Sometimes I just feel like I spend the majority of my life waiting around for stuff to happen. Then it finally happens and time flies by. It's like that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when one of the 3 geeks puts this magic lint on Buffy and the world randomly speeds up on her, driving her nuts.
I remember being in elementary school looking at the big high school kids next door and wondering if I would ever be that big. In high school I wondered if I would ever have a boyfriend, especially on that Valentine's day when literally every single other person I knew was getting asked out. When I finally met a special someone, it was countdown to engagement, then wedding, then house, which is where I find myself now. In July I could hardly wait to move. Packing was such a chore; I just wanted to be done with it and be in my new house already! And now it's already mid-September. Where did those 2 months go?
Pretty soon I will be an old lady sitting on the porch of a retirement home wondering what happened to my life. I don't think I am alone in my fears, but others have been more brave and productive than I in their waiting. Julie Powell (see link) started a blog about cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She developed her blog into a highly entertaining book. I can barely scratch two sentences together to make a blog post, and my blog following is nonexistent. I suppose it would help if I posted more often. Perhaps I should develop some kind of shtick, an around the world in 80 days kind of thing. At least then I would have something to write about.
I guess part of growing up (at least in my generation) is that we're all so special. We were told that so many times that we deluded ourselves into believe we were actually going to write that novel we always thought about writing. I want to take that special feeling I have deep down inside and fling it against the wall, because then I wouldn't have to psych myself up to even write this blog and I could just go back to enjoying Solitaire and reveling in the fact that I have an 18% win average. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?
I think everyone has that scary epiphany in their life when they realize that we don't actually grow up, we just get older. Our experiences make us a little wiser, and our wisdom makes us feel a little grown up, but deep down, we are still little children who are confident that somebody out there knows what they're doing. What we want more than anything in the world is for some cosmic force to come down and pat us on the back and say we're doing a damn good job, we're on the right track and keep up the good work!
So what are you waiting for?
"How you uh, how you comin' on that novel you're working on? Huh? Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice little story you're working on there? Your big novel you've been working on for 3 years? Huh? Gotta, gotta compelling protagonist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? (voice getting higher pitched) Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? (voice returns to normal) No, no, you deserve some time off." -Stewie Griffin [Family Guy]
Recommended Reading: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Philosophy of Star Trek
I've been reading Wil Wheaton's blog which has been instrumental in writing this post for two reasons. It's an idea I've had rattling around in my head for awhile, which reading Wil's blog not only reminded me of it, but I found it very encouraging to write it because Wil Wheaton says, "Don't be afraid to suck!" So here goes.
I have always been a Star Trek fan, not of The Original Series (TOS) which would always be part of that Sunday-morning-there's-nothing-but-crap-on lineup, but of The Next Generation (TNG) which was always part of the mom-can-I-stay-up-half-an-hour-longer-to finish-this-episode lineup. I liked Star Trek for many reasons besides extending my bedtime, namely, that Wil Wheaton was cute (and still is, I might add) but mostly just because I am a nerd and it was interesting.
My favourite character on TNG and later, on the much maligned Voyager, was the most inhuman one. Data, on TNG, and the Doctor on Voyager. These two characters one, an android, the other, a computer hologram, where created by humans to help humans, yet were not created to be human. It always happened though, that these inhuman characters longed to be human, and set off on a long journey to understand humanity.
It's kind of odd, though, once you realize that these people are both actors, and are actually human beings trying to understand what it means to be human. Obviously, we don't have everything sorted out if we are continually questioning what it means to be human. We are still struggling to understand ourselves and our place in this world, and we believe that we will continue to do so when we are travelling beyond this world many years in the future. We will have figured out so many other things like Warp drives and transporters, and will travel far across the galaxies but will still not have completed the deep inner journey into ourselves. We will encounter aliens and make attempts to understand their language and cultures without fully understanding our own.
The funny thing is that being human sometimes means sucking big time. Any time an alien race vows to make something better at the cost of something tremendously human, like our emotions (think of The Invasion) we fight for our right to suck. We would rather have war and poverty and all the things we currently have if giving those up meant giving up a part of our humanity. I don't know if we will ever be able to have world peace as human beings, but for now, I am content to suck along with the rest of my fellow human beings. Thanks, Wil.
"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." -Emerson M. Pugh
I have always been a Star Trek fan, not of The Original Series (TOS) which would always be part of that Sunday-morning-there's-nothing-but-crap-on lineup, but of The Next Generation (TNG) which was always part of the mom-can-I-stay-up-half-an-hour-longer-to finish-this-episode lineup. I liked Star Trek for many reasons besides extending my bedtime, namely, that Wil Wheaton was cute (and still is, I might add) but mostly just because I am a nerd and it was interesting.
My favourite character on TNG and later, on the much maligned Voyager, was the most inhuman one. Data, on TNG, and the Doctor on Voyager. These two characters one, an android, the other, a computer hologram, where created by humans to help humans, yet were not created to be human. It always happened though, that these inhuman characters longed to be human, and set off on a long journey to understand humanity.
It's kind of odd, though, once you realize that these people are both actors, and are actually human beings trying to understand what it means to be human. Obviously, we don't have everything sorted out if we are continually questioning what it means to be human. We are still struggling to understand ourselves and our place in this world, and we believe that we will continue to do so when we are travelling beyond this world many years in the future. We will have figured out so many other things like Warp drives and transporters, and will travel far across the galaxies but will still not have completed the deep inner journey into ourselves. We will encounter aliens and make attempts to understand their language and cultures without fully understanding our own.
The funny thing is that being human sometimes means sucking big time. Any time an alien race vows to make something better at the cost of something tremendously human, like our emotions (think of The Invasion) we fight for our right to suck. We would rather have war and poverty and all the things we currently have if giving those up meant giving up a part of our humanity. I don't know if we will ever be able to have world peace as human beings, but for now, I am content to suck along with the rest of my fellow human beings. Thanks, Wil.
"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." -Emerson M. Pugh
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The Curse of Pretentiousness
Found this poem on the web and thought I would share it. I was reading some old posts and realized (even though I promised my many readers -she said, sarcastically-to post at least once a week) that I was posting less and less so that once a year seemed like a lot. It is a curse, not of pretentiousness really, but more of perfectionism that I don't write more.
Thoughts While Driving Home
Was I clever enough?
Was I charming?
Did I make at least one good pun?
Was I disconcerting? Disarming?
Was I wise? Was I wan? Was I fun?
Did I answer that girl with white shoulders
Correctly, or should I have said
(Engagingly), "Kierkegaard smolders,
But Eliot's ashes are dead"?
And did I, while being a smarty,
Yet some wry reserve slyly keep,
So they murmured, when I'd left the party,
"He's deep. He's deep. He's deep"?
John Updike
Thoughts While Driving Home
Was I clever enough?
Was I charming?
Did I make at least one good pun?
Was I disconcerting? Disarming?
Was I wise? Was I wan? Was I fun?
Did I answer that girl with white shoulders
Correctly, or should I have said
(Engagingly), "Kierkegaard smolders,
But Eliot's ashes are dead"?
And did I, while being a smarty,
Yet some wry reserve slyly keep,
So they murmured, when I'd left the party,
"He's deep. He's deep. He's deep"?
John Updike
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