Feed: Writing to Reach You - AggScore: 82.5

I’m Going to Austin and I Have a Question for You About Books (This Title is Literal)

Austin

After a long January of no travel, I am finally leaving California.  This time to visit some of my favorite people in Austin. Nicole and Ashley and I have to find a reason to see each other every three months or so, and it worked out that we could run a half marathon with other awesome bloggers and also find plenty of time for tiaras and funfetti all in the same weekend.

The stress fracture in my foot means that I won’t be running myself, which is a big bummer, but Linda and I will do our best to cheer everyone on.  My foot already feels much better than it did two weeks ago, so I can walk without wincing now (most of the time), and recovery seems to be going well.  I have a history of doing the exact wrong thing in situations like this and, against the better advice of everyone, not slowing down at all.  I’d like to take credit for making the right decision here, but the truth is that I didn’t really have a choice.  I’ll still take credit, though.

Spending time with these girls is always so much fun, and gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling you only experience when you feel completely comfortable being your weird self.  It’s just the best.

Dealbreaker Books

I know it’s rare that I ask you any questions, internet, but I have a few today.  I came across this quote on tumblr and it got me thinking. Read:

“I do believe in the dealbreaker book. This book so deeply resonates with your soul that if a potential partner finds it risible, any meeting of minds (or body) is all but impossible. Most of us have one or two books that encapsulate all we believe to be skillful and admirable in art and in life. And while we don’t necessarily expect everyone to enjoy them, we do expect our soulmate to. Or at least respect them.”  –Molly Flat (full article)

There are some books (and movies and TV shows and, oh, albums) that mean so much to me that I don’t understand how anyone who likes me could not like them, but I probably would not go so far as to call them dealbreakers.  (Related: That scene in You’ve Got Mail where Tom Hanks insults Pride and Prejudice in front of Meg Ryan.  Totes a mistake, Tom.) Still, I like entertaining the question of what my dealbreaker books would be if I had any.

The answer came to me right away.  My dealbreaker books would be East of Eden and Just Kids.  As the quote reads, they encapsulate all (or a lot) of what I believe to be skillful and admirable in art and in life.  They resonate with my soul.

Internet, what do you think of the concept of dealbreaker books?  And, if you had any, what would they be?  Are there any books I have to read in order for us to continue being friends?

Wearing a Pink Shirt and Going to See ALL THE CASTLES

This blog could use some more pink, so I am posting my weekly vlog for Totes Awesome Channel.  We did a secret gift exchange for Valentine’s Day, and my Valentine proved she knows me very well. If by some sad chance, you don’t know Bri, Nicole, AshleyD, and Linda, go find them and hug them now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OOjjaiJds

This is a Post About Feelings, But I Do Mention Downton Abbey (Just So You Know What You’re Getting Yourself Into)

I am excessively bad at being in the moment.  I make myself feel better by assuming that no one is ever in the moment, and that it is a mostly-meaningless thing we talk about all the time, because no one has ever stopped to consider that it doesn’t make any sense.  Well, I am stopping to consider it now and damn the stupid truth, it does make sense!

I hear most people talk about being stuck in the past.  I don’t understand that.  When I listen to Simon and Garfunkel, I literally want to go back in time to a past that is not my own, because it seems magical there.  Reading Just Kids made me feel so nostalgic that I had to keep putting it down.  When I watched Midnight in Paris, I thought, “Yes, this exactly.”

But I don’t want to go back to my own past. Things are better here and I like myself the way I am now.  My past influences me, but it doesn’t have a hold on me. It’s the future that’s my problem.

It’s Sunday night and I’m sad.  I didn’t even mean to tell anyone, but I was in a conversation where I found myself unable to fake normal levels of cheerfulness, and so it slipped out casually.  When my friend asked me what was wrong, I promised that it wasn’t a big deal, but I didn’t really feel like talking about it.  I would tell this friend anything, but talking about things that make me sad while they are still making me sad just seems so daunting to me.

I could totally be a character on Downton Abbey, the way I take everything in and show almost no reaction, so that no one has any idea what I’m feeling until I selectively and carefully articulate it all months down the road.  The other option, where you just say everything, even if you’re totally going to sound like an idiot, because every other sentence is going to be, “I don’t know,” is a much bigger risk that is full of all kinds of unknown consequences.

