To the Drawing Board

This is not going to be the typical Business Wednesday post. I have who knows how many drafts of posts for this day and to be completely honest, they all are horrible. Seriously, they are not well thought through and lack substance.

It has been bothering me for a bit of time that I have not been able to keep consistent on the Wednesday posts, so I am going to be honest with you. I am going back to the drawing board with Business Wednesdays. In other words, I have nothing good to say. I understand that I could very easily bloviate, but I want to be able to write with substance, especially on Wednesday posts.

What I am saying is that I will officially be taking time off of writing Wednesday posts for a while till I come up with something of substance. I will still be posting on Monday and Saturday, so it's not like I am taking a complete hiatus, just from one day. I will be working on some potential ideas for Wednesday, but it will be a bit of time before I post one.

I will say that if there is some idea that you would want me to write about on the topic of business, I will gladly take suggestions! So feel free to message me, write a comment, send me a tweet, whatever floats your boat with sending a message and I will see what I can do.

A Different Point of View

I have been mulling over what quote to use for today's post. I have searched all over the internet, tried to get inspiration from the movies that I watched over the weekend (Lee Daniel's The Butler and 12 Years a Slave) and even tried to get inspiration over the fact that this post falls on a national holiday, but none of it was working. I was planning on writing about freedom and I didn't really have a defined lead until I found the quote below.

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” Toni Morrison

 Toni Morrison is an author and a professor, which explains why she mentions her students. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature because she gave life to "...an essential aspect of American reality."

We as American citizens love the idea of freedom. We plaster it on anything that we can and at the same time, disregard the importance of it. I believe we take freedom for granted and especially with some people my age, don't take our freedom and rights seriously. 

Maybe this is just me having been influenced by some great people and the literature, but I believe we must treasure all the freedom we have and be willing to give freedom to others. That's part of the reason I watched The Butler and 12 Years a Slave so I would be reminded about the times when people took advantage of freedom and wouldn't allow others to have it. Yes it is important to remember all the military men who serve, but what about those who served here who fought for the rights in our own country?

I can think of people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Francis Willard, Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Cesar Chavez and so many more who fought for the rights for different people. Do we just not want to honor these people as well, because they are some of the reason that we have some of the rights and equal rights?

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” Toni Morrison

"If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else." 

I don't care if you agree with all the people that I listed above or if you think that some of them are extremists, they had some power and fought for people's rights. It is always easy to just look at a holiday like Memorial Day and give credit to military men, which they do deserve credit, but there are the people on the home front who deserve credit too.

It is our responsibility to empower others to be able to have equal freedoms. We should not be satisfied with inequality, but fight for rights for all people. That means not being complacent with where we are because we are still off from living in a equal society. Morrison said it best when she said "...that [our] real job is that if [we] are free, [we] need to free somebody else."

Let us remember that on this Memorial Day. Remember those who have both fought in wars for our freedom, but also remember all those we fought, protested and enacted laws that made sure that we are free.

My Flying Nemesis

Okay, the title may be a bit overly dramatic, but it's the only way I can describe what is to come in this post.

I guess it would be helpful to better define the creature that are the bane of my existence. It's mostly anything that has wings. More specifically birds and butterflies.

Yes, birds and butterflies are my enemies? Why? They honestly terrify me.

I know at this point you are questioning what caused these irrational fear of these two creatures that most people find enjoyment in?

I've thought long and hard to try to figure out why I irrationally fear ( or maybe it is more so to justify my fear) of birds and butterflies. So like every other type of blog I write, I am going to list out/share some anecdotes of on how this fear began.

Birds

• I can't ever remember liking birds
• Anecdote: When I was in Jr. High/Freshman in High school I was a part of cross country. Since I lived in an area that was flat, to get hill training we went to this man-made reservoir that had a path around the top. On the side of the hills, actually all parts of the reservoir was geese territory. Have you ever been chased and hissed at by a group of geese? Not a fun experience and unfortunately for my case, this happened a handful of times.  I was never bitten by one, but it did make me run fairly fast. So if you are ever with me and there are geese around, I will more than likely become very quiet, keep a close watch at them to make sure they don't attack. Seriously though, I freak out when I see geese. I'm sure to others this is a hysterical sight.
• Also, when I see shadows of birds up above me, I duck and cover, because I believe every bird is going to go all kamikaze on me.
•  There are other stories, but I think the goose story makes the me sound neurotic enough.

