Monday, March 19, 2012
TyUnglebower.com
This blog has been discontinued by the author. Please visit his website at TyUnglebower.com for new content.
Monday, February 6, 2012
The End of the Too XYZ Blog
It is with no small amount of irony that less than a week after the (unobserved) two your anniversary of the launch of this blog I should post this to announce what I alluded to months ago; I will be discontinuing Too XYZ. This will be, for all intents and purposes, the last post I make on it.
When I first created this blog in February of 2010, I was no stranger to blogging. My other blog, (which will remain unchanged) called Always Off Book has been a place to share my theatre related adventures, experiences, plans and opinions since October of 2005. Yet during the fall of 2009, as I began to gain an all too temporary and transient esteem from some of the folks at Brazen Careerist, it became clear to me that I may in fact have something to say about things other than community theatre. Things that could help others, make people think, and start conversations.
The glut of self-help and opinion based blogs was obvious to me. Obvious due in no small part to the fact that just about all of them were advising things that were contrary to my natural state. The modes operandi of many blogs then, as now, seems to be, "Shut up, suck it up, smile, and accept the fact that everything in the universe is either under your control, or is entirely your fault. Get on the right side of this fence today."
Not only was that sort of militant "positive" thinking not enough for me and usually ineffective as presented, it bordered on the offensive. Who exactly are these blogosphere drones to tell me that there is one, and only one way to do shit? One way by which to get out of a funk, fix a career, gain money, get published, find a relationship, garner respect, start a business. You name it, and the vast majority of blogs and articles out there insisted upon the same worn out, cookie cutter, "go out there and get it" solutions, all predicated on the idea that luck, privilege and assistance have never and will never contribute to the success or failure of any human being. (And certainly not to their own.)
I wasn't buying that bumper sticker. I knew, from a life filled with disappointment, struggles, failures, limited resources, and at times stupefying bad-timing and bad luck that there was more to the picture than simply wanting it enough. That there had to be something else to be offered to people like me besides, "Want it more! Work harder!". And I felt, in a place deep inside me, that there were others like me who, for reasons they could not quantify, had found themselves unable to catch a break. Unable to get ahead. Unable to even kick open a door, let alone get their foot into same. An entire demographic of people who, like myself, were left always exhausted as well as exasperated by the enormous amounts of energy they spent spinning their tires, and making little to no progress in the world. And even the successful people had to feel this way sometimes, beyond a certain point.
It was those people I wanted to reach, with the help of my Brazen Careerist platform and connections. So I began to plan out a second blog. One dedicated to expressing both how I was too...something, and reaching out to others who were too...something. I wanted a blog wherein I could explore, with other like minded people, why everyone thought we were too poor, too old, too cautious, too shy, too introverted, too, unconventional. A place to explore why we were always far "too"...something. Fill in the blank, I thought. Too XYZ was born.
This was before I was on Twitter, and therefore my blog, and my activity on Brazen Careerist was my key to reaching people. And reach them, I did. For a time. Mentioning my blog posts at BC made me a frequent recipient of the "Featured Post" honor. Comments would come, and conversations would start. It started out well.
But then other things began to happen. Those who enjoyed my candid, zero-bullshit approach when they agreed with what I was saying suddenly became abrasive when I applied it to things with which they did not agree. When I applied my at times acerbic commentary towards my own life, people got testy. I gained and lost several "friends" after the first year of Too XYZ. (Thankfully, I have kept most of them.) My content began to be seen, I imagine, as more of a crusade against the status quo. (Which it was.)
Yet I think a certain demographic of people expected that I was trying to be the next Seth Godin (god forbid that vapid future), and document some kind of personal journey into fame and wealth which I too would enter by kicking doors open and taking the world by storm, as all of their other blogging heroes had done. I theorize many of my initial, enthusiastic reader expected me to adhere to conventional gurudom, monetize my blog, write some damned e-book or another, sell it, talk about it all the time, make money, and polish the all important "personal brand". A brand which would, in essence, be built around the idea of being Too XYZ in a way that was more marketable and conventional. (Even Dan Schawabel shared one of my early blog posts once, which is apparently a big deal.)
This didn't happen. My goal wasn't to be king of the blogosphere. My idea was to start conversations and meet people.
Some would say I failed to achieve my blogging goals because I didn't capitalize on the excellent notoriety and platform I was building. Many left my readership as well as my "friendship" because I failed to seize what they felt needed seizing. I wasn't doing what Gen-Y has been bred almost to the genetic level to do...take what I had built, draw blood with it, and double it every eight weeks. In short, many expected me to become "Ty, Inc." This notion made my skin crawl. I enjoyed posting about and responding to Gen-Y career-related content, yes, because I believe I offered a view that nobody else was considering. But my point was to express that view, and encourage others to express that view in order to make a hole for those of us who know that by and large the Seth Godin and CopyBlogger way is mostly bullshit. I didn't want to use my statements against such things in order to become such things. And I think a lot of my early readers couldn't grasp that. Kicking ass is kicking ass, after all, right?
So I backed away from the "Gen-Y" "How to succeed at your career", type of posts, and moved more into the nature of being Too XYZ in a world that doesn't want to deal with such variables. (The blog's reason for being in the first place.) I initially thought that my success at BC would carry me through in this regard as well. It didn't. I don't want to get into a bashing fest, but suffice to say that like so many other good ideas before it, Brazen Careerist over the course of the next year became anything but Brazen. The same tired, cookie cutter responses, sullied by corporate interest and editorial interference by new employees beholden to same. The sense of exploring the whole person with which the platform was founded, and under which I thrived, vanished in favor of exposure and perks for the already privileged. The elite. The ones with mile long resumes and the connections to rub golden elbows.
In short, I was now Too XYZ for Brazen Careerist. And when the final indignity of being treated like a total newb by one of the so called "editors" took place, I bid my farewells to the place, after gaining 400 followers, (most of which never responded to my private messages...so much for networking) and being labeled a "Top User".
But this blog remained, in hopes that I would still reach that same disenfranchised group of people, while at the same time offering an example of my writing skills to those who wished to observe same. By now I had started on Twitter, and was getting the hang of that; I never really adopted it as most others have, but have learned to use it to some small advantage in the networking department. I'd continue to blog on topics of Too XYZ, while also tweeting about same. Only with a more philosophical bent, as opposed to the analytic and critical approach from earlier in the blog's life.
The readership changed somewhat. It remained steady, though quiet. I won't get into numbers here, but most posts didn't match the numbers of some of my early posts from the career-oriented days of BC. There were some exceptions; people on Twitter were eating up my posts on introversion. As well as my occasional posts on my writing. I began to think that if I could somehow meld my views on being an introvert into being Too XYZ, I could perhaps reach those who were both. And if I could share those experiences through the lens of being a writer, all the better. So I tried to do that with my posts. I succeeded somewhat, but the writing was on the wall; the mission of my online content had changed, and this blog, as it was, no longer quite fit that mission.
I was losing the desire to create this "otherness" about what I am. I maintain that there is something different about me, and that solving my problems is not as simple as most people think that it is. But as my posts began to lean more towards introspection, I came to a conclusion, expressed in this post, that I wasn't serving either myself, nor other people that are Too XYZ very well at all. I was conceptualizing the state of being "Too XYZ", and trying to write and discuss that, when what I should have been doing was sharing myself with the world...an individual man who happens also to be, in some areas, Too XYZ. Let people get to know me and what makes me tick, and not just my existential proclivities. (After all, not all of me is Too XYZ believe it or not. I can be damn practical too.)
My research and work over the last few months has been pursuant of this realignment. And by Easter, a brand new website and blog will be the culmination of this perceptual shift.
My new site will still be dominated by a blogging component, but the content will vary a bit more. Instead of posts about being Too XYZ, you will find posts about being me. Not confined to mere navel-gazing, I'll be posting thoughts, experiences, advice, observations, questions and links pertaining to such topics as writing, introversion, daily life, and yes, being Too XYZ. That aspect of my blogging will not vanish, and indeed, 100% of the content from this blog will be folded into the new one, to be categorized appropriately as per the new broader, Ty-Based approach.
In addition to the blogging, I will provide informational pages about me, how to hire me, writing samples, how to contact me, current projects and more. It will not be the fanciest, plug-in crazy website you will find. It will not be dripping with fancy code and all of the latest widgets. It will be, as this site has been, minimalist in presentation. Clean. Clear. Direct. The depth of content, however will hopefully be up to what you have come to expect from me and my writing. Indeed I hope to continue to improve and expand my content as I give a better idea of not only who I am, but what I can do.
If all goes as planned, I'll be engaging to more people. The site will be place where you can come and get to know either one single aspect of me, such as my writing, or multiple aspects of who I am, and what I do and want. Simple at first where content is king, and perhaps later on, if thing goes well, somewhat more fancy, where, you guessed it, content is still king.
The true work on that site begins this very week. And while I could continue to post here as I set up the new place, (or at least continue to repost Too XYZ Classics), I have decided that now is a good time to make the break and concentrate more fully on making the new site. Which is why I'll not be blogging again until the new place is up and running. When the address and domain are set-up I will probably post one more entry here announcing where to find me in case any stragglers show up and read the blog. But for all intents and purposes this is, as I said, the final entry of any substance for Too XYZ.
I want to thank all of you who have read, commented on, and subscribed to this blog over the last two years. Some of you I know, but most of you have remained in the shadows, leaving no contact information with which I can thank you personally. I hope that if you have been a regular reader of Too XYZ, you will make the switch and come on over to read and subscribe to the new place, once it's all ready. In the mean time, if you don't already, do follow me on Twitter @TyUnglebower. I'll be posting site updates and other things there as well. If not, check back here periodically next month for the official address once I create it.
This blog in this space will remain up for the foreseeable future, both for archival purposes and so that I can respond to any comments I might get on any posts. (Yes, I will still engage in conversations about any of the topics I have brought up over the last two years.) But for now, my short blogging hiatus begins. I hope to see you all on the other side of it. Until then, remember we're all a little Too XYZ sometimes, and that is okay.
sincerely, Ty Unglebower
When I first created this blog in February of 2010, I was no stranger to blogging. My other blog, (which will remain unchanged) called Always Off Book has been a place to share my theatre related adventures, experiences, plans and opinions since October of 2005. Yet during the fall of 2009, as I began to gain an all too temporary and transient esteem from some of the folks at Brazen Careerist, it became clear to me that I may in fact have something to say about things other than community theatre. Things that could help others, make people think, and start conversations.
The glut of self-help and opinion based blogs was obvious to me. Obvious due in no small part to the fact that just about all of them were advising things that were contrary to my natural state. The modes operandi of many blogs then, as now, seems to be, "Shut up, suck it up, smile, and accept the fact that everything in the universe is either under your control, or is entirely your fault. Get on the right side of this fence today."
Not only was that sort of militant "positive" thinking not enough for me and usually ineffective as presented, it bordered on the offensive. Who exactly are these blogosphere drones to tell me that there is one, and only one way to do shit? One way by which to get out of a funk, fix a career, gain money, get published, find a relationship, garner respect, start a business. You name it, and the vast majority of blogs and articles out there insisted upon the same worn out, cookie cutter, "go out there and get it" solutions, all predicated on the idea that luck, privilege and assistance have never and will never contribute to the success or failure of any human being. (And certainly not to their own.)
I wasn't buying that bumper sticker. I knew, from a life filled with disappointment, struggles, failures, limited resources, and at times stupefying bad-timing and bad luck that there was more to the picture than simply wanting it enough. That there had to be something else to be offered to people like me besides, "Want it more! Work harder!". And I felt, in a place deep inside me, that there were others like me who, for reasons they could not quantify, had found themselves unable to catch a break. Unable to get ahead. Unable to even kick open a door, let alone get their foot into same. An entire demographic of people who, like myself, were left always exhausted as well as exasperated by the enormous amounts of energy they spent spinning their tires, and making little to no progress in the world. And even the successful people had to feel this way sometimes, beyond a certain point.
It was those people I wanted to reach, with the help of my Brazen Careerist platform and connections. So I began to plan out a second blog. One dedicated to expressing both how I was too...something, and reaching out to others who were too...something. I wanted a blog wherein I could explore, with other like minded people, why everyone thought we were too poor, too old, too cautious, too shy, too introverted, too, unconventional. A place to explore why we were always far "too"...something. Fill in the blank, I thought. Too XYZ was born.
This was before I was on Twitter, and therefore my blog, and my activity on Brazen Careerist was my key to reaching people. And reach them, I did. For a time. Mentioning my blog posts at BC made me a frequent recipient of the "Featured Post" honor. Comments would come, and conversations would start. It started out well.
But then other things began to happen. Those who enjoyed my candid, zero-bullshit approach when they agreed with what I was saying suddenly became abrasive when I applied it to things with which they did not agree. When I applied my at times acerbic commentary towards my own life, people got testy. I gained and lost several "friends" after the first year of Too XYZ. (Thankfully, I have kept most of them.) My content began to be seen, I imagine, as more of a crusade against the status quo. (Which it was.)
Yet I think a certain demographic of people expected that I was trying to be the next Seth Godin (god forbid that vapid future), and document some kind of personal journey into fame and wealth which I too would enter by kicking doors open and taking the world by storm, as all of their other blogging heroes had done. I theorize many of my initial, enthusiastic reader expected me to adhere to conventional gurudom, monetize my blog, write some damned e-book or another, sell it, talk about it all the time, make money, and polish the all important "personal brand". A brand which would, in essence, be built around the idea of being Too XYZ in a way that was more marketable and conventional. (Even Dan Schawabel shared one of my early blog posts once, which is apparently a big deal.)
This didn't happen. My goal wasn't to be king of the blogosphere. My idea was to start conversations and meet people.
Some would say I failed to achieve my blogging goals because I didn't capitalize on the excellent notoriety and platform I was building. Many left my readership as well as my "friendship" because I failed to seize what they felt needed seizing. I wasn't doing what Gen-Y has been bred almost to the genetic level to do...take what I had built, draw blood with it, and double it every eight weeks. In short, many expected me to become "Ty, Inc." This notion made my skin crawl. I enjoyed posting about and responding to Gen-Y career-related content, yes, because I believe I offered a view that nobody else was considering. But my point was to express that view, and encourage others to express that view in order to make a hole for those of us who know that by and large the Seth Godin and CopyBlogger way is mostly bullshit. I didn't want to use my statements against such things in order to become such things. And I think a lot of my early readers couldn't grasp that. Kicking ass is kicking ass, after all, right?
So I backed away from the "Gen-Y" "How to succeed at your career", type of posts, and moved more into the nature of being Too XYZ in a world that doesn't want to deal with such variables. (The blog's reason for being in the first place.) I initially thought that my success at BC would carry me through in this regard as well. It didn't. I don't want to get into a bashing fest, but suffice to say that like so many other good ideas before it, Brazen Careerist over the course of the next year became anything but Brazen. The same tired, cookie cutter responses, sullied by corporate interest and editorial interference by new employees beholden to same. The sense of exploring the whole person with which the platform was founded, and under which I thrived, vanished in favor of exposure and perks for the already privileged. The elite. The ones with mile long resumes and the connections to rub golden elbows.
In short, I was now Too XYZ for Brazen Careerist. And when the final indignity of being treated like a total newb by one of the so called "editors" took place, I bid my farewells to the place, after gaining 400 followers, (most of which never responded to my private messages...so much for networking) and being labeled a "Top User".
But this blog remained, in hopes that I would still reach that same disenfranchised group of people, while at the same time offering an example of my writing skills to those who wished to observe same. By now I had started on Twitter, and was getting the hang of that; I never really adopted it as most others have, but have learned to use it to some small advantage in the networking department. I'd continue to blog on topics of Too XYZ, while also tweeting about same. Only with a more philosophical bent, as opposed to the analytic and critical approach from earlier in the blog's life.
The readership changed somewhat. It remained steady, though quiet. I won't get into numbers here, but most posts didn't match the numbers of some of my early posts from the career-oriented days of BC. There were some exceptions; people on Twitter were eating up my posts on introversion. As well as my occasional posts on my writing. I began to think that if I could somehow meld my views on being an introvert into being Too XYZ, I could perhaps reach those who were both. And if I could share those experiences through the lens of being a writer, all the better. So I tried to do that with my posts. I succeeded somewhat, but the writing was on the wall; the mission of my online content had changed, and this blog, as it was, no longer quite fit that mission.
I was losing the desire to create this "otherness" about what I am. I maintain that there is something different about me, and that solving my problems is not as simple as most people think that it is. But as my posts began to lean more towards introspection, I came to a conclusion, expressed in this post, that I wasn't serving either myself, nor other people that are Too XYZ very well at all. I was conceptualizing the state of being "Too XYZ", and trying to write and discuss that, when what I should have been doing was sharing myself with the world...an individual man who happens also to be, in some areas, Too XYZ. Let people get to know me and what makes me tick, and not just my existential proclivities. (After all, not all of me is Too XYZ believe it or not. I can be damn practical too.)
My research and work over the last few months has been pursuant of this realignment. And by Easter, a brand new website and blog will be the culmination of this perceptual shift.
My new site will still be dominated by a blogging component, but the content will vary a bit more. Instead of posts about being Too XYZ, you will find posts about being me. Not confined to mere navel-gazing, I'll be posting thoughts, experiences, advice, observations, questions and links pertaining to such topics as writing, introversion, daily life, and yes, being Too XYZ. That aspect of my blogging will not vanish, and indeed, 100% of the content from this blog will be folded into the new one, to be categorized appropriately as per the new broader, Ty-Based approach.
In addition to the blogging, I will provide informational pages about me, how to hire me, writing samples, how to contact me, current projects and more. It will not be the fanciest, plug-in crazy website you will find. It will not be dripping with fancy code and all of the latest widgets. It will be, as this site has been, minimalist in presentation. Clean. Clear. Direct. The depth of content, however will hopefully be up to what you have come to expect from me and my writing. Indeed I hope to continue to improve and expand my content as I give a better idea of not only who I am, but what I can do.
If all goes as planned, I'll be engaging to more people. The site will be place where you can come and get to know either one single aspect of me, such as my writing, or multiple aspects of who I am, and what I do and want. Simple at first where content is king, and perhaps later on, if thing goes well, somewhat more fancy, where, you guessed it, content is still king.
The true work on that site begins this very week. And while I could continue to post here as I set up the new place, (or at least continue to repost Too XYZ Classics), I have decided that now is a good time to make the break and concentrate more fully on making the new site. Which is why I'll not be blogging again until the new place is up and running. When the address and domain are set-up I will probably post one more entry here announcing where to find me in case any stragglers show up and read the blog. But for all intents and purposes this is, as I said, the final entry of any substance for Too XYZ.
I want to thank all of you who have read, commented on, and subscribed to this blog over the last two years. Some of you I know, but most of you have remained in the shadows, leaving no contact information with which I can thank you personally. I hope that if you have been a regular reader of Too XYZ, you will make the switch and come on over to read and subscribe to the new place, once it's all ready. In the mean time, if you don't already, do follow me on Twitter @TyUnglebower. I'll be posting site updates and other things there as well. If not, check back here periodically next month for the official address once I create it.
This blog in this space will remain up for the foreseeable future, both for archival purposes and so that I can respond to any comments I might get on any posts. (Yes, I will still engage in conversations about any of the topics I have brought up over the last two years.) But for now, my short blogging hiatus begins. I hope to see you all on the other side of it. Until then, remember we're all a little Too XYZ sometimes, and that is okay.
sincerely, Ty Unglebower
Monday, January 30, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Optimizing Optimism
In one of my first ever posts on this blog, published on February 22, 2010, I spoke of optimism.
I have had a love-hate relationship with the concept of optimism for all of my life. Perhaps it is better described as a like-hate. I have been through resentment of optimists, confusion of them. I have been briefly intrigued by them, and for an even briefer period of time, tried to become one. Currently, I have an uneasy alliance with the concept and its disciples. I accept it in just about the same proportions that I accept the fact I am no and cannot be an optimist myself. Not when defined by a life long, ubiquitous sense of seeing the silver lining.
I came to that conclusion not long before starting this blog. In fact, knowing I was not an optimist is one of the components that led me to conclude I was Too XYZ for most people.
The good news is, psychiatry is starting to catch up to the idea that I have espoused for so long; Unchecked, universal optimism is not much healthier than is incessant pessimism. Indeed, a recent edition of Psychology Today contains an article addressing this very subject. An article that encourages the tempering of optimistic expectations. It was quite a satisfying read for someone like myself. (Paul, Annie Murphy. "The Uses and Abuses of Optimism (And Pessimism)" Psychology Today Dec. 2011: 56-62)
Since writing this post, as I said, I have a more diplomatic approach to optimism. One that has it seeds in the classic post I am directing you to now. Optimism focused upon a specific project or moment in time, and not applied as a life philosophy has sometimes kept me from going crazy. Perhaps it will help you as well.
I have had a love-hate relationship with the concept of optimism for all of my life. Perhaps it is better described as a like-hate. I have been through resentment of optimists, confusion of them. I have been briefly intrigued by them, and for an even briefer period of time, tried to become one. Currently, I have an uneasy alliance with the concept and its disciples. I accept it in just about the same proportions that I accept the fact I am no and cannot be an optimist myself. Not when defined by a life long, ubiquitous sense of seeing the silver lining.
I came to that conclusion not long before starting this blog. In fact, knowing I was not an optimist is one of the components that led me to conclude I was Too XYZ for most people.
The good news is, psychiatry is starting to catch up to the idea that I have espoused for so long; Unchecked, universal optimism is not much healthier than is incessant pessimism. Indeed, a recent edition of Psychology Today contains an article addressing this very subject. An article that encourages the tempering of optimistic expectations. It was quite a satisfying read for someone like myself. (Paul, Annie Murphy. "The Uses and Abuses of Optimism (And Pessimism)" Psychology Today Dec. 2011: 56-62)
Since writing this post, as I said, I have a more diplomatic approach to optimism. One that has it seeds in the classic post I am directing you to now. Optimism focused upon a specific project or moment in time, and not applied as a life philosophy has sometimes kept me from going crazy. Perhaps it will help you as well.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Screw Cartography
Just over a year ago, I published this post, decrying the rampant need for people, organizations and institutions to put themselves "on the map".
