Month: December 2018

Will it ever end? I hope not

Well, well… lookie there: Malcolm Gladwell’s work is relevant yet again. 😛

Working on my second paper of three for finals, I discovered that the main character I’m following with the paper, the one who tackles a whole new way of living life despite societal standards and expectations, and aims at individualism and self-expression – by the way, this was a super huge deal at the time, if someone were to behave as she did – had lost her mother when she was just a small child…

Hmm… this suddenly called up all of Malcolm Gladwell’s reporting on social agreeableness in individuals and the commonality that around 30% (I believe it was) of top people in their field lost a parent during childhood…. this main character was suddenly yet another example of the amazing people Malcolm Gladwell analyzed in his book David and Goliath, which I just finished reading the other day.

(If you haven’t read it, read it, and what I’ve just said will make much more sense.)

Isn’t that awesome??

I keep telling people that Malcolm Gladwell’s books are genius-ly awesome and totally relevant in our lives today, so it only naturally follows that his work continue to be absurdly relevant in my own life. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Check one

One down and two to go!

I actually wrote the paper this evening/tonight, and I like it!

Yes, it could be loads better, but I’m okay with how it is… I’m not trying to publish it, but complete it, and Inhabe done that.

Tuesday, I’ll present about it, and I likely’ll get super nerdy about everything I learned in my research, as well as all the new research I kind of want to do now, based on things I found that left my appetite unsatisfied. 😛

I’m a dork and nerd at heart, and I totally know it…

That’s a big part of why I’m in school again – I’m opposed to our grading system and standard assignment styles, but I love to learn and to share what I’ve learned. 🙂

Now, to do the whole paper thing over again tomorrow morning and daytime, with a presentation of that paper in the evening! (Yikes!)

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That paper…

So, that paper, the one that was due yesterday… I still haven’t written anything for it.

I have done extensive research for it, learned loads, and have ended up fully confident in my belief that the book’s history is absolutely absurd and somewhat hilarious (though it might not have been to those involved at the time), but I haven’t written a word of the actual 12-15-page paper that is due on it.

The thing is, I can’t figure out how to argue something about this book.

Sure, I could say its history is absurd, but is that actually acceptable, and do I actually want to look up the definition of “absurd”, and then develop how the book’s history lines up with it?

…

Maybe… not too bad of an idea, actually… huh.

Let me see if I can somehow compare it to something like a soap opera or telenovela, but more clever and better related to the book and time period…, then, I think I could make it all work out okay.

Ugh.

Other parts of my life just feel like s total mess, and having these papers makes it feel like I can’t address the real stuff in my life, and it just feels like I’m focusing on something stupid that pales in comparison to the rest of my life…, and I can’t seem to make it feel worth my real time, effort, and attention…

But I signed up for this program, and I am definitely capable of producing results…, so, I guess, let’s do it.

Then I can always look back at it as a face-palm sort of event in my life – one that totally improved me as a person, but really(?), that’s the route you picked, banana?(!!!???)

Yeah… exactly.

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Musical begun

What is my story tonight?

None come to mind…

I didn’t really dance, because the company wasn’t quite right for the kind of intimacy I find in dancing so openly and freely as I might have danced…

Also, I was sleepy and tired and I generally didn’t feel like dancing in the first place.

Plus, my shoes were not for the kind of music that was playing, and the dancing that would have gone with it…

Yeah, I just didn’t much feel like dancing.

But, when I did have the feel to dance, I did… just in my own way, using my arms and head and upper body mostly, and allowing my feet just to chill… and it was great. 🙂

P.S. The musical run has begun, and with a wonderful opening night tonight!

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The planets align…(?)

I went to see my friend’s theatre production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” this morning.

Tonight, on the way home, I selected my leisure audiobook (instead of my current school one, for which I must pay attention and make bookmarks in it as I listen to it), because I needed a break from making my brain work extra while driving.

It was the final section of Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath.

The topic – something of which I had no idea until I heard it tonight – was the Holocaust.

Talk about that as coincidence – twice has this book popped up at exactly the right moment of coincidence.

First it was with the actual story of David and Goliath lining up with my Bible reading (which has been going on for years, by the way, and I only just happened to be at that part right as I re-began Malcolm Gladwell’s book [I had switched from the Kindle edition, which had fallen flat due to my schedule, to an audiobook, which had only just become available through the public library]), and now with this play!

Awesome, isn’t it?

And, just for fun, let’s throw in the title of this writing, one which I determined to connect as best I could manage to these coincidences… and which I hadn’t considered as connecting to anything else when I came up with it.

Tonight, as I munched on my dinner and snuggled next to an air heater, I watched the rest of the first episode of “The Magic School Bus”…, which involves the phone-caller at the end complaining about how the map had shown the planets all nicely lined up, and how that was totally not the case almost ever.

