anger, part one

I've been sick this week-- not deathly ill, just viral yuckiness. I did finally get a covid test yesterday, which came back negative today, so at least it isn't that. But I spent an outsize amount of time sleeping and sitting on the couch, and not enough time thinking about what I wanted to write this week. So I'm pulling this one out of the drafts folder at 11pm on Thursday night, even though I'm not sure exactly where it's going. If I ever get around to writing part 2, we can both find out.

I've been thinking about anger, lots. Both thinking about it and also feeling lots of anger. I'm angry about so many things right now-- social injustices, lack of change, anti-vaxxers, corporations who are making millions off lies and "misinformation," things in my personal life, and of course there's always the hulking, looming shadow of the pandemic in the background. 

How can you be angry about a pandemic? It's completely out of my individual control, although of course I'm doing my part to stop the spread, and it's no one's fault. What a waste of energy, to be mad about a virus. It's just out there, doing what viruses do. And yet, I am mad about it. I'm mad that I haven't been able to travel freely in two years, I'm mad about events that have been canceled and plans that have had to be changed, social occasions that didn't happen, community groups that have acrimoniously split over covid arguments-- it just goes on and on. 

What to do with all this anger? Where to direct it? I don't know. I'm working on it. Maybe I'll have answers in part 2, but probably not. The thing I've been thinking about this week, though, is the frequent disconnect between anger and having a spiritual life.

Having a spiritual life is an integral part of feeling healthy for me, but it's hard to find a spiritual "path" (sorry, I know it's a cliché) that makes room for anger. Being "spiritual" is supposed to be the same thing as being calm and serene, right? It's supposed to be about floating through life on a fluffy cloud of unwavering trust that God is in charge (if you're theist), or peacefully (smugly) observing the crazy swirl of emotions and over-reactions of the less spiritual (if you're not). 

And that's just not going to work for me right now. Maybe it is because I'm immature and unevolved. But a spiritual life that's founded on dishonesty is hardly worth the effort, not to mention that it's pretty much the definition of hypocrisy. And if I pretend I'm not mad, or frustrated, or even sometimes despairing, I'm lying. I want to believe spirituality is about being real, being grounded in myself, in authenticity (hmmm, lots of buzzwords there). 

Maybe it's because traditionally, spirituality has been connected with various religious paths, and institutionalized religion has a vested interest in keeping its people wrapped in cotton wool, not asking questions, and not thinking about the ways you're being coached into supporting the status quo. 

No. I want a spiritual path that can deal with my anger. I want to be set free to feel what I feel rather than herded into following along. And that's complicated to figure out, because of course acting blindly out of uncontrolled rage isn't a great idea, either. I'm having a hard time right now untangling the beauty of a fully-present life, a life that includes anger and fear and jealousy and pain as well as joy and peace, from my own preconception of what a spiritual person should be like. And a spiritual person doesn't get angry??? That can't be right. 

Huh. That's where the draft post ended. No wonder I hadn't published it yet, because it's like half a thought. It may not even have made much sense. But maybe you will grant me a little leeway since I'm still feeling a bit sickly and I will try to explain better in part 2. 

In other news, one of the things that made me angry this week was watching women my age chase after youth. Give it up. Good grief. Why the hell do we care if a 16-year-old thinks skinny jeans have gone out of style? Why do we want to look like we're 35 again? (well, OK, you got me there.) but since it's not possible, why are we wasting time and money chasing after something we can't have?

Which is one of the reasons I post the nostalgia listens. It's a way of celebrating the things we know, the things we've experienced, that those teenagers haven't and never will. They do not know what it was like to hear "Sweet Baby James" when it was brand new, or "I Just Called to Say I Love You," or "I'll Take You There." And we do. So there. (We're also super mature. ha.) I'm adding links to those songs and they can be this week's nostalgia listens.

Twitterpated, part one

Like most of us who use social media, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I've written about this plenty before, it's not a new topic. My goal has been to "get a handle on" my usage, learn how to steel myself against the addictive qualities of The Scroll, and have a healthier relationship with my phone. Um, yeah. 

