Winter Solstice

Hey, faithful readers. I'm sorry not to have kept up with blog series. I hope to finish it perhaps with a little less over-the-top sarcasm. I just underwent a small identity crisis about this blog, what I'm using it for, my "tone" and its content.

This has happened periodically over the 3 years I've kept Spiral Scratch but more frequently now that I have other people reading it. It was much simpler to keep my focus when I had no audience although I greatly appreciate the positive feedback I've received about the content & my writing.

It's just that when you're only writing for yourself, anything goes. You can indulge any whim, not care about how you are being perceived, jump from intimate & personal to grand statements about the world. It's an online journal for whatever thoughts you want to express.

When you are conscious that others read your content (and it doesn't matter whether you have 1 subscriber or 10,000), most people have a bit more hesitation about what they put out there because no matter how kindly they might be, people are passing judgment on you & your writing...was it clever? was it insightful? was it boring? was it funny? was it groan-worthy? Readers begin to form a mental image of who you are and what you care most about.

This thought process happens unconsciously, in the few minutes it takes to scan over a blog entry. Most bloggers claim to be just being themselves but don't believe it. The awareness of people reading what you write changes the way you write. That fact doesn't mean that writers necessarily censor themselves but only the most stubborn of them can not be influenced by the desire to please their readers, even if that means being cantankerous, it's still about meeting other people's expectations of you.

As a person with literary stage fright, I'm not immune to this pull whatsoever! I've dropped my more idiosyncratic posts about my personal life and focused on discussing social networks, especially Twitter. But I've resisted a pressure I feel to adopt a "professional voice" because my blog was never intended to be a vehicle for business or my career but a place where I could talk about experiences and ideas.

The current series about ways to become popular on Twitter was intended to highlight trends I've noticed among the top 1000 most followed people on Twitter that are in contrast to how people normally perceive one gets to be popular. So, I lifted the sales tone of get more followers spammers & tried to make my points in a humorous way (I hope!). But, unfortunately, not everyone got that I was being satirical and not actually giving advice by pointing out some of the more ridiculous aspects of Twitter popularity. I began to question whether I had adopted the best method to get my points across.

Those doubts just stopped me in my tracks even though I had actually mapped out the last segments of the series. I'd like to share these insights but am unsure if I'll just continue in the comic mode or just make the points more directly. It's unsettled but I'd like to finish it.

Since I'd received a couple inquiries about the blog, I just wanted to post this update. I hope everyone is enjoying the remainder of this holiday season, isn't feeling too much end-of-the-year stress, and can enjoy the company of offline and online friends & family. Happy New Year to you all!

What shall I be today?

I started this blog 3 years ago when I was in the middle of a 6 year long bout of chronic insomnia. I was having trouble with my dissertation and, consequently, had nights in which I never fell asleep. At all. I'd lie awake in bed, thinking, and get up once I saw light in the sky.

I'd usually force myself to stay awake and go to bed early but sometimes, at least once a month, I'd go two days/nights without sleep. I did my share of chemical experimentation when I was in college but nothing can compare with going without sleep for 40 or 50 hours. You enter a different stage of consciousness, between wakefulness and unconsciousness. I used to put away my car keys so I'd stay off the road...I think sleepy drivers are a bigger cause of accidents than drunk drivers.

So, I started this blog as a creative outlet, a place where I could put out random thoughts and ideas, sort out things in my mind. And it was mine alone, I think I wrote on and off for a couple of years before I had anyone read my blog and post a comment. I was frankly shocked. I know the Internet is about the least private medium that exists but I was lulled into thinking of this blog as a personal diary.

Against the common wisdom that bloggers want bigger & bigger audiences, I haven't known how to handle having people read my blog, commenting on my entries. In one sense, it is extremely flattering and I'm grateful for the interest and people taking time to read but most people act differently when they know they have an audience. Before, no one knew who I was so I was free to say whatever I wanted because no one was listening (that I knew about!).

Since Twitter, all that has changed. I'm engaged in conversation with a lot more people online than I ever thought imaginable...and because I wanted to fill out the Twitter bio and there is a website link, I linked to this blog. In a sense, that was inviting, maybe even advertising, for readers.

So I've been trying to sort out in my mind what this blog should be...should I continue with the personal stuff that is more intimate and of limited interest? Or should I focus my writing on a topic like Twitter or social media and try to make an intellectual contribution, linking to other blogs and participating in a larger discussion?

The common approach now in social media is to blend ones personal and professional lives together but this goes against all of my training as an academic. I don't think that people interested in my social critiques want to hear me complain about my cat.

But I could be wrong! Let the experimentation continue!

Izea Blog Makeover!

The good folks at Izea are running a Blog Makeover Contest which I'm entering to win with this blog entry. I've never done a post related to a commercial product/organization before but in this case, they are a great company and this is a wonderful opportunity I can't pass up.

