I haven’t flown anywhere for quite a while. It’s been even longer since I’ve taken a flight with a movie. I heard a comedian interview in which, as comedians do, they were talking about airline travel. One of them said the in-flight movies always made him cry.

 The other guy said “Me, too!”

 Oh my god!

 Me Three!

 The most banal movies will leave me with dripping cheeks. What is it about stories while I’m traveling?

 Something about being carried by a machine going somewhere I had already decided to go, knowing that I have no decisions to make–it lets me be totally open. I can let the feels happen.

 Even in ordinary life I think I am a rather sensitive person. I think I’ve got my feet on the ground and I can handle what life throws at me. Then my friend surprised me by calling me high-strung.

 Sometimes I am. Maybe more than I realized.

Recently I have been pegging the needle on the sensitivity meter. Some stuff was going on and I was really struggling.

 Someone said to me, “You need to get a thicker skin.”

 I was embarrassed that this person thought something was wrong with me, and grateful for her advice. At that moment I would have given anything to not feel so stressed out.

 Somehow, I needed to let the stuff that was getting to me not get to me.

 I appreciate my sensitivity. I feel things deeply. The rocks thrown in my pool go down a long way before they hit bottom.

 I am not shallow.

 And yet this depth wasn’t working for me. The stuff thrown at me hurt all the way down. How could I get out of my misery?

 Of course, my first step is to ask the Internet. “How do I grow thicker skin?”

 My first click was to this helpful article: “a thin-skinned person may reject any suggestions or sensible interpretations that are inconsistent with his self-defeating and inaccurate view of the situation.”

 I don’t want to be that. I like myself best when I can laugh and see many sides to the story. My stress and fear was zooming in on the worst possible interpretation and clinging to it.

 There are other ways to see it. One possibility is also just to stop thinking about the scary thing at all and find something else that is pleasant to ponder.

 I started to change the story and get my feet underneath me. And I also tried to give myself a break. After all, who wins if I defeat myself?

Got home from work and ate dinner. Veronica was watching TV but I had her stop to work on some homework. I wanted her to do math. She can’t forget all of her education over the summer!She started to do it but then really struggled. She even started to cry. I decided to stop and she buried her face in my side.

I suggested she watches short TV show and she tearfully agreed.

When the show is over she jumped up and did the rest of the math

Somehow this time it wasn’t upsetting and she did very well. I didn’t have to ask her to do the math she did it on her own. I told her I was very proud of her for not giving up.

I’m working on earning my second million dollars. The first one was too hard.

It’s an old joke, but it’s still funny to me. You can’t make your second million dollars without making for first. And making your second million is only easier because of all the things you learn while making the first.

This week I found myself in a situation where someone was second-guessing me. I hate being second-guessed. If I say that something needs to happen, someone comes up and tells me I’m wrong and it shall not happen, then I am slammed. I am rooted do the highway.

We are on the road. Things need to progress! Why this refusal?

But wait. Maybe the second guess was not a full stop. Why does one person’s opinion stop traffic?

I realized there is a third guess.
First is my best guess about what needs to be done next
Second guess is another person’s guess that the first guess is wrong
Third guess is my guess that my first guess is probably wrong, because someone said so.

I do it all the time.
“Here it is!”
“No, you are wrong.”
And the brain spins. I am wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong. But that person said I was wrong. I must now look for all the ways that I am wrong,

I’m good at thinking. That’s why I was so happy with my first guess.
Then the second guess is taken as an evil challenge to find all the ways to make the second guess true.

If I open my mind to all the possibilities in the world–most especially the possibility that there is something I don’t know–then there is a big chance that my first guess was wrong and has flaws.

Oh that third guess.

Quicksand. Wheels spinning. Rut-forming crazy making third guess.

I put so much more effort into that third guess, staying up during nights when I should have been sleeping. Boring my friends and family with the crisis of all the ways that I am wrong.

And then 3rd guess 2.0. That’s the part where the guess itself is not the issue, but the person who made that first guess is the problem.

I am a failure. What right do I have to make a guess at all?
I am stupid and incapable. I should never try again.

No wonder most people sit on their guesses. That first guess is very dangerous. Some people never recover.

I’m going to keep trying though. That 3rd guess 2.0 program that wants to eat my soul? I need to that one to stop. That loop is a downward spiral.

