Category Archives: Life

10 Things that Happened in 2011

  1. Toasted Cheese celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 18.
  2. I took up crocheting.
  3. I revived the Friday FUM. (You’re welcome to join us each Friday; no registration is required.)
  4. I ran a half-marathon in 2:15, a personal best and my forever goal time. (Now I need a new goal!)
  5. I stopped using shampoo (and much to my surprise, my hair thanks me).
  6. All the late ’80s/early ’90s clothing items I had squirreled away transitioned from old to “vintage.” One day I realized I was wearing 3 of these items at once:
    Vintage 1
    And then I saw this photo at The Sartorialist and realized if the jean jacket/long sweater/Doc Martens/(beaver) hat look is in, I’m all set:
    Vintage 2
  7. I successfully completed my comprehensive exams.
  8. I instigated a mini-NaNo challenge at TC in September—and “won.” (Maybe we’ll make it an annual thing?)
  9. I wrote 3 articles (Running a Literary Journal, Part 1: Choices, Mentor March: Writers Who Inspire Us, A Guide to Designing Assignments that Require Students to Submit their Work for Publication) & 2 editorials (Bounce, Outside In) for TC.
  10. My core & arm strength noticeably improved thanks to 3x/week yoga practice. (I might even be able to defeat the dreaded flexed arm hang now :))

Fear Narrative(s)

I’ve always felt that adolescence during the Cold War was like adolescence on steroids. It’s hard enough to be a teenager and deal with the difficult realization that the grown-ups don’t know what they’re doing; but when the grown-ups have nuclear weapons aimed at each other…then it’s a whole different ball game.

…

It’s fascinating to talk about this stuff with college freshman nowadays. They’ve grown up in the shadow of 9/11; that’s the Fear Narrative that’s been thrust upon them. A part of me thinks that it’s worse, as it actually happened; it’s not as nebulous as what I grew up with. Another part of me realizes that we survived 9/11, that we could survive another one if we had to. Thermonuclear war was supposed to vaporize all human life in an instant.

—Tyler McMahon

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!

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

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

What storytellers are supposed to do

Being anxious is very much like being watched – by another, by your partner, by the world, by yourself. Anxiety is about sprinting ahead, spinning tales and stories and the long, long train of endless possibilities. It’s what storytellers are supposed to do; useful during the act of writing, not so useful in the living of a non-panicked life. Anxious people are in search of a scroll; a scroll that can be rolled out to tell us the meaning of all that has already happened and warn us of what is to come. We are imaginative people who carve something out of nothing and yet we’re still in search of the Oracle. No wonder we’re a little bit unsteady, a little bit on edge.

—Emily Rapp

Those who stay and those who leave

During the panel “The Art of the Novel” on Sunday, novelist Susan Straight said that while writing her new book she learned there were two types of people: those who stay and those who leave. … Straight’s novel portrays characters who migrate back and forth between California and Louisiana, in efforts to escape the past and find a future.

—Chris Daley

Good Things

One day, a month or so ago, when I was reading through my feeds, there happened to be a bunch of posts with a similar idea behind them:

This confluence of posts inspired me to re-start the Friday FUM. Here’s today’s.

I love making lists (my favorite apps are probably the list-making ones). So satisfying. The idea of making lists not to cross things off, but to be mindful of the good things from your day? Brilliant. But I think the reason it so resonated with me is because mentally I’d already been doing this.

In writing, we speak of missing the forest for the trees, i.e. getting so caught up in the details of a sentence or paragraph that we forget the overall story. But in life, I think sometimes we miss the trees for the forest. That is, whatever big thing’s going on in your life has a tendency to overwhelm everything else. So if whatever’s going on is bad, the impulse is to think everything in your life is bad. Which it isn’t. It doesn’t matter how overwhelming the big picture, there are always little things for which to be appreciative. True, the good things may be very little things compared the Big Bad Thing. But they are still good things. Even if they are little. A hot shower after a run. That first cup of coffee in the morning. Waking up to a sunny day.

Whenever someone remains positive despite tragic circumstances, people marvel. To a healthy person, the cheerful dying person is an enigma. But after the past while, I think I understand. Feeling sorry for yourself feels like crap. No one wants to be cast in the role of victim.

I have a long-standing policy of refusing to worry about things I have no control over. You know how people are always griping about gas prices or taxes or other things that the average person has no power to change? And then they wonder why they feel angry and frustrated and put-upon all the time? I can’t see the point. Agonizing about such things isn’t going to change them. Venting might make you feel marginally better briefly, but in the end, it just makes you feel worse.

Choosing to appreciate little good things in the face of a Big Bad Thing is empowering precisely because you’re making a choice. You’re taking control, saying, “Ok, I have no control over X. I do, however, have control over a, b, and c. So instead of spending my time being angry about X, which won’t change anything anyway, I’m going to spend it appreciating a, organizing b, and doing c.”  And on a micro-level, that feels good (even if the big picture is bad). So you keep doing it, because when it comes down to it, everyone wants to feel good (especially when they’re feeling bad).

From the outside, it might seem ridiculous to think that someone could be simultaneously grieving and yet still taking pleasure in life. But you only get one. It’s your choice what to do with it. Even when it doesn’t turn out like you expected.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.  —Randy Pausch

Some things worth watching/reading: