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Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

10 Things I Wish I’d Known 10 Years Ago

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2011| 16 Comments »

1. It is not as common as it once was to spend your entire career working at one company, or even in one career. Therefore most of my parents’ career advice was completely useless.

2. Bodies are complicated, and often doctors don’t know what’s wrong. So sometimes you have to get creative and proactive in seeking out information, alternatives, and talented people who can help you.

3. A large number of acquaintances is not necessarily going to be as satisfying as a small number of people to whom you can reveal your true self.

4. If your significant other is not meeting one of your core needs and shows no inclination of doing so in the future, it is okay (even necessary) to break up with them.

5. So much of life boils down to communication. Unfortunately, many people are incredibly bad at it.

6. Thinking you might not be good enough is not a good enough reason to decide not to do something.

7. The people who are judgmental about your life choices are generally not the people you want to spend time with, anyway. And it’s impossible to make every person in the entire world like you.

8. Be on the lookout for those who are taking away your agency. The easiest way to have your choices taken away from you is if you never even realize you had a choice in the first place.

9. Fake it until you make it is a cheesy-sounding piece of advice that is actually true. Corollary: Your major is not as important as you think. (Except when it is.)

10. Be fanatical about taking care of your teeth, flossing, and visiting the dentist regularly. And use a mouth guard if there’s even a chance you’re grinding your teeth at night…the unsexiness of such a device be damned!

What do you know now that you wish you’d learned earlier?

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The 10 Life Lessons I Learned From When Harry Met Sally (hint: some of them are wrong)

Posted in Life, Society, tagged , , , , , , on December 8, 2011| 8 Comments »

Last night I couldn’t stream Netflix through the Xbox like I usually do because Microsoft’s servers were down. So instead my husband suggested we watch When Harry Met Sally, since I’d been talking about it being a good holiday movie while at a certain wedding a few weeks ago.

While watching it, I realized that this movie, more than any other, is responsible for many of my early ideas of what adulthood was going to be like. It came out in 1989, so I’m imagining it reached the free cable preview weekends (my only real source for movies at the time) a few years after that, and I remember watching it more than once in high school. And while I spent lots of time consuming every Robin Hood movie I could get my hands on, watching Star Wars Episode IV whenever I got sick, and sighing with my best friend over Dirty Dancing, When Harry Met Sally struck me as being more like what real life was actually going to be.

Here is what it taught me:

1. Everyone you know will have a professional sounding job: attorney, journalist, political consultant (I had to ask my husband last night what that actually meant). These jobs will cause them no angst whatsoever and were obviously easy for them to both choose and succeed at.

2.However, everyone will actually spend most of their time and energy dealing with their crazy love lives, having lunch with their girlfriends, and hogging the batting cages from small boys. Also going to baseball games, reading self-help books, and attending many parties.

3. On New Year’s Eve, everyone goes to posh parties at big venues with lots of people they don’t know. Otherwise it doesn’t count.

4. People will often host small and slightly awkward parties at their apartments, where everyone divides up into two teams and plays Pictionary. And they always have an easel set up with a really big pad of paper to make it more awesome. (WHY has this not happened to me in adulthood? WHY?)

5. Never let a friend set you up because blind dates always end badly.

6. Adults are not afraid to do zany and embarrassing things, like sing Oklahoma! at the Sharper Image or have public fake orgasms. (This is particularly true of theater people, but alas, the movie neglected to educate me on that fact.)

7. It is okay to toss barely-used Kleenex around the room when you are very upset.

8. Men might be idiots about love sometimes, but in the end they will come to their senses and sweep you off your feet with an appropriate grand gesture and speech combo. (This is what most romantic comedies teach us, but I’ve found real life to be a vast disappointment in comparison, since most people I know do not seem to have the inclination to actually plan and execute grand gestures.)

9. A man who is married will never leave his wife for you. (Thanks to Carrie Fisher for the running gag teaching this valuable life lesson.)

10. When you move in with somebody, be on your guard for their equivalent to the Roy Rogers wheel wagon coffee table, and make sure you’ve stipulated that it’s not going to be part of the move ahead of time, thus avoiding an embarrassing fight in front of all your friends who are helping you.

What movie most shaped your ideas about what being an adult was going to be like?

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What We Don’t Talk About

Posted in Life, Personal Development, Society, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2011| 19 Comments »

What subjects do you avoid? What don’t you like to admit? What topics do you not talk about because they feel somehow inappropriate?