Butterflies 
  Before I explain this, I just want to preface by saying that this is a completely irrational fear. I get that, I do. I've also tried to get over it, but that proves a failure especially with my most recent experience with a butterfly. (Just so you know, as I am writing this I am laughing at myself, because I realize how stupid this fear is, but I honestly can't help it).

• I don't like things flying by my head. Creatures flying by my head is just very unsettling to me and it's also something about the color of the wings. I understand that people find the wings very pretty, but I really don't prefer them at all.
• I guess this fear escalated when my parents wanted to go through this botanical garden. I was in junior high and was never surrounded by butterflies so I never knew the effect that they had on me. Well, that's because I was never forced to be in a greenhouse full of butterflies. I started freaking out and ducking behind my brother. Of course having the loving family I have, they mercilessly made fun of me and my new found fear. On that day, I swore that I would never go in one of those again.
• Once again, when I was in high school, I went into one of the greenhouse butterfly exhibits. I was not to happy at the suggestion, but begrudgingly went again. My reaction was the same. I freaked out.
•  Now I thought that with me getting older that I would be able to get over this fear., but I was wrong. So I was driving home by myself a couple of weeks ago on a back road when it happened. It was a really nice day and I was in a really good mood. Then, all of a sudden, this butterfly gets stuck in my windshield wiper. I completely start freaking out even though I know it is outside of my car. I am frantically swearing and reaching for my switch to start my windshield wipers to get the butterfly off my car. Now this all happened in less than a minute. After my moment of freaking out, I stopped myself  and realized how stupid my fear is. Good that I noticed my fear, but bad that I am still freaking out.

So at the end of this, I have two super irrational fears that I honestly cannot control how I react to them. I have plenty of other stories of how I have been scared by birds and butterflies, but I would prefer to keep some of my neurosis hidden. 

The Greatest of Faults

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I am a person who constantly is evaluating myself. Whenever I am in certain situations and a thought like, "Man, I wish I did [insert thing I wish I had done here] before [insert situation]" it causes me to evaluate how to fix the mistake for the future.

There have been times when I have had some free moments, that I have evaluated what I can improve in my life. I am not sure why I have had this mindset, but at least once a year, I take a lot of time to see how I can improve aspects of my life (during the other time of the year it's more so just small noticings).

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I find it valuable to be able to evaluate the areas of which a person needs to improve on. It really is a major way to accomplish personal growth and that is why consciously ignoring your faults is one of the greatest faults.

Where personal growth is difficult is when people are unwilling to be conscious of any faults. It is having this complex that you are perfect and nothing needs to change in your life. Another way of phrasing it is being complacent with the way life is and deliberately choosing to be ignorant.

Maybe this has been too relevant to me, because I have been dealing with people who are like this for the past 5 years. They believe they have been doing everything correctly while making these huge and I mean HUGE mistakes and they are ignoring them. It is utterly frustrating, because they are letting pettiness get in the way of accomplishing greatness.

Consciously ignoring your faults aren't just holding you back from personal growth, but achieving greatness. And I don't mean greatness like the ones where you are recognized on a large scale, but that cliche of being all that you can be.

Part of the reason why I evaluate myself often is because I want to grow and constantly improve. This is not connected to some other person's standards, but my own standards of not wanting to be complacent in where I am as a person. I know I can achieve great things, but the only way I can do this is by acknowledging my faults and then challenging myself to grow from them.

I believe that we need to be constantly in growth and to be able to grow you need to be able to face the facts that you need to recognize personal faults.  It is a hard process to go through and typically there are times of denial. Actually, more than often, there will be a time of denial that will be a pain to deal with.

So take the time to acknowledge those faults and realize the potential for growth in your life. Don't wallow in the fact that you have faults, we all do, but instead make the choice to grow.

My Church Hopping Experience

So recently, I have been on the search of a new church to attend. The church that I have attended has been going through much transition and some of the people, unfortunately unbeknownst to them, have hurt me badly and feel like this is the time to move away from some of the dysfunction and have a fresh start.

