And so the days go slipping by…

Another year nearly finished.  Strange to consider. 

... I’m not entirely sure of my reasons for continuing - even occasionally - to post to this blog.  I mean, there’s a lot that I could talk about, but won’t, either because it’s not interesting or too emotive or not suitable for all the potential readers of this page or too much of the same thing that I always talk about.  The Big Questions are all about things that are pretty much just mine to figure out and⁄or involve a chain of problems that have to be unpicked one at a time, in a very slow process.  I mean, my brain at any given moment is almost certainly going to be some variation on a Venn diagram of:

- missing of family and friends, both those that I haven’t talked with in months and those I have talked with in the last few days
- homesickness for Portland
- financial worries
- worries for the well-being of various people
- frustration with… well, mostly myself
- awareness of the unoriginality of 99.99% of my thoughts
- guilt for even feeling like I need to talk about any of this
- awareness of the “#firstworldproblems” nature of most of my concerns
- the everyday interactions & public face

... all of this sloshing around to some form of musical soundtrack, increasingly repetitive as my mental obsessing increases (right now, obnoxiously, thanks to work and my brain cycles, “Frosty the Snowman” is on heavy rotation).

::annoyed sigh:: In short, I bore myself AND see little likelihood of any of this changing significantly in the near future, for a whole host of reasons.  And I see little point in talking herein about the 1% of my mental obsessing that I would feel comfortable talking about freely.  So I guess the best thing for the tiny number of you who check here at all to do is to assume that, if you haven’t heard from me in a while and I haven’t posted anything here in a while, that the last conversation we had together was probably a pretty fair representation of my current mental⁄emotional state, and that any major changes will be communicated accordingly.  Since you are a reader of this blog, it’s also probably safe to assume that you are amongst the “family and friends” in the first bullet point up there, and that you are therefore in my thoughts.

Over and out.

Wow

How can it be nearly Thanksgiving already?  The speedy passage of time worries me somewhat…

Thank goodness for autumn.

A chilly, blustery day, bright with blue skies and warm sun…

Wow

Happy fifth anniversary, love.  :-)

Hmmm.

Gosh, but I’m boring.

Yay!

I have a job!  I’m going to be working part-time at the local bookstore in Gloucester.  It may not be in the area that I eventually hope to make my career, but it will be good.  The people who work at this shop are nice and quirky; I feel like I’ll fit in well.  And of all the possible retail jobs out there, I feel most comfortable in selling books, both in terms of my passion for the subject, and in moral terms.  I like books - a lot - and read incessantly, and believe that reading is a valuable activity for a whole host of reasons, so I am quite content.

Anyway, I celebrated by signing up to give $10 monthly to the Nature Conservancy.  It’s not a large sum - my $120 annually will mean little to the Conservancy, or to the Trust for Public Lands, the other organization that I already support in a similar fashion - but, well, it’s something.  Maybe, once I’m earning a bit more… and once I make inroads into paying off my $40k of student debt… then I can up the amount.  A friend of mine, many moons ago, made it his goal to donate 10% of his monthly earnings to charity.  That seems a reasonable goal to aim for.

Oh yeah, FYI

I did the Bristol Half Marathon this past Sunday.  I finished in a slowish 2:47:51, but hey - at least I finished!  I was having cramps in my lower left calf from about mile 10 onwards - cramps so bad that my toes curled up and I couldn’t uncurl them without stopping and stretching.  Which I did, several times, and then, about halfway through mile 12, decided I’d had it, and just ran with curled toes.  They uncurled themselves eventually, but it wasn’t the most comfortable running I’ve ever done.  ::shrug::

True, but…

I read this op-ed on NY Times the day it came out, but then lost track of it before I was able to post about it.  In it, the author talks about the futility, really, of individual eco-action.  Which is true, when you get right down to it.  But what is the point of being so combative about it?  The collective action the author touts has to begin with the individual.  So getting someone into the habit of recycling, or the habit of cycling to the grocery store, seems to me to be the first, tiny step towards getting them to support the kind of collective action or resolution that can effect real change.  My friend Andy and I argued about this frequently during the two years at Tufts - incrementalism vs. paradigm shift.  He was adamant that massive change is the only way that things can be fixed in time to avert catastrophe, and he is very likely right.  But who is more naive: the person who argues for incremental steps as being (without the impetus of catastrophe) the only steps likely to be able to be effected, even if they likely aren’t moving fast enough?  Or the person who argues that the only way forward is to make drastic changes and refuses to admit the validity of smaller steps, even though drastic changes are exceptionally unlikely to be acceptable to enough people to get democratic consensus behind them?  Can we expect someone to go straight from blithely driving a Hummer to voting for full-cost accounting to be enshrined in economic policy? 