This blog, Spiral Scratch, is overdue for a makeover by a graphic designer. I created it over two years ago and it originally existed as a place where I could write during my frequent bouts of insomnia. So, the posts were personal, reflective and what you might expect from a sleep-deprived person...a tad inspiring but all over the map.

In the past six months, I've immersed myself in the world of social media and have really learned the amazing things that can be done with a blog, how they can become their own kind of forum, and I ache to move this blog from the personal & eccentric to the personal & professional.

I've begun this to a certain degree by changing the template from a beige, bookish, librarian model to one that is sleeker but I'd love to have a custom made logo and design even if that means I move my blog to another platform that would allow more customization.

I can't say I deserve this more than anyone else but I can say that the timing for a makeover of this blog couldn't be more perfect. The visual changes would be reflected in a refinement of content which would focus more on communication, social networking and the social impact of technology.

I've been debating for a while whether I should start a second blog but in this instance, I think a makeover, in style and content, might be a huge step forward that would benefit me and my small but growing readership.

To anyone who is curious, Spiral Scratch is a title of a song but 1970s/1980s band, The Buzzcocks, and refers to what a vinyl record essentially is...one very long spiral scratch. It was also the name of my first radio show. I'm hoping that a visual and content makeover would help me bridge the gap between old & new technology as we discuss how technology is affecting our culture in both large and subtle ways.

Thanks, Izea, for considering this entry!

Ms. Pop-u-lar

Two weeks ago, "PR professional and social media freak" Sarah Evans had a fun idea to run a survey on the polling site Survey Monkey to find out the most popular people posting on Twitter, or The Unofficial Top 50 Tweeples to Follow, as she called it.

Several measures of Twitter popularity already exist on websites like Twitterholic, a website that lists those people with the most individuals following them or the most people who they follow or the most updates/Tweets.

But Evans' poll required people—and one didn’t have to even be a Twitter user to vote—to type in the name of the person they wanted to nominate and assign them a category, not just to check a box on a predetermined list of candidates.

I’m not sure how I found out about the poll..I think someone I followed reposted Evan's original message. And when I went to the survey website to nominate those people I most devoutly follow, I found that some names came immediately to mind. They weren’t on the list of the most popular anything, they were just individuals whose Tweets I had found consistently entertaining, informative, or unique. With some categories (automotive? lawn?), I couldn’t come up with any appropriate nomination but I tried to list all of the people I regularly read, sometimes twisting the meaning of categories like “food” or “entertainment” to nominate people who talk about their dinner in mouth-watering detail or who are generally amusing.

Well, the list was released yesterday morning and I found myself ranked as #18 on a Top 50 list out of 2,500 people nominated. While flattering, it is an odd position for me to be in. I thank people who took the time to nominate me but I’m not used to being in a position of popularity (and recently I've definitely been UNpopular!). I have a mild-mannered exterior but I see myself as living on the margins, economically, politically, professionally, and intellectually.

Perhaps what caused people to like my posts was that I had absolutely nothing to gain by Tweeting, not personally, not professionally, so I was myself, for better or worse. I don’t even Tweet about my blog so I have not even been looking for new readers, I just talk about whatever is on mind at that moment.

I woke up this morning, 24 hours later, to find that I have 80 new people following me in the wake of the poll results and I’m in the odd position of not wanting to disappoint people who now might have expectations of me. I mean, if you get ranked on a poll like this, you must be at least “interesting”, right? So, do I continue to write about my cat, my insomnia, my obsession with the Olympics, my frustration with the Girls in Tech moniker, my surprise at Project Runway results, my furnace problems, or my wandering thoughts on sociological theory?

It seems like very mundane material to me. But when I look over the Tweetstreams of other people on the list, to tell you the truth, outside of a few Twitter celebrities (i.e. Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Mashable), they are also mostly personal and ordinary. Maybe it’s not glamor or power that cause someone to visit a survey website, remember, and type in someone’s name but a simple identification with the ups and downs in the life of another person, when they are honestly written and shared.

I know in the scheme of things, this list means little (except new followers) but it is always an interesting exercise to look outside yourself and consider how other people perceive you. I find I’m often wrong and surveys like this are a good reminder that we sometimes need to shake up the preconceived limitations we have placed on ourselves and reconsider who we think we are to other people.

Visible/Invisible

This blog entry was prompted after reading the blog article
Are You Trustworthy? by Sonia Simone on the blog Copyblogger. The article argues that businesses should value trust between themselves and their readers and how an important element of building that trust comes from showing that there was an actual human being behind a blog. Simone recommended attaching a photo (and a recent, non-glamorous one!) to ones blog so that people would have some idea of who the author is.

There were a lot of comments praising the article but one sentence by Doug Firebaugh stood out for me: “Being human is all to easy-showing it sometimes is difficult.”

