Stop and think 12 March 2008

Wow.
I’m not even sure how to put this post together.

Came home around 11:00 p.m., after another almost 12-hour workday. (I’m blessed to have a job that offers me flexible hours, free tuition, 2 months off in the summer, unique experiences, fun people, etc. BUT when things are busy, things are BUSY.) I still have some homework to do, still owe a handful of people phone calls, but am too drained. I hop on the internet to check e-mail one last time. There’s one from an old Missouri Scholars Academy friend, sent to next year’s staff, sharing a Chronicle article on the busy lives of modern students. It garnered a few interesting responses today, so I decided to read it.

Here’s the title: Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students’ spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable
by Mark Edmunson

“Dwell in Possibility”…sound familiar?
(I live for this sort of coincidence and connection, so I’m in. Do your worst, article. I’m listening.)

(PS–I didn’t notice the author’s name until I got to the end, and realized that Mark Edmunson wrote one of the best books I read last year, Why Read?)

The article’s not a short blip. It forces you to stop and think. But that’s the point.

He profiles a typical student of this generation (I’ll include myself in it, though I’m 2 years out…): Always plugged in, always seeking multiple options. He calls us “enemies of closure”, something that—for better or worse—describes me.

“My students are possibility junkies,” he says. Ever-present technology in our lives keeps us from ever being fully present. We’re 8 places at once on the internet. We’re creating our own individual soundtrack with our iPods. We’re texting someone who’s in the next room. Sending a facebook message to someone 500 miles away.

He compares us to Lord Byron (a figure I remember from my senior honors research, described by many as manic-depressive), saying Byron would love this generation’s “fast travel, fast communication, fast relationships”.
(interesting sidenote: “Byron claimed to compose best on horseback”… and I’ve known for years I sometimes get my best ideas when driving. Comparing myself with mad genius? Maybe a little.)

Funny, this entry has started to feel like an assignment—in the best possible way. This is the kind of thought I miss. The kind I often don’t have time for.

Hm. I don’t know if I made any of the points I meant to. It’s after midnight. I’m too tired to edit.

(But I feel like something is telling me to slow down.)

“Society has a great span of resources to assist someone in doing what he’s not cut out for yet still must be done.[...]But life is more than spontaneity and whim. To live well, we must sometimes stop and think, and then try to remake the work in progress that we currently are.”

March comes in like woah 9 March 2008

Forget Lions or Lambs, y’all. The month’s just a week old, but it’s already been full. Like woah.

Not a good time to lose an hour. I already don’t have enough time for the many obligations, projects, and deadlines that work, 2 classes, countless creative aspirations, and everyday busy-ness add to my to-do list.

And the blog. It just sits here. Day after day. I have ideas, lots of them, but I think I’m not sure which direction I want the blog to go right now… (At the risk of drawing an overwrought and overly-bloggy comparison: kind of like my life.) After spending yesterday thinking/talking/imagining the creative life (at the Self Employment in the Arts conference and at the Skinny show), I’m convinced (as always) that I want to live a creative life. Trouble is I love the idea of being a columnist, designing greeting cards, performing, writing a book, blogging, being a comedian, being crafty / craftivism, studying literature, teaching writing…and those are just my creative aspirations. I have others.

Spent some time rereading recent posts, and going through my browser bookmarks folder titled “creating! fun!” just trying to find some direction, something to focus on in this post that is long overdue. I found two things worth mentioning:

1) In my movie year-in-review I called The Diving Bell and The Butterfly “inspiring, hilarious, beautiful”, and realize now how this might seem a little inappropriate. Hilarious? Locked-in syndrome is a knee-slapper? What kind of freak are you? But Jean-Dominique Bauby IS hilarious, in spite of his bleak, depressing, unimaginable circumstances. (that’s where the “inspiring, beautiful” part comes in.)
I also totally forgot to mention Hot Fuzz, one of the most fun movies of the year.

2) I rediscovered this article I’d bookmarked: “Creative People Are More Distractable” Ain’t that the truth! I can’t get my brain to take a break.

So with tons of things on my to-do list, and even more on my mind, one thing I’m going to do is go outside and run. I don’t particularly feel like running today, but it feels like spring outside, and I feel stressed, so I know that running will make me feel better.

FYI: The race was 99 days ago. (At the risk of sounding overly-bloggy once more: OMG.)

What a Lentdown 19 February 2008

Sad story: the title of this post is probably the most creative thing I’ve written all week.

(Probably not true. I’ve written a lot in recent days, in e-mails to myself, on napkins (believe the cliche!), in my notebook that’s always with me, in random notepad files I open on my mac desktop in hopes someday they’ll develop into something more than notes…)

But who has the TIME to complete anything?!  ADULT life is so much busier than I ever imagined. (I remember reading articles in Mom’s “mom magazines”* about scheduling time to pluck eyebrows, pay bills. It seemed so silly to my little-kid self, who had nothing better to do than go to school and develop elaborate social lives for her toys. And oh the books I could read! The time to doodle!) I’m even writing this at my desk, still at work.

I have, in the midst of the busy, set another BIG GOAL for myself. And I feel that making it public will make me stick with it.  I’m taking Creative Writing II: Nonfiction this semester, and we’ve read some essays out of Brevity, a journal of short-short nonfiction.  I am going to submit something this semester, and be a true (term I’ve stolen from the Brevity page) “nonfictionist”. 

Delicious new goal. I’m excited. Maybe I’ll submit 13.1.

 …

*A “mom magazine” is a publication that can be purchased at a Wal-Mart checkout counter, which features–among other things–photos of seasonally themed cupcakes and tips on sensible handbag purchases, appealing to moms everywhere.  See: Woman’s Day, Woman’s World, Family Circle.