Gentle voice with myself. Kindness and courage. Stop working on the 3rd guess. It’s too hard. Go back to that first guess. All the reasons I made it in the first place. What is right with it?

Of course in a world of infinite possibilities, there is something wrong with it. Everything wrong with it.

But in this here and now, what is right with it?

Go back and defend and explain. That is the only way to keep traffic going.

That first guess contains all the hope for every possibility for things being right. Stick with it until you recognize a better guess.

Don’t stick with no.

Guess to the yes and make it so.

I picked a book on CD to listen to with Veronica on our trip to Solvang. I thought it would keep her occupied and entertained on the long ride.

As it happened, she slept and threw up, and slept the rest of the way. She told me she thought the book was too long.

I’d found a recording of Glenn Close reading the Newberry award winner Sarah, Plain and Tall. The set had the sequels Skylark and Caleb’s Story as well.

The award winner was pretty good. But when Caleb started with his story it broke down. The author Patricia MacLachlan stretched it too far. See, it is a kids’ story and I can see that she was pandering to her audience. Spoiler alert: Caleb’s grandfather shows up at their farm after having high tailed it out of there when Caleb’s daddy was little. Daddy can’t welcome grandpa, and keeps saying, “You never even wrote!”

In a heroic move, Caleb discovers that his grandfather is illiterate and secretly teaches him to read. That way he can FINALLY write his grown son the letter he’d been waiting for.

How very convenient. That answer is too pat, and I don’t think it really addresses the complexity of the situation.

But this is a kid’s book, and a fantasy fulfillment for a kid.

I’m a little too old to believe it.

A friend and I were talking about work this weekend. She was talking about her terrible boss, who asks her to do things, then when she presents her work tells her she’s done it wrong.

“And when I have an idea of what needs to be done, and I share it, it will be immediately put down as a terrible idea. I have a one-year rule, wait a year and then suggest again. It will often be taken then.”

“How do you handle this? How can you let it go at the end of the day, when this boss is telling you that you did it all wrong?”

She said, among other things, she knew better than to believe her.

I wish I were old enough to consistently disbelieve the negative things people say to me.

I want to do something I don’t know how to do

It is not comfortable; to do something I am not good at. There are plenty of things I know how to do that are asking me to do them.

But I don’t want to do them. They are boring.

I hate repetition. I would probably be a better piano player if I weren’t so embarrassed to play the same song over and over. I tend to improvise over a chord progression.

And still. I have managed to get good at some things over time. I could keep doing those things, and maintain a veneer of expertise.

But like the piano, I am bored of the same song. Ennui.

I want to try something I haven’t done before. I want to carve out a new path.

I can watch my daughter with her new explorations. Things never done before are the specialty of the young. For her, there is a cheering squad for every small bit of progress.

For me, it seems there is a lot of confusion. “What is it you are doing again?”

Maybe because at this point the new things I might do are new to almost everyone. They require some explaining. And they very well might not be interesting to most people.

But if they are interesting to me, that is enough. I used to worry a lot about what other people would think about my choices. I am worrying less about that.

So I’m willing to try the things that I would have avoided before. Things that might be a waste of time. I’ve got a little bit of time, and maybe I can waste it.

Or I might just build something phenomenal. It’s worth a try

When I was seventeen years old, straining as hard as I could too see over the horizon and figure out my fortune, I determined that I should have ten children. After all, for sure I knew that as a woman I would have to be a wife and mother. If that was what I was going to do, I was going to be the best at it. I knew people who had 8 children, but no family had ten. I’d go for the record!

But as the reality of motherhood came closer, I discovered a couple other things I could aspire to. I saw how being a mom could swallow up a woman and leave a shell.

That scared me.

I still wanted it. I carefully planned and fit in other things first. And then it came.

A friend recommended a book to me, Mother Styles. It talks about the different Myers-Briggs personality types as they pertain to mothers. The author talks about how women should respect their personality strengths and give themselves room to be themselves. If you are an introvert, get away and be alone every day. If you are a person that experiences the world through your senses make sure to include beauty in your life. Honor your uniqueness, and don’t just assume that others are doing it “right.” There is nothing wrong with needing those things.

It is really really really easy to fall into that sarcophagus, the hollow self-immolating shell of perfection.

