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On Saying No

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on October 11, 2011| 15 Comments »

For most of my life, I have bent over backwards to avoid disappointing anyone.

This is classic behavior for the dedicated people pleaser. We hate saying no (even when we force ourselves to say it anyway). We want to make people happy, avoid conflict, and live up to any and all expectations placed on us, even if said expectations are completely insane. As a result, many of us turn into perfectionists, and we drive ourselves up the wall with anxiety trying to live up to an impossible ideal.

So now I practice disappointment. I give myself permission to disappoint someone else if I believe it is the right thing for me to do. After years of putting everyone in front of myself, I practice putting myself first. I ask myself what I feel comfortable with. I ask myself what I feel like doing. I ask myself how I want to be treated. And I try to make my decisions accordingly. Not in the spirit of being unkind or selfish, but in the spirit of finally giving myself control over my own life.

Sometimes practicing is difficult. I had someone make a request of me a month or so ago. It was something to which I had already responded no earlier in the year, and something which, if I agreed to it, would undoubtedly make me very unhappy. I said no again, and the person wrote back to tell me how disappointed they were, and how everything was going to be much more difficult for them now. I, of course, felt like melting into a puddle and wallowing in my failure as a human being.

Instead I made it into an exercise. I thought of all the other nice things I had done for this person over the last year. I reminded myself that I also have a right to be happy. I didn’t ignore, as I usually do, the fact that this person has a habit of asking me for things while not being particularly nice the rest of the time. I realized that disappointment isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things–I am often disappointed myself, and yet somehow I carry on, so the odds were good that this person would be just fine. And somewhere near the end of my thought process, I knew that just because a decision of mine had caused disappointment didn’t mean it was the wrong one.

So now I sometimes disappoint people. I don’t always give the “right” answer. I don’t always hide my own feelings. I still endeavor to be tactful and kind, but I’m able to stand firm when I need to. And even when I fail, I’m much more likely to recognize what’s going on. For those of you who have always been able to do this, it might not sound like much, but for me it’s like living in an entirely different world.

A world in which I’m finally allowed to be me.

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October Housekeeping

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , on October 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It’s time, my friends, for some housekeeping.

– I have a guest post up over at the Parking Lot Confessional entitled Own Your Creative Process. It’s about the dangers of overcomparing yourself to others and following advice that doesn’t work for you personally, two subjects that you probably know are close to my heart. Check it out!

– I realized that I forgot to mention on the blog when my story Breadcrumbs and Thighbones came out last month over at NewMyths.com. Anyway, it’s out! It’s a fairy tale mash-up of sorts and was very amusing to write. You can also read a fun interview with me if you click on my name on the story page.

– I have a new About page for the blog, now that I (possibly) have a better handle on what exactly it is that I’m doing here.

– By the way, it was brought to my attention last week that not everyone is aware they can subscribe to this blog via email. You can! See that email subscription box at the top of the right sidebar, right under my photo? If you click the Sign Me Up! button and input your email address, you will magically receive everything I do on this blog in your inbox. Mind you, I’m perfectly fine with you using an RSS feed, or clicking over occasionally from Google+ or Twitter or Facebook, or however it is that you got here. But if email happens to be convenient for you, just know that it is possible.

– Now that I have finished those massive posts on social media, I can turn my attention to something else for a while. What, I haven’t quite decided yet, so now’s your chance. If there’s something you’ve been dying to hear me talk about, please tell me about it. I can’t promise to take all suggestions, but I certainly will think about them.

And that’s all the housekeeping I have for now. I hope everyone has a great weekend. My husband and I are going to be celebrating our six-year meeting anniversary, so I’m already looking forward to it.

And now, for the obligatory Nala photo:

Nala feeling shy. Or maybe just sleepy. It's hard to tell.

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Jealousy As Career Booster

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , on September 22, 2011| 20 Comments »

I read a lot of blogs. Some I read regularly, some I occasionally swoop down upon and catch up in a big glut of reading, some I read only once. Many of these blogs are writer blogs, and I’ve seen more than one post about Writer Envy.