Theodora Goss’s recent blog post Telling the Truthis an excellent and thought-provoking essay well worth a read: “And this got me thinking about all the things we don’t talk about,” she says. “There are so many of them!”I think a lot about all the things we don’t talk about. In fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog, because I wanted to have a platform from which to speak about some of these things. But of course, I still carefully write around so many of these things of which we never speak.

I recently spoke to a friend of mine who revealed that he used to have crushes on girls starting in third grade. He had never told anyone else about this because he was embarrassed because he thought it was out of the ordinary. Can you imagine? I had crushes in elementary school, and some people in my classes even had “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” (although of course it meant something slightly different back then). But you know what? I never talked about my crushes. And apparently no one else talked about them to my friend either, so he’s spent all this time secretly thinking that he’s different, that something was wrong with him, because he failed to pick up the social cues that would have informed him that crushes aren’t so unusual after all.

I wonder how many things we are all secretly embarrassed about or ashamed of that are, in reality, very common. Only we never find this out because we’re all busy feeling like outsiders together.

I think many of us are ashamed of failure, like Dora says in her essay. I know I am, and being a perfectionist doesn’t help out with this. And yet, failure is essential for those of us with ambitious dreams. Most people don’t succeed with huge dreams right away. I listened to an interview with Seth Godin the other day in which he bemoaned how afraid so many people are of failure. This fear holds us back. It makes us unwilling to take the risks we need to take to learn, to grow, and to achieve something truly great. And yet, even though I understand the need for failure intellectually, it doesn’t take away the fear.

But on the other hand, the more I fail, the more I know that I am living an interesting and daring life. Failure is taking your life and seeing what you can wring from it instead of coasting along and choosing the safest route. Failure is pursuing lofty goals and pushing back against the fear. Failure is exposing yourself to the world and teaching yourself to believe in the you of possibilities instead of the you of limitations. Failure is the strength to believe in yourself so much that you can rise above your worries (or the reality) of what other people think about you.

Failure is saying, “This is my life, and I’m going to make every inch of it mine.”
Maybe if we can reclaim failure, it won’t be so scary after all. Or at least maybe it can become a badge of courage instead of one of shame.

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My Thanksgiving List: 8 Things I’m Grateful For

Posted in Life, Society, tagged , , , , , on November 17, 2011| 6 Comments »

‘Tis the season to notice gratitude, and several of the blogs I read have been recently doing just that. John Scalzi started it off with his Thanksgiving Advent Calendar (the first post of which, incidentally, makes a nice companion piece to my own post on not drinking). My friend Marie Brennan decided to follow his lead and do a month-long thankfulness project as well (and by the by, also wrote this very Amy-approved post, if you’re looking for more reading). James Van Pelt chimed in with some gratitude of his ownjust yesterday.I’ve been really enjoying reading these posts. It’s so refreshing to get a little dose of positivity every day as these writers think about the various aspects of their lives that increase their quality of existence. After all, I’m never one to shy away from optimism, and one component of that is to appreciate what you already have. So here’s my list of random happy things in honor of Thanksgiving:1. A variety of fresh fruit and vegetables: Because in the past, you could usually only eat what was locally grown. Granted, I live in California, where many fruits and vegetables can be locally grown, but I’m still grateful for this.

2. Living in the United States: Okay, it’s true that the right of habeas corpus referenced in the Constitution seems to be on a permanent holiday, and apparently we’re not allowed to protest peacefully anymore either. But even though there are a lot of things I think need to be fixed, that doesn’t change the fact that I enjoy many benefits from living in the United States. My standard of living is higher than it would be in many, many other countries; I have access to useful infrastructure; and I don’t generally have to worry about my country being obliterated in the near future. These are benefits that I very much appreciate.

3. Corrective Vision Technology: Without any technological assistance, I am very, very nearsighted and couldn’t function normally in the world. Not only do I have access to glasses with light-weight lenses that don’t make me look at the world through Coke bottle glass, but if they break I can get them fixed locally and promptly. Plus, if I get sick of them, I can opt for contact lenses that aren’t painful like the old ones used to be or get corrective eye surgery. Yay for being able to see!

4. The Internet: My life would not be nearly as rich without the increased access the internet has given me, both to a wide variety of people and to a huge collection of data. When I was a kid, if I wanted to know something I’d look it up in our set of World Book encyclopedias and hope there was a relevant entry; if there wasn’t, I’d have to make a trip to the library or just settle for not knowing. Can you imagine settling for not knowing anymore? I can’t. And if you wanted to stay in touch with someone who didn’t live in your town, you wrote letters…which meant you couldn’t stay in touch with a very large number of people. Nowadays that’s gotten a lot easier.

