It's been pitch dark for more than three hours and I spent those three hours in well-lit places. I ate dinner and exercised in order to fight off the winter blues, and I came home to sit in the light when I just want to sleep for twelve hours. I should write my second week essay, or I should finish the book I'm enjoying, but I want to stare at the car wreck that is our democracy in the beginning of 2017.
Wrestling between things you want to do and things you feel you ought to do is never fun. It's slightly more enjoyable to wrestle between things you want to do when the things you ought to do are equally enjoyable. That's one reason why a person should try (if she can) to find a profession she will enjoy doing, so she will enjoy doing what she is obligated to do (I give thanks to Mark Twain for putting me on to this). Enjoying what you are obligated to do is never more important than during the summer months; if I must spend precious daylight filled hours indoors doing something, please let it be something I enjoy.
But the darkness calls me in, telling me it's OK to feel bad and lets the obligations weigh more than they should. And it is cold and dark and it *is* that much harder to get up and go and you must find ways to take joy in your obligations during these winter months. Look back on your New Years' Resolutions to remember the warmth of holiday fun, or of holidays past. Be spiteful to the people who are worse off and don't know it. Know that these are the dark days and you just gotta pull through.
Indulge the lesser evils. Know that other people's vices are worse than yours. but try to be kind. The darkness will give everyone an opportunity to hold on to grudges, and perhaps you should take the moment to fight that.
I'm not sure if this is a good enough essay, but as of right now it's the best I can muster.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Sunday, January 1, 2017
#52Essays2017
“Did you make any resolutions?” Jack Baker asks.
“No,” Suzie Diamond replies. “I figured all that stuff’s a load of crap.” She takes a drag off her cigarette “I mean, you do what you do, right?”
This is not my attitude toward New Year’s resolutions, really. I am fond of navel gazing, and New Year’s Resolutions are a type of navel gazing. They’re reflective, and they are all about YOU. How you want to be better, and think you actually can become better. There’s an age when you become realistic about your resolutions. One year I resolved to quit smoking. The next year I resolved to quit smoking 3 times. Realism is important to resolutions, because it’s how you understand your limitations, or negotiate between your ideals and your limitations.
I think New Year’s Resolutions are poorly timed. We’re 10 days past the shortest day of the year. We’re just trying to sleep through the night, which we think is getting shorter, but we can’t tell exactly. Who wants to try to better yourself when you’re just trying to keep from going batshit crazy in the middle of winter? Who plans that timing?
New Year’s Resolutions should be made in the Spring; the days are getting noticeably longer. The weather is warmer and things seem to be getting better. It’s easier, in March, to think that maybe the changes you make will have a positive impression on the world. On January 2nd? Really, THIS is when you want to start going to the gym every day? When it’s still below freezing when you GET to work, never mind in the 3 hours beforehand when you are probably getting to the gym in the first place? (Caveat: I am a morning person.)
If we made our New Year’s Resolutions in the Spring, mid March perhaps, we would be buoyed by the positive inertia of the seasons. This would keep us going. You try to start going to the gym regularly when the next blizzard is coming, and you are setting yourself up for a fall and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. But the Spring? The Earth is reviving itself, everything is going through its own natural rebirth, why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t we take Mid March to make our New Year’s Resoultions?
Cognitive psychologists (perhaps I’ve got the wrong specialty) would warn us about the WHOLE New Year’s Resolution as setting the bar too high. Why say that “I’m going to exercise 5 times a week ALL YEAR!” when you’ve now got all year to fall back on not doing it, and the minute you start to fail, well, you’ve not met your resolution and you just give up altogether. Why not make monthly resolutions? Better yet, make monthly resolutions for the things you think you’ll be successful at, and resolve to quit the harder stuff (I’m looking at you, smokers!) every other week or two. “I resolve to smoke a pack a day three times this week. The other four days, I’ll only smoke 10 cigarettes.” See? That’s doable. You can succeed at that.
And that’s the problem with the New Year’s Resolutions. WE typically pick big things that we KNOW we won’t be able to do, and we’re soft on ourselves when we fail, because we never expected to succeed in the first place. So pick something easy. Smile more at your sister’s jokes. Succeed at the small stuff, because inertia enjoys success and if you can succeed on the small stuff, you might be able to quit smoking. Well, at least for one week a month, at any rate. #52Essays2017
“No,” Suzie Diamond replies. “I figured all that stuff’s a load of crap.” She takes a drag off her cigarette “I mean, you do what you do, right?”
