“The deeper you go inside, the more general a place you reach.”
Yes.
I read My Struggle Book 1 and now am 3/4 of the way through Book 2. I am loving these books and his writing. His description of the mundane and his internal monologue is riveting, addictive, and moving. Listen to his own reading of his work and see for yourself.
I orient by water. Apparently I have to keep it on the east. If I don’t I have a hard time finding my way around the land. This is one of the many reasons I don’t live in California.
I grew up on the east side of Michigan, in a town pressed up against Lake Saint Clair. Lake Saint Clair is part of the Great Lakes, it’s just not a great lake, more like a pool in between the two straits that connect Lake Huron with Lake Erie.
My family has a cottage up on the east side of the Bruce Peninsula, the Peninsula defines Georgian Bay stretching off to the east.
I spent a lot of time on the east side of south Florida. There again, the seemingly limitless Atlantic stretches off to the East.
And I went to school in New Jersey – once more on the eastern side of the continent.
Basically, all of my most familiar and beloved places have had “big water” to my east, and even when it hasn’t been in sight, I’ve known it was there.
When I go to a place like California that has its ocean to the west, I get my cardinal directions completely backwards, and I find myself stumbling over the fact that away from the water is indeed East, not West, when driving and planning routes. I have imprinted my mental maps on the entirely subjective assumption that the “big water is to the East”.
Learning about my own mental shortcuts helps me see that the categories I create about the world aren’t the world.
I’m pondering the intricacies of nonfiction and fiction writing and interpretation. I heard this on the radio and recognized its truth immediately.
When you’re writing fiction, everybody thinks you’re secretly writing about real people and things. But if you write an autobiography, they think you’re lying as one does.
From Margaret Atwood’s interview with Arun Rath on NPR books, interview full text available from WFAE’s website.
In March I changed my work setting. I left my job of almost seven years and moved to independent marketing consulting and writing. Although I have my share of meetings at client sites and in coffee shops, I typically work and write in my home office.
I’m an introvert. I’m restored by quiet and work productively alone. That means I should like this situation, and I do. Yet, I was worried I might get isolated or isolate myself. The work I do requires me to reach out to others, for expertise, for feedback, for work, so I haven’t gone underground, it’s not possible.
I was worried I’d “go native” with the cats, get even more quiet and watchful. While that’s kind of a joke, I did think that being social was like a muscle. If I didn’t exercise it or keep in practice, I would drop back to previous levels of social awkwardness. In the last few months, I have had my usual share of awkward moments, but I don’t know if it is more or less than before. Probably about the same.
When I left my position, I thought I’d miss my team–I do miss them individually and as a group. I have to make a team or gather input from people less officially connected to my fate and my projects. It is a little more conscious and less spontaneous now, but others are still available. While I’m mostly on my own during the day, I’m hardly solo. Friends, collaborators, and mentors are as close as a phone call, an email, or a drive across town to a lunch date.
I thought I loved our open, collaborative workspace. Yet, I find working in a quiet office has increased my feeling of well-being. When I worked in a leadership position in our open office, I felt I was on-stage and yearned for privacy and quiet in my off-hours. I found myself procrastinating returning personal phone calls on weekends and weeknights. I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the need to be social, engaging, upbeat.
I am finding more social energy now that my need for quiet and privacy are better met. So my social reserve is more like a well, it needs time to replenish, and it is less like a muscle that needs to be kept in shape.
Clients and colleagues have offered me drop-in space at their offices, and Ann Arbor offers a great coworking space, the Workantile. So I have options if I need to work near others. Hasn’t happened yet, but it is nice to have a choice.
I officiated at the wedding of friends earlier this month. The bride and groom wrote their own vows and the ceremony, and they invited me to share some thoughts about love and marriage in the middle. What follows is a paraphrase of what I said, with more of my story and less about the bride and groom than was in their ceremony on their day.
After choosing a great partner, our next choice is to choose the marriage, over and over again.
The big events are easy: the right choice is obvious. For instance, when Dave had an opportunity to move to England for work, I took a year of detached study from graduate school and went with him. When I worried about not being with my dad ahead of an operation, Dave said, “why don’t you just go?” So I did.
A lifelong marriage contains a few big events and hundreds of thousands of small moments: in person, on the phone, in email, via text…In those moments, we have a choice of how to respond to what happens to us and between us.
The good news is that we don’t have to choose perfectly, enough good choices make a marriage resilient.
My blessing for my friends was that they continue to choose each other, that they have the experience Wendell Berry articulates in this poem:
The Wild Rose
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
“The Wild Rose” is available in Entries as well as in The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982.
My inbox is getting full of marketing messages about Father’s Day, and I don’t like it.
OpenTable would like to help me make reservations at a local restaurant for Father’s Day brunch. Two Guys Bow Ties might ensure he’s snappily dressed for the occasion. Princeton U-Store wants me not to forget the college-themed gift, ThinkGeek offers up some nerd fun, and LocalHarvest and Vosges wonder if I should get my dad some yummies.
While I am all for fatherhood and dads, especially my own Dad, all of the Father’s Day messaging rubs me the wrong way. I am not a parent and my Dad has been dead about 16 years (wow…longer than I thought).
Dear Brand I choose to follow, why do you want to remind me of my loss? Not a good strategy for you.
If there were a holiday opt-out in email marketing, Father’s Day would top my opt-out list. I imagine I’m not alone, folks with recent losses or who are facing infertility may be even more sensitive than I am.
Until I can opt-out of holidays that poke me, I might set up an email filter to avoid having these little reminders interrupt what is otherwise a fine day.