What is Writer Envy? It’s that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach when you hear that Jay Lake averages 2,500 words per hour. It’s the pang you feel when you hear someone’s broken into a market that you’ve been dying to get into. It’s the discouragement of feeling that maybe you’re being left behind as one by one, all your writer friends get agents and publishing deals and more and better sales than you think you are getting.

Does anyone know why we call it green with envy?

Well, guess what? I’m giving you permission to be jealous, whether with Writer Envy or because of your friend’s superior cooking or for any other reason. To envy is to be human. And, it turns out, it can even be good for you. Psychology Today recently ran an article citing a recent study about envy. The results are fascinating: it turns out that feeling the emotion of envy both causes us to focus more on the object of our jealousy and boosts our memories. Basically, jealousy allows us to more efficiently learn and remember how to achieve what we’re jealous of.

Therefore, instead of beating ourselves up when we feel it, we can begin to think of envy as a tool. We can use it to make ourselves better writers (or cooks, or car washers, or underwater basket weavers). We can harness that energy to motivate ourselves instead of to discourage.

Example: Let’s say my friend Beth makes a sale to Greatest Ever Magazine, which is the market that I most want to break into. I can wallow and feel terrible about myself because Greatest Ever Magazine still sends me form rejections. Or, I can use my desires and feeling of jealousy to motivate me. I can read Beth’s story and analyze why I think Greatest Ever Magazine liked it. Perhaps the subject matter is perfect for the market, or perhaps the market prefers upbeat endings like Beth’s. I can figure out the strengths of the story, and then compare it to my own recent work. Perhaps Beth’s story shows excellent use of setting, whereas I have too many under-described, white rooms in my recent work. Or perhaps Beth’s story has a twisty and exciting plot that drives it, while my recent stories have all been character-driven. I can learn from my friend Beth’s success where the weaknesses in my own work are and how I might get started on improving them. Beth might even be willing to share her own insights on Greatest Ever Magazine. Meanwhile, because I am jealous, I’ll be more likely to focus and remember what I’ve figured out.

(This can also work, by the way, with embarrassment. I was so embarrassed that I forgot the names of the two rivers of Mesopotamia in seventh grade social studies that I will probably remember that they are the Tigris and Euphrates for the rest of time.)

Of course, experiencing jealousy doesn’t mean we can’t also feel happy and pleased for a person who has succeeded. And it certainly doesn’t excuse any bad behavior on our parts. However, knowing that our brains are designed to feel jealousy on purpose to give us a better chance of survival can change our outlook. Instead of seeing jealousy as an embarrassing weakness, we can see it as another way to move forward towards our goals.

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The Thailand Test

Posted in Life, tagged , , , on September 20, 2011| 11 Comments »

I doubt it will come as much of a surprise that back in my dating days, I was always very interested in how my boyfriends responded to travel. Were they excited about the idea or were they neutral? Where had they already been? When I suggested a trip, what would they say? So my first trip with my now-husband was a pretty big deal. (Why yes, it’s personal anecdote time.)

After much discussion and way more procrastination than I was comfortable with, we finally settled on taking a trip to Thailand. I had never been to Asia and I really wanted to go (thus getting one step further to my six continents by age 30 goal), and Thailand sounded like a truly magical place: Buddhist temples, cheap massage, great food, and elephants. It wasn’t easy, but eventually I coaxed Yony into going.

We arrived safely in Bangkok, where we got lost in a poor part of town and managed to avoid a scam artist while still being totally confused. The rancid smell alone was enough to make us grateful to head out into the countryside. It was perhaps our third day in Thailand when we took a guided adventure tour that was to include a waterfall hike, an elephant ride, and some kind of boat (maybe rafting?) trip.

Me in the middle of the hike. Don't I look insouciant?

