When I started working from home, I knew I would like not commuting. I did not expect how much I would enjoy not being around people.

I do like talking with people, but I don’t want to spend time talking about things I am not interested in. I don’t enjoy getting caught in a long conversation about a TV show I’m not interested in or a movie I am never going to watch.

Clearly that other person is into it, but I’d rather be left to think my own thoughts. I worked from home for more than two years, and I really enjoyed NOT being around people.

I read my own books, and thought my own thoughts and was perfectly happy. I chose a few social interactive events in the week, and kept to myself.

When the stay-at-home orders happened in March, I felt very ready to comply. I checked all my social media outlets, made sure my library cards were set up. I figured it was no different than how I had already been living

It was not the same.

The things I had previously relied on to give me my personalized balanced diet of other activities were stopped. That upset the balance. I remember back in April I went to store for the first time. I was overcome by the site of everyone’s faces—even though they were covered in masks—I cried to have someone tell me to have a nice day.

We’ve been separate from one another. I have not breathed the air of people around me.

For America, this has not been entirely a restful time of contemplation and togetherness. Almost immediately people gathered to protest things. There have been continuing protests somewhere in America this whole time.

I just finished a book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop. He wrote it back in 2007 to explore a trend that has been going on for decades, or longer.

Diversity is a good thing. It’s also an uncomfortable thing.  I might enjoy spending time with people who have read all the same books as I have, who like the same restaurants and music. But it would last long. I would get bored. It would stink like a stagnant pond.

I need other people’s perspectives and ideas. I have to remember they are real perspectives not just concepts. It is dangerous to dehumanize other people.

Bishop writes “Beginning in the 1960s…social psychologists have found that like-minded groups not only enforced conformity but also tended to grow more extreme.”

For example, if a group decides the are dog people, members of the group will one-up each other by expressing more and more dislike of cats. They would end with some very extreme suggestions, like outlawing cats.

I want to avoid those extremes. My best life includes diverse, even clashing viewpoints. And the dogs and the cats need room to co-exist.

Martin Luther King Jr., whom we celebrated this week, said this:

“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

I know I have both in me, Dr. King. I am trying to lean towards the good, and bring others along with me.

Me and Veronica watched the movie “The School of Rock” together, and the failed rock start turned substitute teacher told the struggling kids:

One great rock concert can change the world.

Of course, in the world of the movie it came true. And I was crying. YES.

Rock changes the world
Art changes the world

Music is very immersive, and different from books. And they are all the same stuff.

In British and American lit classes, they would talk about what paintings and music were happening at the same time as the books we were discussing, because they influence each other.

Art in all its forms reaches to put forth ideas that haven’t been in the world yet. So it can be messy and confusing, or it can more true and clean than everything.

It has to be experienced in the way the artist created it. Art can change the world. It changes my world every day

The world needs changing right now. There is so much fragmentation and fear.

The quarantine has asked us to be separate from one another and so the shared experience of art is not happening. We are apart and are having trouble finding our way back.

I want a way for us to be together. I know art can do this.

In the movie it took time to get the concert ready. It took working together and practice. It attention to detail and a lot of work.

Art that transforms should be as carefully crafted as it can be. I am looking for that to come.

It’s sad and separate and lonely right now in the world. It seems especially separate and angry in America.

I know that change can come A great rock concert can change the world.

Great art can bring us together. This is what I hope for. This is what I am working for. My small bit of hope can build. I invite you to believe that things will change and to do what you can to transform the world.

We can do this. Change can come.

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson

I’m not much into TV shows, but I am getting desperate here at home. Flicking through Amazon Prime choices, the audio starts in on Sylvie’s Love:

“Life is too short to do anything but what you absolutely love.”

Sure, Sylvie. I’ve heard that before. This is not the right time for that particular motto.

I’m still home. Still doing things I don’t *absolutely love. * You and all the touring inspirational speakers can go out to lunch and pump each other up about that one.

I’ve got a list of things I have done that I absolutely love. What I did to get those things, or to get them done, was a lot of stuff I didn’t even like.

What it took was a lot of tedious repetition. That’s what life is made of.

More importantly, that is what great things are made of. There is a famous scene with Rocky running up the steps in Philadelphia—the scene with the swelling music.

The fictional Rocky ran those steps every day. In a boring do-i-have-to kind of way. That’s how the greatness happens. I hope that in his mind, he had the swelling music, but I know there were plenty time when I have done something tedious and necessary that I did not want to do that there was no swelling hero music.

There was more of a caterwaul of self-pity and whining. And I would give in to it sometimes. But if I stacked up enough instances—enough repetitions—of doing it anyway I could get to the finish line.

I did the thing. It got done. It felt really good.