5. My blog: For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a lot to say. However, if you meet me in person, you might not realize this is true, because I have this ingrained habit of asking questions and listening…which means I don’t always get around to the saying what’s on my mind part. Getting to share what’s going on up there in my head with you all is a great privilege…and a significant pleasure.

6. My car: This one is a little embarrassing. I had to replace my car early this year, and I’ve been surprised at how much I appreciate the new one. Sometimes it’s the little things: I push the ignition button and it ACTUALLY STARTS. Every single time, even. Wow, do I feel grateful to not have to worry about getting from point A to point B anymore. (P.S. The seat warmers don’t hurt either.)

7. Libraries: Until the last few years, buying a book (and probably a Mass Market paperback, at that) was an extremely big deal for me. The rest of the time, I supported my reading habit by frequenting my local library. I can’t imagine what I would have done my whole life without libraries, and I’m incredibly grateful that I was given the means to live the kind of literary life that would have otherwise been outside of my grasp.

8. My family: I know I sound like a broken record, but my husband and my dog probably make the biggest difference in my life on a day-to-day level. They make the good days better and the bad days not quite as grim. Any list of happy things doesn’t feel quite complete without mentioning them.

Please tell me a few of your own happy appreciative things, or write your own post and make sure to tell me about it!

I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving! I’m taking next week off from blogging for the holiday, so I’ll see you again the week after next.

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But wait. Isn’t perfectionism a GOOD thing?

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , on November 10, 2011| 15 Comments »

When I was entering the job market in my early twenties, I tried to be proactive and prepare for the inevitable interview process. The hypothetical question that all the articles told me I had to be ready for that freaked me out the most was the perennial: What is your greatest weakness? I still hate this question. I mean, there you are, trying your best to sell yourself in a high pressure situation and then you’re forced to talk about your less than ideal points? Plus, according to said interview advice, what you were really supposed to do was choose a “weakness” that you could spin as a positive, meaning that the entire exchange was just an elaborate test of whether or not you could bullshit effectively. Ugh. Anyhow, I chose perfectionism as my flaw, which was one of the examples used on the internet as a good choice. Because perfectionism (I thought) shows that you are actually very diligent, hardworking, detail oriented, and competent.

I never got asked that question in an interview.

Which is just as well, because after having spent years and years of my life as a recovering perfectionist, I can say with authority that the negatives far outweigh any positives. And if I had answered the way I’d planned to anyone with insight into human character, it might very well have cost me the job.

Nothing and no one living is always perfect. (Photo by jfh686 on flickr)

Not convinced? Let me draw your attention to some perfectionism highlights:

1. Freeze/block: Yes, perfectionism can cause things like writer’s block. I know because to this day it gives me trouble while I’m writing. Once a perfectionist realizes there is no way to get a given job done perfectly, it becomes oh so very difficult to do that job at all. At least, if we actually care about the job at all. The less we care, the easier it is to avoid the freeze.

2. Inefficiency: Unless the perfectionist’s target IS efficiency, of course. Because it’s so hard for us to leave something alone and actually call it done. If we just made another little tweak…or a hundred. If we only had time to start over. You’d better hope your perfectionist is feeling perfectionistic about deadlines, or it’s all over. (Happily, I am in fact a perfectionist about deadlines, so at least I get to finish, whether I like it or not.)

3. Stress: If you aren’t a perfectionist yourself, just imagine a world in which everything you are even tangentially involved with has to be perfect and go exactly as planned. And if it’s not perfect, you have failed and it is All. Your Fault. And if it doesn’t go as planned, then life is ruined. And if only you could be a little better, maybe all the problems in the universe would disappear. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

4. Obliviousness, otherwise known as self denigration: Because perfectionists hold ourselves to such impossible standards, we often fail to notice, or give ourselves appropriate credit for, the awesome things we may accomplish. We may not notice positive character traits, and if we do, we think they’re no big deal. If we achieve something big, we focus on what we didn’t achieve yet, something we failed at, or explain why it isn’t important: Well, but I’ve only made one pro sale. Well, but I’ve only sold one novel. Well, but I was only able to succeed at x because I failed so spectacularly at y. Well, but I’m not that intelligent because I don’t have a PhD/don’t have a deep understanding of quantum mechanics/don’t speak six different languages fluently.