This is not my attitude toward New Year’s resolutions, really. I am fond of navel gazing, and New Year’s Resolutions are a type of navel gazing. They’re reflective, and they are all about YOU. How you want to be better, and think you actually can become better. There’s an age when you become realistic about your resolutions. One year I resolved to quit smoking. The next year I resolved to quit smoking 3 times. Realism is important to resolutions, because it’s how you understand your limitations, or negotiate between your ideals and your limitations.
I think New Year’s Resolutions are poorly timed. We’re 10 days past the shortest day of the year. We’re just trying to sleep through the night, which we think is getting shorter, but we can’t tell exactly. Who wants to try to better yourself when you’re just trying to keep from going batshit crazy in the middle of winter? Who plans that timing?
New Year’s Resolutions should be made in the Spring; the days are getting noticeably longer. The weather is warmer and things seem to be getting better. It’s easier, in March, to think that maybe the changes you make will have a positive impression on the world. On January 2nd? Really, THIS is when you want to start going to the gym every day? When it’s still below freezing when you GET to work, never mind in the 3 hours beforehand when you are probably getting to the gym in the first place? (Caveat: I am a morning person.)
If we made our New Year’s Resolutions in the Spring, mid March perhaps, we would be buoyed by the positive inertia of the seasons. This would keep us going. You try to start going to the gym regularly when the next blizzard is coming, and you are setting yourself up for a fall and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. But the Spring? The Earth is reviving itself, everything is going through its own natural rebirth, why shouldn’t we? Why shouldn’t we take Mid March to make our New Year’s Resoultions?
Cognitive psychologists (perhaps I’ve got the wrong specialty) would warn us about the WHOLE New Year’s Resolution as setting the bar too high. Why say that “I’m going to exercise 5 times a week ALL YEAR!” when you’ve now got all year to fall back on not doing it, and the minute you start to fail, well, you’ve not met your resolution and you just give up altogether. Why not make monthly resolutions? Better yet, make monthly resolutions for the things you think you’ll be successful at, and resolve to quit the harder stuff (I’m looking at you, smokers!) every other week or two. “I resolve to smoke a pack a day three times this week. The other four days, I’ll only smoke 10 cigarettes.” See? That’s doable. You can succeed at that.
And that’s the problem with the New Year’s Resolutions. WE typically pick big things that we KNOW we won’t be able to do, and we’re soft on ourselves when we fail, because we never expected to succeed in the first place. So pick something easy. Smile more at your sister’s jokes. Succeed at the small stuff, because inertia enjoys success and if you can succeed on the small stuff, you might be able to quit smoking. Well, at least for one week a month, at any rate. #52Essays2017
Saturday, January 15, 2011
A totally different direction?
I'm not even sure if this will work, but I'm going to try to turn this into a broader culture blog. "Not even sure if this will work" really means I don't know if I'm going to continue doing things that I think are worthy of comment, or if I will lose interest in writing about my life before maintaining this blog becomes a real habit, but I'm going to give it a try.
The totally different direction from the Title is that I am now going to talk about things I've seen or read (plays, movies, art displays, books, even magazine articles) and what I think about them. A broad cultural critique, or sometimes just some suggestions of how an experience might be enriched. I remember driving across the George Washington Bridge as "New York State of Mind" came on the radio. Yes, that sounds like a cliche but I remember that song making me SO happy as I came closer and closer to home. Would connecting those two experiences work for everyone? Of course not, but they did for me. I also wished that I could have listened to "The Day Off" and "It's Hot Up Here" from Sunday in the Park With George while I was at the Art Institute in Chicago looking at A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. So two weeks into the beginning of a new year, I'm going to return to this blog and see what comes of it. Stay tuned!
The totally different direction from the Title is that I am now going to talk about things I've seen or read (plays, movies, art displays, books, even magazine articles) and what I think about them. A broad cultural critique, or sometimes just some suggestions of how an experience might be enriched. I remember driving across the George Washington Bridge as "New York State of Mind" came on the radio. Yes, that sounds like a cliche but I remember that song making me SO happy as I came closer and closer to home. Would connecting those two experiences work for everyone? Of course not, but they did for me. I also wished that I could have listened to "The Day Off" and "It's Hot Up Here" from Sunday in the Park With George while I was at the Art Institute in Chicago looking at A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. So two weeks into the beginning of a new year, I'm going to return to this blog and see what comes of it. Stay tuned!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Readalikes
Three Cups of Tea is still on everyone's lips. I think people who read Three Cups should not only read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi, but also A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Cory Doctorow
Now that I have read 3 books by Doctorow, and listened to one audiobook, I am riding the bandwagon of fans. Neil Gaiman's opinion led me to Doctorow (OK, someone I work with told me to read Doctorow, and someone else told me Gaiman thought Doctorow was great) and I'm very glad.