In the meantime, while I was figuring out how to be a Social Media Superwoman, I fell into a pattern. I would find myself doom-scrolling Twitter at 11pm, unable to stop. So I would delete it. For a few days, it would be such a relief. Then for a few days, I would miss the interaction, but not much. Then after a few more days, I would re-install the app, and think, why did I delete this? It's so much fun! I love these people! And for a week or two, I would healthily manage my social media interactions and everything would be great. And then after a few more days, I'd be doom-scrolling at midnight again. Repeat.

A few weeks ago it occurred to me, wait, maybe this is the way I healthily manage social media. I don't have to be all-in, I don't have to be all-out. I don't have to figure out what way smarter, more savvy people than me have been unable to figure out (how to resist the addictive qualities of The Scroll, which are purposely programmed in by evil geniuses). Maybe if I reframe the way I think about the cycle, this is how I do it.

So I've been through it a couple more times, and you know what? It works pretty well. I use my social media apps (mainly Twitter), making judicious use of iOS 15's productivity features (more about that another time). When I get to the point where it feels unhealthy, I delete it for a few days or a week. When I start to miss it, I reinstall it and start over. It doesn't seem right to manage it that way-- it seems like I should totally conquer my unhealthy habits, or if I can't, I should abstain 100%. And maybe that's the way it works for some people, and maybe that's the way it will work for me at some later date. But for now, this is the way I "manage" my social media. 

This was going to be a lot longer, but I'm out of time, and I always say I'm going to start writing shorter posts, right? So here you go. A short one. 

p.s. I remember my mom used to use the word "twitterpated," but I had no idea where it came from until I just googled. It is a song from the old Disney movie Bambi. Who knew? And since I didn't, that can't be this week's nostalgia listen, so hmmm.

OK, this week's nostalgia listen: "Jazzman" by Carole King. Listen here. She is a goddess. For extra amazingness, click here for "So Far Away." I wonder if I could find my Tapestry CD.

post-Beatles Beatlemania

If you were born in the fifties or early sixties, and you haven't watched Get Back: The Beatles yet, put it on your must-watch list. It's tedious at times, sometimes for long stretches of time, and we've fast forwarded over, um, a bit of it. But mostly it's fascinating. 

I will confess I was never a huge Beatles fan, at least partly because believe it or not, I was a bit young for Beatlemania--I was eight when they split up. But their music was everywhere in the sixties, the playlist of my childhood. They were so much a part of pop culture that everyone knew who John, Paul, George, and Ringo were. 

But it turns out, they--the four Beatles-- aren't who I expected them to be. Watching them interact with Linda's daughter Heather is just sweet, there's no other word for it. And I've always thought that John was sort of self-consciously art-y and pretentious, so that if I'd known them, I would have been more on Paul's side. But if I'd had to listen to Paul's long-winded, half-whiny lectures for ten years, I'd have wanted to exit stage left, too. Immediately. Good lord. 

Interestingly, even though he's easily the one who talks the most, he rarely wins out-- witness his long argument about why they shouldn't do a rooftop concert (ha). And however arty and avant-garde John and Yoko were, John is also kind of hilarious. He's the one who's always goofing around, trying to lighten the mood.

Watching them work, you wonder that they ever got anything done, they spend so much time clowning around and goofing off and trying this and trying that. It's probably exactly the way musicians write songs, I've just never watched it happen. You can tell that the whole enterprise is frequently in danger of completely coming apart (and it did, a year later, but this is not the last album they recorded--that would be Abbey Road-- even though it was the last to be released, so they lasted through at least one more set of studio sessions). But you can also tell that they are deeply, deeply embedded in each other's lives, the irritating teenage best friends that you can't quite live without.

When they're working on one of their iconic songs and they don't have the words or the melody quite right yet, you want to yell at the screen, No, you dummies!! That's not how it goes!! It's "attracts me like no other lover," not "attracts me like a cauliflower" (granted they're joking around with the cauliflower but they haven't yet come up with the words we all know by heart, and it seems like it should be so obvious). 

And then suddenly they get it "right," i.e., the way we know it's supposed to go, and it's like the finicky car engine you've been fiddling around with for days suddenly starts up and runs smoothly. I confess, I've been a bit obsessed. In case you couldn't tell.

Get Back is only on Disney+ right now but I suppose eventually it will be released more widely.

the right write

For a very long time, when I was in college and into my twenties and thirties, I thought My Destiny was to be a novelist. I like to write, and I love to read novels, and I was convinced that meant that I should be a novelist.