Now before I go farther,  I want to state that I am not the biggest fan of church hopping. For some people, it is an awesome experience and if that's your thing, great. Church hopping for me is something that is such a stressful situation and causes me anxiety. I thrive in community and roaming around by myself and trying to decide if this is where you want to continue your growth is just not a fun experience for me (and this is coming from an extrovert).

A lot of this anxiety is due to the fact that I have really strong beliefs that I won't falter on. For example, I am very egalitarian or a simpler term for it is biblical equality. I believe men and women can hold the same positions in the church. In other words, women and men can be pastors. There is no gender limitations. Now why would that cause me anxiety? Cause many of the churches my friends attend are not egalitarian. There are other issues that I do not agree with at these churches too, but I'm not going into details with that because that is my number 1 issue. I don't want to start to be active in a church and not be allowed to lead a class for both males and females. I just find a lot of issues there.

Now going back to my church hopping experience.

I have been searching for churches and checking out church websites and seeing what each church believes. I have pretty much decided very early on that music was not going to play a major part in my decision due to the fact that most churches are not going to have a worship band like Bethel or sound like Hillsong United. If the music is done well and the people leading were not putting on a show, then I would approve.

Another rule I had was to not go to a church just because it seems like the "popular church" to go to if you are of a certain age. A lot of my friends attend mega-churches in the area. I have nothing against mega-churches and have actually attended mega-churches before and really enjoyed them. But in the phase where I am in my life, I don't just want the vastness of these churches because that's not who I am. It's partially because I want to stay true to myself and partially because all the mega-churches in the area where I live aren't egalitarian.

So, I have been church hopping the last two weeks and have had two completely different experiences at these two churches (both United Methodist).

The first one was about 10 min from where I live in the town right near where I live. I honestly had written off the church before I had attended. I didn't think I would like it, but a friend of mine attended there and dragged myself there. I walked in hesitantly and found my friend. I was greeted a couple of times when I was searching for my friend. She and I sat next to each other during the service and it was actually pretty good. The music was okay, but I could tell the people weren't doing it to put on a show and the sermon was excellent. When I left church that day, I told people that I forgot how good Sunday morning worship can be.

This past Sunday I went to another church that I was honestly giving a little more clout. I thought that this was the church I would start attending. To be frank, I don't think I will be attending that church for a long time, if ever. I felt very awkward during the service, especially during the time of greeting when I had to go up to different members of the congregation and greet (talk about a friendly environment when I was being friendlier then the congregation). Also, the music was just plain bad and the sermon had no substance. I was so disappointed walking out of the church, because I had heard it was so much better than what I experienced. Now let me specify, the people were nice and weren't doing anything bad, they just weren't welcoming in the way of convincing me to join them.

Now tomorrow, I have been debating whether to check out the first church again to make sure it wasn't a fluke thing or try another church. I'm thinking I may go to the first church again and the following week trying another church.

I understand that this process of church hopping will more than likely be a long process of trying to discover a good fit. I'm not looking for the perfect church, cause I know that doesn't exist. I just want to find a church that isn't dying. I don't think that's too much to ask for, because I just want to find a community where I can grow in my faith and be able to help with the ministries that they are doing.

Have you ever been church hopping? Let me know your experience with it!

Why is it such a Negative Label?

I am a Feminist.

Gasps! Horror! Shock! Um, whatever.

Yes, I am a Feminist. I have always been a feminist, but have had such a hard time admitting it and with everything going on about Shailene Woodley's comment about feminism, I feel like this is an appropriate time to share how I came to the realization that I am a feminist.

It has been fairly recent since I a have fully claimed that I am a feminist. Seriously, it was a conversation after seeing the movie "Frozen" with my older brother that really spurred me to go on this journey. We were discussing the idea of how the women in the movie weren't villainized or weren't pitted against each other or needed saving by a prince. I said that I was happy that his goddaughter would be able to have a Disney movie like this grow up with. As I was saying this, he mentioned how this is very much a feminist film. I looked at him and completely disagreed. He then said, "Kelley. You like the fact that she didn't need a man; you liked the fact that it treated everyone equally; you liked the fact that women weren't portrayed as weak and could defend themselves, right?" "Yes." "Then you're a feminist." In other words, I was like Shailene and associated feminism with the farthest extreme and not for what it actually stands for.

