Musings

I was going through some old photos the other day and came upon a picture that made me do a double take. It was a picture of me about 10 years ago, probably, and I was really overweight (in a masterful twist of fate, the picture shows me standing with my fridge door open – go fig). The main thing that struck me was just how incredibly overweight I was. In part, it struck me because of how far I’ve come -I can definitely tell the difference – but there’s also the inexplicable fact that at the time, I had no idea I had gained so much weight.

How can that be, you might well ask. I am not really sure. I knew that I wasn’t doing a lot to help myself out. Long hours in grad school and a very nearby coffee shop that served cafe mochas were part of the problem. I didn’t exercise – walking was a pretty big deal for me back then (as in, “I walked, therefore I can have more bad food”). But I didn’t really see that I was getting out of control.

I find that rather worrisome. But I think this happens to everybody in one way or another. Some people might gain a lot of weight. Some people might go within themselves and stop reaching out to people. Some people might hurt themselves. Sometimes, when you get really stuck in your own head, the world can become very small and every event can become very very large. It’s easy to lose track of how many cookies you’ve had or how long it’s been since you’ve eaten.

Recover and forgive yourself

It would be really easy for me to look back at the person I was 10 years ago and be furious. “Why did you eat at Wendy’s so much?” “Why didn’t you exercise when your big plans for the day included “take 30-minute nap?” I could go on and on. I could be really hard on the me of a decade ago. But in the end, looking back and yelling at our old selves doesn’t really make us feel better about ourselves today. Really, it’s picking the scab off of the old wounds that brought us to that point.

There was a lot going on with me ten years ago. Academically, health-wise, life-wise…it was a tough time. I had a $10 budget for grocery shopping every week for awhile there. So, while I could have made better choices, and while I know those better choices *now,* I have to cut myself some slack. I have to remember what it was like to be that person at that time, and I have to realize how much I’ve changed.

I bet if you are thinking about a time when you weren’t happy with yourself, or if you aren’t happy with yourself now, that you could find reasons to forgive yourself. Understand, this is not the same as making excuses. Bad decisions are bad decisions. But sometimes life gives us a little more than we are comfortable with and we need to learn to walk and breathe and live and shift with that new burden that can be so hard to wrap our arms around.

Take hope

If you are not happy with yourself now, as I was not too happy ten years ago, take heart. Take hope. Ten years later, I am still not where I want to be, but boy am I working hard. Every day I try to make a move to get myself to that place I’m shooting for. Some days are more victorious than others, but I keep plowing ahead. I keep taking pictures in the now, and they wipe out that picture from the past. If I can do that, I know you can too.

The first step is to not beat yourself up. The second step is to forgive yourself. And the third step – the third step is to start working the problem. Seek help. Be honest with yourself. Try to take a baby step every day moving forward.

In retrospect, I’m glad I found that picture. It is good to remember where you’ve come from just as it’s good to remember where you’re going.

Don’t lose track of where you’re going. Don’t lose hope. And don’t give up.

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When I was in, oh, I guess about eighth grade, my language arts class went through a real Greek Tragedy period (great for pre-pubescent kids, right?). We read Oedipus and Antigone and all those great gory Greek stories with people popping their eyes out and missing riddles and signs and all that jazz. One of the words that kept coming up (because in eighth grade you can’t learn a word just once) was hubris. It was pretty much the undoing of every character that got undone. “Blinded by the Pride” might have been a huge hit single during this time period.

Of course, philosophers have mused about hubris for as long as they’ve been philosophizing. Where is the line between confidence and arrogance? Where is the line between proven accomplishments and well, hubris?

The unsinkable ship

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The real Titanic, not the one that Leo and Cate were on. In a lot of ways, the Titanic was a sort of a 20th century Tower of Babel. It was going to be the biggest. It was going to be indestructible. And even a few classes of society were going to be sort of almost mixed together on this sailing island of paradise. The builders in Belfast and the White Star Line cruise company were over the top with pride. Of course, this proved to be not only their undoing but the undoing of 1,500 people. The Tower of Babel turned out to be more like the explosion of the two towers on 9/11. Nothing proved to be unsinkable. Except human pride, of course.

