Wow. That was great. This week’s change was a blast. I really think I got something out of it. Learned so much about myself. I’m totally transformed and I think you’re going to be transfixed reading about how fascinating it was. I just wish it wasn’t over!
Okay. That was a bit predictable. See what I did there? I wrote sarcastically about how I spent seven days trying not to be sarcastic. No one’s even paying me to be this clever. I do it for free. Actually, what I’m really doing is stalling. And babbling. Partly because I just don’t feel much like writing anything lately, and partly because I don’t want to write about this week’s change, specifically.
Why? Well, it turns out it’s just not that interesting – which, looking back, I should have seen coming. For some reason I now cannot fathom, I thought – erroneously, it turned out – that it would be exciting to see if I could go a week without being sarcastic. Oh, the pitfalls I imagined! Oh, the zany missteps and mishaps I could relay to my readers! Oh, the people who know me who will fall over themselves wondering what strange spell has been cast on me!
Nah. Really, I could sum it up in a sentence: I pretty much succeeded at not being sarcastic for a week, and it wasn’t all that hard. The end.
As has been the case with previous ill-conceived changes, this one was predicated on a faulty premise: the idea that I am still the ruthlessly sarcastic young adult I once was, virtually incapable of sincere, direct communication. The real surprise, for me, was discovering that I’m not nearly as sarcastic as I was back in the day. Those who know me today should take a moment to let that settle in before trying to conceive how I must have been before.
A little background, perhaps? I was raised in house full of highly intelligent, highly verbal sorts who relished being able to zing and wither using just words as our weapons. Naturally, sarcasm was a relished tool and while I did not excel at much, I excelled at this. I took to it like a fish to water, like white to rice, like a Tea Party-er to idiocy.
(more…)
September 3rd, 2010
You’d think that a person with as many opinions as I have would be better informed. I’m not. Really. On balance, I know almost nothing about what’s going on in the world, except what I pick up skimming headlines throughout the day or what seeps into my brain from having NPR on in the background while I cook dinner or drive from hither to yon.
This seems wrong to me. I consider myself a moderately intelligent person, a citizen of the world, if you will. And, as that great philosopher GI Joe said, “Knowledge is power.” I concur, Mr. Joe! And why wouldn’t I? I grew up in a household with parents who listened to NPR in the morning, pored over the New York Times on the weekend, religiously watched the evening news at night.
So what happened to me?
In my current life, I’m surrounded by journalists. I’m married to one. Some of my best friends are journalists. No, really! My family-tree-in-law is lousy with journalists. So it’s particularly embarrassing that I seem to only know the bare bones of what’s going on in the world. Unless, of course, you have questions about TV shows and celebrity gossip, in which case I am so well informed, I’m surprised I’m not called on to be an expert. Or a pundit. I could be a sitcom pundit. Is there such a thing? There should be.
In fairness – to myself, that is – I’m not woefully uninformed. I do know people who are more ignorant than I am, and if that statement isn’t a pathetic reach for validity, I don’t know what is. I know the basics about current events. Major disasters do not escape my notice.
I have my own morning routine of information gathering, which will clearly demonstrate where my priorities lie. First, I check Facebook to see what my friends are up to and, more importantly, what they think of what I’m up to. This is about all my brain can handle first thing in the morning.
After that, I check my Google home page, which allows me to skim the headlines of the big hitters: BBC, NPR, NYT, CNN, MSNBC and other jumbles of letters. I click through to CNN and read the headlines there, maybe following through on a few stories that seem important. And it all feels like a chore to me, I have to say. An obligation. Must. Be. Informed.
(more…)
August 27th, 2010
One of the benefits/drawbacks of being a loudmouth is that people often mistake volume for confidence. As with many people, there is often a sizable gap between my outer bluster and my inner assurance. Which is fine, for the most part. I benefit at times from acting “as if” and soldiering through a difficult situation. But this inner conflict can also make things a bit confusing, for no one more so than me.
See, it feels like I second-guess myself on everything: my choice of snack, the shirt I’m wearing, that thing I said when you asked what I thought. I spend an alarming proportion of my day playing “what if” or “should I have.” It is, as you can probably imagine, exhausting.
Now, obviously, I can’t actually be second-guessing myself on everything. I’d be catatonic. But it’s close. It’s close.