I have complex motivations for keeping most of it to myself.  Part of it is an introvert thing where talking that much about myself is exhausting.  Part of it is a perfectionist thing where I don’t want to be honest, at least in the moment, about my total lack of perspective.  Part of it is an intellectual thing where I feel like I am the only one who can sort things out, so I should just do it on my own.  And a big part of it is fear of vulnerability, because when you tell people what you want or why you’re sad, then you can’t pull off hiding your real feelings anymore, and whatever may happen, they are going to witness it and expect a reaction.

Instead of expressing how I feel in the moment or even just letting myself feel that way in the first place, I always deflect to the future where I have all kinds of perspective and I know what to do.  Where sadness is intellectual instead of physical.   I play the role of a smart girl who is not affected by really stupid things all of the time.  Then I write about it with distance and clarity that makes it seem like this very real moment never happened and I have more closure than I really do.

This is the part of the conversation where I have to say, “I don’t know.”  Am I going to change?  I don’t know.  Probably not that dramatically.  Not just because I am auditioning for a role on Downton Abbey, but because this is kind of the way I am.  Am I going to tell anyone anything less vague about what’s bothering me now?  I don’t know.  Seems like a pretty easy fix, but all of those reasons I generally keep things to myself are rather convincing.

Even though I tried to resist it tonight, I have gotten better at admitting in the moment that I’m feeling down, and I have discovered that I have friends trained in the special art of cheering me up.  Turns out it’s pretty easy to make me laugh, even when I’m sad.

Forgetting (Post #700)

I’m going to write this post This American Life style.  That is, variations on a theme: a post in three acts. Read in the tone of Ira Glass if it helps.

Act I

David Gray has this song called “Forgetting” that, depending on your mood, will either make you: a). Say, “I don’t get it. He just keeps repeating the same word over and over.” b). Fall to the floor, crying. In a video about the song, he talks about how we forget almost everything and that is what makes life tolerable.  He’s talking about how we forget the suffering of others and the ways in which we benefit from it, but also in choosing which memories to hold on to and how to remember them, we forget our own suffering in order to keep moving forward.  And I know that sounds incredibly depressing, but I suppose I just think of it as a fact of life.

You can’t in every moment or even in one single moment consider the suffering of the entire world, and even if you could, there is so little you can do with that information.  We’re all very limited and we remember things in pieces and are blinded by our own interests and forget almost everything, including our own sadness, in order to keep, you know, destroying and manipulating, as well as creating and living.

Act II

This is my 700th post.  Maybe this has been true for a long time and something has just brought it to my attention recently, but I keep starting posts only to get a few sentences in and think, “have I written something like this before?”  I will have just a vague memory, but no idea what I said or if I actually wrote the post or if I wrote it and didn’t publish it.  I will try to search my archives for it, but be unable to even think of a single unique search term.

I’m not too worried about repeating myself.  I figure that if I can barely remember writing a post, then it is doubtful that anyone is going to specifically remember reading it.  Only once did I sit down to write a post only to find that I had already said everything I wanted to say on the topic months earlier.  But it brings to light the way that so many of our experiences are forgotten.  I mean, something struck me enough that I went to the trouble of putting it into words, and even that experience has faded so much that I’m not sure it really happened.  This perishing of life and experiences and possibilities is a theological concept I have always meant to write more about.  Or maybe I have written about it already.  See, this is the problem!

Fear of forgetting motivates a lot of us to document our lives, but the strange reality is that we record so much that things still get lost and forgotten in all of what we have tried to make permanent. I think I’m okay with that.  I get so much out of documenting my life that the thought of most of it perishing is not a deterrent.  (It turns out I believed the same thing in 2009. At least this blog has a search function!)

Act III

I have been meaning to write Act I of this post for more than a year.  In all of that time, I kept thinking of what David Gray said about forgetting and applying it to different aspects of my life.  This actually relates to something Adam Carolla said on his podcast once. That is, if he thought that any of the people he talks about or criticizes, from family members to celebrities, actually listened to anything he said, then he would never be able to say it.  I write like that.  I think a lot of writers do.

Of course I have an ego and want everyone to think I’m amazing (I wouldn’t say no to a parade in my honor either), but if I start thinking of any one specific person actually reading something so personal, I get shy and lose the courage to put myself on the line like that.  But I forget about that most of the time.  Not on purpose, but because there are so many specific people it would make me nervous to think were reading my writing that I literally can’t think of them all at once.  So I just assume they’re not reading, which is its own kind of forgetting, and I carry on writing.