Success, and even fame are one thing. But they ought to be the result of working towards a mission. That mission, I said a year ago, and maintain today, cannot be fame and notoriety in its own right. If being "put on the map" if the underlying impetus for everything you do, you aren't doing much.
Since I published this I have announced the start of my own theatre company, The Parapet Players. I am currently in the midst of building a new website. I am revising my first novel, and outlining a second. I seek my freelance writing work. And yet in each of these cases my goal is to create a quality product, not to "get on the map".
I'd like to be on the map someday in any and all of these endeavors, of course. But I simply won't rearrange what I have in order to go right for the map. I should get on the map because of what I have done, not because I have pursued a course of action designed to do so.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen something that is established go to pot because the decide they need to "expand" and get on this map. And don't even get me started on placed that aren't even established, who decide the answer is to shoot for the map right away.
And my old high school? Their plans to build a new facility which I mentioned in the original post? They have now been totally abandoned. They will instead take over the facility of middle school that has moved out of the area. That just about sums it up as far as they and their "map" are concerned.
How important is "getting on the map" to you?
Success, and even fame are one thing. But they ought to be the result of working towards a mission. That mission, I said a year ago, and maintain today, cannot be fame and notoriety in its own right. If being "put on the map" if the underlying impetus for everything you do, you aren't doing much.
Since I published this I have announced the start of my own theatre company, The Parapet Players. I am currently in the midst of building a new website. I am revising my first novel, and outlining a second. I seek my freelance writing work. And yet in each of these cases my goal is to create a quality product, not to "get on the map".
I'd like to be on the map someday in any and all of these endeavors, of course. But I simply won't rearrange what I have in order to go right for the map. I should get on the map because of what I have done, not because I have pursued a course of action designed to do so.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen something that is established go to pot because the decide they need to "expand" and get on this map. And don't even get me started on placed that aren't even established, who decide the answer is to shoot for the map right away.
And my old high school? Their plans to build a new facility which I mentioned in the original post? They have now been totally abandoned. They will instead take over the facility of middle school that has moved out of the area. That just about sums it up as far as they and their "map" are concerned.
How important is "getting on the map" to you?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Why Introverts Hate Small Talk
This post was only published back in June, so I don't know if it's truly old enough to be a "classic". But just this weekend I got two more fresh comments on small talk from two different people. (One of whom actually Googled "I hate small talk".) So given it's initial popularity and the continued interest people have on the topic, it has attained Too XYZ Classic status.
My thoughts on the nature of small talk have not changed much in a mere seven months, of course. It is still tedious, still pointless, and still grates my nerves. The world still expects it and in general I still refuse to yield to that expectation.
There are over 25 comments on the comment section of this post though, and each of them makes an excellent point in a way I didn't cover, or otherwise shares a personal anecdote that I feel enlightens the subject even further.
In other words, those commenting on the post are not engaging in mere small talk.
My thoughts on the nature of small talk have not changed much in a mere seven months, of course. It is still tedious, still pointless, and still grates my nerves. The world still expects it and in general I still refuse to yield to that expectation.
There are over 25 comments on the comment section of this post though, and each of them makes an excellent point in a way I didn't cover, or otherwise shares a personal anecdote that I feel enlightens the subject even further.
In other words, those commenting on the post are not engaging in mere small talk.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Sculpting Relationships
Back on March 16, 2011, I posted this somewhat lengthy but quite satisfying piece about how I think we can forge and strengthen our relationships with people. The advice within the post came about as I pondered the things I found most lacking in my own relationships that were also the things for which I most yearned. In a few cases these tips were, I admit, also the things I myself found most difficult.
I don't know how successful I have been in implementing all of these things. And I know that the state of my relationships since I wrote this is roughly the same, overall. Some of my relationships I have only recently concluded are actually never going to be any good for me. Others are just starting out, relationships that didn't even exist when I originally published this post. So perhaps it will be easier for me to follow my own advice with new relationships than it is in regards to old ones?
That isn't to say I have not followed any of my own advice already. And when I have it has been advantageous more often than not. I really have felt closer to certain people since putting a few of these things into practice here and there.
The one that tragically remains the least utilized among my friends is "always apologize." I literally have been hurt many times by certain people, and those people have never once thought to apologize. I have even been shut out, and told that the conversation is "over" when I attempt to equalize the bad feelings. The hurt over people who behave this way continues. But as I said, at least I am starting to see the true nature of some of my so called friends. Maybe, in part, due to my greater focus on the concepts mentioned in this piece.
Would you add any other actions or perceptions to my list?
I don't know how successful I have been in implementing all of these things. And I know that the state of my relationships since I wrote this is roughly the same, overall. Some of my relationships I have only recently concluded are actually never going to be any good for me. Others are just starting out, relationships that didn't even exist when I originally published this post. So perhaps it will be easier for me to follow my own advice with new relationships than it is in regards to old ones?
That isn't to say I have not followed any of my own advice already. And when I have it has been advantageous more often than not. I really have felt closer to certain people since putting a few of these things into practice here and there.
The one that tragically remains the least utilized among my friends is "always apologize." I literally have been hurt many times by certain people, and those people have never once thought to apologize. I have even been shut out, and told that the conversation is "over" when I attempt to equalize the bad feelings. The hurt over people who behave this way continues. But as I said, at least I am starting to see the true nature of some of my so called friends. Maybe, in part, due to my greater focus on the concepts mentioned in this piece.
Would you add any other actions or perceptions to my list?
Monday, January 16, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Five Ways to Make Networking Events Introvert Friendly
Despite popular belief, we're allowed to enjoy and even love our own work. And for my part, I love this post I wrote back in October of 2010. I really feel I captured the most potent reasons that standard networking events, (such as business card exchanges) are such anathema to the average introvert.
Further, I am proud of how well I articulated just exactly what needs to be present at a network event if anyone ever wants to spearhead an introvert-oriented meet and greet. Not that anybody has jumped at the idea to do this.
Yet they should. They should indeed. Introvert creativity is some of the most forward thinking and inspiring you can come across. No offense to extroverts out there of course, but the predominance of your kind in the design of office space, loathsome "team projects", brainstorming sessions, and the previously mention networking events all do a disservice not just to introverts, but to organizations that execute such strategies. Yet the sad truth is, business is becoming more and more an extroverted affair. That is as unfair as it is unwise.
Yet, as I said there is some hope. I have yet to encounter a networking event that incorporated some or all of these five elements I mentioned. But if I did, I'd be happy to attend. Introverts need help too after all.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: 8 Reasons Volunteering Sucks
On April 20, 2010 I wrote this piece on volunteerism. It has been either first or second on Google searches for the phrase "Volunteering Sucks" for most of the time since. Which means more than a few people must punch in that phrase. And if the many comments on this post are any indication, quite a few of those Googling the phrase have recently been burned by volunteering their time to some cause or another.
Let's face it, volunteering isn't really all it is cracked up to be as a concept. Sure, we want to help people who need it, and there are for many people lots of opportunity to make use of our talents to assist others for free. Yet if we are not lucky enough to land the perfect volunteer position? Let's just say that the pre-packaged notion that volunteering is it's own reward was never vetted by offended and unappreciated former volunteers such as myself and those who read this post originally.
Since publishing this piece, I have yet to look for, and hence have yet to find, any rewarding volunteer services to provide my community. So my thoughts remain in large part the same as they did when I wrote this.
Do you volunteer anywhere? Have you noticed any of these things?
Let's face it, volunteering isn't really all it is cracked up to be as a concept. Sure, we want to help people who need it, and there are for many people lots of opportunity to make use of our talents to assist others for free. Yet if we are not lucky enough to land the perfect volunteer position? Let's just say that the pre-packaged notion that volunteering is it's own reward was never vetted by offended and unappreciated former volunteers such as myself and those who read this post originally.
Since publishing this piece, I have yet to look for, and hence have yet to find, any rewarding volunteer services to provide my community. So my thoughts remain in large part the same as they did when I wrote this.
Do you volunteer anywhere? Have you noticed any of these things?
Monday, January 9, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: I Hate Dating
In some ways, this post from June 10, 2010 is one of the most "Ty" posts in this entire blog. Few things in life have been as consistent for me as a hatred of the whole dating scene. In the 18 months or so since I originally published this, my views have not been tempered much. That is to say I may find myself able to enjoy one or two standard "getting to know you dates" in the course of an entire year. And that is only a maybe. Yet the lion's share of this post's sentiments remain in tact. I still despise conventional dating. The games. The unfair judgement. The standards for a partner so lofty they border on indecent. The hoops of fire through which I am to jump in order to make the "correct" impression on the drill sergeant that is my date. (Assuming I haven't scorched my manhood during said leap and lost all interest in such things by that point.)
Until dating changes, or until women who run the dating circuit like it's an Olympic event become less dismissive of guys like myself, (not rich, not tall, average looks) I will stick to actually relating to people, and making sure people relate to the real me. Not the "dating me".
Until dating changes, or until women who run the dating circuit like it's an Olympic event become less dismissive of guys like myself, (not rich, not tall, average looks) I will stick to actually relating to people, and making sure people relate to the real me. Not the "dating me".
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Too XYZ Classic: Look Before You Melee
In this post, originally published here on the blog on March 18, 2010, I used video game playing as a metaphor. I did so to show how effective it can be at times to go slow and finesse one's way to success. I have to say that in the intervening time since I wrote the post I have become more adept at strategic approaches to certain things. The temptation and inclination to melee, however, is still present. It's something of which I have to remain aware as I go forward with my plans. (Though I still have gone to melee, not without some success, in the nearly two years since I wrote this piece.
What I didn't specifically mention in the post, but which I nonetheless find applicable to same is the notion some people have to be always moving. Always changing. Always rushing into the next big thing. Brand changing, loyalty changing, spend two years creating something only to drop it 4 days after it's official, and move on to something else to build. For something that is "keeping it fresh". To me that is but another form of ill advised melee attack. Blasting your way through life for the sake of blasting and getting to the top of...whatever.
I didn't have a huge readership the first time, and as you can see, little commentary. But I count it as one of my favorite posts because it illuminates one of my favorite lessons over the last few years. A lesson I try to apply each day in some way.
What I didn't specifically mention in the post, but which I nonetheless find applicable to same is the notion some people have to be always moving. Always changing. Always rushing into the next big thing. Brand changing, loyalty changing, spend two years creating something only to drop it 4 days after it's official, and move on to something else to build. For something that is "keeping it fresh". To me that is but another form of ill advised melee attack. Blasting your way through life for the sake of blasting and getting to the top of...whatever.
I didn't have a huge readership the first time, and as you can see, little commentary. But I count it as one of my favorite posts because it illuminates one of my favorite lessons over the last few years. A lesson I try to apply each day in some way.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Online Plans for 2012
Whew. After a month of posting daily as part of the fabulous and enlightening Reverb11, I have taken a few days off of blogging before starting up again.
And even now, it is just a brief stay so I can lay out a few things for those of you who follow me.
To begin with, as I said, Reverb11 brought out a rather copious amount of new material to the blog in a short amount of time. I am proud of myself, and I don't regret the decision. Please go back and read everything I wrote in December to get a great idea of what I am about, and plan to be about in the near future.