The trip began with the waterfall hike, which was a steep uphill climb through the mud on a hot, sticky day. The wise tourists stopped partway up at some pools where you could go swimming, but Yony and I were determined to reach the top, and I was trying with all my might and main to keep up with his faster pace. I was tired and uncertain of my footing, so I didn’t follow Yony to one of the viewing areas that looked difficult to reach. Because, you see, I was being careful. We eventually made it to the top and took some photos.

Beautiful view from the top

Soon after we started the climb down, I rounded a corner, slipped (whether on mud or slick rock, we will never know), and took a very bad fall down the slope. Yony was behind me, and from his perspective, I might as well have fallen off a cliff–I had fallen out of view and he had no idea how far I might have tumbled.

Luckily for me, I stopped at the bottom of that particular slope where the path veered to the right and didn’t continue on past the trail. Otherwise, I might not be writing this today. I was okay except for an extremely muddy backside…and a very injured ankle. And remember, we were still at the very top of trail, in Thailand where, as far as we knew, there was little chance of outside aid.

Some of the mud we had to hike down through.

We walked down that mountain together, Yony and I. He encouraged me onwards, he helped me past the narrow and slippery bits, I leaned on his shoulder as I limped downwards, every step sending pain shooting up my leg. I held it together for him, and he held it together for me, and after an endless walk, we reached the bottom.

When you travel with someone, you get to know them. Yony and I got to know each other better that day. He saw my levelheadedness in a crisis (one of the first things I did was to ask for the ibuprofen in our backpack), my determination, and my courage. I saw his devotion, his strength, and his patience. He realized how he’d feel if he lost me, and I learned how to trust him more than I had before. That day we became a team.

The Amy-Yony team

Of course, it’s not only through travel that we get to know people. We learn more about people by facing adversity together. Through grief and disappointment, hardship and disagreement, conflict and fear, we get to see deeper inside. We get to share the parts of a person that are weak, fearful, that make mistakes and have regrets. I said last week that travel can make or break a friendship, but in the bigger picture, it is those hard times and the hurt places within us that will test a relationship. And upon being tested, that relationship may fracture, fail, or grow stronger than ever before.

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Want to know somebody better? Travel with them.

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on September 15, 2011| 10 Comments »

If you want to get to know someone, take a trip with them. If you really want to get to know them, don’t bring anyone else along, don’t take an all-inclusive guided tour, and either go somewhere that neither of you have been before or somewhere the other person truly loves.

 

Even deciding where to go together can be instructive. Do they want to go camping? On a cruise? On a beach vacation or to a theme park? Are they attracted to big cities or locations off the beaten track? Close by or international? Low key tourism or adventure travel? Or do they want to do all of the above? (This would be me, although it changes over time.) Are they willing to save up for a more expensive trip? Do they talk about how they’ve always wanted to travel but haven’t? Are they completely uninterested in leaving their region/state/country? Do they have a dream of someplace they’ve always wanted to go but haven’t visited yet?

Egypt, outside of Cairo

The obvious reason that traveling with another person causes you to get to know them is the vast amount of time you’ll end up spending together. This is doubly true if the trip involves lots of travel time (by car, train, plane, bus) during which there aren’t many distractions and you don’t have much to do besides be together. You’ll probably end up talking a fair amount. You’ll see this person at all times of day and in many different moods (excited, tired, cranky, hungry, interested, relaxed, etc.). It’s harder to hold onto a public persona under these circumstances; the mask tends to slip.

You’ll discover, if you don’t know already, how they interact with the world around them. How do they respond to trying something new? What about something new that they’re trying just because you want to? What activities do they end up actually advocating for or spending time on? Which ones can they obviously not stand? How much downtime or quiet time do they need? How do they react to crowds? Discomfort? Fatigue? How engaged are they in what they’re doing?

Traveling also requires many decisions, and watching what someone decides, how they decide it, and how they try to communicate with you can also be very revealing. When and what are you going to eat? How are you going to find a restaurant? On what activities will you spend your time? What souvenirs do you buy? Even the timing of when you go to bed and when you get up in the morning can be a point of contention.