I agree that full-cost accounting needs to be put into official policy, since self-interest does tend to be a much greater motivator than self-sacrifice (as the author says).  And that collective action is needed.  But rather than being dismissive of the things people do already, why not approach it from a good-first-step, encouraging point of view?  I don’t think that individual action is incompatible with the push for drastic change, nor do I think that it necessarily “distracts us from the need for collective action.”  We should reframe our individual actions as the first step in a marathon, rather than as the completion of a very short race, and rather than as a pointless waste of personal energy.  In general, we’re not very good with marathons; what we need more than hecklers is encouragement. 

I’m guessing that there are very few of us who can’t be dinged for hypocrisy on one point or another.  The amount of plane travel I do, for instance, does call into question my so-called environmentalism, something of which I am well aware and puzzle over a lot.  IThe fact that I am far from most of my family and friends and miss them all constantly is a major factor in my internal equation, although I know full well that that doesn’t account for all of my international flights.  It is, however, a factor, and one which would likely still lead me to take at least one international plane trip per year, even were full costs brought in.  Does that make me selfish?  Well, yes.  But frankly, I don’t know how else to reconcile some of the major conflicting aspects of my life.  I couldn’t help falling in love with an Englishman.  I can’t help that most of the rest of the people I love are scattered across the United States.  There is nowhere I could be that there wouldn’t be someone I was missing, terribly, somewhere else.  So I fly, and try to make up for my flights by choosing well in the rest of my life, as best as I can.  Even knowing that it’s not enough.  I’m not giving myself an out - I’m just saying that I have run up against a problem that I can’t solve, given who I am, and for which I have chosen a compromise that, like pretty much any decision, is open to criticism.

Full-cost accounting will shift people’s choices.  But it won’t mean that they always make choices that you’ll agree with; I’ll still fly.  So why not encourage good habits, however small in impact, which contribute something toward balancing out the selfish choices that will still be made?  Of course recycling is not a solution in itself.  Nor is cycling to the grocery store.  Nor is growing your own vegetables, or line-drying your laundry, or installing a low-flush toilet… or full-cost accounting.  It ALL contributes, however, to what will necessarily be a complicated solution to a complicated snarl of problems.  So why not reserve some praise for small actions?

Of course, the author that prompted this diatribe did, to be fair, finish up his op-ed by saying that his readers shouldn’t stop recycling.  He’s encouraging extra action.  So, really, he and I are saying the same thing.  We’re just saying it in different tones.

Oh, I so very much want this…

A mural of “Calvin and Hobbes” in… well, pretty much anywhere in the house would be unbelievably fantastic.  I have to say, I’m not sure that the title of the article is all that hyperbolic…

Addendum

... it’s not just cowardice that keeps me from being a doctor.  It’s the fact that I doubt it’s useful for a doctor to get woozy at the thought of needles, scalpels and guts.  Just a hunch.

Continuing a train of thought…

...Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to working on open space conservation, etc.  Because I’m a coward.  People are far less likely to be horribly harmed if I don’t manage to make or save a park.  Their wellbeing is less wholly in my hands.  I will never be able to save them as wholly as, say, a doctor or a psychiatrist, but neither will I be able to destroy them, or, at least, fail them, as wholly as a doctor or psychiatrist.  I can be a force for mild betterment, rather than a savior.  I think I’m okay with that, even if it reflects poorly on my bravery.

::chuckle::  It reminds me of a quote from “The Incredibles.”  Mr. Incredible says, “No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again.  Sometimes I just want it to stay saved!”  It seems to me that doctors and psychiatrists must have to work very hard to keep up their enthusiasm for work – there is an infinite plenitude of people who need fixing.  And, looping this back to the beginning of this rambling [ed. note: not shared in this space], that is a major case of receding goalposts.  What a mind-bender!  Each person saved is both infinitely important – what greater impact could there be than to save someone’s life or sanity? – and infinitely trivial, in comparison to the neverending stream of people who could and will follow on.