Showing your humanness means not only showing those parts of ourselves which are endearing, admirable, or attractive but also showing those parts of ourselves that fail, that misjudge others, that are reluctant to publicly acknowledge our mistakes. It's hard to be vulnerable and show ones weaknesses & flaws to an audience who may or may not empathize with you.

I remember writing a response to another blog entry once in which the author had said, "Everyone loves attention." Well, not all attention is good attention. Growing up in an alcoholic family for six years, the only attention the kids in my family got was negative attention or praise when someone else made a mistake ("Good thing you're not like your sister!").

We all had our ways of coping...my younger sister played up her youth and adorableness, my brother only came home at night to sleep & was absent for the rest of the day & evening, and I tried my best to fade into the wallpaper and not draw attention to myself. Being singled out meant you were going to be the target of criticism so it was best to just become as small and inconspicuous as possible, to become invisible.

It took having a completely liberating & hedonistic undergraduate experience to make me less afraid to shine, to speak out, to make myself be known. I had a successful part-time career on a large community radio station and for six years I had a prime time show. We were only a 5,000 watt station but because the land was flat, our coverage had a 45 mile wide radius where hundreds of thousand people lived.

I found that the self-consciousness arising out of having someone who was always critical watching me still affected me though and the only way I could pull off each show was by having everyone else get out of the studio, facing the mike alone, and talking to the audience as if they were my best friend. It seemed to work very well but I eventually realized I was not commercial enough for a professional career in broadcasting as I had no wish to sell products to my "friends", I just wanted to share my love of music with them, take their requests, interview bands they liked & ask the questions they would've asked, and give away stuff (albums, tickets, t-shirts, etc.). The show wasn't about me it was about the live conversation I was having with people who loved the same kind of music I did or who were at least open to hearing new music I thought they would enjoy or find challenging. The audience was appreciative and the job was the most fun & educational experience I ever had had in my life.

What does this have to do with showing your humanness? I think we can waver between our desire to be invisible and to be visible based on how secure we are in our relationships with ourselves. If we feel loved & supported, one can much more easily step out into the spotlight and face any praise or criticism that might come your way. When we feel like we are on shaky ground, when we feel hostility & judgment from others, or are just in an unfamiliar area (a neighborhood, a clique of people, a discussion board), we might either try to be as unobtrusive as possible or to only want to show the most flattering aspects to our personality.

We come from a place of insecurity because we don't believe that someone has our back, will understand our occasional lapses into self-absorption, will forgive how we might intentionally cause another person pain.

So, I think our desire to publicly face our humanness, to be visible to others, can only come after we have been affirmed by others, when we have a support system whether that is a family, a network of friends, or simply an employer or professor who believes in your ability.

It is fashionable now to believe the sole key to success is high self-esteem but I think we are infinitely stronger and can be more truly ourselves, online & offline when we feel valued by other people. That makes us vulnerable to their influence in our lives but the good news is that it only takes ONE other person to make us feel like we can stand up, be human, take what life throws at us, and turn it into gold.

When being wrong feels right

This week I found myself at an Advanced Blogging Workshop run by New York City Webgrrls, a group of women working in technology who network and run classes like this. In this workshop I discovered that everything about my blog is "wrong", from using the Blogger platform to my page layout, from the erratic nature of my posts to my content which is too personal and not professional enough.

I was told that "the blogging community does not respect anonymous bloggers" which is a pretty amazing claim considering the millions of blogs that exist...did the Worldwide Bloggers Association hold a meeting and not tell me about it? I never got a chance to vote!

My initial reaction is to think, if being right is what everyone else is doing, I want to be wrong! When I conveyed these sentiments in the workshop, that being "different" could attract readers, I was told that Internet users make judgments about whether they want to read a blog in 1/20 of a second and that if I didn't have the right pieces in their proper places saying appropriate things, these valued potential readers would turn tail & run and never, ever, EVER come back. Whoosh! Millions of missed opportunities!

I don't know about you, valued readers, but this is not how I read blogs. I do wander into some blogs that are on a subject matter that is not of interest to me and leave...for example, I'm not a computer scientist and I don't have a baby so if I go on to sites that have these as their primary material, I don't stay.

But through Twitter, I am exposed to literally hundreds of blog links every day and, unfortunately for my academic work, I follow quite a few of them back to their source. It doesn't matter whether it is a blog with tips for success or a blog that describes a party someone went to, if it looks mildly interesting, I'll give it five minutes of my time and even scan through older posts. I usually notice that some layouts are more inviting than others but I read some blogs that almost qualify as ugly! But content rules!

Because I'm basically a humanist and I follow a lot of people on Twitter who work in marketing & PR, I often find myself at odds with some of the consumer/corporate ideology in the material I come across. Unless the person is offensive or dismissive, this doesn't stop me from revisiting this blog if there is another entry posted that sounds interesting. Once again, content rules over presentation, at least in my world.

