he opens the door, overpriced gas and more overpriced gas…people’s hobbies turn into full-time careers everyday. Better yet, many hobbies turn people into millionaires. Are you a club promoter on the side because your “real” dream is to be a successful musician and club promoting is as close as you can get (at least for now)? Do you go to work everyday, answering phones and taking messages, come home and work another few hours penning your bloody American horror story, drawing, or doing whatever it is you actually love to do? Well keep it up and don’t get discouraged! Seriously.

In the article, Trism spells success for iPhone developer  author Mike Smith discusses 29 year old and former software designer Steve Demeter who developed a cool phone game called "Trism" – all in his spare time.  Steve Demeter put “it on Apple's App Store for $4.99. Just Two months after putting it on Apple’s App store “the game had earned Demeter over $250,000, and prompted him to quit his day job at a bank and start a development studio.”

My point is, you never know. And whether or not you ever earn enough to “quit your day job” it’s really about continuing to do what you do “on the side” because, simply put: it makes you happy. That by itself should be motivation enough to never give up and just enjoy the time you use to do what you love to do. You never know when that point in time will come, if it ever will - when you can earn a living from your passion i.e. pay all of your bills, have money to save for retirement and spend for fun (becoming a millionaire can come later). But if you give up, you’ve just assured yourself it never will.

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.”- Beverly Sills, 1929

8th Grader Ordered Not To Wear Goth Make-up At School

Recently in Ohio, a thirteen year old eighth grader, Matt Allsup was ordered by school authorities not to wear make up to school after he came in with black eyeliner and lipstick. School authorities said that it was “distracting”.

Fortunately and to the dismay of the school leadership, Matt’s mother, Mindy disagrees and supports her sons right to express himself.

This young man is learning it’s okay to express himself as long as he limits his expression to those based on the values of others, not his own.  

Black eye-liner and lipstick are often expressions used by Goths, emos, and alternative rockers who just want to wear what makes them feel good. Would it be different if Matt wore red lipstick and blue eyeliner like 8^th grade girls? If the school system would order a female not to wear black liner and lipstick then should Matt be allowed to wear pink lipstick instead?

Is this about gender expression or goth/alternativeness? Either one is cause enough for concern. Why can jocks wear their letter jackets but Matt gets reprimanded for wearing what identifies him into his chosen clique? Who was actually “distracted”? The students or school administrators? How many people complained, if any?

This is clearly another example of society trying to bring a “stray” back into the herd. Obviously the “herd” didn’t appeal to Matt, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed reining in. Let the boy be himself. Black liner and lipstick stops being distracting after a few weeks at most. The other students will get over it. Maybe instead of teaching intolerance school administrators need to be teaching acceptance of diversity and expression when there’s no life threatening issue at hand. Sadly, “distracting” as a rationale sounds too similar to one of the rationales used to keep schools segregated during the 1950’s.

If more schools would embrace or at least be more tolerant of these types of expressions, then maybe, just maybe when my clients step into the workplace everyday they’d have less adversity facing them. It's not just Matt who's learning a lesson here, it's each and everyone of his classmates.

~ Ebony

"Murder in the 8th Grade: A Tale of Bullying, Sexual Identity and the Limits of Tolerance"

"In the sixth grade, a girl started a "Burn Book" - an allusion to a book in the movie "Mean Girls," where bullies scribble nasty rumors about the people they hate - about Larry. The Larry book talked about how he was gay and falsely asserted that he dressed in Goth and drag. And it ended with a threat: I hate Larry King. I wish he were dead," according to one parent's memory of the book." - Newsweek, July 28, 2008 pg. 42. "Murder in the 8th Grade: A Tale of Bullying, Sexual Identity and the Limits of Tolerance". 

This article in Newsweek immediately caught my attention because of the title right smack on the cover page.  Some people still don't think being Goth is a legitimate minority group that's discriminated against. Yet - in this article we have another unfortunate reminder that, at least for children in the 6th grade accusing someone of dressing Goth is in the same vein as saying they dress in drag and are gay. It's still meant to be a negative. That 'Goth' is "bad". Dressing in drag is "bad" and so is being gay.

One thing the article fails to mention is what, if any punishment or discipline was given to these student who were bulling and harassing this young, gay identified young man before Brandon McInerney, 14 year old, shot him twice in the head at school.