That’s a fun coincidence, too, though not quite the same as the other two.

Also, just a fun fact, that episode talked about the nine planets of our solar system, and how ‘Pluto actually will still be inside Neptune’s orbit until 1999.’

!!!!! 1999 !!!!! That’s totally the past

(Obviously, I knew that I was watching an old show, since I had actually seen it when I was a child, but I was surprised at just how old it turned out to be.)

But, it turns out that the show started in 1994, and so 1999 was a little while into the future back then… so was that awful declaration that I ignore about Pluto…

P.S. Talk about diversity: Take a look at that class of Miss Frizzle’s!

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School

Three papers and presentations to go, but I finally have topics that are not only good topics, but topics that excite me… phew.

At last: something this semester that excites me about this degree.

And yes, I remember fully that I out myself in this program, of my own will and volition*.

*Is that being repetitive, or are they actually different meanings? (Aha – I looked it up, and I found that volition is the power or act of choosing and/or willing something.)

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Being remembered

I regularly feel as though I am a rather unnoticed individual, and I especially felt so throughout school… I am surprised whenever someone from high school remembers me or even knows my name.

And yet, the other night, I was delightfully* accosted by a gorgeous girl from my high school, who declared that I went to that high school, class of ’08, right?.. no, not ’08…, but I went there, right?

I told her that I had, and we exchanged names, unsure as to how she recognized me so easily, knew my face so well…

She pointed out her husband, who was in school with us, and I told her how that made so much sense, since I had known he looked familiar, when I’d seen him earlier.

Up close, I discovered that he had an amazing tie covered in penguins.

It was a great few minutes of the event.

The funny part, though, was that I had no recollection of her face whatsoever… her name was vaguely familiar, but nothing else.

(And we really didn’t discover anything that would have linked us back in high school, so it made sense that I wouldn’t know her in the first place.)

How totally odd to be on the opposite end of the remembering… for the first time in my life, I wasn’t the person calling out someone who had no idea who I was. 😛

It was weird, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it – disappointed that I had ‘let her down’ by not remembering her, flattered that I was remembered by someone so distantly connected to me, or something else altogether…

Whatever the case, it was nice to visit the other side and to see how it is on that end for once… perhaps people are as excited when I approach them as I was at the initial encounter with this girl… perhaps so…

*As is in true fashion of graduates from my high school

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Goals

Your goal should always be to aim higher than you think you can reach

-George Strake

29 Nov 2018

It was in the middle of a speech that George Strake said that, and I found myself in a whirlwind to write it down as quickly as possible, so that I could return to it continuously in the days to come.

I felt it to be of the utmost importance in my life, both immediately and long-term… and I have done just that, returning to it each day (sometimes multiple times a day).

I started tearing up when he said it, because I could see almost immediately how wonderfully fulfilling such an endeavor could be, while simultaneously seeing how I very much was not undertaking anything of the sort…

I tend to aim right where I know that I will succeed, and only on occasion do I aim a bit higher than I think I can get, but only when the outcome relies on someone else in some way – like someone else’s opinion says how it turns out – and it leaves me not to blame for the lack of achievement in the end…, but it is still very likely that I will achieve what I’d hoped to achieve anyway.

So, here I am now, wondering what I might actually do with this idea – will I pursue it, or merely be afraid of it for a while longer?

I do believe that I will pursue it, but I’m not sure when or to what degree I will do so… I guess it all depends on how much I’m willing to give up around ‘playing it safe’ in life, you know?

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School

I have to give a 20-minute presentation tomorrow on a 15-20-page paper I haven’t yet written, the research for which I have only just tonight begun reading… and had to stop reading, because money (aka real) work last night went so late that I didn’t get enough sleep to be at a level of quality functioning today…

I imagine I’ll manage something decent for the presentation, but ugh, this being exhausted so often and having to do work I don’t particularly want to do is just really exhausting. 😛

No wonder I feel ill.

P.S. I am a long-time procrastinator, so the last-minute work is nothing new – just the exhaustion from other stresses and whatnot combined with the procrastination is new and stressful.

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Work love

Tonight, I did photography for a corporate Christmas party…, and I loved it.

It was more like play for me than work.

And I got paid for doing it.

I think this was my first time being paid for doing photography (aside from the small handful of photos that went to the college campus newspaper back when I got involved with it while in college).

Thinking about that now, I recall a recent talk from a local musician, and something she said about her process to becoming an effective full-time musician.

“Did I pay all my bills… doing this thing I love? Okay… maybe I can do it again next month…” -Kam Franklin

Quicker and quicker, I slither and slide toward that goal, and tonight was a perfect example of a great scoot forward.

Post-a-day 2018