However despite the fact that I could create some more original content, I am going to give that portion of my brain a rest for at least January. But I don't want to go dark for that time, so I will be posting "Too XYZ Classics". Throughout this month I will be re-posting what I think have been some of my favorite, most successful, most controversial and most commented upon posts of the last two years. If you haven't had a chance to read them, and haven't explored my archive yet, here will be your chance.
Perhaps they will kick up some conversations all over again. I'll still be responding to any comments, so feel free to offer up your thoughts on what you read. I will also up a brief overview of the post, and some thoughts on what if any conversation came about the first time it was posted.
Also now is as good a time as any to remind you all that this year my online presence will change. Too XYZ as you know it today will cease to exist, as I design and build a more all purpose website. It will be a place to learn about me, read samples of my writing, get information on hiring me, and, naturally, blogging. (On more than one topic.) It's all part of rebuilding and strengthening my freelance business.
All of the posts for Too XYZ will be, ideally, folded into this new site, so all of these old posts will remain accessible for you to read and comment upon. I will keep you posted on the progress of that project periodically by posting about it here. I may even need your advice as time goes on.
The goal is to have the new site up and running no later than Easter Sunday. So stay tuned for that.
In the mean time, I hope you will continue to check back here to the blog for the Too XYZ Classics, starting later this week.
And even now, it is just a brief stay so I can lay out a few things for those of you who follow me.
To begin with, as I said, Reverb11 brought out a rather copious amount of new material to the blog in a short amount of time. I am proud of myself, and I don't regret the decision. Please go back and read everything I wrote in December to get a great idea of what I am about, and plan to be about in the near future.
However despite the fact that I could create some more original content, I am going to give that portion of my brain a rest for at least January. But I don't want to go dark for that time, so I will be posting "Too XYZ Classics". Throughout this month I will be re-posting what I think have been some of my favorite, most successful, most controversial and most commented upon posts of the last two years. If you haven't had a chance to read them, and haven't explored my archive yet, here will be your chance.
Perhaps they will kick up some conversations all over again. I'll still be responding to any comments, so feel free to offer up your thoughts on what you read. I will also up a brief overview of the post, and some thoughts on what if any conversation came about the first time it was posted.
Also now is as good a time as any to remind you all that this year my online presence will change. Too XYZ as you know it today will cease to exist, as I design and build a more all purpose website. It will be a place to learn about me, read samples of my writing, get information on hiring me, and, naturally, blogging. (On more than one topic.) It's all part of rebuilding and strengthening my freelance business.
All of the posts for Too XYZ will be, ideally, folded into this new site, so all of these old posts will remain accessible for you to read and comment upon. I will keep you posted on the progress of that project periodically by posting about it here. I may even need your advice as time goes on.
The goal is to have the new site up and running no later than Easter Sunday. So stay tuned for that.
In the mean time, I hope you will continue to check back here to the blog for the Too XYZ Classics, starting later this week.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Reverb11: The Finale. Looking Back.
Take a moment to think back on your Reverb11 responses. Have you learned anything? What surprised you about this experience? Which of your responses was your favorite?
So I now reached the end of Reverb11. What started off as a way to kill some time in the first few days this month as I was housesitting for my sister, something I assumed I would only take part in occasionally but ended up committing to in whole concludes with this final post. I guess the fact that I posted each days from the 3rd on is one of the surprises of this experiences. I will get to the other surprises in a bit. First, let's break down the final prompt.
Have you learned anything?
I have indeed. I learned, or in the very least was reminded just how prolific a writer I can be, given deadlines and structure. One doesn't always have such things, and I would not want everything I ever write to be confined in the way the Reverb posts were. Yet I can't deny how well I tend to cook with just a little bit more fire under me, as it were. (At least when the writing doesn't involve interviewing other people.)
I learned that I am both on top of some things more than I thought I was, and in need of work in some more things than I thought I was. I am a little darker in places than I realized, and I have the means to examine that. I learned to pay more attention to things happening to me every single day than I tend to do now. I thought I was good at being present, but I learned I can be lacking at that sometimes.
Also learned was a small degree of detachment from my difficulties. Like anyone I have had and will have ups and downs in regards to how bothered I am about the darker aspects of my life and thoughts. I will find myself bothered more by such again in the future, I have no doubt. Yet it will fade again because by writing about my troubles, fears, and obstacles with the intention of explaining them to others, free of the maudlin language I wanted to make sure I avoided this month, I learned that most of my issues have a looser grip on my throat than I feel sometimes when I am in the heat of the moment. That whether through my own means or the eventual hired help of various types of professionals, the things with which I struggle can in most cases appear much more surmountable when shared in an open, yet modest and efficient nature.
I learned that I am a bit fearful of the future, but I also learned I have the means to make a plan because I am able to look at aspects of the whole from a distance, and react accordingly. I guess I already knew this, but I learned I can be better at it than I thought.
What surprised you about this experience?
My own candor.
Now being who I am I have never had much of a problem speaking my mind. I tell it like it is, or like it should be, and to hell if the gurus, thought leaders, or Blog Royalty agrees. Nor have I been shy about sharing my bad luck, or my tribulations. (Regardless of many people figuring I had little of either.) I was committed from the inception of this blog to be honest about what I was up to, and feeling. I have maintained that agreement with myself and with readers.
Yet with these Reverb posts, and the previously mentioned detachment some of them brought about, I was able to open up with my readers in a way I am not always so famous for doing. The less obvious, under the surface, emotional motivation for some of how I think and act were revealed with more frequency, and yet more subtlety than I would have expected before this began. I assure you I have retained my privacy when I needed to, yet Reverb provoked in me a frankness that comes from someone unconcerned about personal judgement. Which, biggest surprise of all, I was. Some of the sharing muscles may be a little stiff from lack of use, but despite the fact I have not bared my whole soul, I have bared more than before, and not felt that worried about it. I still feel some guilt and some shame about where I am in life, but for the first time in a while, not so much that I can't mention it to others.
Also I was pleasantly surprised at how appreciative people were of my posts, as well as how many new friends I made in the process of Reverb. I welcome them, and hope they stick around for my future online content.
Which of your responses was your favorite?
I guess it depends on the metric, as is so often the case. There are several posts where I quite enjoyed the prose I came up with. I think some of my best formed lines of non-fiction in years have come about as part of these posts. Sometimes they just flowed and sometimes they took some thought, but in either case I am pleased with the results. Some of my favorite prose among my own writing this month was in Traveling, I think. I am quite satisfied with the metaphors I used there.
Then there are the posts that were my favorites to write. Loathing was great fun to pound out. I also got a kick out of writing the inside jacket blurb for my own, as of yet, not realized book in Author, Author.
The most socially important piece, when viewed with as objective a view as I can muster for my own work was probably Let's Do Lunch, and I almost chose that as my favorite.
Yet in the end, I think Self-Forgiveness is my favorite post from among my own Reverb11 work. It has a little bit of everything in it, from prose I am proud to call my own, personal satisfaction in the composing, a frankness that is the hallmark of Reverb11 as I understand it, and a call to take the most important step we can take in loving other people. Yes. I maintain that if he can begin to truly forgive ourselves, there is little we cannot do for ourselves and for others.
And that, as they say, is that. The temptation is to sum up with some long, sentimental, complex and poetic analysis of the entire experience. Yet I think I will fight with my own inclinations and refrain from doing so. I would hope you could see what each individual post meant to me, and what I was trying to convey in same on the day. Consider it all carefully, and what each prompt as well as the whole Reverb experience meant to me should become clear to you.
In the end, I suppose it was not about each individual stop, but more about the entire month. The journey, as is so often the case, was perhaps the main point of Reverb. And I can think of no better way to end my experience with same then to mention that it was an enlightening and worthwhile journey to me, and I thank each of you for taking it with me.
Happy New Year, and be sure to check back here at Too XYZ in the coming weeks as I announce some exciting changes.
So I now reached the end of Reverb11. What started off as a way to kill some time in the first few days this month as I was housesitting for my sister, something I assumed I would only take part in occasionally but ended up committing to in whole concludes with this final post. I guess the fact that I posted each days from the 3rd on is one of the surprises of this experiences. I will get to the other surprises in a bit. First, let's break down the final prompt.
Have you learned anything?
I have indeed. I learned, or in the very least was reminded just how prolific a writer I can be, given deadlines and structure. One doesn't always have such things, and I would not want everything I ever write to be confined in the way the Reverb posts were. Yet I can't deny how well I tend to cook with just a little bit more fire under me, as it were. (At least when the writing doesn't involve interviewing other people.)
I learned that I am both on top of some things more than I thought I was, and in need of work in some more things than I thought I was. I am a little darker in places than I realized, and I have the means to examine that. I learned to pay more attention to things happening to me every single day than I tend to do now. I thought I was good at being present, but I learned I can be lacking at that sometimes.
Also learned was a small degree of detachment from my difficulties. Like anyone I have had and will have ups and downs in regards to how bothered I am about the darker aspects of my life and thoughts. I will find myself bothered more by such again in the future, I have no doubt. Yet it will fade again because by writing about my troubles, fears, and obstacles with the intention of explaining them to others, free of the maudlin language I wanted to make sure I avoided this month, I learned that most of my issues have a looser grip on my throat than I feel sometimes when I am in the heat of the moment. That whether through my own means or the eventual hired help of various types of professionals, the things with which I struggle can in most cases appear much more surmountable when shared in an open, yet modest and efficient nature.
I learned that I am a bit fearful of the future, but I also learned I have the means to make a plan because I am able to look at aspects of the whole from a distance, and react accordingly. I guess I already knew this, but I learned I can be better at it than I thought.
What surprised you about this experience?
My own candor.
Now being who I am I have never had much of a problem speaking my mind. I tell it like it is, or like it should be, and to hell if the gurus, thought leaders, or Blog Royalty agrees. Nor have I been shy about sharing my bad luck, or my tribulations. (Regardless of many people figuring I had little of either.) I was committed from the inception of this blog to be honest about what I was up to, and feeling. I have maintained that agreement with myself and with readers.
Yet with these Reverb posts, and the previously mentioned detachment some of them brought about, I was able to open up with my readers in a way I am not always so famous for doing. The less obvious, under the surface, emotional motivation for some of how I think and act were revealed with more frequency, and yet more subtlety than I would have expected before this began. I assure you I have retained my privacy when I needed to, yet Reverb provoked in me a frankness that comes from someone unconcerned about personal judgement. Which, biggest surprise of all, I was. Some of the sharing muscles may be a little stiff from lack of use, but despite the fact I have not bared my whole soul, I have bared more than before, and not felt that worried about it. I still feel some guilt and some shame about where I am in life, but for the first time in a while, not so much that I can't mention it to others.
Also I was pleasantly surprised at how appreciative people were of my posts, as well as how many new friends I made in the process of Reverb. I welcome them, and hope they stick around for my future online content.
Which of your responses was your favorite?
I guess it depends on the metric, as is so often the case. There are several posts where I quite enjoyed the prose I came up with. I think some of my best formed lines of non-fiction in years have come about as part of these posts. Sometimes they just flowed and sometimes they took some thought, but in either case I am pleased with the results. Some of my favorite prose among my own writing this month was in Traveling, I think. I am quite satisfied with the metaphors I used there.