James Cameron’s “final word”

As part of the Titanic anniversary, National Geographic has been airing a show titled something along the lines of “The Titanic: James Cameron’s final word.” The concept of the show is pretty interesting on the surface. Cameron has gathered all sorts of historical and naval experts to try to piece together exactly how the Titanic split in two and sank to the sea. Why is the stern folded over like a taco and facing the opposite direction from the bow? Why is that boiler way over there? Neat stuff like that. But almost from the beginning, Cameron seems to be a man marked by hubris. First, he notes that in order to make his film, he went on down to “dive the crash site,” as if this is something just any ole person could do. But throughout the show, you see Cameron arguing science and naval history with people who have dedicated their careers to this, and you realize too that Cameron is not REALLY trying to solve the mystery of the ship’s demise. He’s trying to figure out just how accurate his movie was. There’s a little scene from the shooting of his movie where someone tells him something should be shifted to make it more realistic and Cameron quips, “Yeah, well, I’m going to keep it that way so my movie is actually dramatic.”

Hubris. Yucky every time.

As I reported these observations to my Facebook friends and while I was agonizing over whether Cameron should be admired or criticized, a buddy of mine said, “I think maybe his butt has been kissed too much.” I think that’s probably pretty accurate. Then I got to thinking, “I wonder if that’s the case in the online world too.”

The construction of online hubris

I’ve been helping out a new blogger here and there and it’s funny to watch the process that I went through via this prism of another person’s experience. This person is monitoring their traffic every day, practically, just like I did. When they get a comment they are so excited. Sometimes they report their traffic doubled from the day before. “I could get used to that!” They tell me.

Indeed.

It’s pretty hard not to feel like you’re getting your butt kissed here in the online world. You have pictures of yourself plastered all over the place. All of these sites ask you what’s on your mind. Look at this site here. I can write some words and then people not only respond, but they share it! Holy smokes. One can get a big head pretty quickly that way.

Is your butt getting kissed too much?

I think perhaps some people get a little too carried away with it. For example, I feel sometimes like people with big followings on Twitter feel like just mentioning someone is a great act of charity. After all, them saying your name means some 500,000 people are seeing your name, right? I always picture the recipient tweeter bowing down and saying, “Oh…thank you for mentioning me! Thank you!”

It’s kind of creepy.

I find myself wondering if this is why a lot of people online end up talking or writing about things that they really don’t know, just like James Cameron trying to explain history to two different historians (“I mean, that is history, right?”). If you’re not an experienced marketer, why are you talking about marketing as if you’re an expert? If you don’t know much about how to motivate others, why are you calling yourself a life coach?

How can online hubris lead to your undoing? You can end up saying something really wrong and you can get called on it. You can discover that maybe people don’t REALLY think you’re so great. Your belief that you are now above basic human manners can result in you losing touch with people who really did think you were neat. It can backfire in all sorts of ways (though hopefully not in the eye-poking sort of way).

Having big online followings can be a lot of fun. It can be an ego boost. But all I have to do is mention some big accomplishment of mine to a friend not involved in this world to get myself grounded again. I can’t tell if it’s the puzzled deer in the headlights kind of look or the rolling of the eyes, but I just get the sense that most people simply do. not. care. You should remember that too, as you roll along in this heady online world. You are not unsinkable. Hubris can really weigh you down. That’s a combination to be wary of.

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I was poking around YouTube the other day trying to find a film Jim Henson had done before he became famous for his muppets (you’d probably never guess it was the same guy if you didn’t know his background). Instead of finding that, I found something entirely different and unexpected, as so often happens when you are innocently surfing the web. I found Frank Oz’s eulogy of Jim Henson from Henson’s funeral.