Podcasts For Your Ears

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  They are how I pass the time at work and at home and while cleaning and traveling and shopping and brushing my teeth.  Indeed, I have kind of been obsessed with them for about five years now.  It’s actually hard for me to to understand people who don’t listen to podcasts.  You are missing out on so much free insight and entertainment!

I listen to most of the podcasts that everyone listens to, such as everything from NPR, but you probably don’t need another This American Life recommendation. Instead I want to talk about podcasts you may not have heard of, not because they aren’t popular and highly ranked on podcast charts, but because the only people who look at podcast charts are people who make podcasts and me.

These are pretty much all comedy podcasts (and generally NSFW), and my secret motivation in convincing you to listen to them is that I want to have conversations like, “Oh my gosh.  That episode, I mean, I don’t even know what to say!” and then you’re like, “I knowwww.” I am tired of being obsessed by myself, internet!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Nerdist: If you have heard of any of these podcasts, I am guessing it’s this one.  It’s hosted by Chris Hardwick and two of his friends.  Basically they find awesome people, mostly comedians but not exclusively, and have conversations.  If you like listening to funny and interesting people talk, then give it a try.  Start with: David Cross.

How Did This Get Made?: This podcast is constantly making me look like the crazy girl laughing to herself as she walks through the library.  It’s hosted by Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas (you will recognize both if you watch The League) and June Diane Raphael, and every episode includes a guest.  Basically, they watch a bad movie and discuss it.  It’s hilarious.  The end.  Start with: Burlesque with Nick Kroll.

WTF with Marc Maron: Marc is a comedian and all around interesting guy.  He has other comedians and people in entertainment on, and conducts fairly serious, but always entertaining and often insightful interviews, several of which have inspired me to write blog posts.  There are so many amazing episodes I recommend, like the Conan O’Brien one or, ahh, Amy Pohler, but only the most recent 50 are available for free.  I pay for the iPhone app. so I have them all, but I’d suggest starting with: Jon Hamm.

Comedy Bang Bang:  This one took me a while to get into.  I wasn’t used to podcasts with character bits, and I didn’t appreciate it right away.  Then I got it and spent months listening to most of the 140+ episodes.  Start with: Episode 120 featuring Adam Scott, Chelsea Peretti, and Harris Wittels (I have listened to this episode a million times and always listen to it when I need cheering up).

The Pod F. Tompkast:  If you don’t already know Paul F. Tompkins, then just trust me that he’s awesome, and listen to him talk over piano music and do bits and talk to his friends as they tell stories.  I always want to grab a glass of wine and sit in a fancy chair and listen, but usually I’m at work in front of my computer instead.  Start with: the most recent episode will do!

Who Charted?: This one is hosted by Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack.  Each week they go through the charts (music, movies, etc.) with a guest and, you know, talk about them.  In addition to introducing me to all kinds of terrible music I wouldn’t know otherwise, it’s also really funny. Start with: Ben Schwartz (aka Jean-Ralphio).

The easiest way to listen to all of these is by subscribing on iTunes.  If you need more recommendations, I’m your girl.  Here’s a current look (it changes a lot) at all of the podcasts I am subscribed to.  I am not always caught up on all of them, because I am only human, but I am still open to any recommendations!

Right Before You Fall Asleep

I have been thinking about that time right before you go to sleep when you’re just laying there in the dark, alone with your thoughts.  This time does not exist for me.  I work until midnight, I come home and enjoy some alone time with Netflix, and then I fall asleep at about two in the morning or whenever my head happens to hit the pillow.  It is rare that I am conscious of a single thought before it is suddenly morning.

I didn’t start thinking about that time before sleep until the problem with my foot (which, it turns out, is a stress fracture) stopped me from walking everywhere.  As I was already quite aware, that is where I do all of my thinking.  I get most of my ideas while walking to work, listening to David Gray.

I spent a lot of my senior year of college driving.  Between home, school, and two jobs, I was always on one side of town and needing to be on another.  I hated it, but then when I moved here months later and was suddenly in a situation where everywhere I needed to be was no more than two minutes away, I missed that time I had to think before arriving at my destination.  It seemed I was always in class, having only been awake for a few minutes.

Early on in my life as an absolute crazy person, when I had just started working a million hours in addition to all of my school work, but had not yet become good at it, I walked around looking homeless and feeling half asleep (it was a strange time very well-documented on this blog).  By the end of the week, it was all I could do to keep my head up.  I was always running from one place to another, and if not for all of those quiet hours at night in the library, I probably would have gone crazy from lack of time to think about anything other than where I was going next.