Then there are the posts that were my favorites to write. Loathing was great fun to pound out. I also got a kick out of writing the inside jacket blurb for my own, as of yet, not realized book in Author, Author.
The most socially important piece, when viewed with as objective a view as I can muster for my own work was probably Let's Do Lunch, and I almost chose that as my favorite.
Yet in the end, I think Self-Forgiveness is my favorite post from among my own Reverb11 work. It has a little bit of everything in it, from prose I am proud to call my own, personal satisfaction in the composing, a frankness that is the hallmark of Reverb11 as I understand it, and a call to take the most important step we can take in loving other people. Yes. I maintain that if he can begin to truly forgive ourselves, there is little we cannot do for ourselves and for others.
And that, as they say, is that. The temptation is to sum up with some long, sentimental, complex and poetic analysis of the entire experience. Yet I think I will fight with my own inclinations and refrain from doing so. I would hope you could see what each individual post meant to me, and what I was trying to convey in same on the day. Consider it all carefully, and what each prompt as well as the whole Reverb experience meant to me should become clear to you.
In the end, I suppose it was not about each individual stop, but more about the entire month. The journey, as is so often the case, was perhaps the main point of Reverb. And I can think of no better way to end my experience with same then to mention that it was an enlightening and worthwhile journey to me, and I thank each of you for taking it with me.
Happy New Year, and be sure to check back here at Too XYZ in the coming weeks as I announce some exciting changes.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Reverb11: Three Wishes
If a genie could grant you three wishes for 2012, what would they be?
For the sake of this prompt, let us assume two things. First, that the laws of physics cannot be ignored. Things get way too fanciful otherwise. Second, that the "Monkey's Paw" Effect is suspended. It may seem like a silly thing to point out in this context, but being a writer and story teller, it is difficult to get the reference out of my mind.
So, if the wishes were just wishes, with no negative consequences, mine would be as follows:
1) I would wish that my mother could 100% retire.
Because enough already. These are the years she should be enjoying, not raking together just enough to pay bills all the time. A lifetime or working hard should lead to some point of not having to do so. It doesn't. I hope to have the money to allow her to stop working altogether some day.
2) I would wish for better business sense.
I am right now not that great at marketing, and I need to be if I am to be a full time freelance writer. Or even just a part time one. Or just a novelist. I don't want to change my personality. I refuse to cold call and hard sell and carpet bomb market as many people do. Yet I know there are more respectable ways to market one's self and one's services. I have just been 100% unable to do it. Something is blocked in my mind about it. I hope to fix that on my own of course, in the coming year, at least somewhat. Yet if we are talking wishes, I would wish it to be already done, and in place. Or at least wish for a person to arrive out of nowhere and do it all well for me.
3) I would wish for my own self sustaining theatre company with venue.
Modest stage. Some basic equipment. Dedicated volunteers. Creative control, and no fear. Art for art's sake. Not art that gets altered in just such a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of people so we can turn on the lights and the heat.
Perhaps not the sexiest set of three wishes you will read about. And I am sure if I thought about this prompt every day, I'd come up with different answers everyday. Plus wishes change over time, whether they are fulfilled or not. However, at this moment these wishes would do a great job in setting me on the right road towards fulfillment and peace. They of course would not provide those things, but they would give me some nice tools with which to do the job myself.
For the sake of this prompt, let us assume two things. First, that the laws of physics cannot be ignored. Things get way too fanciful otherwise. Second, that the "Monkey's Paw" Effect is suspended. It may seem like a silly thing to point out in this context, but being a writer and story teller, it is difficult to get the reference out of my mind.
So, if the wishes were just wishes, with no negative consequences, mine would be as follows:
1) I would wish that my mother could 100% retire.
Because enough already. These are the years she should be enjoying, not raking together just enough to pay bills all the time. A lifetime or working hard should lead to some point of not having to do so. It doesn't. I hope to have the money to allow her to stop working altogether some day.
2) I would wish for better business sense.
I am right now not that great at marketing, and I need to be if I am to be a full time freelance writer. Or even just a part time one. Or just a novelist. I don't want to change my personality. I refuse to cold call and hard sell and carpet bomb market as many people do. Yet I know there are more respectable ways to market one's self and one's services. I have just been 100% unable to do it. Something is blocked in my mind about it. I hope to fix that on my own of course, in the coming year, at least somewhat. Yet if we are talking wishes, I would wish it to be already done, and in place. Or at least wish for a person to arrive out of nowhere and do it all well for me.
3) I would wish for my own self sustaining theatre company with venue.
Modest stage. Some basic equipment. Dedicated volunteers. Creative control, and no fear. Art for art's sake. Not art that gets altered in just such a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of people so we can turn on the lights and the heat.
Perhaps not the sexiest set of three wishes you will read about. And I am sure if I thought about this prompt every day, I'd come up with different answers everyday. Plus wishes change over time, whether they are fulfilled or not. However, at this moment these wishes would do a great job in setting me on the right road towards fulfillment and peace. They of course would not provide those things, but they would give me some nice tools with which to do the job myself.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Reverb11: Shake It Up.
Looking towards 2012, what can you do to shake things up a little next year?
Can one shake things up by tightening one's focus and continuing to pursue that which they have already pursued? Can ridding one's self of extras actually cause a shake up? It sounds like an oxymoron at first. Yet if you consider that often during 2011 I was anxious about so many goals and plans and problems and thereby running around everywhere trying to put out fires all of the time (some of which were actually there), slowing things down could in fact be a ways of shaking things up. I say that because if my mind and spirit are approaching my work and life from a different perspective, things are by definition, shaken up.
I don't mean it will be a year of leisure. Far from it. I will keep time for leisure of course, but 2012 is to be, if I have my way, a year of some intense work. More work on things with which I am good, and familiar, and the hard work of tackling some new, (and necessary) things about which I know little right now. (I beg of you not to call this "stepping outside of my comfort zone", because not only am I unsure this applies, but I am just exhausted with hearing that term.)
When I moved into this spare room in Mom's house, I knew that it would be sink or swim. I have not been here long enough to be certain which it will be. I cannot predict the future. I do however know that if it is to be swim, I will have to in some ways contract my universe, so as to have more control over it, in order to subsequently expand it later. It is this overall theme of contracting in order to expand applies to many plans I have that will certainly shake things up in 2012. I will in a sense be retreating not only more into my own physical room more often, but also more into my own style, my own work and art, and even my own eccentricities at times. (Things against which I think I have too often rebelled in the interest of financial success.)
My friend Becky likened it to Dr. Who's Tardis machine, wherein the inside is somehow bigger than the outside. My life shall expand even as it appears to the outside eye to be smaller, both in terms of time spent in one room locked away working, and the metaphorical focus upon my own brand of life, more free of the judgement of others. (Please know in my life I have watched exactly one full episode of Dr. Who. I had to look up key aspects of the series to fully understand Becky's imagery. But once I did, it worked.)
I mean to delve even deeper into fewer yet more soul strengthening aspects of my existence. Not as some flight of fancy, (though no doubt the business and productivity oriented out there will call it so), but as a matter of health and sanity. It is time to embrace fully that I am Too XYZ, and nourish the things of which I am built. Story telling. Acting. Writing. Spiritual balance. Truth seeking. Greater self-acceptance through self-exploration and examination. Not mere artistic indulgence coupled with navel gazing, but a concerted effort to fully immerse myself in that for which I appear designed in this life. Even if that means I remain a pauper for a while, it will, in theory mean I am at least maintaining my sanity. Sanity brings clarity. Clarity brings options. Options bring confidence. Confidence brings both inward and outward success.
Naysayers to this approach to life abound. On websites, message boards, television, and my own family. I cannot turn them all off, but I can minimize their impact by moving as much of what I am into this spare room/office. To trade in the lack of certain bills that this crucible of comfort provides me in exchange for an intense cocooning into my creative environment. An environment which, I hope, will eventually be a place where I can better my writing, my art, and my business practices. (The latter being by far the most fearful undertaking on this list.) My own pace, in my own way, adopting the ways of others in the small increments I so require, instead of leaping headlong into the vat of Kool-Aid sold by so many gurus.
My goal is not, and indeed my hope is not that I will become a recluse, or hermit. That is no way to be a story teller that affects people's lives, let alone a man of good business. I won't be doing the business card exchanges and the other conventional networking stuff of course, because I never do. Yet I will be making connections in my own way, and making that a priority. I will be changing things in my human relationships department. The frequency, nature, and duration of my connections to people will be shaken up.
As will my concept of time. I plan to focus more on the potent omnipotence that is now, and what I can do with it, more than the unsatisfying what-ifs of the too far future times. I want to build towards a greater, more satisfying personal future with bricks made of the present. They add up, if we pay attention and lay them in their proper order and location. At least that is my theory. And that alone will be a bit of a shake up in the way I have approached such things before.
I will also, as I mentioned, be shaking things up artistically. I have some big artistic news that I will not elaborate upon here, but will announce in multiple ways once the New Year is a few days old. Stay tuned for that, but for now suffice to say that it too should shake things up for me in 2012.
It's all rather counter-intuitive. True, I've never had any problem telling that status quo to get stuffed, and if you read this blog or know me as a person, you can confirm that. Yet I usually do so in advocacy of people or ideas far greater than myself. Now that I plan to direct all of that in service to me for a while, I am not sure how it will all feel. Yet one thing is clear; it will without a doubt shake things up for me in 2012.
Can one shake things up by tightening one's focus and continuing to pursue that which they have already pursued? Can ridding one's self of extras actually cause a shake up? It sounds like an oxymoron at first. Yet if you consider that often during 2011 I was anxious about so many goals and plans and problems and thereby running around everywhere trying to put out fires all of the time (some of which were actually there), slowing things down could in fact be a ways of shaking things up. I say that because if my mind and spirit are approaching my work and life from a different perspective, things are by definition, shaken up.
I don't mean it will be a year of leisure. Far from it. I will keep time for leisure of course, but 2012 is to be, if I have my way, a year of some intense work. More work on things with which I am good, and familiar, and the hard work of tackling some new, (and necessary) things about which I know little right now. (I beg of you not to call this "stepping outside of my comfort zone", because not only am I unsure this applies, but I am just exhausted with hearing that term.)
When I moved into this spare room in Mom's house, I knew that it would be sink or swim. I have not been here long enough to be certain which it will be. I cannot predict the future. I do however know that if it is to be swim, I will have to in some ways contract my universe, so as to have more control over it, in order to subsequently expand it later. It is this overall theme of contracting in order to expand applies to many plans I have that will certainly shake things up in 2012. I will in a sense be retreating not only more into my own physical room more often, but also more into my own style, my own work and art, and even my own eccentricities at times. (Things against which I think I have too often rebelled in the interest of financial success.)
My friend Becky likened it to Dr. Who's Tardis machine, wherein the inside is somehow bigger than the outside. My life shall expand even as it appears to the outside eye to be smaller, both in terms of time spent in one room locked away working, and the metaphorical focus upon my own brand of life, more free of the judgement of others. (Please know in my life I have watched exactly one full episode of Dr. Who. I had to look up key aspects of the series to fully understand Becky's imagery. But once I did, it worked.)