It’s worth a watch – it’s perhaps the most amazing eulogy I’ve ever seen. What I like about it is that Oz bases his words around one simple act that Jim Henson did – a gift that Jim put together for Frank one Christmas. But just as Jim Henson dissected the character of Bert, Frank Oz used this present to dissect the character of Jim Henson. Oz described Henson’s love of layers and detail, his excitement at giving gifts to people, his utter enjoyment in slaving away on something for someone he cared about.

Frank Oz used his eulogy to illustrate how a gift from a long time ago had shown him how much Jim Henson had loved him, and in saying that, you can tell that Frank Oz took that as the highest of honors. It’s everything a eulogy should be.

I found myself wondering though, as I listened, whether Frank Oz had ever mentioned these amazing observations to his friend. Did Jim Henson know that this gift had made such an impression? Did he know that the gift had touched Frank Oz’s heart?

Eulogies are kind of selfish

I have decided that eulogies are sort of silly. They really are not for the person who has left us. They’re for us. So often you hear people say things like, “I wish I had told that person xyz,” or “I never told that person how much I care.” You are really saying those words to lift the burden from your own soul. Which is fine. But I keep wondering if there isn’t a better way to go. I keep wondering if there’s a way, an easy way, to interweave eulogies into the land of the living.

Ew, that’s awkward!

Of course, we say things in eulogies that may not be easy to say to a person face-to-face in real life. “I really appreciate you,” “I love you,” things like that. People tend to shy away from these heartfelt sentiments cuz ya know, it makes ya look kind of mushy. A lot of foot shuffling happens. Some jokes may lighten the touch of these heavy words of gratitude. It’s just not an easy thing for us to do for some reason.

So, I keep thinking of a scene from The Wire, where a cop who is retiring has a “wake.” He is lying there in an open casket and all of his co-workers are eulogizing him, and he isn’t allowed (technically) to say anything. It got me to thinking, maybe we could introduce something like that into our poor depraved society. Maybe we could have a day where people get to say whatever they want to say to you (hopefully good) and you aren’t really allowed to respond, taking away some of that mushy pressure. I don’t know, would that make it easier?

The weight of words unspoken

One of the greatest regrets people have, either when their own life is ending or when they are losing one they love, is that they did not say everything they wanted to say. What stops us? What makes it easier after the person has gone away?

People say we live in a time of fleeting friendship. That may or may not be true, but surely now is as good a time as any to make sure that the people you do care about KNOW it. Even if it’s just a little thing,  go ahead and say it. Why wait? As Clint Eastwood might well say, “Go ahead. Make their day.”

Or am I crazy?

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Awhile back, an article came out that interviewed a pretty well-known person. Marketing advice was offered, I frothed and flumbled, and so it passed out of my mind. For the most part.

I’ve come upon mentions of that article here and there. Some people are dissing it while others are giving it acclaim, but recently I read a blog post that really disturbed me. The general jist was that the blogger had initially reacted to the article the same way I did. “This flies in the face of everything I’ve said and done for the last ten years. This doesn’t make sense. This is BAD ADVICE.” But then the really freaky thing happened. The blogger said (paraphrased),

“Then I started to think about it. This guy has written something like 10 books. Maybe I needed to reconsider *my* position because clearly they know what they’re talking about.”

And therein lies the rub, said Hamlet.

We’re all special, which means nobody is

Have you ever watched the Pixar flick The Invincibles? As an adult I have to say, “No, neither have I.” However, you might recall, if you had seen it, several repetitions of the idea that if everyone is special then really no one is special. How can everyone be special, right? Well, that’s kind of where we’ve gotten to in the publishing business, at least insofar as the online world is concerned. Factually, anyone can publish a book these days. It might be self-published. It might be online only. But I mean, heck, I *technically* have published a book. It’s floating up there in my masthead minding its own business. It’s not like Paul Giamatti’s character in Sideways or the dad in Little Miss Sunshine, both of whom had to peddle their wears to publishers.