But two things happened to change that. One was that I discovered that I hated writing fiction. I sit down to write a blog post with a fair amount of enjoyment, but writing fiction never, ever felt like anything other than having my fingernails pulled out one by one, or whatever other form of medieval torture you want to imagine here.

The other thing that happened was that I read two or three novels that were the kind of thing that I dreamed of writing, but were far better than anything I had ever managed to produce. I don't even remember what they were at this late date, but I remember several times putting a novel aside with a sigh of satisfaction/admiration/envy and thinking, No one needs me to do this because other people are already doing it better than I ever could. Who needs another coming of age novel by a middle class straight white woman who loves to read?

Then I had kids, and writing became something I only did in emails and book reviews and contributions to the comments of various forums. It wasn't until our younger child was in elementary school that I started writing again. At that point, I was still trying to write a novel, but I never made it past thirty or forty thousand words during National Novel Writing Month, and the rest of the year, all I felt was relief that I wasn't trying to write a novel. 

I started a blog in 2003 (several iterations back from the one you're reading now), and for a long time, that was enough to keep me happy, because whatever else I can or can't do, I do love to write. 

But I sometimes wish I'd had the grit and determination to actually commit to a big, publishable writing project, whether fiction or non, and stick with it to the end. I tried again last summer, but I don't think I ever made it past about 5,000 words. 

It's hard to know exactly how to interpret this. Our culture, especially the writing subculture, is so full of easy wisdom that assures you that you can do whatever you want to do, that all you need to succeed is the previously mentioned grit and determination, all you have to do is believe in yourself and keep trying and you'll succeed.

Seriously, at least three times in the past year I've seen tearfully joyful Instagram posts from first-time authors, sobbing, I've been dreaming of this since I was ten! All of you out there who are dreaming of publishing your first book, I'm proof that you can do it! Just keep writing! And yet, not everyone gets published. Not everyone has the writing chops, or the of-the-moment thing to say, or the built-in audience from podcasting or blogging or social media followers. 

I know that sounds like sour grapes, and you're absolutely right, it is. But my point isn't to whine (even though I am), but to state the obvious dilemma: is it really just not "meant to be"? should I stop even thinking about trying to write a book-length project? or have I not tried hard enough, persevered long enough, worked my ass off long enough?

There were another three paragraphs along these lines, which I have no deleted, because they were boring. You get the message. What the hell am I doing here.

I'm working my way through the half-written posts in my Drafts folder. Who knows what will be next. Have a great weekend.

Start by Giving a Crap. (Right.)

At some point last fall, I think it was in October when covid numbers were dramatically spiking here locally, some inner part of me threw up her hands and said I'm done. I was past the point of caring, past the point of wanting to waste my mental energy worrying and/or arguing with the idiots. Just done.

But the thing about a pandemic is that it isn't done when we want it to be done. It's done when it has run its course, and apparently covid-19 isn't done with us yet. And of course there's all kinds of medical people (including two right here in my house) who don't have the option of shutting down. They're still right there in it. 

After getting several unrelated nudges from the universe this week, though, I'm coming around. I can't stay checked out forever. As my Ten Percent Happier meditation said on Monday--in a somewhat different context-- start by giving a crap. Damn it.

So here we still are. And I'm sorting through exactly what I'm going to care about and what I'm not.

In other news, since I just checked, I can tell you with confidence that I have THIRTY-ONE half-written posts in my Drafts folder. Maybe one way of caring would be to start posting again. 

In the meantime, here is my list of my favorite books I read in 2021. Other than Deacon King Kong being my favorite, they are in no particular order.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Everything I read by Martha Wells (especially the Murderbot Diaries)
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K.Jemisin
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

Honorable Mention: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, King and the Dragonflies, Craft in the Real World, Hamnet, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Under the Whispering Door, Project Hail Mary, Assassination Vacation.

This week's nostalgia listen: Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again"

OMG you have to watch the video. Did we ALL HAVE THE SAME HAIR? My hair has never in my life been that long but I sure had the perm.

Palate cleanser: try this one (song starts at 2:54) (pass the carrots, please)(but they still have the hair)