Rhubarb Pie

What's Up With Me

Hi, friend. 

It's the end of the school year -- exam week.  Student appointments have dropped way off, although the level of anxiety in any particular appointment is much, much higher.  I have room to think about the year, how I do what I do and how I might be able to do it better next year. 

NBT and I had a friend date with a couple we don't know very well but we think might be promising pals.  It was so great that since then I've been feeling a little insecure.  Their life sparkles with creativity, art, projects, plans.  It left me a little less satisfied with our own life.

All I can really report that I've been doing faithfully is reading.  Thanks to my new index card system I don't have to rely on my memory to tell you what I've been reading.  It's a strange list, with chick lit books cheek by jowl with classics and dry nonfiction titles, but that's that.  Below is the list of books I've read in 2010, with any remarks I jotted down on the card.  Not listed in chronological order -- I haven't been dating the cards (should I?), just shoving them willy-nilly into the box. I'm torn between the desire to explain away some of the trashier books and just shrugging and saying, yep, I like trash.  I think that's the right choice.  I like trash.   

Thoughts About Books

I declared 2009 the Year of Planned Reading, but that was a failure too.  I didn't plan my reading, and what I did instead (set wildly ambitious goals, binge on armloads of books from the college library) just kind of set me up to feel like a failure.  I had a good reading year in 2009, but I completely failed at even the most basic thing: I didn't keep track of the books I read.  To tell you what I read I would have to rely on my memory, which we know to be lousy, and my interest in going back to recreate a list, which sounds really boring to me.  I read a lot of books, good and bad. I probably read more books last year than I have in previous years, but it would be impossible to confirm that, since I haven't been keeping track.   

So the Year of Planned Reading was mostly a bust.  But I did get a few things out of it, which are below.  I'm most excited about my new tracking system for 2010.    

2010: The Year of.....

There are a few things I will be focusing on in 2010.  I am happy in my home life and my work life, and I am getting back into a pattern of exercise that is starting to feel good again.  So my hope is that I can attend to other things without screwing any of that up.  

I've been thinking about Fun, as I wrote a little while ago.  I'd like to have More Fun in 2010.  I realized that I haven't quite learned what is fun for me at this stage of my life -- there are things I used to love doing, and some of them I might want to do more of, but some of them don't sound like fun right now (e.g. gathering a ton of friends to meet out at a bar, or come over to play games).  Those don't sound awful, but they aren't necessarily the best way for me to have fun at this stage of life.  On Christmas Eve some friends and I walked to the pond in the park in the center of town and went ice skating, and then came home for an afternoon of cooking and hot cider.  That was fun.  I think I can have more fun by taking more excursions, planning more adventures, participating in more pranks.  I think it's kind of fun to play cards with people.  When I sat down and thought about fun I thought about a few categories of fun: there's solo fun, couple fun, and fun with friends.  I think that in the late 30s "fun with friends" changes, so noticing how and when the different opportunities for fun show up will be something I pay more attention to this year.  "Couple fun" is tricky, too -- there's lots of contentment in cooking together and curling up with our books or a video, but that's not quite what I mean by "fun."  Ice skating, swing dancing, and walking a few blocks to see the Red Claws play: those seem like good bits of fun we can add, and I think paying more attention will yield more ideas.  And then there's solo fun.  It was really easy for me to identify what is fun for me by myself.  I like to take the dogs on rambly walks.  But the thing that immediately jumps out as the most fun thing I can spend my time doing is going to be the biggest focus of 2010: The Brain. 

The Year of the Brain (Comic Book).  What is really, really fun for me is to learn about the brain.  And the funnest way for me to learn something is to draw cartoons about the concepts and how they relate to one another.  When I thought about how I might have more fun the obvious answer was to spend the year learning as much as I can about the brain -- specifically, cognition and decision-making, and the systematic flaws or limitations that seem to be part of the way we process information and make meaning out of it.  What I care a lot about is how people make sense of the world and how they can make better decisions -- that's why I like the job I'm in right now, and that's what I am curious about when I read the books I read.  I am not sure if what I need is psychology or neuroscience or philosophy -- I've been checking books out of all three areas of the library.  When I'm further along on this project I think I'll have some better ideas about which field I'm most specifically interested in, but for now there's a lot of reading and drawing I need to do just to start asking the right questions.  I don't know or care right now whether anyone will ever want to read my comic book about how to use your brain better, but I know that learning enough to figure out what goes in it, and drawing the pictures to tell whatever story I've arrived at, will be the most fun I can have by myself.  I'm cheating by starting early, gobbling up lectures on DVD by a Vanderbilt neuroscientist.  Actually, I started on this years ago, in 1994 when I first read The Moral Animal.  But 2010 is the year I'm going to do it in a more specific, focused way.  (Want to see some pictures of what I'm talking about? Here you go.)