I mean to delve even deeper into fewer yet more soul strengthening aspects of my existence. Not as some flight of fancy, (though no doubt the business and productivity oriented out there will call it so), but as a matter of health and sanity. It is time to embrace fully that I am Too XYZ, and nourish the things of which I am built. Story telling. Acting. Writing. Spiritual balance. Truth seeking. Greater self-acceptance through self-exploration and examination. Not mere artistic indulgence coupled with navel gazing, but a concerted effort to fully immerse myself in that for which I appear designed in this life. Even if that means I remain a pauper for a while, it will, in theory mean I am at least maintaining my sanity. Sanity brings clarity. Clarity brings options. Options bring confidence. Confidence brings both inward and outward success.
Naysayers to this approach to life abound. On websites, message boards, television, and my own family. I cannot turn them all off, but I can minimize their impact by moving as much of what I am into this spare room/office. To trade in the lack of certain bills that this crucible of comfort provides me in exchange for an intense cocooning into my creative environment. An environment which, I hope, will eventually be a place where I can better my writing, my art, and my business practices. (The latter being by far the most fearful undertaking on this list.) My own pace, in my own way, adopting the ways of others in the small increments I so require, instead of leaping headlong into the vat of Kool-Aid sold by so many gurus.
My goal is not, and indeed my hope is not that I will become a recluse, or hermit. That is no way to be a story teller that affects people's lives, let alone a man of good business. I won't be doing the business card exchanges and the other conventional networking stuff of course, because I never do. Yet I will be making connections in my own way, and making that a priority. I will be changing things in my human relationships department. The frequency, nature, and duration of my connections to people will be shaken up.
As will my concept of time. I plan to focus more on the potent omnipotence that is now, and what I can do with it, more than the unsatisfying what-ifs of the too far future times. I want to build towards a greater, more satisfying personal future with bricks made of the present. They add up, if we pay attention and lay them in their proper order and location. At least that is my theory. And that alone will be a bit of a shake up in the way I have approached such things before.
I will also, as I mentioned, be shaking things up artistically. I have some big artistic news that I will not elaborate upon here, but will announce in multiple ways once the New Year is a few days old. Stay tuned for that, but for now suffice to say that it too should shake things up for me in 2012.
It's all rather counter-intuitive. True, I've never had any problem telling that status quo to get stuffed, and if you read this blog or know me as a person, you can confirm that. Yet I usually do so in advocacy of people or ideas far greater than myself. Now that I plan to direct all of that in service to me for a while, I am not sure how it will all feel. Yet one thing is clear; it will without a doubt shake things up for me in 2012.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Reverb11: Self-Forgiveness
(Note: please check out last night's post, if you have not already. It is a corrected post. I read the prompt incorrectly before. T.U.)
*******************************************
Well, damn. Who would have guessed that I would have answered this prompt in my response to a previous prompt? Yet I have.
Of course, if I had any notion that the subject of forgiveness would be revisited during Reverb, especially as it relates to forgiving myself, I would not have chosen myself as the person who most needed my forgiveness earlier in the month. I would have spoken of someone else.
I thought briefly of writing in this prompt about the someone else I should forgive. The old switcheroo. Yet that seemed tacky.
I have some general thoughts on forgiving one's self though.
Even the people who appear most forgiving of others can find it almost impossible to forgive themselves of their own trespasses. As my previous forgiveness post indicated, I am one such person with this difficulty.
In the end, I think there are several reason we do not forgive ourselves with the ease we appear to forgive others. None of them healthy.
To begin with, it's not unlike the reasons doctors make lousy patients. We are so close to the problem, so close to the pain and the guilt, and we think we are so knowledgeable about the source of the discomfort (in this case, our own soul) that we figure we have a handle on it. We not only know our crimes, but our motivations. We are 100% clear on what we were thinking when we commit a sin. That is a luxury we do not have with others who sin against us. At some point we need to either cut them off, or accept that they are telling the truth about their reasons. Yet we have this assumption that our own motivations are so much more horrible than those of others could possibly be.
Yet they are not. They are just more familiar to us. They are so much a part of us we assume we know better than anybody else the things for which we cannot be forgiven. And like the sick doctor who is so sure that his profession makes him uniquely qualified to determine how to heal himself, we lack the distance and perspective to see things as a whole. Which means that we tend to assume we even understand all of our own motivations for doing things. Which of course, we do not. We act out sometimes in ways we cannot explain to ourselves. We are, after all, only human.
Which is another reason why it may be so difficult to forgive ourselves. It confirms we are not only human, but as human as the other people we forgive in the course of our lives. And we may find it uncomfortable to place ourselves in the same species as a few such individuals.
Which means that contrary to the notion we sell ourselves, we are not actually being selfless and humble when we do not forgive ourselves. We are in fact, being quote arrogant. Think of how it really appears when we forgive others and avoid forgiving ourselves:
"You are forgiven because so little is expected of you. But up here in my ivory tower where only the absolute most well developed and pure people with the highest standards live, we cannot get away with such things. I have failed to live up to the lofty standard of my superior race, and hence, I cannot forgive my mistakes they way I forgive yours."
Not an appealing sentiment, is it? Yet if you delve into why you don't feel you earn your own forgiveness, you may find more of this creeping in than you care to admit.
In the end, we are all human. Some people are less evil than others, and that will never change. However in the area of forgiveness it is often easier to forgive the other person than it is to forgive ourselves, because the latter requires us to get dirty and recognize that perhaps we are just a frail, stupid, weak and dark as those we can forgive with ease.
This doesn't mean we live lives without hope. If anything it means that there is more hope than we choose to accept sometimes. That by realizing we have made mistakes, but that those mistakes are for the most part not much worse than the mistakes many people in our lives make, we come to understand that commonality between us and others. And if we work hard at it, we can perhaps find it easier to forgive both ourselves and others when we consider it from this standpoint.
In the end, it is about love, for ourselves and for others. Can we truly love a person we have not forgiven? If not, we had better get on with forgiving ourselves before we try to forgive others.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Reverb11: Author, Author.
Share with us the title and inside jacket cover of the book you would most like to write.
Now that I have the prompt done correctly, (I didn't before,) I am still faced with a difficult task. Asking a writer what book he would most like to write is probably a bit like asking a baseball player which particular seat he would like his home run to land in. It's swinging for the fence and scoring that is of the utmost. Plus, the book I "most" wanted to write recently is already in the process of being revised, so I am not sure that counts. So I'll make a deal with you; I will answer the prompt with one of the ideas I have for the future. Just remember, there are several where this came from. I can't put it on a pedestal above the others. But at any rate...
Interim-in-Chief
by Ty Unglebower
Chester Andrews, the popular and respected Vice-President of the United States has but one major public appearance remaining before leaving office after two terms; to deliver a speech to the party's election year National Convention. Despite many pleas from all over the country, Andrews, 67, has no desire to seek the presidency. The speech, both a defacto endorsement of the party's nominee, Senator Harris Gruber, as well as a first step in his own farewell to public life, is a rousing success with both convention delegates and the punditcracy.
Yet Vice-President Andrews barely has his shoes off in his bedroom after the short flight from Madison Square Garden in New York when he gets the unthinkable news; President Jacob Turner has suffered a massive heart attack. The fears of both Andrews and the nation are realized when three days later, the President is dead, and with a mere six months remaining in his tenure in office, Andrews is elevated to the presidency.
Now the job Andrews never sought is his for six months. And with war brewing in the Middle East, a recalcitrant Speaker of the House with his own Presidential aspirations, and a now hobbled party nominee that believes he can assert influence over affairs of state before winning the election, newly sworn in President Andrews may find those six months more of a trial than the seven and a half years of his immediate and beloved predecessor.
Now that I have the prompt done correctly, (I didn't before,) I am still faced with a difficult task. Asking a writer what book he would most like to write is probably a bit like asking a baseball player which particular seat he would like his home run to land in. It's swinging for the fence and scoring that is of the utmost. Plus, the book I "most" wanted to write recently is already in the process of being revised, so I am not sure that counts. So I'll make a deal with you; I will answer the prompt with one of the ideas I have for the future. Just remember, there are several where this came from. I can't put it on a pedestal above the others. But at any rate...
Interim-in-Chief
by Ty Unglebower
Chester Andrews, the popular and respected Vice-President of the United States has but one major public appearance remaining before leaving office after two terms; to deliver a speech to the party's election year National Convention. Despite many pleas from all over the country, Andrews, 67, has no desire to seek the presidency. The speech, both a defacto endorsement of the party's nominee, Senator Harris Gruber, as well as a first step in his own farewell to public life, is a rousing success with both convention delegates and the punditcracy.
Yet Vice-President Andrews barely has his shoes off in his bedroom after the short flight from Madison Square Garden in New York when he gets the unthinkable news; President Jacob Turner has suffered a massive heart attack. The fears of both Andrews and the nation are realized when three days later, the President is dead, and with a mere six months remaining in his tenure in office, Andrews is elevated to the presidency.
Now the job Andrews never sought is his for six months. And with war brewing in the Middle East, a recalcitrant Speaker of the House with his own Presidential aspirations, and a now hobbled party nominee that believes he can assert influence over affairs of state before winning the election, newly sworn in President Andrews may find those six months more of a trial than the seven and a half years of his immediate and beloved predecessor.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Reverb11: Music Is Powerful
Think of one song that you turn to time and again and describe why it's important to you.
As with so many such prompts, the list of possible answers is considerable for me. For how does one choose between so many songs that one goes back to over and over? What is the metric? The most powerful lyrics? The most moving music? Or is it simply a matter of describing a song I listen to with a high degree of frequency?
So many inspiring songs in my collection. So many songs to which I have rocked out many times throughout life. So many beautiful lyrics or stunning arrangements. A few songs posses more than one of the above qualities. It will seem ridiculous to not have picked any number of songs when all is said and done, because I go back to so many of them so often.
I have opted in the end, however, to describe the song that has been a song I go back to for as long as I can remember. The song that seems to be in the background of my consciousness even if it has been a long while since I have listened to it. The song that in many ways, (as one of the first songs I ever knew, and loved) serves as the cornerstone of my entire musical aspect of my personality. Like a literal cornerstone, my eclectic musical tastes have been built up from and around this song for my entire life. It isn't front and center, but it is always there deep within me doing its job.
I am referring to Country Roads by John Denver.
The song is no virtuoso accomplishment, from either a technical or artistic standpoint. I do believe John Denver was a good poet, by and large. An accomplished songwriter who obviously touched millions of people. Yet strictly speaking Country Roads isn't even Denver's own best song, in terms of compositional difficulty or lyrical potency. It was never ground breaking, but that is not why I select it.
And it isn't that I have a huge esteem for West Virginia itself, despite having many friends there, and having lived no further than 15 minutes from its border at any time in life. (The song even inspired an essay of mine on this subject, entitled, "The Place I Almost Belong, West Virginia.) I don't care for the politics, religion, or general feel of most of West Virginia. I am not a fan of the terrain when I have to drive in it to see certain friends. Now in general, despite my objections to a lot of its culture, I bare no hatred for West Virginia. Yet I have no desire to move there.