So yes, all is not fun bright times in perfectionism world. While perfectionism does often create driven personalities who go on to achieve great things, I think there are ways of being driven and ambitious without being quite so hard on ourselves. One of my favorite parts of The West Wing was when President Bartlett had dealt with a problem, often less than perfectly, often when there were no good solutions or easy answers. He’d always turn right around and say, “What next?” What next allows us to focus on what we can do instead of dwelling on our inability to be perfect.

Any other perfectionists out there? Any strategies you use to help you work through it? Any aspects you find especially difficult? I’d love to hear from you.

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Aging is not a Four Letter Word

Posted in Life, Society, tagged , , , , , , on November 8, 2011| 23 Comments »

It’s really hard for me to write about aging. Hard enough that I’ve been procrastinating on the internet and thinking through what I want to say and then tearing it to shreds before I type a single word–not because it’s so bad, but because I’m trying to avoid writing about it. Which of course, given my obstinate nature, means that now I really have to.

Our culture gives aging a very bad rap. I mean, we live in a world in which it doesn’t sound completely unusual for someone to say that the best years of life were in high school, or college, and once you turn twenty-five, it’s all downhill from there. Whenever I hear that kind of thinking, I want to scream. I mean, sure, there were some good moments in high school, and college was a special time for me, but really? That’s as good as it gets? Fumbling around in the dark being confused and angsty and not understanding what was going on half the time is supposed to be the high point of my life? No, thanks.

Photo by ezioman on Flickr

I’ve been thinking about aging a lot after that whole tooth debacle, which awakened me to the profound idea that I probably won’t keep all my teeth for my whole life. I know, I know, who hasn’t heard of dentures, but it shook me up all the same. And then I’ve been having all these bizarre health problems, and they make me feel old. For the record, none of these health problems are age-related. Let me repeat that. NONE of them are age-related. But it’s easy to slip into the sloppy thinking that maybe they are.

But really, what makes me think about aging is my epidemic of white hairs. I know, how superficial, right? My mother went gray at a fairly young age, and I remember kids thinking she must be a grandmother because of her hair…when she was around FORTY. Ever since that time I have associated gray hair with looking old, so I am ridiculously disturbed whenever a white hair intrudes upon my notice. It screams out at me with its little crispy voice, “Aha! You see me? You can’t even pretend to be in your twenties anymore. And your life might already be half over.”

I am choosing to reveal my neuroticism about aging (and I’m sure I’m not alone in how I feel) because it is all in my head. Yay society for helping me out with that, but ultimately I can choose for myself how I feel about aging. And what I choose will affect the rest of my life, quite literally. This study showed that people who thought about how aging might be affecting them performed worse on memory performance tests. So how I think about myself as I age will determine what I am able to achieve. Suddenly, developing a healthy relationship with aging seems a whole lot more important.

We tend to focus on the negative impacts of aging, but what about the many positive ones? I’ve become a much more developed singer and musician than I used to be, and I have the same maturation of my writing to look forward to in the future. I know and understand myself a lot better than I used to, which greatly improves the quality of my life. I am happier. I know more things and have more skills. I have perspective and experience, and I look forward to gaining more of both. I have more trust in myself.

Aimee Mann recently gave an interview all about aging (imagine, a famous musician actually daring to talk about her age!), and she said:

So that’s what aging probably means. You’ve got to be around long enough to try all the dumb stuff and then get sick of it and then kind of reach the conclusion of, look, I don’t care if this is cool or sounds cool, I want a life that works now, because I want to be creative, and it’s not being creative to be obsessed, anxious, depressed, trying to control other people, trying to control circumstances, and flipping out when stuff doesn’t go your way. But that’s what most people are. And you know, I don’t need to make cool my higher power. Cool doesn’t work.

Yes. I want to be creative in a way that works. And the closer aging can bring me to that, the more valuable it becomes.

Fundamentally, all of us will either age or we’ll die. Given my choice, I’d pick aging any day.

So, anyone else ever feel neurotic about aging? Got anything you are particularly looking forward to as you age, or have you already experienced some positive benefits? Please share.

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5 Subjects that are just as Interesting as Controversy

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2011| 12 Comments »

I was all ready to pound out another rant today, when my little dog began to snore. She’s sleeping in her bed right next to where I’m sitting, lying on her side with her legs all stretched out, and she’s making the most adorable little snorey snuffle noises. Watching her sleep makes me want to write about something happy instead, because how can I fail to be happy listening to such a cute dog’s satisfied little sleep grunts?