So, I apologize if having the menu on the right side rather than the left side forces the reader to have to shift their glance from one side of the page to the other but you know what? I think you guys can figure it out!

I am actually going to consider some of the suggestions that were made to me because I don't want to be closed-minded to criticism. But they will be considered each on their own merits. If being popular means looking like everyone else, I'll stick with my frizzy hair and oddly-shaped toes. I mean, if it can't be personal, why even have a blog?

Balancing, an Act

If you ever ask my mother, Ellen, about me, she would mention that I put way more hours into the jobs I've had than I ever get paid for, that sometimes I'm downright "lazy" and other times a complete workaholic. She is mystified that I don't have weekdays and weekends, a balanced life.

My mother, on the other hand, is an eminently practical woman, always busy, never sitting down until the kitchen is cleaned in the evening. But she only exerts exactly enough effort to get "okay" results. Her house is clean, not immaculate, her cooking good, not great, her patience moderate, but not extended, her clothing lightly used, neither old nor new. She enjoys and reads a great many books (she always is juggling 4 or 5) but doesn't remember the plots a month after she has read them as she has moved on to an equally enjoyable series of books. She has a green thumb but just manages a modest group of pots on her deck, a garden being too time-consuming.

She doesn't consider herself a success but in my eyes she manages to accomplish something I have never been able achieve->she achieves the greatest results with a minimum amount of effort. She does this by having the discipline of not expecting perfection, in fact, she would never ever expect that from herself. What she does expect is to be"good enough", to face tasks head on, even or maybe especially unpleasant tasks. She's a true Virgo and her chief strength is to persevere until her common sense tells her that her efforts would be best spent doing something else. She is economical in all things and, as a result, gets a lot of work accomplished.

I am quite the opposite, almost the polar opposite. Maybe because of the dominance of middle-of-the-road, suburban rationality in our home growing up, I was always drawn to the margins, both left & right, north & south. I am able to do absolutely nothing for long periods of time, just meditating, listening to the birds and watching the world go by like it is 1908. Another day I might get up at 3 am to work on a job I care about accomplishing and put in 18 hours.

But I am too cautious a person to live in the extremes of culture. I'm not to the manor-born, type A, go-getter but I also will always be gainfully employed, even if it is checking in books at a library...you won't find me in the White House but you also won't find me in a crack house! I'm edgy & contrary but not fearless.

Unfortunately, except for the arts, most occupations reward steady, consistent, hard work and people who are focused and who chip, chip away on their chosen career path. I am too passionate and ambitious to be a slacker but I also value a low stress life that lets me pursue my varied interests including friendships, faith, and volunteer work.

And so my life has been a series of large leaps of achievement followed by times of stagnation, times of winning awards & fellowships followed by long fallow periods where absolutely nothing is happening. While this might make me an interesting person to have at a dinner party, it has caused me setbacks from which I'm not sure I'll recover very soon. But who knows? Given the zigs & zags of life, I could be poised for a comeback any moment now!

I didn't intend to write an entry on myself, I had decided to write on time management until I realized that I am completely abysmal at it! I work on projects I love until I fall asleep at my desk but there are crucial, important tasks that I never get to. And so, if anyone is reading, please give me your advice on how to maintain a steady pace forward instead of my current habit of running far ahead and then sitting down while the world catches up.

Next post, I promise, will be less self-indulgent and confessional!

Those who don't create, critique those who do

I've committed one of the cardinal sins of blogging: it's been weeks since I've written an entry. This has happened for a number of reasons but primarily due to my addiction to Twitter.

I've found this microblogging format and the people I've been introduced to incredibly compelling. Twitter is everything that academia and a dissertation is not: it is concise instead of wordy, it is flirty instead of measured, it is snarky instead of considered, it is timely instead of enduring, and it is fast instead of labored.

There is in both academia and the Twitter universe a great deal of self-promotion but where Twitter blares out self-referential Tweets in stark, bright colors, scholars indirectly tout themselves in lengthy and subdued footnotes. Twitter is bold, snappy and instantaneous and in academia, even after death, an author's work is ceaselessly critiqued for its worthiness and its potential contribution to the field. Bogged down in yet more dissertation rewrites, I was an easy mark to fall prey to Twitter's seductive urgency, its false sense of intimacy and its immediacy.

But since every quality that are Tweets, or messages, are aspects of writing frowned upon in my discipline, I've been a stranger in a strange land, out of my element. The people I've encountered online have been, by and large, kind and open to me but, to use another cliche, I'm a round peg in a square hole. I don't fit and many of my snarky remarks were observations of the worlds of the participants (primarily technology and marketing) that I found incredibly peculiar. I found and still find it difficult to hold my tongue when people are behaving in what seems to me to be a ludicrous manner. If I was physically present, I would roll my eyes and give a "what is WITH these people" shake of my head but since I was in the world of Twitter, I would fire off a random pet peeve of those I was "following" or remark sarcastically in a way that I thought resembled intelligence.