In some ways, the idea of that infinite slog of impact is appealing.  As someone who seeks both challenge and utility, the knowledge that every day could be replete with saves and yet leave an endless supply of potential saves (and potential fails…) for the next day, and the day after it, and all those thereafter, is… hypnotic.  But as someone who does NOT work well without a goal, and who hates hurting or failing people, the idea is also horrific.  How do doctors and psychiatrists retain their own sanity?  With no respite, no lull in the stream of potential patients, and even “saves” not necessarily being permanent?

[ed. note: entry edited for length and recursive tendencies.]

Much gnashing of teeth

When I saw the headline for this article on NY Times, my head actually fell forward to hit the table, from which position I then screeched in an unpleasant but evocative-of-my-frustration way.

::deep (but not terribly calming) breath::  I… can’t.  I just can’t. 

...You know, one of the obnoxious aspects of this is that I know that my rage does nothing but undermine my ability to make a sound argument (were I ever able to do so, and were there anyone to listen to such an argument).  I know about framing a problem and about people - generally - rejecting information that doesn’t jibe with their worldview, and that information doesn’t really speak for itself, so it’s not just a question of education.  There’s a line between useful passion for a subject and fury that distorts thoughts.  Give me a bit, and I’ll pull back out of the fury side.  But that doesn’t mean that my passion and conviction are necessarily going to be useful.  What can I do, other than continue to try to make my own personal choices as best as I can, and to lead by example?  Because I am also well aware of the hypocrisy of people (I’m looking at you, Perry) who can slate others for proselytizing about climate change - can say those others are leading a cult - and yet speak just as passionately about their own ideas and beliefs.  If Gore is leading a climate change cult, why are the Republican/Tea Party candidates not leading their own cults? 

Why does passion for a subject seem automatically to lead to people being dismissed and derided?  This is from both the left and the right.  Surely most, if not all, of the candidates in any given election feel strongly about things.  That is why they’re going into politics, right - to make things better?  (Is this too “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”?)  Why can’t more candidates acknowledge their opponents’ passion for a subject, acknowledge that they disagree - passionately - and then move on to more substantive discussion?  Passion doesn’t have to be a bad thing; indeed, lack of passion is a grey, uninspiring thing. 

Instead of deriding the opposition for its passion while clinging fiercely to our own passion, why can’t everyone just acknowledge that we all feel and believe in some things passionately, and move on to discussion of the basis for that passion?  Instead of picking a scapegoat - in the case of this article, the EPA - and using that as a jumping-off point for excoriating all those who support the scapegoat… why don’t we seek for common ground?  There *has* to be common ground - the ability to live a healthy life, the ability to be happy…  Surely, if more of us talked together, we could start to find solutions to these common aspirations that didn’t involve undue restrictions on any particular segment of society.

Living together, in a society, even in the smallest group unit of a society - a family/relationship - necessarily involves compromise and negotiation and some personal restriction.  When people refuse to participate in those necessary aspects of relationships, things fall apart.  We can never be wholly free to act exactly as we wish in every moment; to expect that is childish.  The trick is to work together to find the solution that involves the least and most even sacrifice for everybody.  And that’s not going to happen if we persist in cultivating hatred or derision of those who don’t share our beliefs.  Not to put it too simplistically, but can’t we just agree to disagree, and move on towards finding a way to live together?  Because we must live together - we are all Americans, or, jumping to an even more grandiose level, we are all human beings, stuck on one planet.

::rereading her entry::  Oh, and since I’m obviously in a rose-tinted, idealistic, hippy-trippy frame of mind… a few “kumbayahs” wouldn’t go amiss.  ::grin::  Group hug!

Getting there

Tuesday, August 2:  2.75 miles in 33:24
Tuesday, August 9:  5 miles in 1:00:42
Monday, August 15:  5 miles in 1:01:41
Wednesday, August 17:  5 miles in 58:44

I may not be like some people that I could mention, nonchalantly completing ultra-marathons and enormous bicycle rides.  But I’m gradually getting back into some semblance of shape, after the mostly-sedentary two years of grad school.  (I did a lot of walking and bicycling for commuting purposes during that time, but my body’s used to that, and it didn’t really help my fitness.)

On the downside, my knees are now clicking when I go up and down stairs.  ::sigh::

The kindness of friends

... is a wonderful thing.  Even something as simple as an email, reminding me that my favorite season is on its way, helps me keep my chin up.  Yay friends!

Round and round the worries go

...‘til my head is so tightly wound that I feel on the verge of bursting, like an old-fashioned clock in some silly animated film.  ::sigh::