Oh so sleepy.

Yes, I know. My dog is cute, and the blog suffers as a result. But hopefully the reason you’re reading in the first place is because you’re like me and you don’t need constant controversy all the time. After all, it’s not only controversy that is interesting–is it? (Blogging experts everywhere are now vehemently disagreeing with me.)

Oh, I feel a list coming on. A “What’s Interesting to Amy” sort of list. Because really, isn’t that the best kind?

1. Psychology, or Why Individual Humans Behave the Way They Do: This never fails to fascinate me. For instance, today in my blog feed, I found out about 13 types of worriers; last week I learned about 7 common defense mechanisms (well, it might have been 8, but I can’t find it now, so I have no idea). This also feeds into my interest in cognitive science.

2. Sociology, or What Humans Do When They Get Together in Groups: Yeah, I’m interested in people, what can I say? For instance, I read this article (I can’t find it, but here’s another one about a similar topic) about a study in which it was shown that a group of people who think they are in competition with another group for the same resources is likely to give that other group negative qualities and characteristics, even if they know absolutely nothing about that other group. How interesting is that?

3. History, or What Humans Did in the Past: People say that history is important so that we won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. I don’t know about this because it seems to me that we do, in fact, repeat the same mistakes sometimes. I think history is interesting because it tells us the story of where we come from (and there are many versions of the same story, some of which have been lost over time) and show us what is possible in terms of human existence and human behavior. We see both the best and the worst of humanity through study of our history, and every shade of gray in between.

4. Science Fiction, or What Humans Might Do in the Future: I guess technically this is called futurism, but science fiction comes close enough for me. I love wondering what the world will be like in fifty years, or a hundred years, or two hundred years. I love guessing what societies might develop, and what aspects of them might be unthinkably bizarre to us now. I’m grateful I’m an optimist because otherwise I’d probably find this more depressing than interesting, but as it is, I can’t wait to find out if we figure out how to cause humans to regrow their teeth in my lifetime.

5. Chocolate: Yes, chocolate is very interesting indeed, only to be trumped by chocolate ice cream. Excuse me for a minute, won’t you?

Your turn! What’s interesting to you? What subjects do you find endlessly fascinating? Where do you turn when you want brain candy?

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Divisions of Sharing: Professional, Personal, Private

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , on October 20, 2011| 11 Comments »

This week I have a Neil Patrick Harris quote stuck in my head:
“I feel like it’s important to have three lives. Your professional life, your personal life, and your private life.”
He goes on to talk about how these lives relate to the entertainment industry in particular, but while I think the distinction may be more relevant for public figures (including many artists), I was struck by how the same could be said of all of us.

The professional life: This is our most public face, the life in which we are focused on our career and the image we want to project to the general population. We live this life when we’re at the office, at professional events (although these sometimes blur into the personal and private), and doing public tasks associated with our roles. For instance, a mom attending a PTA meeting, a writer sending a query, and a businessperson attending a party for the primary purpose of networking could be said to be living their professional lives.

The personal life: This is still often a public part of our lives, but it is focused on a life outside of jobs, careers, and professional-related goals. This life includes such things as friendships, relationships, family, and hobbies, although only to a certain depth. It might also involve your religion (particularly if you attend church, thereby making your practice more public) and certain groups or communities you may belong to (while others of these will be private). Information (non-work-related) that you feel comfortable divulging in casual conversation with an acquaintance probably lands in this sphere. What you post on Facebook or Google+ often also falls into this category, unless you’ve made the decision to use these tools for strictly professional purposes.

The personal life can be an important component of professional relationships. We are often expected to have hobbies and interests so we appear well-rounded, for instance; there is also the stereotypical example from the ‘50s of the ambitious young man who is expected to get married (and perhaps even start a family) in order to receive the coveted promotion. The personal life plays a key role in the new trend of authenticity–allowing your audience inside your life so they gain the impression of really knowing you.

The private life: Most people do not want this life to be public. It includes the deeper aspects of relationships and friendships, facets of ourselves that we think we will be judged for, and certain stories from our pasts. If there is some part of your life that you do not generally speak of, or only to a carefully chosen few, that falls into your private life.