Even when I had nearly mastered being a crazy person, when I started wearing real outfits again and stopped trying to pull off the messy bun as a cute hairstyle, I still suffered some effects of having no time to reflect.  In part due to the circumstance and in part because I had no time to ugly cry when I needed to or take a night off to drink wine and read a book, my emotions were heightened and I took to walking everywhere as a way to deal with myself.

I have a lot of feelings, but I am a super calm person, and that has only been double extra true lately.  Everything is suspiciously quiet and I don’t even know what to write in my journal, because not much has changed since the last time I wrote.  Over the weekend, I did think to say that at least half of the joy I get from life is in reflecting on it and writing about it later, but maybe I have the balance off right now.  For once, there is too much time to reflect and not enough to reflect on.

So I have been thinking about that time right before you fall asleep, and something about it seems so appealing.  I imagine this moment of clarity, the kind you can only have in the dark when everyone you know is asleep, and how it could change everything.  I am very big on single moments changing everything, especially when things have been the same for too long.

Then it happened last night that for once I didn’t fall right to sleep.  Instead I found myself awake at four in the morning, staring at the clock.  I tried every way to trick myself into falling asleep, and then I thought to finally capitalize on this moment, and instead of peace and a clear mind, I found my heart was beating quickly and my head was foggy, and I didn’t know anything more in the dark than I know when I am surrounded by people, and when I woke up the next morning, nothing was different but I felt dread in my stomach.

More than usual, I feel the need to admit that I did not write this post with any direction in mind.  It was really an exercise in seeing whether I could pull a bunch of different things, vaguely associated in my mind, together into something coherent.  But here at the end, the apparent conclusion is that you can place a lot of value on quiet moments of reflection, and you can try to manufacture them in meditation or long walks or the moment before you fall asleep, but more often they will surprise you.  And just when everything was starting to seem so suspiciously quiet!

Act Naturally

This is a scene that has played out in every sitcom.  You’re in some kind of social situation where the attention is suddenly on you, and all you have to do is say one normal thing, but you can’t remember how sentences work and you’ve lost all touch with normal.

I always feel that way when something happens to send a bunch* of new people to my blog all at once.  I start asking myself, “what is it I do here again?”  I forget how to be myself.  I think, “Just say something.  Anything.  But right this second.  And make it normal.”

I started this post a couple weeks ago when this happened, but I didn’t finish it because I thought that calling attention to the thing I was experiencing might actually make it worse.  Same way you try to make up for awkwardness by calling attention to it or making a joke about it, and then no one laughs and you still have nothing normal to say.

I get over it quickly.  I remember how to be my weird self.  But it’s strange the way that seems so much easier when no one is looking.  Sometimes these experiences make me feel inauthentic.  I assume that other people are just so 100% themselves that they don’t get rattled by anything.  Me, I have to think about how to be myself.

In the first place, I am going to make the safe guess that this is not true.  I mean, it probably would not be a staple of sitcom humor if it wasn’t experienced by all kinds of people.  And in the second case, there is a lot of value to those experiences that knock you off your feet, not so much that you fall, but so that you’re on your heels before you recover with some wild arm movements that do nothing to really help.

I always feel like the worst thing I could do is get quiet.  I have something to prove to myself by just acting naturally. “I’m totes casual.  This is what I always do with my hands.”  I fake being myself until it’s easy again.

So, hello if you’re new.  I hope I didn’t just scare you away by admitting I am ridiculous.

*Anything more than three counts as a bunch, right?

Fortunately, I’m Not That Smart

Dana Gould is one of my favorite comedians.  He was on Marc Maron’s podcast a while ago, talking about the time he had an anxiety attack on stage.  He said, “Fortunately, I’m not that smart, so I could never outwit myself . . . in avoiding dealing with my shit . . . you know a lot of people who are too clever for their own good and they never hit the wall.”

I think about this all the time.  I am intuitive and incredibly stubborn, which means that I rarely believe anyone’s lies except my own.  Especially when I’m feeling anxious or sad, my mind just spins and spins, trying to calm down and see things clearly.  My perspective is too limited to do much more than glimpse reality, so I tell myself all kinds of things.  Whatever I need to hear.

I spend a lot of time talking myself out of feeling the way I do.   I don’t know where the line is between dealing with your problems constructively and completely undermining them by denying that they are really problems.  I’d like to think my self-talk is constructive, but I fear that more often it is dismissive.