I was already to write another Tweet about how no one in the outside world really cares about political in-fighting in the world of technology when I got a terrible headache. Eventually, this led me to wonder, was I creating anything of value? Was I contributing to the problem instead of trying to understand the world and myself a little better?


Which, predictably, led me back to my neglected blog. I hope to take the energy I got from writing Tweets and channel it towards the creation of something more lasting and ephemeral than 140 character messages. I'm not aiming for profundity, I'd just like to contribute something relevant to the discussion going on online about how advances in technology and communication are changing the way we understand ourselves and the way we behave.

I know I won't be promoting myself on Twitter, that is a no-no that is just too ingrained in me over years of graduate school programming. But I can say with certainty that I'll probably lapse into talking about myself and my cat! That's a promise.

Creating, not consuming

I've been trying to get up-to-date on technology issues, specifically those involved with shared media and social networking. But it is just an enormous world out there! I have feeds and bookmarks for about two dozen blogs already so there is no way I can keep up with current developments without spending a couple of hours a day just reading other people's blogs.

Then I become merely a culture consumer instead of a culture creator. It's a little thrilling to be "in the know" and to have a grasp on the current wave of technology (as peripheral as it is to my life) but how does this knowledge help anyone, including myself? If I'm not creating something tangible, putting effort into content creation, then it is just ephemeral info that is immediately out-dated as soon as the next technological development or crisis appears.

I have to put more effort into creative efforts than just reading other people's thoughts, however interesting they might be.

My new mascot:

Musings....

I’ve spent a fair portion of my life avoiding reality. We all do it. We find a distraction--love, work, a hobby, a preoccupation, sex, drinking, computer games, gambling, our kids—-and throw ourselves into that person or activity which allows us to forget, for a few moments or hours, some dysfunction or unhappiness or regret in our lives.

And most of us—-if we allow ourselves to think about it (and we’re over 21)-—have things we regret, choices we’ve made or not made that, in hindsight, might not have been the best course of action to take.

If you think of the seven deadly sins, I think I would have to claim “sloth”, at least in those activities that I don’t find pleasure in. Probably like most people, I have difficulty doing those tasks that aren’t satisfying or that highlight some personal weakness or blind spot.

This is the most mundane of problems but one that has had a tremendous impact on the way my life has unfolded. I’m one of those people who slowly pull a band-aid off and the world rewards the yankers in life that act. I’m always kind of hoping that the wound will heal and the bandage fall off by itself.

My father called it “being lazy”. Having been raised in California, I thought of it more as “going with the flow of the universe”. It seemed dangerous to make a decision that wasn’t right and then have to suffer the consequences...better to let the universe/God show you the way than trying to fight the tide. It seems very passive, I know, but what I most abhor in life is frustration. And, unfortunately, to succeed at anything, you have to have a tolerance for a certain amount of frustration because most things are not immediately successful, there is a certain amount of trial and error involved. And when you grow up with a lot of judgment surrounding you, you try to avoid error at all costs.

This leads one to “play it safe”, avoid risk and injury, and have a less adventurous life than one might have had. Still, we manage to survive, we just live lives of little significance except to our immediate circle of family and friends. And maybe that is just fine. Surely billions of people have lived and died without making any discernible impact on the world except to procreate the next generation. But if you don’t have this kind of immortality, what evidence can you leave when you die that you ever even walked the streets, loved, were loved, or simply breathed? I still don’t know the answer.

Funk, and not the good kind

It’s been quite a while since I wrote in this blog. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, during which I’ve been mentally lost in a fuzzy world of crime dramas. I’ve seen so many of these shows by now that I swear I could do an autopsy myself, use Luminol to test for blood at the scene of the crime, analyze splatter patterns, look at surveillance tapes, check ballistics on the murder weapon, and run fingerprints through CODIS, and compare DNA markers on blood and sweat samples.

Do these shows have a basis in reality? I doubt the average police department has the resources to spend this amount of time and money on crime-solving. Some of these tests alone cost hundreds of dollars and on TV they do them without even a thought to an actual budget.

I mean, there must be dozens of murders on TV any hour of the day. People bludgeoned, knifed, shot, garroted, pushed from buildings, skinned and gutted, drowned, drugged, strangled, decapitated, hit by a train, hung from the rafters, poisoned, throat cut, drill through the skull, dowsed with lye, set on fire…there was even one show where the killer stuck his gun in this obese man’s rectum and fired the gun so there wouldn’t be an obvious entry wound. Enough to make even a jaded TV viewer ill.

Even though the killers are caught and convicted in 90% of these shows on TV--they have to let a few villains fall through the cracks so they can run on about alleged judicial “technicalities” everyone rails about--, these shows, if you watch them in reruns (which means once or twice a night) paint a very dismal, depressing view of the world.

