Sasha Cagen

Sasha Cagen is an American writer, editor, and entrepreneur best known for starting the quirkyalone movement. Her first book was Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, and her second book To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us, a collection of 100 handwritten lists and the stories behind them, was released by Simon & Schuster in November 2007. She is the founding editor and publisher of To-Do List, a "magazine of meaningful minutiae" that used the idea of a to-do list to explore the details of daily life, and of todolistblog.com. Among other major recognition, To-Do List was named Best New Magazine of 2000 in Utne's Alternative Press Awards, Reader's Choice. Cagen cofounded StyleMob, a social networking site "dedicated to real people and their style." The site started in early 2007, and has already received a lot of media coverage. Cagen has appeared on the BBC, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and NPR's "Day to Day" and "Talk of the Nation". Quirkyalone received attention in newspapers and magazines including USA Today, the New York Times, and the London Observer. The Quirkyalone book has been translated in German, Danish, and Portuguese, and was named a finalist in the Books for a Better Life Awards, 2004. Cagen's essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Village Voice, Utne Reader, and Men's Health, as well as in numerous anthologies. Cagen got her start as a writer in the "girl zine revolution," writing about topics ranging from the class politics of attending an elite women's college to the taste of grape soda and the fear of being pushed or pushing someone else into the subway tracks. During the mid-nineties in New York, Cagen co-edited the popular girlzine Cupsize. Cagen attended Amherst College and graduated from Barnard College. A native of Cranston, Rhode Island, she lives in San Francisco.

Passion

Why doesn't passionate love last? How is it possible to see a person as beautiful on Monday, and 364 days later, on another Monday, to see that beauty as bland? Surely the object of your affection could not have changed that much. She still has the same shaped eyes. Her voice has always had that husky sound, but now it grates on you—she sounds like she needs an antibiotic. Or maybe you're the one who needs an antibiotic, because the partner you once loved and cherished and saw as though saturated with starlight now feels more like a low-level infection, tiring you, sapping all your strength. Studies around the world confirm that, indeed, passion usually ends. Its conclusion is as common as its initial flare. No wonder some cultures think selecting a life-long mate based on something so fleeting is folly. Helen Fisher has suggested that relationships frequently break up after four years because that's about how long it takes to raise a child through infancy. Passion, that wild, prismatic insane feeling, turns out to be practical after all. We not only need to copulate; we also need enough passion to start breeding, and then feelings of attachment take over as the partners bond to raise a helpless human infant. Once a baby is no longer nursing, the child can be left with sister, aunts, friends. Each parent is now free to meet another mate and have more children. Biologically speaking, the reasons romantic love fades may be found in the way our brains respond to the surge and pulse of dopamine that accompanies passion and makes us fly. Cocaine users describe the phenomenon of tolerance: The brain adapts to the excessive input of the drug. Perhaps the neurons become desensitized and need more and more to produce the high—to put out pixie dust, metaphorically speaking.

College Experience

The best experience that I felt, was the feeling of independence. Although I do not live on campus and still live with my parents, I feel that I am being more responsible for my live that before. In high school, it was very simple; all you had to do was follow a set of classes complete them and then graduate. But college is different. This most noticeable one, is that you pay for your education. Last week, I dropped $2,500 to pay for summer and fall semester classes. I also need to buy books which might cost an extra $500. In total that would be $3,000, and to me that is about 5-6 months pay for me. I felt so mature, when I paid for my classes out of my own pocket. I definitely feel that I would be able to support myself in the future. And college has helped me realize that I can fend for myself. I don't feel like a child or teen anymore, but as an adult.

Sasha Cagen's Term

Quirkyalone is a neologism referring to someone who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple. Magazine publisher Sasha Cagen came up with the term "quirkyalone" on a Brooklyn subway platform on New Year's Eve, 1999. She expanded the concept into an essay in the first issue of her magazine To-Do List. When the article was republished in the Utne Reader in 2000, Cagen was surprised by the fervor of responses from readers who felt their lives had been validated by her work. As a result of these responses, Cagen opted to expand her essay into a 2004 book, titled Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics. International Quirkyalone Day is February 14 and was chosen as an alternative to "the marketing barrage" of Valentine's Day. It started in 2003 as a "celebration of romance, freedom and individuality". Celebrations of the holiday have been noted in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Reasons for why we fall in love

Psychoanalysts have concocted countless theories about why we fall in love with whom we do. Freud would have said your choice is influenced by the unrequited wish to bed your mother, if you're a boy, or your father, if you're a girl. Jung believed that passion is driven by some kind of collective unconscious. Today psychiatrists such as Thomas Lewis from the University of California at San Francisco's School of Medicine hypothesize that romantic love is rooted in our earliest infantile experiences with intimacy, how we felt at the breast, our mother's face, these things of pure unconflicted comfort that get engraved in our brain and that we ceaselessly try to recapture as adults. According to this theory we love whom we love not so much because of the future we hope to build but because of the past we hope to reclaim. Love is reactive, not proactive, it arches us backward, which may be why a certain person just "feels right." Or "feels familiar." He or she is familiar. He or she has a certain look or smell or sound or touch that activates buried memories.

What surprised me...