Is this a good thing?

On the one hand, this ability to publish oneself at a whim is kind of exciting. I love that peoples’ thoughts (like Julien Smith’s, for example) are more readily accessible than they might have been five years ago. Much like Triberr touts itself as the friend of the little blogger, the new world of publishing could rightly tout itself as the friend of the author who wants to get published really really badly.

On the other hand, this also means that we have a lot of books that might be kind of like Wikipedia. They might look really good. They might be 90% legit. It’s that 10% that can be problematic. The thing is, while we have gotten looser about what we can publish, our reverence for the published word has not really changed. If it is in book form, it deserves to be considered. If a person has put a lot of thoughts into book form, they must know what they’re talking about.

Does this scare anybody else?

Don’t abandon what you believe or know to be true

More than the whole publishing conundrum though, what really worries me is that people are getting intimidated by authors who may have 6-12 books to their name. Don’t do that. Even the smartest people don’t know everything. Sometimes authors aren’t even the smartest people. If your experience has shown you that something is true, don’t just toss it away because someone wrote more books than you over the last decade. If you firmly believe something, read with an open mind, but stand up for your beliefs. You likely came by them for some good reason. Don’t be intimidated by people with lots of book titles in their bios. Especially these days. At least read all of those books first.

Does this make sense?

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For some reason lately, my grandparents have been on my mind. It’s a tricky subject. I lost my first grandparent when I was 7. My father’s parents both died when I was 10, exactly six months apart. When you’re 10, you don’t really know how much you should value your grandparents, apart from the fact that they spoil you rotten. I was just starting to explore old family photos when my dad’s mom passed away. There were references to the store her father owned and other things that I didn’t understand at the time.

On my mom’s side, information is a bit easier to come by. Most branches of our family have been in the US for quite some time. In fact, some of family history goes back to the Mayflower and Jamestown. While we might not have all of the information, it seems somewhat accessible. But my dad’s family is a bit different. All of my dad’s grandparents were born in Russia – two in Odessa and two in Berditchev. We assume they came to the US in the wake of anti-semitic pogroms and other pressures, but we have no records to really confirm that. We don’t really know who was left behind in Russia or what happened to them, and unfortunately, my dad was quite young when his grandparents died, so there is a huge gap there.

Recent history is disappearing

It’s one thing to say that you don’t know a lot about your great-grandparents. That’s sort of acceptable. But I realized a couple of weeks ago that I actually have no idea what my dad’s dad did in World War II. We have lots of information on my other grandpa. He was in the Navy, fought on the Nicholas. We know what battles he was in because he recorded that information in later years. But my other grandpa – I have no idea. There are  feelings that he may have been a writer for the Stars and Stripes. He may have been in Northern Africa. He may have been in Italy. He may have been…but we don’t know for sure.

As I started on my path of research, I went to the National Archives website to request military records. The drop-down menu that had you select your relationship to the military person did not include grandchild. It included spouse, former spouse, child, brother, sister. But grandchildren are not considered next of kin in the world of governmental bureaucracy. That really stopped me in my path. If I had embarked on this journey as an old woman, when my parents were not around, how would I even begin to access this information?

How many people have already missed their chance?

Given that I’m the third Clayman to work in the company that my grandpa started, I feel obligated to learn what he went through in the war. If he wrote, I want to know what he wrote. If he experienced things as so many men did, I want to learn about that. I want to learn about what might have shaped him before his family and his business were on his mind. Did he know my grandma when he went off to war? How did they meet?

All of this information is slipping beyond my generation’s reach. If we don’t grab on to it soon, there won’t be anyone left who can tell those stories, as incorrect as they might be.

There’s no time like the present to learn about the past. I’m starting to work on it.

How about you?

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