I have a few people in my life who seem immune to any sort of second-guessing. I don’t mean to imply they don’t have a conscience – just that they have a raging case of self-confidence. Or maybe just an annoying ability to accept things as they are. Whatever. I mean, I admire these people tremendously, but I have no illusions I’ll become one of them. I’m too far into this whole life experiment to expect to change my spots that much.
I also have people in my life who second-guess themselves as much as me, if not more. And while it’s comforting to know I’m not alone, it’s also a little disturbing to realize how rampant this sort of self-doubt is. How few people seem to be truly at peace with the choices they’ve made. And perhaps that’s partly because our lives are cushy enough that we have the luxury to navel-gaze about the most trivial, self-focused matters.
(more…)
August 20th, 2010
As the Year o’ Change rolls on, sometimes I get stuck for ideas. Or, rather, get stuck for ideas for changes I would actually undertake. Fortunately, my readers are quick to make suggestions. They generally do so with a little gleam in their eye, as though they were the organ grinder and…well, we know what that makes me. It can be a little unsettling.
I’ve also found that, when coming up with changes for me, readers sometimes either forget – or take a great deal of poetic license with – the part about “change for the better.” They’ll say, “Why don’t you have sex every day for a week?” Or, “Why don’t you try to go a week without talking?” What? It’s not “I will make a change for the better of my husband.” Sheesh.
But a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine – let’s call him Nick, since that’s his name – suggested that I try meeting someone new every day. Generally, I’m most enthusiastic about changes that require very little effort on my part and, especially, those that don’t interfere with my eating or TV watching. This fit the bill. It sounded like a piece of cake. Haven’t I been doing this long enough to know that if it sounds like a piece of cake, it’s not?
Oh, my friends, how I underestimated the naivety/evil genius of Nick’s suggestion.
In a word: it blew. It turns out, I hate, hate, hate meeting new people. I’m not a hermit or xenophobic. I’m happy to shake hands with and chat up a new friend I’m introduced to. But make no mistake: actually going out there to seek people to meet is deeply uncomfortable to me. It also, for lack of a more sophisticated phrase (see: “it blew,” above), made me feel like a freak.
Bear in mind that I work from home, so the opportunities to meet someone new in the course of any given day are beyond limited. It meant I would have to leave the house in order to make this happen. And I don’t like to leave my house. (Maybe I should revisit the “I’m no hermit” claim above.) But the spirit of this exercise is change, and in good faith, I forced myself out and about to see who I could meet.
(more…)
August 13th, 2010
On weeks like this, I feel like I should issue a disclaimer. It would go something like this: “This is not one of those funny blog entries. It’s one of those difficult changes that inspires much introspection on my part, most (if not all) of which I’m unsure is remotely interesting to anyone else. Please consider yourself forewarned.” In other words, please consider yourself forewarned.
I should probably also issue a disclaimer to myself. It would go something like this: “Think very carefully before you make this next change, because it’s going to be a tough one and it touches on a lot of nerves and insecurities and when you sit down to write the blog entry you’re going to feel both boring and exposed.” But I didn’t issue that disclaimer to myself. So here we are.
Why all the stalling and nervousness? Because this week is about food. I know what you’re thinking: Again? Didn’t she write about eating before? Not eating meat? Not eating out? Not eating sugar? And you’re right. I’ve written about it before, but since food is consistently one of the bigger areas of frustration in my life, it stands to reason that it’s also one of the areas in which I have to keep trying to make changes.
See, food is tricky for me. Not in theory. I get the idea: eat stuff for fuel, go about your business. But for me – and I think for many of us – it’s far more complicated. There are emotions involved. There is history of struggle, which I say with a straight face, as though it’s on par with the Civil Rights movement. There is a deep and abiding love of food. And there is a strong attraction to – maybe even obsession for – the very foods and approaches to eating that are consistently my undoing, in more ways than one.
(more…)
August 6th, 2010
Last week, when I was musing about what counts as necessary consumption, I went off on a tangent, as I am wont to do. I mentioned that if we were listing the things a person actually needed to survive for seven days, food doesn’t even make the cut. It made me wonder what was necessary to stay on the right side of the dirt for a week. Turns out that, barring any acts of God, freezing temperatures, unrelenting sun exposure or abandonment in a cool body of water, there are two things one truly needs: oxygen and water.