Writing fiction taught me something about this.  I was writing this story, and I found myself constantly trying to downplay the drama, because I have trouble with conflict.  At a certain point, I realized my character was not clever enough to see the wall, and the story could not move forward until she hit it.

Some people are very good at saying a lot without ever really saying anything at all.  They make smart observations about other people and don’t realize they’re talking about themselves.  A personal blog can be a place where you confront yourself or it can be a place where you say so much that you make yourself feel like you’re doing the work you’re really avoiding.

I’m good at being introspective.  I’m good at writing about my feelings.  I am less good at talking about them.  I only turn to other people after I’ve thought myself into a circle that I can’t get out of and then I’m like, “Here’s how I feel and here are the seven ways I justify feeling the way I do.”  This is how I make you realize I’ve thought about this more than you can imagine, so you’ll probably have nothing to add.  I’m hoping you’ll just pat me on the head and admire how self-aware I am.

I’m not out to fool anyone but myself and I am not even aware I’m doing that until a friend gives me that look that says, “Slow down, crazy.”  I don’t need any brilliant insight that cuts straight to the heart of it all and points to what I’ve been missing.  I just need that look that implies that there’s no reason I should be doing back flips to justify feeling the way I do. You can’t always avoid the walls.

When Getting Rid of Everything Starts Feeling Creepy

I started this post months ago, but something I read in The Marriage Plot pushed me to finish it.  It took me years and years to get here, but I have finally reached a point in my effort to get rid of everything I own where I don’t have that much left.  Way into year four, I was still finding bags worth of stuff to give away all the time, but finally in the last year, that has changed.

So I turned my attention to the clear, but difficult obstacles that remained: CDs, DVDs, and books.  I danced around.  I considered my approach.  I thought some more. I decided I’d made enough progress for a while.  I did some more thinking.  Then some research.  Finally I was ready to face what remained.

Well, not books.  I’m still putting that off.  But I got rid of all of my CDs.  I had a few doubts as I began pulling them out of the binders where they had been sitting in alphabetical order and completely untouched for at least three years, especially when I came across my favorites.  Yeah, I got rid of my David Gray CDs.  I sent them all to a place in California where they could live on a farm.  I mean, be recycled.  You may one day enjoy the remnants of one of my most beloved albums in whatever they make out of recycled CDs.

I am keeping most of the movies I have on DVD since I do not have digital copies of them, but those I didn’t love and never watched I also sent to be recycled.

Then weeks passed as I considered what to do with my collection of TV shows on DVD.  First I feel like I should confess that I was storing them in one of my kitchen cabinets, because I am more interested in television than cooking.  I did nothing for a while, because I was hesitant to part with my collection and unlike everything else, I was not quite willing to just give it away.  I wanted to sell the set I had, but that seemed like a lot of work.  Finally I settled for trading them all in at once on Amazon (for which I received quite a bit of credit, most of which I spent buying books, but we’re not talking about the books today).

There were a few items I thought might find new homes with friends.  This led to a number of conversations where it became necessary for me to state that my decision to give things away was not a warning sign at all, but a perfectly healthy move toward minimalism. I might have creeped a few people out, but I think I finally convinced them I am of sane mind.

Getting rid of the uncomfortable sweater you have never worn doesn’t feel like a statement the way that getting rid of your Arrested Development DVDs does.  There has never been an ultimate goal to all of this that is any more specific than just living with less, but I do feel an impulse to be less attached to a place (that holds all my stuff) and sometimes it feels like I’m preparing for something that could be as practical as a big trip or far more existential.  Related: I just read and watched Into the Wild.

Previously: Minimalism (Wow, The Grapes of Wrath Really Did a Number On My Head), My Complete Lack of Style, Fancy New Person Syndrome, and More on Minimalism, and On My Continued Effort To Get Rid of Everything I Own.

Dancer’s Hip

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where it comes out that Marshall has dancer’s hip, and you think maybe he hurt himself playing basketball or something, but it turns out that he really does dance.  Like, a lot.  Whenever he’s happy or receives good news.

I share that secret, even while insisting that I don’t dance.  And I recently injured myself.  Okay, so not while dancing, but it is sure cramping my style. Not that I have a style other than bad.  There’s a reason the dancing is secret.

I hurt my foot a couple weeks ago, and then just as that minor injury was starting to heal, I started getting sharp pains up near my toes, and this afternoon when I was limping to my car, I heard this snapping/crunching sound and now it hurts much worse and a bruise has formed.