Those words, "Then you're a feminist," resonated with me and caused me to evaluate much of myself. Everything I believed in with equality for all people no matter the gender aligns itself with feminism. I mean, even some of the blogs and websites I would read consistently fell in line with the feminist idea (Rachel Held Evans, Hellogiggles, etc). I even looked up what feminism was in the dictionary: 

1:  the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

2:  organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests

Why was it so hard for me to claim this title if I was already living the lifestyle of a feminist? I mean, my favorite person in history to study is Francis Willard (a suffragist and activist), my mother and father encouraged me to pursue any field I wanted to and believed that I could achieve anything if I put my mind to it, I had many female role models who held high positions and I was always taught that a woman can do anything a man can do, so why couldn't I just claim the label?


The Reason: I didn't want to be categorized as one of those women.

A lame reason to be afraid to claim who you really are, but it's true. Even when I would talk to friends (male and female) about feminism, I felt like I had to hold back when they would make a horrible judgment about what it was (typically it being the highest extremes possible). And to a certain point I can understand why they would have negative thoughts about feminism.

For example, my mom graduated college and worked in her field for a little bit, but decided to be a stay-at-home mom because she wanted to be an influence to her children. There were many women (feminist) who gave my mother a hard time for not using her education and staying at home (To give some reference, this was in the early to mid 80's). My mother wanted to be at home to be a part of her children's lives to influence them, but that wasn't good enough for some women because she wasn't using her degree. May I add that if it wasn't for my mom being at home, I wouldn't have been able to have my strong beliefs that women are equal to men.

This judgment of women is hurting feminism, especially in cases like what my mother had to face and what Shailene Woodley is facing. This is playing into the hands of everyone who is against feminism and this is why people don't take feminism seriously. We need to stop shaming each other and need to unite! I know that uniting isn't an impossible thing, because I have seen it on different online communities. Believe me, go on tumblr and you will see that feminism isn't something extreme, but a way to fight for equality!

So here I am saying: This is what Feminism looks like. It is not something extreme; it is not something that is negative; it is not something that is ignorant and one-sided, but is a movement for change and fighting for equality for all.

PS: Check out this video of Courtney Martin's TED talk about Reinventing Feminism. It's 11:26 min, but is completely worth the watch.

 

So What's Your Story

Have you ever been asked that question before?

What's your story?

Seems like a pretty loaded and personal question and it is. There is nothing to debate with this, but this is a Business Wednesday post and a question like this does not seem to fit into this topic.

I would say this question fits perfectly in the concept of business and not in an interview perspective but in one of my favorite topics, branding.

A couple months ago I wrote a post about how I love brands an branding. I brought up the definition of what a brand is and had three points that I focused on. Since the post was very specific on the idea of brands and what they stand for, I was unable to go into detail of my favorite parts about brands: that they tell a story!

Now I could go into the aspect where actual brands tell stories and could find multiple advertisements that could prove this point, but I feel like this would not be a relevant article. Of course advertisements should tell a story, that's why people remember certain ads, quote ads and will share ads on different social media sites.

Where I want to take you with Brand Storytelling is how it relates to personal branding. I love looking into personal branding, because that is the area of branding that combines both marketing and public relations together. This also has to connect both who you are in your personal essence and how you want to be perceived. It really is an interesting balance and even a delicate one when you take a deeper look.

So, "What's your story" can actually be broken down into three different points:

1. Who are you at your core?
2. What do you want to be known for?
3. How are you going to achieve this?

I really believe that this is the order you should tackle this when discovering your personal brand identity. It is important to understand who you are to the actions you need to take. But it is no good just to give a list, but to deeper explain why each of these points are important.

Who are you at your core?

 This is probably the hardest question to answer in my perspective. When you are personally branding yourself, you need to be true to yourself but also making sure that you are holding yourself to industry standard. It is hard to find that balance because there are times when you give up certain aspects of yourself to be able to fit a particular image and you are feeling miserable with everything that you are doing, because you are not who you are.

I will use myself as an example. In my bio, I admit who I am. I give you a glimpse of who I am so that you can understand my perspective and it won't be a total surprise on what I write. There was a time when I tried to change my core, but I was completely miserable. As soon as I admitted to myself that I am a geek who loves reading and writing, watching really odd movies and still is a fangirl over Disney princesses, I became a lot happier. I get that I am odd, but that is a part of my core that helps me look at things in a different different point of view.