It still feels good. And there are the times when I feel so small and the world so big. Those times when I wonder what use I am to anybody and whether I am worth the oxygen I take up. Then I have a little pile of stuff I did that I’m proud of. I take one off the pile and wrap it around myself to remember I did something once, brought a bright thing of value into the world.

And that caterwaul is quieter. I find a scrap of will to do it again:

“Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

More than anything, I am encouraged by the feeling of satisfaction when I do the small hard things along the way. Right now, with a nasty virus making the world week, I need whatever satisfaction I can get.

1. divergent
2. Nothing to see here
3. Mom & Me & Mom
4. As You Like it
5. Remember Me
6. If women rose rooted
7. dance of cloaks
8. Big sort
9. Reflections by Rosa parks
10. The Forgotten Daughter NF
11. Contagious Leadership NF
12. There is no cloud
13. John Dies at the end
14. burro genius
15. The Outsiders
16. wolf hall
17. the unbearable lightness of being
18. 2020 Democratic Party platform
19. the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
20. untamed
21. john woman
22. before the coffee gets cold
23. have spacesuit will travel
24. anything is possible
25. 7 dirty words the life and crimes of George carlin
26. #ask Gary V
27. Uncle Tom’s cabin
28. the henna artist
29. dignity
30. shay with me
31. never split the difference : negotiating as if your life depends upon it
32. creating a culture of tenderness
33. When
34. Tatoos on the heart
35. Censorship Now!
36. Autobiography of Malcolm X NF
37. pedagogy of the opperessed
38. emotional wisdom
39. long walk to freedom
40. journey to The west
41. The Jetsetters
42. why time flies
43. leaves of grass
44. emerson essays
45. alcoholics anonymous NF
46. rules of Prey
47. Olive Kitteridge
48. a court of thorns and roses
49. do over
50. drive
51. too soon old too late smart
52. Leviathan
53. indistractable
54. Why My third husband will be a dog
55. Insurgent
56. remnant population
57. nine nasty words
58. dandelion wine
59. Project management for AV professionals
60. Hero with a thousand faces
61. shadow prey
62. existential kink
63. the red badge of courage
64. unmasked
65. huckleberry finn
66. Circe
67. The emotion code
68. linchpin
69. The fighters mind
70. the hunting wives
71. get a life chloe brown
72. Six armies in normandy
73. the art of asking
74. Scrum Book of Knowledge
75. art & Fear
76. Death of the Artist
77. The girl with the dragon Tatoo
78. flow
79. Forty autumns
80. war of art
81. how the west was won
82. focus
83. The phantom of the opera
84. No More Mr. Nice guy
85. I am a cat
86. the giver
87. gathering blue
88. messenger
89. Son
90. Stranger in a strange land
91. catch 22
92. awakening
93. it ends with us
94. communist manifesto
95. tarot: unlocking the arcana
96. infinity blade redemption
97. as you like it
98. the art of political war
99. its not me it’s you
100. book of three
101. steal like an artist
102. show your work
103. keep going
104. Gravity’s Rainbow NF
105. woke inc
106. the black cauldron
107. Who’s that girl?
108. 10x

I bought a calendar for 2021. But I haven’t put it out yet. I have to say, I’m cautious about what this new year will hold.

I love making plans, but 2020 wadded up my plans and made me try again.

A surprise gift at the end of the year was taking up martial arts. The sensei asked us if we had the calendar for the new schedule starting January.

While we were all stretching, he admitted that the calendar he had created at the beginning of 2020 had to be changed pretty quickly. But that is no reason to leave the calendar empty.

I will miss every shot I don’t take. And I don’t want to give up.

My new age-y friends would say to set intentions. That’s plans with a lighter touch. I can plan to get a good nights’ sleep, but get derailed with family and pets. But my intention remains intact for me to try again the next night. It might be kinder to intend and see where it goes.

Plans are brittle, but intentions are resilient.

I do want things. Very much. I have ideas about what I can, should and will do. Often those come with expectations about how long it will take to get done and what it will look like when it’s finished.

Those plans can be very heavy to carry. Sometimes I disappoint myself when it doesn’t happen like I hoped.

Rather than lose energy carrying the plans AND the corresponding disappointment, I’m going to try for intentions.

That leaves room for surprises. Like I said, I was surprised by starting martial arts this fall. I almost didn’t start because I didn’t think I’d have the time for it. But after I came to terms with the fact that I had lots of time because I didn’t’ have a job YET, I realized I could enjoy my time now and learn something new.

I intend to find a job as soon as I can. But I want to stay flexible. I intend to put up the ’21 calendar this week.

I’m going to go slow, but I will fill up 2021 with good intentions. It will be marvelous to see what happens.