So, why do I select for this post what some consider the unofficial state song of West Virginia? To begin with, personal history. I have no memory of not knowing this song. I was listening to it in infancy, thanks to Mom. This is the song I wanted my friends to like as a child, because it would mean that something important to me actually meant something to other people. Having my friends like this song would mean that I was not as alien and unlovable as I always felt. Kids of course did not love this song. Ever. They disliked me even more for ever daring to reveal I liked it. It was "lame". It was "slow". It was only for "old people", or "retarded people".
So I spent most of my childhood alone. (No surprise there.) And when alone, whether my mood be celebratory or anxious, whether I was preparing for bed, or trying to pretend I wasn't afraid of what would happen to my oldest sister in the hospital when she needed emergency surgery to deliver my first two nieces, I would listen to the album with Country Roads on it. Along with other music, and other artists. Yet that song always seemed to be the front door into a musical session.
Years go by and tastes change, somewhat. While I don't think a person can truly ever get away from the foods, areas and music with which they grew up, people do begin to expand their horizons. Venture further away from that which is familiar in hopes of understanding a broader sloth of the human experience. We seek out other cultures, other genres of writing, other sources of music in pursuit of new feelings. Or fresh catalysts for the familiar ones. We fall in and out of love with new sounds, growing weary of some fads, while adding other songs to our permanent collections. Yet still, the seeds of what we experienced as our "firsts" almost always remain to some degree.
Through many dangers toils and snares I have listened to music. Not always John Denver, but he is often one of my considerations when flipping through the collections of music to choose a mood. Because the song seems to transcend any given mood. The lyrical longing fits in with a melancholy. The harmonies work well to soothe in jittery times. Yet the tempo is just upbeat enough to provide a toe tap when needed as a pick me up. And of course, despite being about a state, it is in the end a love song, so I turned to it many a time when I found myself in what I foolishly at the time determined to be love. A song for all seasons indeed.
I have often felt that if a song plays in the light tunnel through which many believe we pass after death on the way to the next world, mine would be Country Roads. So deeply ingrained into every aspect of my consciousness has that song been, for song a long period of time, I can think of no more appropriate human tune to transition me forever away from the things of being human at the end of my time on the earth. The song I would listen to most in life to get me quickly back into shape when feeling out of sorts. To make me feel well when I got sick.
Sometimes I go months without listening to it. Yet I have owned Country Roads in some form my entire life. The record my mother played for me in my crib was eventually sat on and broken in two during a family party. (It was the only record I was allowed to handle as a child. I'd play it all the time at Christmas, as a celebration of the season, and to this day it even reminds me of Christmas a bit.) I was about six when it got broken. It was as though a friend moved away. Worse. It was as though an imaginary friend had moved away. So much so Mom purchased the same album, this time on the far more durable cassette format, a mere few weeks later. A cassette I had with me into young adulthood, playing to thinness.
The CD was located for me in time for Christmas one year, and I have had the CD to this day. (Transferring the song on a regular basis onto an MP3 player for walks and such.) I don't know what the next music format will be in the future. But I do know that whatever form it takes, one of the first purchases of it I will make will be of Country Roads.
As with so many such prompts, the list of possible answers is considerable for me. For how does one choose between so many songs that one goes back to over and over? What is the metric? The most powerful lyrics? The most moving music? Or is it simply a matter of describing a song I listen to with a high degree of frequency?
So many inspiring songs in my collection. So many songs to which I have rocked out many times throughout life. So many beautiful lyrics or stunning arrangements. A few songs posses more than one of the above qualities. It will seem ridiculous to not have picked any number of songs when all is said and done, because I go back to so many of them so often.
I have opted in the end, however, to describe the song that has been a song I go back to for as long as I can remember. The song that seems to be in the background of my consciousness even if it has been a long while since I have listened to it. The song that in many ways, (as one of the first songs I ever knew, and loved) serves as the cornerstone of my entire musical aspect of my personality. Like a literal cornerstone, my eclectic musical tastes have been built up from and around this song for my entire life. It isn't front and center, but it is always there deep within me doing its job.
I am referring to Country Roads by John Denver.
The song is no virtuoso accomplishment, from either a technical or artistic standpoint. I do believe John Denver was a good poet, by and large. An accomplished songwriter who obviously touched millions of people. Yet strictly speaking Country Roads isn't even Denver's own best song, in terms of compositional difficulty or lyrical potency. It was never ground breaking, but that is not why I select it.
And it isn't that I have a huge esteem for West Virginia itself, despite having many friends there, and having lived no further than 15 minutes from its border at any time in life. (The song even inspired an essay of mine on this subject, entitled, "The Place I Almost Belong, West Virginia.) I don't care for the politics, religion, or general feel of most of West Virginia. I am not a fan of the terrain when I have to drive in it to see certain friends. Now in general, despite my objections to a lot of its culture, I bare no hatred for West Virginia. Yet I have no desire to move there.
So, why do I select for this post what some consider the unofficial state song of West Virginia? To begin with, personal history. I have no memory of not knowing this song. I was listening to it in infancy, thanks to Mom. This is the song I wanted my friends to like as a child, because it would mean that something important to me actually meant something to other people. Having my friends like this song would mean that I was not as alien and unlovable as I always felt. Kids of course did not love this song. Ever. They disliked me even more for ever daring to reveal I liked it. It was "lame". It was "slow". It was only for "old people", or "retarded people".
So I spent most of my childhood alone. (No surprise there.) And when alone, whether my mood be celebratory or anxious, whether I was preparing for bed, or trying to pretend I wasn't afraid of what would happen to my oldest sister in the hospital when she needed emergency surgery to deliver my first two nieces, I would listen to the album with Country Roads on it. Along with other music, and other artists. Yet that song always seemed to be the front door into a musical session.
Years go by and tastes change, somewhat. While I don't think a person can truly ever get away from the foods, areas and music with which they grew up, people do begin to expand their horizons. Venture further away from that which is familiar in hopes of understanding a broader sloth of the human experience. We seek out other cultures, other genres of writing, other sources of music in pursuit of new feelings. Or fresh catalysts for the familiar ones. We fall in and out of love with new sounds, growing weary of some fads, while adding other songs to our permanent collections. Yet still, the seeds of what we experienced as our "firsts" almost always remain to some degree.
Through many dangers toils and snares I have listened to music. Not always John Denver, but he is often one of my considerations when flipping through the collections of music to choose a mood. Because the song seems to transcend any given mood. The lyrical longing fits in with a melancholy. The harmonies work well to soothe in jittery times. Yet the tempo is just upbeat enough to provide a toe tap when needed as a pick me up. And of course, despite being about a state, it is in the end a love song, so I turned to it many a time when I found myself in what I foolishly at the time determined to be love. A song for all seasons indeed.
I have often felt that if a song plays in the light tunnel through which many believe we pass after death on the way to the next world, mine would be Country Roads. So deeply ingrained into every aspect of my consciousness has that song been, for song a long period of time, I can think of no more appropriate human tune to transition me forever away from the things of being human at the end of my time on the earth. The song I would listen to most in life to get me quickly back into shape when feeling out of sorts. To make me feel well when I got sick.
Sometimes I go months without listening to it. Yet I have owned Country Roads in some form my entire life. The record my mother played for me in my crib was eventually sat on and broken in two during a family party. (It was the only record I was allowed to handle as a child. I'd play it all the time at Christmas, as a celebration of the season, and to this day it even reminds me of Christmas a bit.) I was about six when it got broken. It was as though a friend moved away. Worse. It was as though an imaginary friend had moved away. So much so Mom purchased the same album, this time on the far more durable cassette format, a mere few weeks later. A cassette I had with me into young adulthood, playing to thinness.
The CD was located for me in time for Christmas one year, and I have had the CD to this day. (Transferring the song on a regular basis onto an MP3 player for walks and such.) I don't know what the next music format will be in the future. But I do know that whatever form it takes, one of the first purchases of it I will make will be of Country Roads.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Reverb11: Memorable Gifts
What is the most memorable gift you have ever received?
How appropriate and yet open-ended a prompt for Christmas Day. So many answers, depending on the criteria used. Even just within the boundaries of "memorable" lie all kinds of definitions, yielding any number of possible answers.
Some years you get exactly something you had on your list. Sometimes it is a total, wonderful surprise you had not even thought of yourself. And it need not be a large or expensive gift, either. One year the best gift I got was one simple Greatest Hits CD filled with songs I loved.
I am going to go, though, with a gift that required the most thought, and hence is the most memorable in that regard. It is a ball point pen.
Not just any ball point pen, though. It is a ball point pen fashioned out of an antler. And antler from the final deer my father ever hunted. My father died when I was seven years old.
Mom had it done. While my father was not obsessed with hunting, he did enjoy it. I do not hunt, but always think of my father when I think of hunting. So a connection with that aspect of my father's recreational life, for which I was far too young when he died, represents a nice connection with my father.
It was especially thoughtful because it was a pen. It could have been a figurine, or a lamp or something, and would have retained it's sentimental value in my eyes. Yet Mom in her wisdom chose to make it a pen. Practical, because I am often looking for a nice pen with which to do certain thing. And symbolic, because being a writer, I make frequent use of a pen. Not to write drafts, but certainly to write notes, and outlines and the occasional letter. The pen is too special to carry with me all the time, as I fear I would lose it. Yet I don't want it to be an icon, and hence too precious to be used. So I use it for writing I do within the safe confines of my room. Outlines. Letters. Some miscellaneous planning and listing. The exciting and the mundane. The point being to make regular use of something that in some tangential way connects me to my father and his leisure.
It had been out of ink for a while, and mom replaced the cartridge for Christmas this year, and gave it to me early so I could use the pen again. It's nice to have it back, and since it is a gift from my mother, it will in some ways always connect me to both of my parents.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
How appropriate and yet open-ended a prompt for Christmas Day. So many answers, depending on the criteria used. Even just within the boundaries of "memorable" lie all kinds of definitions, yielding any number of possible answers.
Some years you get exactly something you had on your list. Sometimes it is a total, wonderful surprise you had not even thought of yourself. And it need not be a large or expensive gift, either. One year the best gift I got was one simple Greatest Hits CD filled with songs I loved.
I am going to go, though, with a gift that required the most thought, and hence is the most memorable in that regard. It is a ball point pen.
Not just any ball point pen, though. It is a ball point pen fashioned out of an antler. And antler from the final deer my father ever hunted. My father died when I was seven years old.
Mom had it done. While my father was not obsessed with hunting, he did enjoy it. I do not hunt, but always think of my father when I think of hunting. So a connection with that aspect of my father's recreational life, for which I was far too young when he died, represents a nice connection with my father.
It was especially thoughtful because it was a pen. It could have been a figurine, or a lamp or something, and would have retained it's sentimental value in my eyes. Yet Mom in her wisdom chose to make it a pen. Practical, because I am often looking for a nice pen with which to do certain thing. And symbolic, because being a writer, I make frequent use of a pen. Not to write drafts, but certainly to write notes, and outlines and the occasional letter. The pen is too special to carry with me all the time, as I fear I would lose it. Yet I don't want it to be an icon, and hence too precious to be used. So I use it for writing I do within the safe confines of my room. Outlines. Letters. Some miscellaneous planning and listing. The exciting and the mundane. The point being to make regular use of something that in some tangential way connects me to my father and his leisure.