And this got me thinkin’, which is usually the first sign of trouble. I’m not particularly good at drinking water. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that I get most of mine through Diet Coke and I don’t think that’s what nature intended. I need to hydrate more.
I read that the human body is 60% water. If I had to guess, I’d say mine’s probably about 20% water. (That leaves 70% fat, 2% brain cells and 8% undigested bubble gum from childhood.) So I decided to commit myself to drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day. However, that didn’t seem like it would make for the most fascinating blog post, especially considering that for the following seven days, I mostly forgot about it.
I have an excuse though. I was too busy breathing. That’s right. I chose to focus instead on the other of those two necessary items. Because in addition to not being particularly good at drinking water, I’ve also come to the somewhat disturbing realization that I’m not particularly good at breathing, either.
A little perspective: I’m not terrible at it. Obviously. I clearly do it enough to get by. But considering it’s likely the first thing I did at birth and I’ve been doing it quite a while, one would think I’d be better at it. It begs the question: how can a person be bad at breathing, barring some horrible respiratory condition? It’s supposed to be automatic, right? You’re supposed to do it without thinking, right?
So then how come lately I’ve been noticing throughout the day that I’m holding my breath? I mean, I’m not breathing. I’m just sitting there. And I have no idea how long I’ve been doing it. Probably less than three minutes, or else I’d have passed out. In fact, it’s probably not more than ten seconds at a stretch. Still. I’m no medical expert – as I’ve proven repeatedly on this site with my various cockamamie theories – but I’m pretty sure the brain needs oxygen to work. I heard that once. Also, possibly other organs need it too. Again, no expert.
(more…)
July 30th, 2010
I could spend a lot of time (yours and mine) trying to convince you how un-materialistic I am. What a spiritual giant I am. But the truth is: I enjoy money way too much to qualify. More specifically, I enjoy using money to buy things. Mostly things that are pretty and that I think will change my life (although they invariably don’t). And I’ve been doing a lot of it lately.
It is not a matter of spending beyond my means, like some sort of Real Housewife of Something or Other. I rarely pay full price for anything. But therein lies the rub: I have a little trigger inside me that gets pulled whenever I see a GREAT DEAL. I start to panic. I become convinced that I can’t not buy it, that passing on the deal would be tantamount to losing money. My faulty logic and ushers me from a state of wanting things to needing them. And I blame the internet more than anything for making it so easy to spend, spend, spend.
To wit, recently I have been shopping a lot of on-line sample sales. Part of the appeal is that, not only do I think I’m getting a bargain, but I also think I’m getting something exclusive. Secret. Mysterious! That’s how I ended up with not one but two round melamine trays designed by Thomas Paul, one of my favorite textile and graphic designers. Granted, they were a steal at $10 each (normally $30!!!!) but the collection of trays languishing atop my refrigerator would argue that I don’t need one tray, let alone two.
Note, also, the set of four gorgeous bamboo cutting boards. Beautiful! Functional! Only $40! And while I was paying for shipping anyway, it only made sense to toss in the set of matching bamboo utensils I absolutely did not need. They were just $10! I could totally see how my life would be significantly altered – less meaningful, somehow; less full – if I didn’t snap them up. I’d lie awake at night, tossing and turning, filled with regret.
In this vein, over the past few months, I have acquired a set of entirely pointless candles, two glass water carafes, six mini ramekins and a large orange plastic tub I have no idea what to do with – all from the Crate & Barrel clearance page. I ordered two v-neck tees at rock-bottom prices, never mind that they don’t fit properly and I’m not wild about the colors. But do I pay about half of what they cost me in return shipping? No! That would be silly!
(more…)
July 23rd, 2010
Do you want the good news first or the bad news? Too bad. The bad news – if you can call it that – is that I didn’t change anything this week. The good news is that means you can stop reading right now and go back to your regularly scheduled life. Think of it as a gift. Of time. From me. To you.
You’re welcome.
What? You’re still here. Okay. Sigh. You’re probably due a little explanation. Sadly, there isn’t much of one. I was sorely tempted to spin this into some sort of change-by-not-changing intentional, purposeful effort, but that strikes me as mildly disingenuous at best and flat-out-misleading at worst. (Plus, I kind of already played that hand, didn’t I?)