Take CSI. I can’t believe as many people die in a year in Las Vegas as die on this show in one season. They’ve had so many serial killers on that show, any one of which would have made the national news. But, no, we don't hear about serial killers running rampant through the countryside. Or the bio-hazards, terrorist plots, natural disasters, or city-wide epidemics they feature on these shows. Don’t remember hearing about these every night on the news.

Yes, it’s only TV, it’s a fictional construct but watching these shows can’t help affect one’s view of the world as a dangerous, deadly place where, any minute, you could be sitting in a restaurant when a car comes barreling through a plate glass window, mowing down diners. Or your child goes to the grocery store and gets shot in a drive-by. Or someone knocks on your door to deliver pizza and ends up throwing you off the balcony.

The assault of images and twisted motivations (don’t get me started on the “Ponyboy” episode of Bones the other night) of seemingly ordinary people just leaves me feeling depressed at the state of the world. I use to think this attitude was just being a “realist” about human nature but the writers of these shows are challenged to come up with even more bizarre and creative plotlines to distinguish themselves from their almost identical rivals (teams of cops, DAs, and scientists solving crimes). They don’t want to seem like they are recycling other show’s plotlines so everything gets ramped up to “10”. More sexual deviation, more unexplained bloodthirstyness, more complete disregard for the consequences of random violence. Dead bodies litter the streets, alleys, and playground in this fictional world.

I let myself get pulled into these shows because they have a comforting, absolutely predictable pattern:

1) Initial crime (usually before the credits). We know little or nothing about the victim, sometimes see the crime from the criminal’s POV and sometimes the scene jumps right past the actual crime itself, from before the crime to police surrounding a corpse on the ground.

2) Analysis of crime scene by cops and/or scientists. Hawkeye vision distinguishes a multitude of irrelevant items at the crime scene and they obsess about something that seems insignificant to the audience (a bit of glass smaller than a fingernail, a bottle cap, a piece of lint) to the exclusion of everything else that seems like it might be equally if not more important. How do they know? They just do, they're omniscient.

3) First theory of the crime proposed. First possible suspects interrogated. The cops/scientists are wrong about the first suspect 99% of the time because it’s an hour-long show so they have to stretch out the mystery and there is only so much that the audience can take of watching people make phone calls in a squad room or analyzing tool marks in a lab. If the first suspect was actually guilty, the show would be over in 15 minutes. Through the discussion with suspect #1 and other red herring suspects, we learn more about the victim(s) and possible motives for the crime.

4) Almost at the very end of the show (last 5-8 minutes) the final theory (always the correct one) is proposed and the killer is usually apprehended. This coming together of evidence could happen in the middle of a trial or in the lab or the field. Frequently, in the newer shows, there is a faux reenactment of the crime which just reinforces the infallibleness of the investigative team. They might miss something but they never, ever makes mistakes in the final interpretation.

5) Despite their unbelievable success rate in solving crimes (which can not be repeated in the real world), the investigators are in general unhappy people, either single or divorced workaholics. It’s rare to find a happily married man or woman on one of these shows. It’s like they are martyrs, sentenced by God to redeem their sins (whatever these might be) by righting the wrongs of the world but not experiencing any satisfaction or happiness themselves. They get their only satisfaction in life from figuring out the puzzles in other people's lives instead of their own.

These shows are very addictive. Everyone loves a good story and here they are with clear beginnings, middles, and endings complete with commercial breaks. We have troubled souls as heroes (whom we can identify with) and kinky, perverted, amoral villains whom we can also live vicariously through. The shows both celebrate violence—by making it the theme of every episode—and also condemn it in moralistic terms which can make the viewer feel superior because there is the thrill of sex and violence (frequently entangled) but we watch violence perpetrated by others instead of indulging in it ourselves.

I was procrastinating the other day when I should have been working (like right now) and watched part of a “marathon” of episodes of one of these shows and before I knew it hours had passed. I had terrible thoughts and images filling my head when I tried to fall asleep that night and I’ve noticed it happening more and more after an evening of watching these shows. I’m not personally afraid of being a victim, it’s just that they've twisted my view of the world to one of an unpredictable, dangerous place full of sexual predators and random acts of violence.

I think that this worldview is enhanced by the heroes’ nonchalance about the dark side of human nature, like they expect the worst from people and can no longer be surprised by even the most deviant acts. One could call it “noir-ish” but I find it just makes me feel dismal about the human race. And that, along with recent setbacks, has me in a complete funk.

Hopefully, writing will help me exorcise some of these demons. I’m not looking for a Disneyfied view of humanity, just to hold the possibility in my heart once again that people are basically good and not opportunists waiting to take advantage of the weak and disadvantaged in our society. After I get a little of that point of view back, maybe I can work on my total mistrust of corporate America next.