It's also going to be the Year of Using My Power For Good.  I hope it won't be the only year of that.  I spend a lot of time doing volunteer work of one sort or another, and I've been thinking about that, just as I've been thinking about Fun.  I want that time to be more meaningful than it has been so far.  I have a law degree, and a license to practice, so I've been going to the district court about once a month to help people get protection from abuse orders.  I'm not sure it's the best way for me to help, although I do think that, mostly, I've helped make something hard a little tiny bit easier for some people.  That feels good, but it's not as good as it could be if I were doing something slightly different with my time.  I have some ideas that might be a better use of my time and my brain and my law license, but I'm not quite sure how to make those things work yet.  I'm also on the board of a nonprofit that I started, with my dad, a long time ago.  I've been doing a lot to help that organization, but I'm still not sure I'm doing enough, or doing the right sorts of things.  Finally, at work, I think mostly what I do is useful, and if I can do it well I am helping some people who need it.  But I think there are ways I'm not using all of my power -- that sounds groovy, but I don't want to get more specific just yet.  I'm trying to think about how to be a better advocate for my students in particular, and for people looking for jobs more generally.  There are some charlatans out there, ready to prey on the confusion and insecurity of people who aren't sure whether or how they will get hired.  I don't like those folks very much, and I'm trying to figure out what my role in that landscape should be.  So this idea has a couple of components.  One is "Use My Power" -- by which I mean, the things that I do especially well, that are different than what other people offer, that make me feel fulfilled when I exercise them.  And the other is "For Good," by which I mean, well, to help the world in some way that feels meaningful.  I'm not sure what the scope of that kind of contribution should be.  Something that makes me different from you is that I seem to be blindedly devoted to individuals.  I can't think about groups or populations, at least not while retaining any passion or sense of purpose.  I'm not very capable of abstraction, even though I'm reasonably smart, and can fake being logical and rational pretty well if necessary.  I care about individuals, not groups.  I haven't figured out how to be efficient and effective and to make as broad a contribution as possible when that seems to be my mindset.  

 I need to sit down and review 2009, so we can all set our expectations about these goals appropriately low.  I didn't cure Crohn's disease, or read all of Shakespeare, or even do a very good job planning my reading.  But I have more to say about all of that, so I'll write that down in the next couple of days. 

Year of Planned Reading

Books I've Read In 2009:  (not counting Shakespeare)

Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, & Breaking Dawn -- Stephanie Meyer

Omnivore's Dilemma -- Michael Pollan

The Black Swan -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck

On Chesil Beach -- Ian McEwan

Restoring Your Digestive Health -- Jordan S. Rubin

The Physiology Coloring Book -- (only the digestion section) 

Breaking the Vicious Cycle -- Elaine Gottschal

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet Recipes -- R. Prasad

The Consciousness of the Litigator (1/2 read) -- D. Graham

A Concise History of Portland, Maine -- John B. Robinson

Against Happiness -- Eric Wilson

Speed Dating -- Nancy Warren

Holy Fools -- Joanne Harris 

Remember Me -- Sophie Kinsella

Certain Girls -- Jennifer Weiner 

Outliers -- Malcolm Gladwell

The Black Prince -- Iris Murdoch

Dark of the Moon -- John Sandford

(Of these, the best were the Black Swan, which I'm still thinking pretty hard about, and the combination of the Omnivore's Dilemma and the Grapes of Wrath, which have me thinking about the connection between labor and food and satisfaction.  The worst were Speed Dating, which was free on the Kindle but cost me a couple of hours that I'll never get back, and Against Happiness, which was a dumb argument against a straw man by an academic who thought he was being very clever, and Holy Fools, which was a mediocre book made bad by its contrast to my high expectations of it.) 