Iguazu Falls, Brazil

And then there’s that inevitable moment when things go wrong. And make no mistake about it, things almost always go wrong at least once during a trip. Often a lot more. These moments are among the most revealing of character and personality: how he deals with stress, what kind of fiber she’s made of, how resilient he may or may not be, how creative she is when thinking of solutions. And these are also the moments that can make or break a relationship, either throwing the two of you into conflict or bringing you closer together.

Of course, even if we can’t travel with a certain person, we can learn a bit just by spending some time asking them about their trip. What do they tend to talk about: the logistics? the food? the physical activities they did? the beautiful painting they saw? the people they met? Do they turn their trip into some kind of narrative through which they find insight or meaning? Do they dwell on what went wrong (the weather, bad food, lost luggage, etc.) or what went right (or maybe a bit of both)?

Traveling with someone is challenging, so don’t do it to keep the peace and maintain the status quo. I’ve heard stories of friendships ending during trips because they aren’t strong enough to bear up under the additional stress. But if the end goal is not to keep a friendship going at all costs but rather to know a person more deeply, then travel might give the insight we seek. We might not like everything we discover, but sometimes we’ll also find that we love that person anyway.

Your turn: Where would you like to visit? What aspects of a trip do you tend to talk about once it’s over?

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Disneyland’s New Star Tours

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on September 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

I just got back from my more-or-less annual visit to Disneyland. This year one of my stated purposes was to check out the redone Star Tours ride. I heard the new ride featured some large number of possible combinations (I heard the number fifty-four being bandied around), but the details I garnered were somewhat fuzzy. Obviously the thing to do was to go check it out in person and see for myself.

With much glee my friends and I proceeded to ride Star Tours many times (I think my personal total was around seven) and break down its intricacies. Following is a detailed report on the new ride, so if you want to be surprised, read no further.

Star Tours has always been a movie experience attached to a “theater” styled as a space vehicle that moves in conjunction with the movie. The newest iteration adds 3D to the mix. I have to say, I’m not a huge fan of 3D in general, and noticed the 3D effects in the new ride only rarely. Unfortunately, the addition was enough to make my husband ill, though, so if you have troubles with 3D movies or 3D video games, be warned that you’ll probably have trouble on this ride as well.

The other big change to the ride is its variability. Before, the ride consisted of a single adventure that was always exactly the same every time you rode. Personally I didn’t mind this because the adventure included a Death Star trench run, so you know, I kind of wanted it to be the same every time because for me, trench run equals awesome sauce. But I can see that other visitors might have found the same old, same old to be ho-hum.

The new ride’s experience is divided into four distinct sections:

SECTION 1: Beginning
A. The ship begins in a dockyard area that includes many stormtroopers. In the background, Hans Solo is visible in front of the Millennium Falcon, arguing with more stormtroopers. A robot attaches to the front windshield of the ship and determines that a rebel spy is aboard (a photo of one of the audience members is shown at this time). Both your ship and the Millennium Falcon shoot their way out and make the jump to light speed.
B. The ship begins in a dockyard area and is then approached by Darth Vader. He makes demands for the rebel spy on the ship to be delivered to him (again, a photo shown of one audience member). He uses the force to control the ship, but then the ship shoots at him and escapes. BONUS: Darth Vader uses his light saber to deflect the ship’s shots.

SECTION 2: First location
A. Hoth: Your ship visits the ice planet of Hoth. It gets involved in a battle not unlike the Hoth battle at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back.
B. Kashyyyk: Your ships visits the forest Wookie planet of Kashyyyk. It gets mixed up with some speeders not unlike those from the Endor parts of Return of the Jedi.
C. Tatooine: Your ship visits the desert planet of Tatooine and participates in a pod race not unlike the pod race in that new Star Wars movie whose name I have blocked from my mind.