This injury is throwing the half marathon training into great concern, and making my job very difficult.  Plus it takes me forever to get anywhere, and I look like an old lady limping around, and I keep making these terrible wincing sounds when the sharp pain hits.  Add to which, whenever I feel the least bit limited, I become very aware that I live in a giant state by myself and suddenly I don’t feel so kiss ass and independent.

For whatever reason, none of that really bothers me.  What bothers me is that I can’t dance and I can’t go for long walks.    Call me Thoreau, but I get a lot out of standing up from my desk and disappearing outside with no particular destination.  It’s a habit I developed when I was at my most anxious, and it has stuck with me for the last couple years.  I like to roam around campus, listening to music (that still counts as communing with nature, right?).  Even when I’m at work, I will take any excuse to walk through the stacks.  Everything I really need is within walking distance of my apartment, so I have become used to walking everywhere and only using my car on the weekends (more nature points).

Right, so I can’t work out my feelings by dance-walking Troy Bolton style, which may result in me becoming a little angsty.  If I start wearing a bunch of eyeliner and talking about how no one understands me, you’ll know why.  And if you have any good thoughts to spare, my foot and I would appreciate some healing vibes.  Thank you kindly.

Stop Doing ALL THE THINGS. Start Doing One Thing.

In the Summer, I found myself alarmed by my own inability to focus on any one thing for more than a few minutes.  I couldn’t even sit down and read for very long before I found myself checking my phone to be sure nothing interesting was happening on the internet.

It was like I was wholly uncomfortable with silence.

It was a mystery to me how I ever got anything done.  I actually had to use a program to block access to the internet on my computer and an alarm on my phone just to get myself to sit and read for a full hour.  You know when you know you’re being ridiculous, but you can’t do much about it?  It was like that.

Regardless of how I got myself to do it, concentrating felt good.  It was peaceful.  I felt productive.  World domination was within my grasp.

But I’d known for a long time that my problem with silence was not just about a lack of discipline.  You have to be pretty comfortable with yourself to be silent for long periods of time, because it’s like inviting all your very worst thoughts and doubts to a party without even balloons or alcohol for distractions.

Less deliberately than makes for an inspiring story, I kept working at concentrating for longer periods of time.  I was on a separate mission to ditch anxiety, and I found that also made quiet moments alone much easier.  I wasn’t always reaching for my phone, hitting refresh to keep from thinking about my own life, because I was already dealing with it.

Because change like this happens so slowly, I didn’t notice anything was different until it was December and I was reading for hours at a time with no care for what was happening on the internet.  And–SHOCK TO THE WORLD–without even listening to music.  That’s right, dead silence.  I guess I should say that with the small exception of philosophical texts that are so difficult that they require all of my attention, I haven’t read in silence since I received my first Walkman (approx. one million years ago).

Everyone knows that if you heard someone say they read something somewhere, then it must be true.  Well, years and years ago, a coworker told me that she read somewhere that multitasking is actually a myth.  You are really not accomplishing more by trying to do several things at once.  You’re just looking busy.

I held this knowledge in the back of my head while willfully ignoring it whenever I could, but sometimes I had to face reality.  When you have a 20-page paper to write, you can’t finish it by doing anything but sitting down and writing all five thousand words.  At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how neat your notes are or how many awesome articles you found, you have to do the really tedious work of concentrating for a good 10 hours.  No matter how hard I work to avoid it, there is a lot of value in that tedium.

So lately I have been working on doing just one thing at a time.  Aside from making me far more productive, it is also really peaceful.  (I tried to add music back into my practice of reading and found I enjoyed myself more in silence.)   Months ago I expressed concern that I don’t get lost in art anymore.  I always seem to hold myself back and hide behind a veil of distraction.  Somehow in dealing with anxiety and working on concentrating and becoming okay with silence, I think I found my way back into caring too much about fictional characters and crying at every movie.

What I’ve learned is that you actually can’t do all the things.  At least not at the same time.  Trust me, I tried for a really long time.  But you can do one thing, and since you’re only doing one thing, there is a much greater chance that you’ll actually finish it.  And having finished something, you will have the confidence to attempt a new thing, maybe something bigger and scarier.  And at the end of all of that: world domination.

“To start with, look at all the books.”

This picture was taken in December. Those are unknowing googly eyes.