There was no philosophical, uh, philosophy behind it. I just didn’t feel like it. I was sick and tired of making changes. I couldn’t think of anything I honestly had the energy to undertake. I felt drained and none-too-well on the fibromyalgia front and I simply didn’t have the brain space or the oomph to tackle some sort of transformation.
As I write this, it occurs to me that there’s a case to be made for the fact that I actually listened to what my body – sore and frustrated – had to say and I made a decision to take care of it first and foremost. That I tried not to worry about “letting down” readers and let my people pleasing make decisions I’d ultimately pay for later. I suppose one could say that’s unusual for me. A change, even. But I’m not sure I’ve earned that pass.
So there you have it. I took the week off. You can call it slacking or you can call it a vacation. Either way, it is what it is. Now go back to doing whatever it is you do! I’ll see you here next week, dazzlingly transformed by my next change. If, you know, I feel like it.
July 16th, 2010
Some of my earliest memories are, if not of being afraid, of worrying – specifically, worrying about bad things happening. To me, to those I love. Long before I had any notion of what the saying meant, I was wandering the globe, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Trying to discern which part is worry and which part is fear feels a bit like semantics to me. Especially considering the real issue at hand, which is this: I have not evolved much in this area.
Actually, that might be inaccurate. I think I did evolve in that area. In my early twenties, I was so filled with anxiety, I suffered near-crippling panic attacks that seemed to strike at the most inopportune times. Interestingly, when I gave up the booze and set myself on the so-called straight and narrow, the fear and panic ebbed.
I suffered a rather significant regression in this area following the sudden death of my mother seven years ago. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable and exposed in a whole new way. The bad things I’d feared as a child were no longer just hypothetical – they were happening. To me. To us. To our family.
Since that time, I’ve waged an ongoing battle with my anxiety and fear and, although I can’t really figure out why, it seems that it’s been at a bit of a high point lately. To be sure, it’s been a year when health concerns have threatened the wellbeing of a number of family members and I suppose that alone is enough to ratchet up the fear level.
But I’m tired of it, frankly. I’m tired of having a brain that leaps to a worst-case-scenario whenever my husband doesn’t check in as promised or when I can’t get a hold of my sister. I know not everyone operates this way. I know that other people possess the ability to be rational about matters, particularly when there is no evidence suggesting the need to be anything but.
This is not how my brain works.
So I set out this past week just to try – to apply actual, conscious effort – not to let my fear rule the land. Just seven days where I tried not to give into worry and anxiety, but tried to behave like a normal person.
(more…)
July 9th, 2010
Readers, do you remember a few weeks ago? When I tried to give up caffeine for a week? And I pronounced the experiment a failure because I fell off the wagon once or twice? Oh, what I would give for that success rate now. Because, by any measure, this week was a bona fide failure.
This change was, without question, the hardest one I have attempted to date. It eluded me at every turn. It challenged my nature to the very fiber of my being. It frustrated me and taunted me. “What was it?,” you ask. Did I attempt to run a marathon? Save one small child per day from a burning building? Single-handedly mop up the oil from the BP spill using only a sponge and a roll of Bounty?
Oh, no. It was much bigger than that. For seven days in a row, I tried not to swear.
I realize that, for many of you, this wouldn’t be much of a challenge. I also discovered that many people I spoke to this week didn’t realize it would be a challenge for me. Which means that either they don’t know me that well … or maybe I don’t curse nearly as much as I think I do. Either way, that was the obstacle I set before me.
Writing this at week’s end I am, once again, wondering why I thought to undertake this change in the first place. Because the truth is, I love to curse. I love profanity. I like the force of it, the sound of it, the sheer flexibility and prurient pleasure of it. Yes, I’m grown up enough to recognize that not everyone digs it and I can curtail my potty mouth out of respect for others, but as a general proposition I just find it – particularly the F bomb – so salty and so useful.
I like to tell people that the reason I curse so much is because I spent the first ten years of my life in Scotland, where swearing isn’t just commonplace – it’s taken to a whole new level. (The Australians and Irish I know often take deep offense at this, claiming their own nations far superior in the wielding of profanity than the Scots. I don’t know how one does the metrics for the definitive answer. Perhaps we declare a tie.) Let’s just say the fact that some Scots like to pepper speech with the “c” word as a gerund (“That c***ing driver is out of his c***ing mind!”) suggest a really strong commitment to the sport.
(more…)
July 2nd, 2010
Previous Posts