Virginia Woolf talked about it in a way I can never forget. She was haunted by the Victorian female Ideal:

You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her–you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it–in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.

Are you shuddering?

Before I lose the attention of all my readers, this isn’t only about moms. Yes, motherhood can take over a person’s life just about as much as a woman will cooperate with.

There are a lot of things that will do the same.

Conformity to expectations can roll over any of us and take us away from ourselves before we know it. Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt tells the parody story of a middle class man, who seems to be following his own way. He even leaves his family to be a rebel. But when it comes down to it, he realizes he’s only been following the well-worn groove that all the people just like him are nosing though. When his son bucks his wishes and leaves to follow his own career, Babbitt realizes “I’ve never done a single thing I’ve wanted to in my whole life! I don’t know ’s I’ve accomplished anything except just get along.”

Virginia Woolf talks about how she had to kill The Angel in the House in order to be an author. And Lewis throws up a parody example of how easy it is to fool ourselves into thinking we are using our own minds when we are only following the herd. That comparison, that conformity, is there for any of us to fall into and fool ourselves into thinking we are doing the right thing.

It’s vitally important to me to find my own self-expression. Emerson said it: “Imitation is suicide.”

He and his buddies were called the transcendentalists because they were going to move past the basics. Conforming, or imitating, felt like deathly betrayal to him. He was fine tuned to his own note.

That is not how everyone feels, but I understand it like a grip around my neck. I struggle to find my own uniqueness in this life and especially motherhood.

In the rack of Mother’s Day hallmark cards, I don’t think there is going to be one for me. That’s the way I want it.

I once worked at a place where lunch was by far the biggest event of the day.

One designated person would take everyone’s orders and go pick up lunch. The discussion and the decision would last for hours if it were slow. What shall we choose today? What did we choose yesterday?

Oh yes, and we will never forget the time we once chose this to eat. Or the other time we chose something different…

I watched in awe. I found the time and attention given to something as inconsequential as lunch take-out a huge waste of time.

Don’ get me wrong. I can enjoy a good meal. But a working lunch?

I envied the pleasure my co-workers got out of their lunch ritual. And I also came to terms with what I really wanted out of a lunch meal.

The only thing I want out of that is enough energy to stay awake and get my work done.

What I want most about food is the feeling of having already eaten it. The tasting, chewing and swallowing can be skipped over, as far as I’m concerned.

They have a lunch like that. Just add water.

So I found the powdered mixes that met my spec. Easily mixes with water, high protein for energy, texture and taste such that it did not activate the gag reflex.

The gag thing turned out to be the hardest.

But I worked it out. My favorite is Raw Meal Spiced Vanilla Chai. Super healthy and it gets it done.I find myself able to concentrate and keep moving. Water, powder, give my water bottle a shake and down she goes.

It’s a great solution. Lunch and other work-time nutritional needs are met.

Then I find that it is creeping. I don’t have time for chewing in my life.

When I get home from work now my daughter has already eaten and she wants to be with me. Leisurely dinner is not part of the plan.

I’m trying out  harder powers mixes. Straight up protein. Soy. Pea. it’s less viscous than the more nutritionally varied Raw Meal.

Fiber?

Carbs?

I don’t have that kind of time. There is kindergarten homework to supervise and invented games to participate in.

Those are my two reasons:

Working lunch and working dinner.

Chewing is for chumps.

yeah, I’ve heard it. And i agree.

We need divesity, Having people from different walks of life and different backgrounds makes a more interesting and stronger base.

But i’m sick to death of cookie cutter diversity.

Perhaps the latina woman, black man, homosexual man and asian woman panel for diversity day is not as played out as I feel it is.

Maybe there really is a need for more of that, maybe other people have not gained what they can from it.

But I think that the usual suspect have given their time.

Can’t we be a little more diverse in our diversity? I would like to see an orthodox jew talk about his or her high holy days. I’d like to have an armenian on the microphone to talk about the genocide.

Maybe a muslim? A hindu person to talk about what to bring to a potluck.

and you want to know what else? White people getting real about what makes them not as ordinary as they look.

The panels of the same old diversity candidates is starting to reinforce stereotypes. The opposite of their intent, I think.

One place i worked at was celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s day. MLK is a remarkable man. They were holding a food drive. 