SECTION 3: Holographic transmission
All three of these are essentially the same message, saying that the ship must deliver the rebel spy safely to coordinates that are being transmitted to R2-D2. The Princess Leia message has the additional bonus of quoting passages from her famous message from A New Hope.
A. Yoda
B. Princess Leia
C. Admiral Ackbar

SECTION 4: Second location
A. The bounty hunter sequence: Bobo Fett is trying to blow up your ship. There might be some asteroids involved. There is definitely a Death Star involved, I think probably Return of the Jedi era.
B. Coruscant: The ship emerges from light speed into a gigantic space battle and eventually plummets down into Coruscant below, where it must contend with crazy big city traffic, in a scene reminiscent of one of those pesky movies whose names I do not know and they all blur together anyway.
C. Naboo: The ship is escorted from space down into Naboo and ends up plummeting underwater to see the underwater city, followed by a journey to the core of the planet. Jar-Jar Binks makes a cameo here.

I have mixed feelings about this remake of the ride, honestly. I love that the ride has so much variety, and I really like getting to visit different areas of the Star Wars universe. However, the transitions between the sections are often a bit shaky at best. And, perhaps more importantly, there is no trench run. Other fans will share the understanding of how tragic that statement truly is.

However, I was selected during one ride to be the rebel spy, and Darth Vader himself demanded that I be handed over immediately. Was this moment of equal coolness to the trench run? No, probably not, but it was pretty good all the same.

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The Sea of Wishful Thinking

Posted in Life, tagged , , , on September 8, 2011| 4 Comments »

Ever since I read an article in Psychology Today entitled The Double-Edged Sword of Hope, I’ve been thinking about the nature of hope.

I’m a natural optimist, and possibly as a result, I carry a lot of hope around with me. It’s not that I don’t see anything wrong in the world or in my life, but I tend to try to find the hope in a situation. Sometimes that means thinking of the best case scenario as well as the worst case one. Sometimes it means brainstorming what I might be able to control myself in order to turn things around. Other times it’s more of a blind hope–things might suck now, but things do change. (Tuesday’s blog post is a great example: We might not have a strong space program now, but that doesn’t mean there will never be one in the future.)The problem with hope is that it sometimes persists past the point of reasonable returns. We have such an ethos in our culture of not being a quitter, of persistence as a virtue, of not giving up. Many times these are beliefs that hold us in good stead and keep us going when things become difficult. But there is a line that we don’t want to cross, beyond which is the Sea of Wishful Thinking.

The Sea of Wishful Thinking, for all that it has a poetical name, is a painful place in which to reside. It is from this place that we continue to try, even though in our heart of hearts, we understand (or at least suspect) that things aren’t going to work out the way we want. We continue to hope even in the face of odds that are truly insurmountable. Perhaps there is still hope in the bigger picture (or perhaps not), but we continue to obsess over the battle that we are consistently losing.

The difficulty, then, is determining whether we are indeed in the Sea of Wishful Thinking, or whether we’re still dwelling in the Realm of the Possible and have merely fallen victim to a passing Dark Despair Cloud. If the latter, then by holding fast, we can wait out the cloud and still have the potential of a positive outcome. And indeed, in most ambitious endeavors, there will be times when we have to hang on even though things seem bleak. If the former, then at some point we will need to cut hope loose and move on to some more promising possibilities.

Hope can be a beautiful sentiment, but ultimately it is a tool we can use for both the good and the not so good. It can trick people into thinking they don’t need a practical plan, or it can keep someone going until they reach the next stage of mastery. It can bring the strength needed to survive, or it can offer someone an excuse not to take responsibility for themselves. I think as soon as we become aware that hope can both help and hinder us, we are better able to recognize how we’re using it. But sometimes its promise will burn too brightly for us to see clearly, and sometimes it will gutter and die too soon. Perhaps that is part of what it is to be human.

Hope springs eternal, the saying goes. But it is up to us to decide how we are going to use it.