What do you want to be known for?

Once you embrace your core, you need to decide what you want to be known for. This part is gauging what your priorities will be when you are trying to promote yourself. The process for this can take many forms depending on who you are. You can do this by creating a list or getting advice from someone who knows you well or meditate or however you process this type of information.

For me, I went through a period when I was evaluating this blog and wanted to know what to write and become a bit more consistent. It took me the entire month of November and December to decide what posts were received well. I evaluated these posts and tried to figure out the themes to do. What you experience in my blog and the themes I have picked are the most received.

How are you going to achieve this?

Taking action. I could be that person and leave it at that, because that's really what you have to do at this step. You need to take action and be consistent with it.

With me, I looked and found the posts that were most received. I could have simply looked at that information and said, "I don't care. I'll do what I want." That type of attitude is not one of the attributes I want associated with me, so I took my own criticism and started focusing a bit more on my writing. Yes, I do random Saturdays for my own personal enjoyment and those ones are more hit or miss than the other two days, but that one gives me the opportunity to stay true to my core.


I get that this may all sound good, but I bet you may be wondering how this exactly relates to Personal Brand Storytelling.

As a person who enjoys writing stories, this is easy. Think of these questions as the motivation as the protagonist (you) of the story (life). If you understand the core of the protagonist and what they want to be known for, then it is easy to understand the action they would take. I understand that life is not as organized as a story, but it is an easier way to view how to do personal branding.

Branding is supposed to present information and that information is you when it comes to personal branding. You just need to make sure that the best story is being told so that people will then have the perception that you want them to have. It's all about that impression.

Wise words from my Grandpa

[In college] You will meet some of the smartest people you will ever meet and some of the dumbest. The smart ones will be able to apply their knowledge to life and the dumb ones will just have a piece of paper hanging on their wall. ~ Tom Gifford

 I have half written two other quote Monday blogs, but am not feeling either of them today. So you will get those in the near future, but for the time being you will have to deal with a quote from my grandpa.

To give some background on this quote, my grandpa (Tom Gifford) was a director of accounting for a steel company in Ohio. He was a very no nonsense type of guy who knew what he was looking for. He had a strong work ethic and expected everyone to hold the same ethics as he did.

Now to the quote.

He said this to my dad when he was entering college. This is a quote my dad has said to my brothers and I all the time and he even tells us that while we have entered the workforce. The quote in general just works and seems very basic, but it means so much more to me since I know the purpose on why my grandfather was giving this advice.

Being the Director of Accounting, my grandfather would hire accountants to be on his staff. One of the things that he considered to be a red flag was a student who had a 4.0 in college with all the honors a person could have with grades and no extracurricular activities.  If you had a 4.0 and no extracurricular activities that you were involved with, then he didn't want you. That was the sign that you were not a team player and were focusing on your own well being. But he would give the chance to the person who had solid grades and were involved in activities, because he knew you would be able to work in a team environment.

He also wanted to see if they would be able to relate to real world situations and not just examples from the book. My grandfather was in no way against education, in fact he very much promoted it and even worked his way through college after WWII to be able to provide for his family. He just knew that you needed more than books to be able to get the job done.

So what does that have to do with his quote?


It has everything to do with the quote and was part of the reason why I made sure I stayed active in college.

I needed to apply the knowledge I had in different areas and gain from other experiences. For example, when I started a young adult group I had to learn how to coordinate weekly meetings, come up with study ideas that later led to me bringing different materials to the group so people could experience it in different ways, I had to organize the weeks we cooked for the youth group and create menus and activities outside of our weekly meetings. It was a lot of work and seemed pretty daunting, especially since I was 19 when I started the group. The experience forced me to lead and think outside of the box.

Another example of something related to my field of study was when I joined the campus chapter of the American Marketing Association. This was useful to me since it was a group that was in my area of study. It had different meetings where we learned from marketing professionals and we would try to apply the knowledge by helping an organization. By having this experience, this helped bring the concept from the classes to actual examples and I chose to see the correlations.