Currently reading: The Marriage Plot

Even though I love speaking critically about books and it is basically what I am trained to do, I can’t bring myself to write book reviews.  It’s one of the few areas where I’d rather have a conversation than spend time carefully putting my thoughts into words.  I don’t want to write about the book as a thing that exists on its own.  I want to write about it from my own perspective.

In this case, I want to write about my experience of a book that I am not even half completed.  Because reading it has been an experience.  Like when I read Just Kids, I find myself putting this book down because, I don’t know, it makes me feel restless.  I want to talk about it or just look up from the page to make some kind of face at someone who understands.   Maybe we would have one of those conversations that begins and ends with, “I know, right?”

The novel begins in an academic setting with characters who study English, philosophy, and religion.  Do you know that that is my life?  I’ve spent enough years in a little bubble where it seems normal to care as much about these subjects as I do, but at one point it was a crazy decision I made, and still it is strange for me to read in fiction about Derrida and Tillich.  That’s so specific that I am nervous just putting those names together, because I know a classmate working on a paper is going to do a search and find this post.

(To that person I say: Hello.  Yes, it is that girl who sat next to you in that one class. Sorry that you found a bunch of my feelings instead of anything helpful.  But your paper sounds interesting and I’d love to read it.)

I can’t say that I find any of the philosophical discussion in the book enlightening, but reading someone write about things that I know very well make me realize that I should be doing that.  I don’t know what it means to have a purely academic interest in anything.  To me, everything is personal.  But reading about the (again, really specific) things that I study, I keep thinking that I need to find new ways to share all the meaning I find shoving my face into books and writing research papers.

As a grad student in an age of overwhelming distraction, I always romanticize student life in earlier decades, but the minute one character had to stay in on a Friday waiting for a boy to call, I was pretty happy to be back in own decade. I am not yet willing to say I am a great fan of the main female character, but smart girls are sometimes written very strangely, as if being intelligent means never being stupid or lacking confidence, and she seems complex in a way that is real, whether I want to be her best friend or not.  I wish I’d understood that kind of complexity when I was younger.

I am so aware reading this book that I am not 22 anymore. Only now am I getting to the point where I can think back on my early twenties with anything more than relief that I somehow survived them to become a sane and happy person.  I keep thinking of how strange it would have been to read this book when I was the same age as the characters.  I don’t know whether it’s good or bad that it hadn’t yet been written.

I find myself somewhat critical of the writing, but I am still so engaged.  It doesn’t feel transcendent like Middlesex, which was so well done that it seemed to belong to a different world, but the experience of reading has been so much more fun.  I really want to know what happens, and that’s not always the way I feel reading serious literature.

Whether in the end I decide that The Marriage Plot is a good book or not is second to the fact that it matters to me and I am having an experience (worthy of italics) just reading it.

Every January I Tell The Same Story

Every January I tell the same story.  I was taking a required religion class when theology entered and then immediately took over my life.  I think it’s fair to say it swept me off my feet and then dropped me on the ground.  If you have never taken an opportunity to question everything you know, you should totally do that sometime!

Fair warning: things will get personal right away.

I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to go through it alone.  Like that really great friend who doesn’t make you feel better, except in the way he seems to totally understand what you’re going through, David Gray was there for me.  By some coincidence, I discovered his music at the exact same time seven years ago that theology found me.  I can’t say which one has been more important.

Theology did not strip my worldview of mystery, but it did of superstition.  I no longer look for secret meanings in things or assume that they happened for a reason.  I don’t wonder why certain people have entered my life. I’m just happy they’re here and for some reason like me enough to hang around.  I like the freedom I have in creating my own future.

But I also like knowing that for all my planning and good intentions, things I never predicted will come out of nowhere and make themselves undeniable in my life.  They might even happen all at once with no care to space themselves out or give a girl time to process what’s happening.

So, as to the future: I have no idea.  January always reminds me of that.

How To: Slow Down

Those of us at WBWV (We Blog, We Vlog) use Penguin Awareness Day as a chance to vlog about an arduous journey we will be undertaking in the year to come.  In preparation for my vlog this year, I watched my video from last year. 2011 was not at all what I expected, but I spoke in vague enough terms that it almost sounded like I had some idea of what was coming.

A year ago, I was finishing coursework for my PhD and working two jobs (for a total of 55 hours a week).  I had just come to the end of a 14-month journey of getting myself out of credit card debt, and after working like a crazy person for all of that time, I was ready to slow down.