It had been out of ink for a while, and mom replaced the cartridge for Christmas this year, and gave it to me early so I could use the pen again. It's nice to have it back, and since it is a gift from my mother, it will in some ways always connect me to both of my parents.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Reverb11: Somebody Has To Say It
Somebody has to say it...
The prompt for today came with the suggestion that it be just one sentence. So, here is mine, which I find appropriate for Christmas Eve:
Some of the most Christ-like people , now in through history, have not been Christians.
Enjoy your visions of sugar plums tonight, my friends.
The prompt for today came with the suggestion that it be just one sentence. So, here is mine, which I find appropriate for Christmas Eve:
Some of the most Christ-like people , now in through history, have not been Christians.
Enjoy your visions of sugar plums tonight, my friends.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Reverb11: Travel
Did you visit anywhere new this year? Any plans to travel next year?
In May I traveled to Jersey City, New Jersey to attend a friend's birthday party. (In that case though, "party" doesn't begin to cover it. Birthday Bash, perhaps.)
I have been to New Jersey before, but not that part of it. I didn't know much about Jersey City, and Hoboken, and all of those places, though of course I had heard of them. If there is such a thing as "small town big city" life, I think the places I visited while in New Jersey would qualify. I remember shopping at one point, and this street we were walking down had all kind of store keepers selling things on the sidewalks outside of their store. Fruit and vegetable stands, and that sort of thing. I admit to not thinking much about it before that time, but part of me sort of assumed that you couldn't really find city streets like that in this country anymore. Not that there is never an odd fruit stand here and there, but the idea of blocks-long lines of eclectic local merchandise being sold by an even more eclectic mosaic of people from all over the world, literally) I figured was just about gone in 2011. It was encouraging to see it was not. At least not in Jersey City.
I had falafel for the first time while I was there. From a shop in the city with just two tables inside. I enjoyed the meal quite a bit, and hope to have some of it again someday. I learned that the tiny shop, (the name of which I cannot remember) has some kind of rivalry going on with another tiny falafel shop on the other side of the city. (Or it may have been in a nearby city, I also cannot remember that exact fact either.) But that amused me for some reason.
Then there was Hoboken. We weren't in Hoboken much. I wish time would have allowed a longer stay there. For some reason I think I would have enjoyed hanging around Hoboken the most out of the places in New Jersey I went to. That's no disrespect to Jersey City, but Hoboken, or at least the parts I saw, spoke to me a bit more, if you will. Downtown at least had a certain presence that appealed to me specifically. I'd love to be able to elaborate on that, but I can't. Again, maybe if I had been able to absorb more of it. The best I can say is that there seemed to be an almost equal mix of past and present that you don't always see in cities of comparable size. Even other cities in New Jersey.
One thing I did get to experience in Hoboken probably had nothing to do with it being Hoboken, per se, though it was without a doubt an Urban New Jersey experience. It took place when we went to get the beer for the party at this huge beer warehouse. It was literally a warehouse you drove into. Cases of beer everywhere. While I waited I counted no less that 25 varieties of brew just within my eyesight. A crew of maybe five guys in overalls and hand trucks moved the beer hither and yon. They were my favorite part of my brief stay at the warehouse. They should have their own reality show on television.
Not that I watch those kind of shows in general, but this group of guys were, (at least from my outsider's perspective) sort of like New Jersey personified. Not like those Jersey Shore assholes, but true, working class, sarcastic and blunt Jersey. Though you aren't supposed to stereotype people, they did say many things and did so with accents that one associates with the area. Most of what I heard from this colorful crew came from the guy I assume was the floor supervisor. "Hey, why is case of Milla still sitting ova heeya?" He didn't appear to be happy as he asked this question. The Miller was not there much longer, though the yelling and snappy repartee between the workers remained.
I did spend a few hours in New York City itself, which of course is nearby. As always I enjoy getting to see Manhattan. Yet we were in area I had never been to before. Far from the usual tourist infested areas. On our way to and back from dinner and the short film festival we attended, I saw many sites that were also in the "small town big city" category. New York City is of course immense, but when you get as deep into Manhattan as we were, (we had gone on for so long I thought for sure we were in a different borough) it was like a different city. It's own neighborhood. (And again, my apologies, I don't know which part of Manhattan we were in.)
Local basketball tournaments under the evening lights in a park. Old buildings from a bygone era with their ornate architecture housing things like Starbucks and Apple outlets. Art. Bars and taverns. All lit street lamps, not by the glaring, ever present fluorescence of Times Square and Broadway. I love Times Square and Broadway, but I got a lot out of my time spent in the deeper parts of the borough, where the garish, manufactured, though intoxicating enormity of the famous hot spots faded away to reveal a slightly foreign (to me) but nonetheless more relatable and accessible humanity. The "everyday" of New York City, if that makes any sense.
Sometimes you can "learn" something you already knew. A concept can begin to dawn on you when you experience it first hand in a way it never could when it was just a concept of which you were aware intellectually. I of course knew there was more to New York City that the swarming, glitzy, warp speed mass of neon illuminated homo-sapiens that is Lower Manhattan. Yet that has been the only part of New York I had ever been to. This trip in May reminded me that even that city is made up of millions upon millions of regular people living lives not that unlike my own in scope, even if they differ greatly in culture and attitude.
If I do travel in 2012, (and I would like to, but money is an issue), I'd like a chance to experience some more of that everyday neighborhood flavor. Both in this country, and in other countries. (The United Kingdom in particular.) Where people are not quite as anonymous. Where it's clear that the neighborhood is an extension of the citizens within, as opposed to the masses of people crashing like so many ocean waves to be broken on the rocky coast of a nebulous downtown megatropolis.
Please do not misunderstand me. There are many big cities I long to see for the first time, (Boston, New Orleans, London), and some I want to see again (Seattle, Chicago, and yes, New York City.) I love the hugeness of a major city. The lights. The sound of traffic. The adventure and the site seeing. I'd never want to be denied that kind of experience. Yet in the meantime, (or perhaps, with the right guide, while I am in those big cities), I want to make sure I see more neighborhoods like the ones I saw back in May.
Do you live in one? Perhaps I will visit you next. If your town has falafel.
In May I traveled to Jersey City, New Jersey to attend a friend's birthday party. (In that case though, "party" doesn't begin to cover it. Birthday Bash, perhaps.)
I have been to New Jersey before, but not that part of it. I didn't know much about Jersey City, and Hoboken, and all of those places, though of course I had heard of them. If there is such a thing as "small town big city" life, I think the places I visited while in New Jersey would qualify. I remember shopping at one point, and this street we were walking down had all kind of store keepers selling things on the sidewalks outside of their store. Fruit and vegetable stands, and that sort of thing. I admit to not thinking much about it before that time, but part of me sort of assumed that you couldn't really find city streets like that in this country anymore. Not that there is never an odd fruit stand here and there, but the idea of blocks-long lines of eclectic local merchandise being sold by an even more eclectic mosaic of people from all over the world, literally) I figured was just about gone in 2011. It was encouraging to see it was not. At least not in Jersey City.
I had falafel for the first time while I was there. From a shop in the city with just two tables inside. I enjoyed the meal quite a bit, and hope to have some of it again someday. I learned that the tiny shop, (the name of which I cannot remember) has some kind of rivalry going on with another tiny falafel shop on the other side of the city. (Or it may have been in a nearby city, I also cannot remember that exact fact either.) But that amused me for some reason.
Then there was Hoboken. We weren't in Hoboken much. I wish time would have allowed a longer stay there. For some reason I think I would have enjoyed hanging around Hoboken the most out of the places in New Jersey I went to. That's no disrespect to Jersey City, but Hoboken, or at least the parts I saw, spoke to me a bit more, if you will. Downtown at least had a certain presence that appealed to me specifically. I'd love to be able to elaborate on that, but I can't. Again, maybe if I had been able to absorb more of it. The best I can say is that there seemed to be an almost equal mix of past and present that you don't always see in cities of comparable size. Even other cities in New Jersey.
One thing I did get to experience in Hoboken probably had nothing to do with it being Hoboken, per se, though it was without a doubt an Urban New Jersey experience. It took place when we went to get the beer for the party at this huge beer warehouse. It was literally a warehouse you drove into. Cases of beer everywhere. While I waited I counted no less that 25 varieties of brew just within my eyesight. A crew of maybe five guys in overalls and hand trucks moved the beer hither and yon. They were my favorite part of my brief stay at the warehouse. They should have their own reality show on television.
Not that I watch those kind of shows in general, but this group of guys were, (at least from my outsider's perspective) sort of like New Jersey personified. Not like those Jersey Shore assholes, but true, working class, sarcastic and blunt Jersey. Though you aren't supposed to stereotype people, they did say many things and did so with accents that one associates with the area. Most of what I heard from this colorful crew came from the guy I assume was the floor supervisor. "Hey, why is case of Milla still sitting ova heeya?" He didn't appear to be happy as he asked this question. The Miller was not there much longer, though the yelling and snappy repartee between the workers remained.
I did spend a few hours in New York City itself, which of course is nearby. As always I enjoy getting to see Manhattan. Yet we were in area I had never been to before. Far from the usual tourist infested areas. On our way to and back from dinner and the short film festival we attended, I saw many sites that were also in the "small town big city" category. New York City is of course immense, but when you get as deep into Manhattan as we were, (we had gone on for so long I thought for sure we were in a different borough) it was like a different city. It's own neighborhood. (And again, my apologies, I don't know which part of Manhattan we were in.)
Local basketball tournaments under the evening lights in a park. Old buildings from a bygone era with their ornate architecture housing things like Starbucks and Apple outlets. Art. Bars and taverns. All lit street lamps, not by the glaring, ever present fluorescence of Times Square and Broadway. I love Times Square and Broadway, but I got a lot out of my time spent in the deeper parts of the borough, where the garish, manufactured, though intoxicating enormity of the famous hot spots faded away to reveal a slightly foreign (to me) but nonetheless more relatable and accessible humanity. The "everyday" of New York City, if that makes any sense.
Sometimes you can "learn" something you already knew. A concept can begin to dawn on you when you experience it first hand in a way it never could when it was just a concept of which you were aware intellectually. I of course knew there was more to New York City that the swarming, glitzy, warp speed mass of neon illuminated homo-sapiens that is Lower Manhattan. Yet that has been the only part of New York I had ever been to. This trip in May reminded me that even that city is made up of millions upon millions of regular people living lives not that unlike my own in scope, even if they differ greatly in culture and attitude.
If I do travel in 2012, (and I would like to, but money is an issue), I'd like a chance to experience some more of that everyday neighborhood flavor. Both in this country, and in other countries. (The United Kingdom in particular.) Where people are not quite as anonymous. Where it's clear that the neighborhood is an extension of the citizens within, as opposed to the masses of people crashing like so many ocean waves to be broken on the rocky coast of a nebulous downtown megatropolis.
Please do not misunderstand me. There are many big cities I long to see for the first time, (Boston, New Orleans, London), and some I want to see again (Seattle, Chicago, and yes, New York City.) I love the hugeness of a major city. The lights. The sound of traffic. The adventure and the site seeing. I'd never want to be denied that kind of experience. Yet in the meantime, (or perhaps, with the right guide, while I am in those big cities), I want to make sure I see more neighborhoods like the ones I saw back in May.
Do you live in one? Perhaps I will visit you next. If your town has falafel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)