Read Little Brother, Eastern Standard Tribe, and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Find a copy of Wastelands Stories of the Apocalypse or just click on the title of Doctorow's story, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," depending on how you prefer to "take" your stories. I listened to the podcast of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and was thrilled with it. Go! Now!
Yes, Doctorow's stories are dystopic; they're not happy, but Little Brother has a good attitude of fighting authority and damn it, I'm on the bandwagon and you should be sitting next to me here!
Read Little Brother, Eastern Standard Tribe, and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Find a copy of Wastelands Stories of the Apocalypse or just click on the title of Doctorow's story, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," depending on how you prefer to "take" your stories. I listened to the podcast of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and was thrilled with it. Go! Now!
Yes, Doctorow's stories are dystopic; they're not happy, but Little Brother has a good attitude of fighting authority and damn it, I'm on the bandwagon and you should be sitting next to me here!
Graphic Novels
A friend of mine prefers to call them "funny books," and we don't call them comic books anymore, mostly because comic books makes people think of books printed on poor quality paper that rips too easily and tends to bleed ink. I like some graphic novels and I'm going list them here.
Spiegelman's memoirs; Maux, Maux 2, Breakdowns, and In the Shadow of No Towers are wonderful. Breakdowns shows Spiegelman's talents as an artist and show how he uses art to further his narrative. Maus and Maus 2 are great books to introduce people to graphic novels who might shy away from the format. Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers are really for people who enjoy graphic novels, because they both use the art to move the story more than (I think) the earlier two books do.
Marjane Satrapi's memoirs also are a wonderful example of how art should be used to tell stories. The art allows the reader to look at the horrors of life before the revolution but still maintain some distance.
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot is what happens when someone decides to write a literary biography in a graphic novel format. It is a brilliant idea, because it allows the reader to access the literature on different levels. It's got a full bibliography in the back for people who NEED the references, but there's no reason that literary criticism can't be fun, and this was a brilliant way to address Lewis Carroll's work.
Talbot also wrote "Tale of One Bad Rat," which is both about Beatrix Potter and her short story of the same name, but also how abused children can use both art and literature to help them cope with awful things that happen to them. The heroine of this book is an incest survivor who has run away to escape her abuser. Like Satrapi's books, Talbot uses art to make us look at awful crimes and see them for what they are.
Spiegelman's memoirs; Maux, Maux 2, Breakdowns, and In the Shadow of No Towers are wonderful. Breakdowns shows Spiegelman's talents as an artist and show how he uses art to further his narrative. Maus and Maus 2 are great books to introduce people to graphic novels who might shy away from the format. Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers are really for people who enjoy graphic novels, because they both use the art to move the story more than (I think) the earlier two books do.
Marjane Satrapi's memoirs also are a wonderful example of how art should be used to tell stories. The art allows the reader to look at the horrors of life before the revolution but still maintain some distance.
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot is what happens when someone decides to write a literary biography in a graphic novel format. It is a brilliant idea, because it allows the reader to access the literature on different levels. It's got a full bibliography in the back for people who NEED the references, but there's no reason that literary criticism can't be fun, and this was a brilliant way to address Lewis Carroll's work.
Talbot also wrote "Tale of One Bad Rat," which is both about Beatrix Potter and her short story of the same name, but also how abused children can use both art and literature to help them cope with awful things that happen to them. The heroine of this book is an incest survivor who has run away to escape her abuser. Like Satrapi's books, Talbot uses art to make us look at awful crimes and see them for what they are.
Old Man's War Tie-in
OK, I'm showing my nerd shirt now, but one of the lines I really liked in John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" was when a character would say (and he said this several times), "I'd explain it to you, but you don't have the math." "The Black Hole War," by Leonard Susskind, will help you understand the math. Susskind's book is about Quantum Mechanics and Black Holes while Scalzi's books are science fiction, but Susskind made me think that I actually understood how things worked. So if you've finished Scalzi's series about John Watson, and think you want to understand the math, try "The Black Hole War."
Then, when you're finished with "The Black Hole War," try ""The Day We Found the Universe." And don't come crying back to me when you realize you've LEARNED something.
Then, when you're finished with "The Black Hole War," try ""The Day We Found the Universe." And don't come crying back to me when you realize you've LEARNED something.
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