As difficult as it was to get myself out of debt.  As little sleep as I got.  And as many sacrifices as I had to make.  I loved that time.  I rocked those 15-hour work days.  I continued to do really well in school.  I even managed to do my hair every day and maintain two blogs.  I just kept getting better and better at doing more and more.  I was kind of amazed at myself and I didn’t mind the way it impressed other people.

I’m a perfectionist with an impostor complex, so I can’t even call myself a workaholic without thinking, “Well, someone sure thinks highly of herself!”  But the facts are that I’ve done really well in school since sixth grade, and at 28 have never not been a student working toward a degree. I have had a job since I was legally permitted to and have always worked way more than any of my friends.  The longest amount of time I have been unemployed in the last 11 years was a month in the Summer of 2008, and while I was searching for a job that July, I finished a 90,000 word novel.  In the last six years, I have almost always worked more than one job, and for the last three years that has meant working more than full time while being a full time grad student.

I don’t resent or regret any of this hard work, because it was all self-motivated.  It’s just that I was very aware that my self-worth was completely wrapped up in proving how hard I could work and if anyone so much as vaguely suggested that I wasn’t working as hard as I could be, it made me defensive and I would react by working harder.

There were some side effects (anxiety), but I was almost alarmed at how easy it seemed to just keep going a million miles an hour.  I decided to slow down less because I needed to and more because I worried that if I didn’t jump off the speeding train now, then I never would.  I said in my video that 2011 would be about learning how to do less even if doing more would sound great and look awesome on my CV.

So I got off the train.  Not all that gracefully.  I held on too long looking for the perfect place to land and then when I finally did let go, I hit the ground and kept rolling.  The challenge was not in doing less, but in doing less without losing myself.  I was nervous about all the time I’d have to spend with myself if I stripped away so many of the distractions.  I was worried that when I finally had the time to do the things I wanted to do, I’d fall apart under the weight of my own expectations.  I felt like the best version of myself, and I was scared that slowing down would me sliding backwards.

I know from experience that these concerns were all valid.  I think what saved me this time was that I’d worked so hard in 2010 to get out of debt that I no longer had anything to prove, to myself or anyone else.  I was satisfied knowing that I could continue to work that hard, but I didn’t have to anymore.  I felt free of my own ridiculously high expectations.  I was ready for something different.

Of course when I ran into a super ambitious classmate of mine and she said it takes everyone at least a semester to adjust to being done with coursework, I thought to myself, “Well, I can beat that.”  But when it turned out I was exactly like everyone else, I didn’t take it badly.  I’m in good company.

With this new level of self-assuredness, I will say that I think maybe I got awesomer this year.  I know I got happier.  It’s probably all the sleep I have time for now.  And I really don’t miss people looking at me like I’m crazy when I tell them all the things I’m doing, though I did get a lot of joy out of that.

What Change Actually Looks Like

I have this very simple narrative in my mind about how one accomplishes goals.  You make up your mind to do it, then you start, then you kick some ass, then you high five everyone, and then you carry on feeling pretty damn good about yourself.

Well, I’m a fairly ambitious person and also madly goal-obsessed, and in my experience it’s more like decide what you want to do, then get overwhelmed with what to do next, then try and find that things are difficult, then don’t give up but maybe flounder for a while, then question whether you are making any progress at all, then the slow fade, and then discover months later that you kind of did end up doing what you meant to but there were no high fives and you missed the moment when you were supposed to feel awesome about yourself.

Despite the evidence, I insist that I can change my life in an instant.  It seems that I can actually change my life, but it happens on a schedule that does not work for a crazy impatient person like me.  This is especially true when it comes to feelings.  I had some experience last year with bitterness, jealousy, and self-doubt.  I could feel them eating away at me and so I got very good at talking myself out of them, but when I woke up in the morning, they were there in my stomach filling me with dread.

I know I’m never going to have the patience to approach change with any kind of perspective like, “Hey, this may take a while.”  And that’s probably for the best.  I think running at things full speed, ready to put in all the hard work, only to get tangled and grow uncertain in all the messy details, is more effective than playing it cool.  I admire my own irrational optimism.

Because I do change.  I have let go of bitterness and crippling self-doubt, and maybe I would have reached this same destination with time alone, but I doubt it.  There is still power in trying really hard.  So often it looks like failure, but then I realize weeks and months later that success just didn’t look the way I imagined it.

The simple narrative is the one that motivates me to jump out of bed in the morning, but I am developing an appreciation for the slow but meaningful reality of change.  I just wouldn’t mind if it hurried up.