In progress now: 

White Teeth -- Zadie Smith

Here Comes Everybody -- Clay Shirky

On the nightstand and ready to go: 

Credit & Blame -- Tilly

The Book Thief -- Zusak 

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making -- Bazerman

The Feeling of What Happens -- Damasio (in progress)

After Virtue -- MacIntyre

The Watercooler Effect (1/2 read) 

The Tending Instinct -- Taylor

The Silent Language -- Hall

Self Improvement Update

Year of Shakespeare: no change.  I think this is twofold -- I am convinced it will not be very hard to read all of Shakespeare this year, and I needn't push it.  Also, I still don't have the right reading chair, and so I'm postponing Shakespeare until that chair is in place.  Everything else about my new reading nook is set up: the lighting is right, the bookshelf is right nearby, with the Shakespeare books stacked up neatly and a pile of index cards and some pens there within reach.  I even bought a chair at a used furniture store, but the narrow little steep staircase up to this garret room proved too tight for the chair, so I had to return it.  Soon.

Year of Planned Reading.  Hmmm.  I've been reading a lot.  A LOT.  More than in a long time.  But I'm not so sure about the Planned part.  I've gotten away from my disciplined preservation of daylight reading time.  I haven't stuck to the Plan -- I've been grabbing books opportunistically at the library, or ordering things on interlibrary loan and reading them ahead of others because of their due dates.  I've been fiddling around with my Kindle and reading different books on there than I would read in hardcover.  I've been doing a lot of reading related to the Year of the Cure, and some reading related to my job.  I should sit down and list what I've been reading, or even try to take a look at all the books I have checked out of the library right now and impose some intention on the pile.  Reading, yes.  Planned? Not so much.  In honor of my good intentions, I'm going to devote the next two hours to reading, as soon as I finish up this post.  

Year of the Cure. This is complicated.  I know a lot more than last time I wrote, because of all the reading I've been doing.  Maybe.  I certainly know more about the architecture of the small and large intestines, and the chemistry of digestion.  I'm not sure I understand it at a level that would let me make meaningful decisions.  I have some choices to make, and I have some misgivings about the different options.  I am not sure what my course of action should be.  I don't think I've found the right allies and advisors.  I don't know if it matters.  I think my disease is mild and will probably always be.  Maybe this shouldn't be my big fight.  Maybe medicating it and doing more interesting things is the right approach.  On the other hand, I have a Big Idea that I think might help lots of people.  Implementing it would take a huge amount of energy and some money and a lot of time.  This deserves its own post, which I will write a little bit later.  Another day, probably.  Tonight I need to read.  

Year of Planned Reading: Update

So the Year of Shakespeare got off to a good start but paused abruptly when we moved.  I blame the lack of a good sitting chair in my little reading space in the new house for lack of continued progress on that front.  Yes, it's a transparent and ridiculous excuse, but I'm going to stick with it for a while.  Year of Planned Reading has been a little better, though not without bumps.  I've been doing some unplanned reading -- after a couple of hard books I picked up some paperback detective novels my dad dropped off and tearing through those was a treat.  Then I got a Kindle, and went on an experimental spree of downloading all the free Kindle books I could find, plus buying ones in the Kindle store that struck my fancy.  And there are all these "12 Secrets To Landing Your Dream Job" type books that I feel compelled to read and evaluate for work.  (Most, you will not be surprised to learn, are bad.  But some are very good.)  So I've been reading a lot, though not in the disciplined way that I set out to do at the beginning of this year: according to a pre-determined list, for 3 hours on weekends, 2 hours on Wednesday nights, plus the usual bedtime reading. 

I'm hoping hoping hoping that now that we are pretty much moved in and we have sold our old house, I can turn my attention back to the Reading Plan.  Yesterday I came home from work with 10 books from the college library -- the three interlibrary loan books I'd gone in to get, plus 7 others that jumped out at me from the shelves and begged me to take them home.  I have reading time planned tonight, and my Sunday is blissfully open.  