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The Jellyfish Friend

Posted in Life, tagged , , , on September 1, 2011| 14 Comments »

Ah, the jellyfish. A brainless, spineless sea creature that drifts along feeding and spawning incessantly. And yet it is strangely hypnotizing and beautiful. Not completely unlike its human relative, the Jellyfish Friend, or for those who don’t like to be friends with mean people, simply the Jellyfisher.
Bridget Jones’s Diary and its sequel (written by Helen Fielding) introduced us to this species of people: “Humph. Rebecca is not “great”; she is a Jellyfisher. Talking to her is like swimming in a lovely warm sea, then suddenly something stings you and next thing everything is back to normal except a bit of you really hurts.” The Jellyfisher is defined as being a person who makes small cutting comments and put-downs, all the while pretending to be perfectly friendly and ordinary.

For awhile I thought the Jellyfisher was mainly a fictional creature. Perhaps I could live in this state of blissful denial through the combination of having many male friends (for whatever reason, the Jellyfisher tends to lean female, at least in the media), making the effort to be tactful as much as possible, and blaming myself over others in a pinch. However, I’ve recently had the interesting though dubious distinction of being able to watch one of these bloodthirsty creatures in the wild so I can vouch for their existence.

As far as I can tell, Jellyfishers live to make us feel badly about ourselves. No matter how solid we think our armor is, Jellyfishers will, with consummate skill, locate the few little chinks and stick their stingers right in there. Sometimes they’ll even discover (or create?) a chink we never knew we had. They dress up their phrases with such judgmental gems as “well, if you’re comfortable with that” and “oh, isn’t it nice that you finally [have a boyfriend/sold a story/got a raise/pretty much anything else you can think of]”, with occasional snide remarks about how your clothes/hair/belongings aren’t very nice or you’re obviously an unkind/immodest/unintelligent bitch (except said in a very subtle way or as if joking, sometimes so skillfully that other people involved in the conversation won’t even notice).

No, I am not using this essay as a mere excuse to show you pretty photos of jellyfish. Really…

So what to do about your friendly neighborhood Jellyfish?

1. Identify these people as quickly as possible; this way you deprive them of the element of surprise and limit their potential ammunition. When we feel badly after interacting with a particular person on a regular basis, this may be a sign that we are dealing with a closet Jellyfisher.

2. Ignore the stinging comments. Refuse to rise to the bait and become defensive. Instead, smile and make a dismissive comment, or simply change the subject. Then think or talk it through later to avoid internalizing the negative messages this person is giving you about yourself.

3. Avoid this person when possible. Obviously there’s only so much we can do to avoid some people who play a role in our daily lives, but we certainly don’t need to seek them out.

4. Stand up for yourself. Ferrett is trying to teach me that it is not necessary to be polite to people who are behaving rudely. I’m still thinking about that, but even if you’re like me and being rude feels like drowning kittens, it is still possible to stand up for yourself while being polite and firm (often with a dose of deadpan humor). Examples: Jellyfisher: “Well, as long as you’re comfortable with that.” Me: “Why, yes, I am comfortable with that. Thank you for being so supportive.” Jellyfisher: “Do you really think that red is your color?” Me: “Why, yes, I do. I simply adore red. I’m glad you agree.” Jellyfisher: “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Me: “Why, yes, I actually do have a high IQ. Thanks for noticing.”

Of course, with a close enough friend, bluntness may be called for if you have any interest in saving the friendship from dramatic implosion and/or causing you prolonged misery.

What do you think? How do you deal with the Jellyfishers in your life?

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Seizing the Day Slowly

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on August 30, 2011| 5 Comments »

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may;
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
~Robert Herrick

Regular readers of this blog know that I often espouse a carpe diem philosophy. I talk about seizing the day, doing what you want to do, following your dreams and sculpting them into reality. But how does time fit into the equation of this free spirit paradise?

I wish I believed that we could decide to follow our dreams today, and that tomorrow those dreams would be a reality. Or that we could decide to change ourselves today and be completely different people tomorrow. Or even that we could make absolute statements about what an hour of any given experience might be worth. But so often, that is not the way that the world works.