Getting comfortable again?

So, I write this nice entry about embracing discomfort and I get this email horoscope message in my Inbox this morning. I think the universe is working against me!

Romance could be awkward -- but that's almost always a good sign! If you feel more exposed than you like, that means you're moving in the right direction. Find a way to get more comfortable.

Romance is always awkward, isn't it? At least at the beginning. But is discomfort a sign of growth or that something is wrong? Are obstacles "omens" that you are going in the wrong direction and you should try doing something else or are they merely barriers in your path that you need to overcome? It's a question that has haunted me for quite some time and I'm still not sure of whether there exists an answer to this question.

Embrace discomfort...sez who?

I was looking around the house for something to inspire me to write and I found a Word document I had created by cutting and pasting an article from the Internet...here is the section that grabbed me initially when I saw the article in a magazine:

Embrace discomfort—at least temporarily.
Change is hard, but perpetual dissatisfaction is no picnic either. "You won't make any real progress unless you're willing to be temporarily uncomfortable," says Robert Leahy, PhD, a clinical professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and author of The Worry Cure. "Taking one step backward from your easy life is the first step forward." You may even learn that what you thought would be excruciating (putting your house up for sale, having a one-on-one with your boss or partner) isn't nearly as unpleasant as you thought. http://www.prevention.com/cda/article/make-this-your-year/b7f068f271903110VgnVCM10000013281eac____/weight.loss/strategies.for.success/diet.basics/0/0/1

This is so true of me--I try to avoid anxiety by delaying uncomfortable activities or decisions--but writing a simple blog entry became this early morning quest to find the authorship of this quote. I didn't identify the source on my Word document so I did a Google and Yahoo search for "embrace discomfort", looked through 250 options they listed; went on to at least a dozen quotation websites, searching for any quotes using the words "embrace" and "discomfort"; I even went to some Bible sites after thinking it might be some quote from Paul but no luck.

No one takes credit for putting these two words together but it was interesting to see who uses the expression:

1. Self-help websites
2. Yoga websites
3. Business/Motivational websites
4. Exercise/Sport websites
5. Health websites
6. Ecological websites
7. Christian websites
   

So, the expression has expanded to beyond what how I initially understood the term to now include all forms of change in ones physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual life, ones business practices or ones lifestyle. It now refers to any aspect of our life that we are seeking to change whether it is altering ones corporate culture or sales methods, changing how or where we shop, losing weight, getting in shape to run a marathon, learning to love our neighbor, pushing through the pain to achieve a yoga position, or starting to date again after a divorce.

It's fascinating to me that somewhere, at some point, some unknown minister, self-help guru, or motivational speaker put these two words together and created an entire philosophy that covers all aspects of ones personal and professional life. How does that happen? It's refreshing in this day and age that a phrase can be popularized like that without someone "branding" or trademarking it.

I never did find the source of this quote listed above until I went back to my original document and did a search for a more obscure term (the last name of one of the authors cited). It turns out that the original piece was from Prevention magazine at the beginning of the year and came from a series of articles about making changes in ones life (link included).

My search for inspiration ended up becoming a futile search for an author and it is somehow comforting to me that there are some newer expressions or sayings that we can still say were written by "Anonymous".

Choppers

I just got home from a 3 hour dental appointment....my 12th in 5 months. It's been hard to bear. I hadn't seen a dentist for at least a decade and I avoided them because I'm on a fixed income and I have no health insurance.

But a friend told me about a local dental school that I could go to that had a sliding scale and student doctors with professional supervision. It took a lot of phone calls to actually set up an appointment but I got evaluated and was pleased and surprised to find I had no problems at all (lucky I have good genes), but there was such this minor, optional, elective procedure I could undergo that might prevent a tooth from cracking in the future. But it was up to me. I went for it, mainly because I could actually afford their rates and because it was a teaching hospital and there were dozens of professional dentists around to advise in case my student doctor ran into complications.

Well, here I am, 5 months later and what was supposed to take 3 visits has taken 12 and they told me to plan on at least 2 more...and the visits last between 3 and 3 1/2 hours. It hasn't been torture (they have great painkillers now) but it has been tedious, tiresome and frustrating. And there is no one I can even get mad at about it all!

My student doctor is a sweetheart, young, eager, well-intentioned, and a bit of a perfectionist. But "things", I've continually been told, didn't go as planned. Unforeseen consequences. What they thought would work, didn't work, so they had to start from scratch with another procedure, then ran into problems with that one, etc. etc. It's been an exercise in patience and it makes me wonder how people cope with dialysis or chemotherapy, those uncomfortable and timeconsuming procedures people undergo which can actually save your life. What a trial that must be...I think it would either build my character or leave me a bitter woman!

