Author Archives: Theryn

Wonderful Secrets

When I think about the things in my life that have given me the greatest sense of accomplishment, in each case, I told very few people what I was attempting to do — I would just privately start taking the first steps, and then slowly work toward it, before letting anyone know (for example, I didn’t tell most people, including my parents, that I was thinking about going to law school until after I got accepted).

…

I think there’s something delicious about taking baby steps toward something that you dare yourself to do, all-hush-hush-like, with only yourself or, at the most, a few confidants knowing.  I love the feeling of “if they only knew!” that happens when you start to make progress.  I think there’s something to be said to having wonderful secrets about what you’re capable of doing, only to be revealed in due course (or, never to be spoken of again, if that works, too).

—Karen Walrond

omg, yes. This! I also didn’t tell anyone about law school until I was accepted. I love having secret projects, like running or school or writing or whatever. Outside pressure, regardless of how well-intentioned (soooo, how’s that Big Project of yours coming?) doesn’t do anything for me; it just stresses me out (makes me feel like I haven’t done enough, I’m going to fail, etc.). It’s so good to know I’m not alone in feeling that way.

On the other hand, I sometimes think that people interpret keeping quiet about a project to mean that it must not be a big deal—when in fact it’s the opposite. Just because I like to quietly work at my goals doesn’t mean I don’t want to celebrate once they’ve been achieved. If anything, I want to celebrate more. After all, I’ve been saving up. Not counting my chickens until they’ve actually hatched. So when I share my achievement? Break out the party hats and noisemakers!

SVHM 2011

Scotiabank Vancouver Half Marathon 2011

My 5th half-marathon & I finally achieved the time goal I’d been shooting for since my first (2hrs 15min)! *happy dance* Redeemed myself after last October’s running-while-injured PW 😉 So now I need a new goal. I’m thinking 2:10 or 2:11. I was on track for that up until 15-16k, so I now know it’s doable. I didn’t do any runs longer than that this spring (just trying something different—I know a lot of people max out at ~10 miles in training), so I just got tired at the end. Also the Burrard Bridge at 18k is eeeeevil.

This is an awesome race if you’re looking for one to do. It’s point-to-point, UBC to Stanley Park. Net downhill, but keep in mind most of that is in the 1st half; 2nd half is bit rolling. Plus, you know, the bridge. Anyhow, very scenic and this year, the weather was perfect. No guarantees on that, though. Previous time I did it, it poured buckets of rain the entire time.

Quest for a bargain

As a result [of online bookstores], our lives, and our engagement with the world around us, slowly become more insular. We get challenged less, so believe in what we believe with more fervor. Something akin to intellectual torpor sets in as we keep returning to the same shelves in the marketplace of ideas. And we, as a society, are worse off for it, another stroke of damage from his secular religion of ours, the quest for a bargain.

—Scott Martelle

The people in the world that I like the most

Emily: I often have the experience I get an email from someone who I really want to send a good full‑bodied response back so I don’t respond with one line immediately and then it falls back in the queue and I never get to it.

Farhad: Yeah. That happens to me all the time. I think that looking over the email that I need to send, the people in that queue are probably the people in the world that I like the most.

Emily: I feel so much better.

—Farhad Manjoo and Emily Yoffe

Write more like the way that you talk

Ha! This is what I always tell students (re: writing academic papers).

I owe a vast debt to Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write “more like the way that you talk.” At the time, I was near speechless at the charge of being boring and never thanked him properly, but in time I appreciated that my fear of self-indulgence and the personal pronoun was its own form of indulgence.

—Christopher Hitchens

By request: Pizza!

Pizza

Add 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp honey to 1 cup hot (tap, not boiling) water. Stir. Sprinkle 1 tbsp yeast over the water mixture and let sit 5 minutes, until yeast is foamy.

Meanwhile, mix 1/2 tsp salt with 2 cups flour.

Stir yeast mixture briskly, add to flour, combine to form dough. Knead dough 8-10 minutes, adding more flour as necessary.

Rub dough with olive oil, place in bowl, and cover. Let rise in warm place for ~1 hour. Punch dough down and shape into circle.

Sprinkle pizza pan (the kind with holes) with cornmeal. Place dough on pan. Add toppings.

Place pizza in cold oven on bottom rack and bake at 500°F for ~20 minutes or until crust is brown and cheese is melted.

A profound connection with an imaginary world

Serious readers, [Shirley Brice] Heath tells [Jonathan Franzen], come in two flavors: either their parents modeled serious reading for them as children, or, far less commonly, they were “social isolates” who found in books a profound connection with an imaginary world that supplanted a daily environment in which they felt they had no place. The latter description, apparently, fits Franzen to a T, and he is relieved to hear Heath tell him that readers who came to books to cure their social isolation are more likely than other kinds of readers to become writers. Soon afterward, his writer’s block is cured and his stalled third novel begins to click along.

—Michael Bourne,
discussing Franzen’s 1996 essay, “Perchance to Dream“

Discovery and reinvention and risk

[W]hen I worry about my students being online, it’s because I imagine their moments of discovery and reinvention and risk derailed by Facebook comments from people who remember them as they weren’t and won’t let them forget it, tying them down before they lift off. … I worry there’s less room to try on and cast off new selves, as people and artists alike, but maybe that’s only an issue for someone who always finds himself writing about isolation one way or another, and for whom the most terrifying thing ever seen on TV is that eBay ad asking, “What if nothing was ever forgotten?”

—Steve Himmer