A Dissertation on Myself

My name is Aubrey. I'm 17 years old upon writing this. I'm born and raised in a small town in a relatively rural area in Ohio. I consider myself an unschooler, although this hasn't always been the case. My career as a student began with my first year of preschool when I was 4 or 5. I then attended public school until the end of seventh grade, at which point I was 13. Beginning in eighth grade, I went to a private/independent school in Toledo, Ohio. This turned out to mostly be a fiasco, although some good things did come of it. If I didn't attend this private school, I would never have read a book in my sophomore English class about corporate exploitation of children and young adults, and I would never have read the chapter about resistance, and I would never have read the reference to unschooling. I would have never read "The Teenage Liberation Handbook," the book that helped me convince my mother that the world, not school, was the right place for me. I would not have started this blog. I would still be very unhappy. And I probably would still be wearing moderately hideous grandmother dresses from Goodwill. Not good. Not good, at all.

I also probably would not have, or would not understand the views I have on industrial civilization. Especially towards the end of my carreer as a publicly and privately schooled student, I was massively depressed. There were a lot of days when I just felt dead. When any bit of movement, physically or mentally, was a complete drain. I felt awful, and I didn't know why. I was depressed, in large part, because I was living a life that did not make sense to me. In some ways, I still am. But I'm working towards an understanding of a way of life that will not conflict so heavily with my personal values and beliefs. I don't want to always be trapped within a society that values production over life. Or I at least don't want to be so heavily involved in such a society. I think in a lot of ways the feeling of deadness I had was indicative of the mindset recquired to perpetuate industrial civilization (not that of individuals, who largely have no choice as to what culture they live in, but of the culture at large, if that makes sense.) One of the jobs inherent to a society based on industrial civilization is the conversion of the living to the dead (forests become toilet paper, pigs become bacon, rivers and lakes become dump sites for toxic waste), and I think, in a lot of ways, that methodology holds true for the humans in our society. Instead of joyful human beings interacting with the world around them (not just the humans, but the plants, animals, and places surrounding them), we see a lot more people trying to just get by: trying to pay rent, put food on the table, etc. You can still be joyful in a lot of aspects when you're trying to do these things, but I don't think the joy we know is not comparable to that of a person who lives in a symbiotic relationship with their surroundings. Do you?

Being an unschooler and anti-civilization are two of the largest things that shape my identity. There are a bunch of other things as well, and I want to try to talk about these next, along with a general description of what my life looks like right now.

Here it goes:
I'm introverted. This used to borderline on hermithood. It doesn't so much anymore, but sometimes it feels like it.
I struggle a lot with whether or not I am smart enough to do this or that.
I love to organize things.
I have a lot of interest (albeit, many of these interests are unexplored) in permaculture, rewilding, feminism, indigenous cultures and indigenous rights, unschooling, green anarchy, cats, intentional communities, sustainability, and outdoorsy stuff.
There are a lot of other things to mention, but I don't know what, or where to start.

I'm going to put a general description of my life in another post, both because I'm hungry and want to go get food, and because this post is getting long.