Preliminary remarks on the Kindle: I love it.  It's better than a book because it contains many books at once, it's light, it contains the means of getting other books immediately.  Those things are reassuring and cool.  Having it with me means I have access to all books at once.  It is disarmingly, chillingly, efficient at purchasing new books.  Reading on it is slightly easier than reading a "real" book, because you can hold it with one hand and turn the pages with a click of your thumb, which sometimes you can't do with a larger real book.  But is it really better than a book?  Well, this pile of 10 books I brought home and plan to review this weekend are real books.  That means I can look over their dust jackets and covers, flip through the index, skim easily, jump to relevant chapters, and do that "inspectional reading" that Mr. Adler taught me is very important.  Some of the 10 books I brought home probably won't merit more than that level of reading.  If there's a way with the Kindle to quickly scan a book and assess the whole and its component parts, then jump around and skim sections, I haven't figured it out quite yet.  I will probably reserve the Kindle for reading fiction and shorter articles, and continue to use the library for nonfiction books, the better for skimming, skipping, and jumping around. 

What am I reading? Hmm. I just finished the first two Twilight books, on my Kindle, on which I also read a horrible (but free) romance novel.  Am partway through The Omnivore's Dilemma on the Kindle, and am already accepting that before I'm done I'm going to shop and eat differently. Just read a florid and overwritten book for book group, called Holy Fools, which you should not waste any time on.  Next month's book group selection is The Grapes of Wrath, which I have loaded onto my Kindle but haven't yet started to re-read -- I last read it in high school, so remember only a few scenes.  On my bedside table I have The Feeling of What Happensand After Virtue-- real books from the library, not Kindles.  In the bag I brought home from the library yesterday are 10 more books, the heavy old-fashioned kind.  My intent tonight and over the weekend is to skim and inspect these books pretty closely, to figure out which of them deserve to be closely read.  (If you have thoughts, and can save me the trouble on any of these, please email me to let me know.)  As usual, my curiosity about people and why we act the way we do is pretty transparent: 

 Tragedy and Hope

How Breakthroughs Happen

The Black Swan

A Great Idea At the Time

The Pleasure Center

The Tending Instinct

Nowtopia

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

Against Happiness

The Watercooler Effect

Nudge

I Did A Sneaky Thing To My Book Group This Weekend

I gave my book group a pop quiz.  It's never been done in the history of this book group, which is a long and storied group indeed, but they took to it quite well.  (Question 3 -- True or False: "There is a natural tribal hostility between the married and the unmarried.") We read The Black Prince, by Iris Murdoch.  It's a complicated book, and good, good, good.  But it's hard.  This is the biggest breakthrough I have had in my Year of Planned Reading. Knowing that I have plenty of time to read, I am less headlong and impatient about my reading.  It doesn't seem crazy to read a book twice.  In fact, it seems necessary. 

In How to Read a Book, Adler and Doren recommend that.  They say, read it through the first time to get the gist.  Skim it, really.  Notice what you understand and what you don't.  Then go through again and read it for real.  Your second reading will be better because you understand what the whole is, and you have a sense of what you missed in the first pass, so you can focus on that and incorporate it into the whole.  This makes so much sense!  I have been a lazy reader for a long time.  Lazy?  Well, more like, impatient, dashing through books and carrying away only my hasty impressions.  Worse, I have often blamed the author.  If an ending was ambiguous, or I didn't fully understand something, I blamed the author for being unclear, even though I hadn't done any work at all. 

Not that I'm fully reformed, yet.  But it is great to have permission to read a book twice.  They say that any book that's worthwhile is worth that attention, and of course, any book that isn't worthwhile, there's no harm in just skimming it and abandoning it after that cursory read.  It's starting to make sense, a more deliberate approach.

Anyway, Iris Murdoch has now been responsible for two complex, exciting, and mysterious books, and it's nice to know there is a whole shelf full of others that I've not yet read.  The Black Prince is a book I didn't understand when I closed the cover the first time.  I'm not sure I fully understand it now, although after writing the pop quiz and arguing about it with the supersmart ladies of my book group I am closer. 

Here's the pop quiz, in case you want to play along at home.  Nobody got a hundred, not even me. Download Book Group Pop Quiz 

My Projects Aren't As Visual As Yours

Here's what it looks like around here this morning.  Outdoors, snow -- the tiniest flakes, lots of them.  The kind that means business.  We're supposed to get 3 to 6 inches, which is enough to make me wonder whether the brunch I have scheduled in a couple of hours will happen, and whether my book group ladies will descend on the house at 1 as predicted.  3 to 6 inches is a tough forecast  It's not enough to be a Real Snowstorm, where everyone hunkers in and the power flickers.  But it's also enough of a nuisance to make driving difficult, to require shovelling, etc.  But to change plans? Not sure.