I learned that i was a quirkyalone. When I reading through the articles in chapter 5, I came across the one written by Sasha Cagen. While I read her article, I felt that she described my dating personality very well. I often did feel that I was the only one with my attitude toward dating. But I felt relieved when I saw other people felt the same, even though its like 5% of the population. Its interesting though; how she mentioned we'd rather spend the night alone, instead of going on a bad date. Or that when we are alone, we find insight about ourselves and other things. But my favorite was when we do find that special someone "the earth quakes."

my thoughts

Love is, what I believe to be one of the greatest pleasures someone can experience. I believe that everyone in his/her lives will have experienced love at least once. Whether it ends horribly or happily, is decided between those involved.
I listen to Reggaeton, a latin music genre, which is basically based on two things: love and/or sex. The music artists I listen to only sing about this and I enjoy listening to them, because I like the way they use and describe it. I'm not kidding when I say this, but this music drives me loco and makes me want to grab a woman and kiss her. I don't know how it is in other races, but Latin men find women to be very important to them, at least from men that I know. I do too.
Love is magical, because it can be revealed and hidden-at any time-from nowhere. The way love influences someone is very interesting, because it can make a person do things he/she never knew could or ever wanted to do. Once you have love, you want to hold onto for as long as you can. Because it feels so great, so amazing, and so wonderful. Everytime you see or think about her just puts a smile on your face, because you remember all the fun and great times you had with her. I definitely don't want to lose this feeling for a long time.

April 17

Good Friday, also called Holy Friday, Black Friday, or Great Friday, is a holiday observed primarily by adherents to Christianity commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and often coincides with the Jewish observance of Passover. Based on the scriptural details of the Sanhedrin Trial of Jesus, the Crucifixion of Jesus was most probably on a Friday. The estimated year of Good Friday is AD 33, by two different groups, and originally as AD 34 by Isaac Newton via the differences between the Biblical and Julian calendars and the crescent of the moon.

Spring

Meteorologists generally define 4 seasons in many climatic areas, Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn (or Fall). These are demarcated by the values of their average temperatures on a monthly basis, with each season lasting 3 months. The 3 warmest months are by definition Summer, the 3 coldest months are Winter, and the intervening gaps are Spring and Autumn. Spring, when defined in this manner, can start on different dates in different regions. In the vast majority of northern-hemisphere locations, Spring occurs during the months of March, April and May. Summer is June, July, August; Autumn is September, October, November; Winter is December, January, February. The vast majority of southern-hemisphere locations will have opposing seasons with spring in September, October and November.
Astronomically, the Vernal Equinox, should be the middle of spring, and the summer solstice should be mid-summer, but daytime temperatures lag behind insolation by several weeks because the earth and sea have thermal latency and take time to warm up. Some cultures call the spring equinox mid-spring, but others regard it as the "first day of spring". For most temperate regions, signs of spring appear long before the middle of March, but the folklore of March 21st being the "first day of spring" persists, though June 21st as the "first day of summer" is common only in the USA. According to the Celtic tradition, which is based solely on daylight and the strength of the noon sun, spring begins in early February and continues until early May. The phenological definition of spring relates to indicators, the blossoming of a range of plant species, and the activities of animals, or the special smell of soil that has reached the temperature for micro flora to flourish. The first swallow to arrive or the flowering of lilac may be the indicator of spring. It therefore varies according to the climate and according to the specific weather of a particular year.

Essay

I don't necessarily hate any of the essays in the book; I find them all rather correct in their own way, but there was one subject that caught my attention the most and that was the identity subject. It just brought back so many memories from my high school, that I actually spent a whole day in my room recalling everything. I didn't know my identity in high school and just spent my time with various cliques. Of course it was fun at the time, but when I look back at it; I just feel sad. I always told my buddies that high school, wasn't just a bunch of kids attending school; but a small community reflecting and preparing you for your adult life. It was just the way I thought back then, but now I'm happy for my experience. If it wasn't for high school then I wouldn't know who I am, but I do know.

My Algebra 2 Teacher

This guy has to be the most unique and intelligent person in the whole world. He is an incredible math genius who had the oppurtuniyt of teaching at a different school with better pay; but chose to stay at my school, because he wants to help kids who need it most. He had such a way of explaining math, that a person who doesn't know what addition means could understand how imaginary numbers function. He was the hardest math teacher in my school and I was lucky enough to have him as my Algebra 2 teacher. Although I almost failed my first marking period, I managed to ace every upcoming period. During my finals, I was the only kid who managed to exempt the finals because of my superior grades. I find that as my greatest accomplishment mathmetics.

My Favorite Subject

My favorite subject is Algebra; but the subject that I'm most fascinated by is Biology. I often think that people are interested in only two general subjects, that go in pairs. It is either English and History or Math and Science; but thats probably due to the fact that those pair interlace with each other so perfectly. I like Math because it is so simple to me; whether it has to do with formulas, equations, or theroems. I am one of those math geniuses who just understand it, but only on occassion. It usually only happens when I'm taking the course, if I'm not involved with it then I don't know it. I like Bio because the facts about humans and animals just overwhelm me with fascination. I think its just incredible how the human body works. It is as if every human has their own earth inside him/her where life is just breathing inside him/her.

Why I Cheat

Of course, as you can see from my title, I have cheated in school before. I only cheated for a couple of reasons. Well this one time, my paper was due on Monday and I was working on it Sunday. So I found a couple of different websites and copied and pasted the whole essay. I cheated cause I worked on the paper last minute. Another time, I was just not focused on the class because my teacher didn't give a crap at all. So if he didn't care; I didn't care. Inevitably, he assigned us a paper and I just copied the essay from my friend; apparently, he didn't care because he never confronted it to me. I think people cheat because they don't prepare or just dont care. It might be okay, every once in a while, but if it's consistent; then that person is just abusing it.