Let’s say I decide I want to be a fine pianist, maybe even an exceptional one. Whether or not we subscribe to the popular notion of 10,000 hours of practice to master a new skill, I don’t think any of us would argue that it would take time, energy, and commitment to learn to play the piano. First we have to learn the fundamentals: how to read music, how to feel and count rhythm, mastering new vocabulary, how to move our fingers on the keys, etc. Then we have to learn ever more complicated pieces, build up muscle memory and finger dexterity, and discover the difference between rote playing and artistic playing. It takes years to become a very fine pianist, and even more to become exceptional. So how do we reconcile these years of effort with seizing the day?

I think the answer is that we have to find pleasure in the daily tasks. While we might not enjoy drilling scales, we might find satisfaction in mastering them. And as a reward, we may allow ourselves to practice Schubert, whom we absolutely adore playing. The idea behind living life to its fullest is not that every day has to be a potpourri of incident and excitement (the people who want this are probably not going to be found practicing piano ten hours a day). It’s that you are spending at least a portion of every day on activities in which you are invested (you know, in between taking a shower and playing Angry Birds).

Time is not the absolute it sometimes appears to be, and some things cannot be rushed through. Forgiveness takes time. Building a relationship takes time. Figuring out what we want takes time. Getting to know ourselves takes time. Becoming skilled takes time. Making change takes time. Sometimes a long time. And we face judgment for not accomplishing these sorts of difficult tasks fast enough. But which is more valuable–doing something right or saving time? Saving time is not always the answer.

Since my mother died, I’ve had people tell me that they’re sure I’d give anything for even just another hour of her company. On the surface, this sounds like a no-brainer, especially since I was very close to my mom. But even this statement ends up being superficial. My mom spent her last week mostly unconscious and obviously in horrible pain and discomfort. Would I give anything for another hour in that week? No; in fact, I’d give a lot to avoid another hour in that week. It follows that the quality of the time is as important as the quantity. There are moments I had with my mom that I wouldn’t trade for days with her.

Our society tends to teach us to value more time, save time, and avoid wasting time. But sometimes less time is more. Some tasks cannot be rushed through. Sometimes seizing the day means slowing down and doing what is needed. Should we put off our dreams indefinitely? I don’t think so, but we also shouldn’t expect them to come true without investing time and effort into them.

In what dream are you putting your time?

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Becoming a Troublemaker

Posted in Life, tagged , , on August 25, 2011| 11 Comments »

Well, I’m home from WorldCon, at which I got to spend time with old friends and make new ones. And now I’m exhausted and sick and all I really want to do is take a nap, watch some Desperate Housewives, and read Zelazny. So this essay is going to be short and to-the-point.

Robert Barnes shared this quotation by Mohandas Gandhi on Google+ the other day:

A “No” uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a “Yes” merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

I have spent most of my life trying to avoid trouble. Sometimes I have done this by saying yes when I don’t mean it; sometimes I have done it by saying no to myself. Sometimes I do both at the same time. I think this idea cuts to the core of what it means to be a people pleaser. We want to please people, yes, but even more we want to avoid trouble, or conflict, or rocking the boat. Even when we might be willing to say “No” on behalf of others, we’re not necessarily willing to do the same for ourselves.

What I am coming to realize is that conflict isn’t always inherently bad, even on an interpersonal level. It can bring about much-needed change; it can allow us to finally find our voices. It can open up channels of communication, help us discover and create new opportunities, and allow us to stand up for ourselves when we’re being treated poorly.

Granted, I usually find conflict to be very taxing and stressful. But my negative experience of conflict doesn’t mean it’s not necessary or important. In fact, in my experience, the important things in life are usually difficult at least some of the time.

So nowadays, I am trying to remember to ask myself this question: am I doing something because I want to avoid causing trouble, or am I doing something because I truly believe it is the right thing to do?

Now Fudge is a troublemaker worthy of emulation.

In elementary school, there were the good kids and the troublemakers. I was always one of the good kids. I got my name put up on the board one time in second grade, and I thought I was going to die. I followed every rule as best as I was able. I did all my homework. I raised my hand before I spoke.

Who knew that one day I would be doing my best to join the troublemakers?

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