Indoors, it's all boxes and packing tape and no pictures on the walls, and me fretting. 

I would like to report that the Year of Planned Reading is going great.  I've kept my commitment to block 3 hours on Saturday afternoons and 2 hours on Wednesday nights, plus I've continued to read in other stolen moments around the week.  Do you know how much reading you can get done in a 3 hour block? It's a lot.  Do you know how much different it is to read in the middle of the day, when you're awake, in a sitting up position, instead of reclining in bed when you're already tired?  Whole different deal.  And don't get me started on the How To Read A Book book.  It's rocking my world. 

I had a false start last Saturday, my first three hour block.  I took myself to a coffee shop, because I thought it would be good for me to get out of the house.  That's when I realized just how long three hours is.  You can't sit in a coffee shop for three hours reading a book.  After one hour my mate was long finished and I felt like a weirdo.  I came home.  This week I just stayed home, and it was much better all around. 

2009: Year of __________

Wowsers.  2009: Year of Pregnancy for Megan.  I like it, very much.  If you leave the skate park and I stay there, we must do what we can to make sure we don't get tetchy with one another, or, on the contrary, overly effusive about how much we support the other's divergent choice.  I actually don't think that will be very hard, knowing you and me as I do.  Anyway, my 3 projects are not as ambitious as your one.  Nonetheless, I'm excited.

1) Year of Shakespeare.  I'm going to read all of Shakespeare this year.  I read Comedy of Errors this weekend, plus a bunch of sonnets.  Plus an editor's exposition on the sonnets, telling me what I should think about them.  Perhaps I won't do too much more of that sort of reading.  I'm halfway through As You Like It, and I can tell you I do like it, very much.  I have more to say about the Shakespeare project, and about the Shakespeare I'm reading, but I'll do that in other posts. 

2) Year of Planned Reading.  I'm much more excited about this than I am about the Shakespeare project, although it is odder and less specific and more dorky than the Shakespeare project.  It sprung from the Shakespeare idea, because I have no real idea how to go about reading all of Shakespeare and started considering how to do it well -- what order, which editions, should I read critical essays or not, and if so, before, during, or after the original works??  Also, how long will this take, and when will I do it?  So I had to think about a plan for my reading, which otherwise just sort of happens before bed or stolen moments of unplanned time.  And then I got excited.  What if I actually PLAN to read, and block off time for my reading goals, and progress through my booklists with some order and some discipline instead of picking up books whimsically?  This is related to my intensifying interest in brains and psychology and neuroscience and philosophy -- whatever field it turns out to be that I've been hacking away at with undiminished curiosity for the last 10 years.  This year I will give my interest a little more respect, and make room for it to flourish.  I have a lot more to say about the Year of Planned Reading, but I'll save it for another post.  Well, I'll just say a few quick things.  Some components include: 5 hours blocked for reading per week, in addition to bedtime reading and stolen moments reading.  3 hours on Saturday afternoons, 2 hours on Wednesdays (or perhaps a different weeknight, depending on the other events of the week).  Also, I am plotting to buy a Kindle, which I've been coveting for almost a year.  And, I just checked this book out of the library, and even as musty and brown and dull as the cover is, even though it's library due date stamp indicates that I am the only person ever to check it out of the library, I can't wait to get home and read it.  I am stoked about this project.  I'm in a book group, and that's the only intentional and deliberate reading I've done.  Everything else has been haphazard.  This will be a big, big change.   

3) Year of the Definitive Cure.  I have ulcerative colitis, which is generally unsymptomatic and occasionally rises to the level of a mild nuisance.  Medicine generally keeps it in remission, but I have decided that's not enough, and I want a Definitive Cure.  Interestingly, I called today to make an appointment with my gastroenterologist.  I like him a lot, and was looking forward to telling him about the big plans I have for us.  I was told that he'd left the practice, with no plans to continue practicing medicine.  Hmmm.  So, I have no idea yet how the Year of the Definitive Cure is going to unfold.