That is what my grandfather means by smart. It is not being defines as having a high IQ or being able to remember vast amounts of information to spout out whenever it is needed, but to find the correlation. Smart to him was to actually be able to apply that knowledge you gained in the classroom to everyday situations. Being book smart is good and all, but actually applying the information shows the signs of a highly intelligent person.

Guess what? I'm Back!

I'm back from my little hiatus. I felt that much of what I was writing was being forced and was not being very inspired. So I took some time off to focus on work and to be able to read, but now I am ready to go back to the swing of things.

This Random Saturday is going to be about a genre in literature that has been becoming even more popular. For whatever reason dystopian literature has captivated many people including myself.

So what is it that is so captivating about this type of literature? What is it about these heroes that make us want to mimic who they live? Why are we able to relate to these worlds so much?

Before I attempt to dive into this topic, I want to state that I am by no means an expert on this topic. I have only had a few courses on literature. What I can say is that I have been reading up on this subject and these are my conclusions.

From what I have read and some consistent themes in each dystopian literature, there are three key things in my mind on why people are drawn to this genre.

They are as followed:

•  Categories
• High Stake Situation
• Hope

Categories

We love categorizing everything! You can disagree with me as much as you want, but society as a whole loves categories. Take it back to when you were in school (elementary to High school), there was always the kids that were smart (nerds), the kids that were good at sports (jocks), the people who were too cool for school (I would say popular, but I don’t think that aptly describes them), and so many more. Categorizing makes things easier to process and easier for people to understand.

I think the best example of this is in this scene from the movie Mean Girls:

This is a movie, the map of the lunchroom though is from a book entitled "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World" by Rosalind Wiseman. This book is not a Young Adult fiction book, but a book that my aunt who is a school counselor reads so she can help students!

Now how does this relate to dystopian fiction?

Easily. The vast majority of dystopian fiction I have either read or have heard of has some type of categorization. You are in a faction, a district, a sect, whatever the term is; you are placed in a category and are not allowed to break from it. The fact that you cannot break from it is not the part that we like, but the protagonist breaks the social norms and stands for something different. 

We are placed in categories all the time and the simple fact that these characters are in a world where categories define them and are breaking those molds help empower us to carry that over to our lives.

High Stake Situations

 Breaking societal norms typically leads to some type of negative effect. Not all the time, but the majority of the time people do not respond positively to change. By forcing change, these protagonists in these dystopian worlds are forced into high stake situations. They are leading revolutions and changing the overall views of society.

Why do we like this?

Because these protagonists are fighting for what is right. I have met so many people who want to bring change to the world, who join different organizations to help bring change so we can make the world a better place and who are ready to fight. These high stakes are the reason to fight and we are seeing them in the world around us. Hence the reason why so many people are becoming more vocal about different subjects and are letting their opinions out.

Hope

Breaking categories then being forced into high stake situations then leads to hope. The reason protagonists are fighting against society's categories is not to simply fight, but to bring a better world. It always amazes me how in dystopian worlds, the protagonist is not trying not to create an utopian world, but somewhere in between. They know that there is a better way to live, but that it does not have to be perfect, like how the governments that they are living under are trying to portray. They know that they are not fighting in vain and typically have some moment in the books when they realize this.

BUT...
            with all of this, it does not completely describe why people are drawn to this type of literature.


To give some deeper perspective, when I worked with teens in the youth group, none of them remembered a time that we were not in war. They do not remember a time when we have been at peace or when there has not been talks of horrible riots or school shootings. All of these items are norms. Near the end of the time I was working with youth, there was a boy in a neighboring school district who some kids knew of and they weren't phased that he committed suicide, it was something normal.

These dystopian worlds show order at first at face level, which to be honest, people are trying to do that same thing in our society. That's why I get sick when parents would complain that we couldn't discuss certain subjects, because that's not what you were supposed to do in church. Just angers me when I think about it, cause if you can't talk about issues there in a safe settings where teens came be themselves then I don't know where (that is the atmosphere we tried to present with the kids in the youth group).

So, these dystopian worlds are actually more closely related to the world we are living in just in a more drastic point of view. We relate to these characters because we see that society is categorizing us and people are beginning to take those high risks to help build a better world by keeping hope alive and not being completely cynical.

That's why I believe dystopian fiction is as popular as it is. It keeps hope alive in a bleak world.