Everyone has different comfort levels and therefore different boundaries that constitute the private life, but we have certain societal norms for what we tend to share and what we don’t. When someone doesn’t share these norms or has parts of the private life come unexpectedly to light, the result is often scandal and/or controversy: for example, when Penelope Trunk tweeted that she was at a business meeting and in the middle of a miscarriage, or when a politician’s unconventional sex life becomes headline news.

The secret life: According to Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel Galileo’s Dream, we have seven secret lives as well:

“We all have seven secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else ever knows these lives.”
I would add another to these secret lives: the unique experience of being the person we are. No one else can completely understand what it is to be Amy, just as no one can completely understand what it is to be you. Empathy can help us in our quest for understanding, but it falls short of complete experience.
Can you divide your own life into these parts? Where do their boundaries fall for you?

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Do What Works

Posted in Life, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 18, 2011| 9 Comments »

Does publicly stating our goals make us more accountable and therefore more likely to achieve them? According to some recent research, no, not as much as we may think. Apparently sharing a goal publicly sometimes actually decreasesour commitment to it. In addition, we feel we’ve made more progress towards the goal just through the act of sharing it, without taking any other action whatsoever, therefore making us more likely to feel complacent or like we don’t need to work as hard.I bring up this little tidbit of research because I’ve seen lots of advice saying the exact opposite. I’ve been advised that sharing my daily word count, both target and actual number, can help my productivity. I’ve seen people sharing their monthly fitness challenges and their target weight numbers. Even my routine of blogging twice a week is a public commitment of sorts. The tried and true advice seems to be that if you wish to finish a project, tell someone about it and that way if you don’t do it, you’ll feel bad–hopefully bad enough that you’ll actually push yourself through it.Yeah, and that works so well with New Year’s resolutions…

Increasing accountability can be a wonderful tool. I have many friends who take exercise classes or work with a trainer on a regular schedule to keep themselves exercising. Music lessons work in the same way; after we have paid the money and form a working relationship with our instructor/trainer, we have greater incentive to “get our money’s worth” and work harder for our instructor’s praise. Other people make their business goals public and are thus able to gain valuable PR, build tribes (aka fan bases), and raise capital. Sharing goals can also be a great way to bond with a community.

However, I question whether external validation, pressure, and support are enough. Perhaps they’ll give us a boost when we need one and help get us through the hard times. But we shouldn’t forget the importance of internal commitment. How highly do we value our goals, and do we value ourselves highly enough to see them through? What do we actually care about? How can we best support ourselves? And at what point do we need to reevaluate our goals and adjust as necessary?

I don’t think the answer is to eschew public goal-making altogether. Rather, I think it’s important to pay attention and make sure that stating our aims publicly is having the desired effect. If we realize that telling other people what we mean to do is making us feel like we’ve accomplished more than we have, we can compensate for that fact by giving ourselves “extra” to do. If we realize that we often share plans that we don’t follow through on, then we can stop sharing and see if there’s a noticeable difference. If we have systems in place that work well at increasing our accountability, then we can keep on doing what works.

We are not cookie-cutter creatives; we are not one-size-fits-all human beings. As a result, so much advice and so many rules turn out to be over-simplifications. When thinking advice over and deciding on a best course of action, here’s what I try to remember: do what works.

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Will You Change the World?

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on October 13, 2011| 16 Comments »

Photo by Ali Leila

Some people know they can’t change the world. They are beaten and dreary, prone to complaining about things they know they can’t control just for the sake of complaining. The world is a hostile place, and these people are its victims. Nothing will ever be better for them, and nothing will ever change. They live in a haze of “can’t,” and therefore they spend their lives in a prison of impossibilities, devoid of hope.
Some people hope they can change the world. They realize there are a lot of things that could use some changing, and that many of the needed changes are on such a large scale they can’t even begin to fathom how they could make a difference. So instead they focus on what they can change. Sometimes these people start out small, with a smile or a twenty buck donation, or by educating themselves further so they gain a greater understanding of the world around them. These people understand that affecting one other person can have a ripple effect, therefore giving their actions meaning.

Some people think they can change the world. They have big ideas and even bigger dreams, and when they speak about these ideas, a certain brightness creeps over their features, serving as a beacon in the long, cold night of apathy. Not only do they have ideas, but they act upon them. They tend to try many things, and sometimes they fail. We might expect them to slink away after such failure, but inevitably they brush themselves off and either tackle the problem from a new direction or find another problem to address.

Some people are changing the world. Are you one of them? Do you want to be?

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