As I handed them my cans of food, I said, “I can’t help but think. Isn’t this rather condescending? Martin Luther King was a heroic figure that championed the rights of African Americans. When people think of commemorating him, naturally they think of African Americans. And holding a food drive on his day is kind of like saying African Americans are poor and need food.”

The organizer sputtered and said that King had a lot to say about service, and…and…and

I caught the eye of a young African American man helping the organizer. “Yeah…” he said. “I see what you mean. It doesn’t look good.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to find people who were similar to King, and were making a difference in their communities? People of any background?” I said.

It woudl be a lot harder to organize that kind of meaningful tribute. It’s easier to stick to the agreed-upon definition of diversity.

Diversity is here. It’s now, in every group. What do each of us have to offer each other?

We have to start seeing each other.

All of each other.

so I used a website that critiqued my headline for the weekly wonder today.

Back to the idea of tryign to get over my ookiness for martketing.

I have this idea that my ideal reader is more sophisticated then perhaps she is. He is.

But I know I have this idea that *I* am more sophisticated than I am.

THis website says that a headline is what grabs people and makes them click.

My usual free form headlines are just whatever. I dont’ put a lot of thoguth into them.

But maybe if I did, and tuned them to be attention grabbers, it’s worht it.

One weird trick that beats all

or some other cliche

I guess clishe’s work.

I’m trying it. I feel kind of dirty.

I’m gonna go chekc and see if anyone clicked.

As long as I’ve been hanging around with nerds, which is long before it’s been cool, we’ve gone through a pecking-order ritual of saying when  each one of us first got on the internet.

Young nerds would not have been old enough to experience the internet before it became the World Wide Web. I got on it when it was the pure and true ascii waste land. I talk about it a little here.

Before our phones held pictures, they carried our words. The internet found a way to carry data using modems. 14.4 and 28.8 and 56K before we got our broadband sorted out.

I am thinking back a little further though. Do you remember what the two T’s in AT&T stand for? Telephone and TELEGRAPH.

Back in the reign of Queen Victoria some engineers started stringing wires. It’s still called ‘laying cable.’ Before these wires connected the far reaches of this island nation, carrying coded messages (dah dit dah) the fastest way people sent messages was through signal fires.

Signal fires. Like in the Lord of the Rings. It was not that long ago. It was so recently that we were so far apart.

But the telecommunications technology of signal fires couldn’t reach as far as America. My home country was separated from England. People had to carry letters on ships and trust that they would get there in time or at all.

…until…

(and it happened faster than it had a right to)

The hyper fast communication of telegraphs became so important that the Victorian engineers were compelled to find a way to connect it across the oceans.

We revere our engineers now. Bill Gates is a celebrity, and the whole world knows and mourns Steve Jobs. The ones who brought our friends and family as close as our pockets, these we honor and admire.

The Victorians revered their engineering visionaries too. For basically the same reasons. Friends were down the street, with the telegraph.

So the fantastic inventors and engineers that made the railways and ships and telecommunication systems were respected and listened to.

It was kind of an accident that the ship which lay the first successful transatlantic cable was used. Isambard Brunel, the one responsible for it, did not start out as a ship biuilder.

He build railways. HIS way. He started the Great Western railway company, after riding on the railways then available in Britain. He declared the standard gauge rail was too cramped. In visionary engineer style, he re-engineered it to double in width.

Nerds know what I mean: PROPRIETARY STANDARDS.

So he had to create his own train locomotives and cars and tracks. But he did it. The Great Western was very popular even with it’s limited range.

Having conquered the railways, he wanted to conquer shipbuilding. He built…

(what else?)

The Great Western ship, the largest ship of it’s time, steam AND sail powered, to get to America and back.

Then he had to do it again, making a ship that was bigger still, the Great Eastern, which was meant to travel all the way to Australia without refueling.

It was the end of Brunel, literally. He died right after it was done. Young, like Steve Jobs.

The Great Eastern was not a success as a passenger ship. It would not be interesting to me if it had been.

In the end, this largest of all ships laid cable. It laid the first successful transatlantic cable. It was slow painstaking work to drop a thick cable down to the bottom of the ocean so that in the end it would carry a circuit, and more importantly, an intelligible morse code signal.

-.-. — -.. .

That is a giant step for humankind. Thanks, Brunel. Even if that’s not what you meant to happen.