I guess what I'm left with from this experience is that being well-intentioned might make you a nice person but isn't an integral ingredient to success. They are not opposed to each other (you can be both well-intentioned and successful), but being well-intentioned just isn't enough when you are trying to accomplish something (do a medical procedure, right a wrong, build a career, write a frickin' dissertation, etc.). It's best to try to mesh your good intentions with knowledge, experience, and the drive to reach your goal in a timely fashion, whatever that may be (get this damn tooth crowned) or however long you consider to be timely (last November).

Perspectives

I think you can tell a lot about how a person looks at the world and other people by how they would answer the following two questions:

1) Do you think people are inherently good (trustworthy) or evil (untrustworthy)?

2) Do you think the world is a place of order or of chaos?

So, of course, here's where I reveal what I think. I think people are basically good. Or, at least, I tend to trust people until they give me a reason to think otherwise. Perhaps I've been fortunate but I've had few people ever intentionally betray my trust or stab me in the back. I believe everyone has a shadow/dark side but I think most people are either ashamed of that part of themselves or they selectively express it and it doesn't define who they are. Or they have a skewed moral perspective and what they think of as evil or sinful are merely aspects of being a typical human being with weaknesses and faults.

As for the world, I tend towards theories of chaos rather than karma. Years ago, I had a close friend Phillip who had an attitude of providence or, basically, that the universe would provide for him when he needed things. And, remarkably, that was true for him...everything (jobs, love, money, success) seemed to come to him at the exact moment when he needed it. Not spectacular things or riches, but enough to provide him with a full life.

But my experience has been different...."sure things" fall apart...I fall for someone at the most inappropriate time, like when I'm moving to another state/city...people I know who are deserving suffer while those with little talent succeed...individuals get serious health problems when everything seems to be going well in their lives...I am born into a nation and family where I have enough to eat and a roof over my head while others are born into starvation and unstable environments. Life is clearly unfair.

The upside of chaos though is that you can receive blessings that are completely undeserved. I'm not sure that I would call it "luck" and I would never bet on a longshot winning the Triple Crown. But the most unlikely things happen, things that are unpredictable and unexpected and sometimes those things are wonderful and more beautiful than you ever imagined.

And therein lies the slim hope I have in my future. I think a certain amount of success comes through hard work but most of the course of my life has been completely out of my control and is never what I would have imagined or planned it to be. There have been more twists and curves than Lombard Street, some good, some very unpleasant. So rather than being an optimist or pessimist, I think I would call myself a realist...life is hard and unfair but people are generally good and the most amazing things can happen to you when you least expect them.

Here's hoping that something amazing and unpredictable happens to you today!

What do you cover?

I heard a public radio interview today with Kenji Yoshino, a Yale Law professor who has published a book called Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. He made some interesting statements about how people in U.S. culture are encouraged to "cover", to hide aspects of themselves that would make them stand out as different from mainstream culture, whether those differences are racial, sexual, ethnic, religious or just ones of personality (a man who hates sports, for example). Diversity is accepted and preached but we receive subtle but strong pressure to silence or not express those parts of us which are different enough to cause others to become uncomfortable (being blind, being gay, being poor, being a sexual victim, male or female, etc.). The one exception he mentioned is the marketplace...if some aspect of, for example, being black (rap) or being gay (Queer Eye) proves to be hip and popular, it is accepted and incorporated into the mainstream while other aspects which are not fashionable are discouraged or put down as strange and unacceptable.

Yoshino had larger issues to make about how this concept of covering influences civil rights legislation (behavior, not identity is regulated). It got me thinking though about how we all actively cover, really manage, what parts of ourselves we are willing to show to different people in different situations (Psych 101, right?).

But it connected with a quote I had read earlier today from an E.B. White essay, "The Second Tree from the Corner" (in a Ralph Keyes book about writing) where a man named Trexler goes to see a psychiatrist because his fears and anxieties are crippling him. The session has mixed success but Trexler feels a bit more free afterwards because he is "unembarrassed at being afraid; and in the jungle of his fear he glimpsed (as he had so often glimpsed them before) the flashy tail feathers of the bird courage." Keyes goes on to say that White was a beloved writer because he was "so willing to sail boldly into the squall of his own fears, commenting on the trip as he went" (1995:5).

Fear is so visceral. You break out into a sweat, you hyperventilate, your eyes dialate, your heart rate shoots through the roof, your muscles tense up, and your stomach does cartwheels. It pulses through your body. Meanwhile, your mind is actively scanning the physical, psychological, and verbal horizons for that one reliable source of relief: an escape!

The idea of not only being unembarrassed by our fears--not "covering" them--but to "sail boldly" into the midst of them, requires a courage that eludes me at the present moment. But it does inspire me to try to take a different approach to writing anxiety than the one that is my typical reflex--busying myself with something completely unimportant in comparison (cleaning, writing letters, playing Sudoku, um, writing in a blog). Something to muse about over the weekend...