Seth Godin declares that there is no more mass culture anymore, and I believe it.\u00a0So why do I feel like I’m being trite by having so many mass-culture-reference blog posts in a row?<\/p>\n
Maybe the New Year is one of the few remaining cultural touchstones. Yes. The world is still spinning.<\/p>\n
It’s not new to have resolutions and examine one’s life in January.<\/p>\n
We’ve been cleaning out our garage. Such masses of STUFF that I must sort through. I confess I am a notebook hoarder. I feel deeply uncomfortable if I don’t have a notebook with me at all times.\u00a0And I can’t bear to throw them away. Some delicious poems or essays are in these pages.<\/p>\n
And there are a lot of to do lists.\u00a0These papers don’t need to be in my life anymore.<\/p>\n
So I can tear out the to do lists and phone messages scribbled in my notebooks.<\/p>\n
Digging deeper into my boxes of papers, I even found old college syllabuses and term papers.<\/p>\n
Time machine.<\/p>\n
Reading again, I see that professor was saying something encouraging. “If you can expand on this topic, you’ll really have something…”<\/p>\n
I remember at the time interpreting that to mean ‘as it stands you have nothing…’<\/p>\n
Silly me. I’m not going to write that paper on transcendentalism again, but maybe I’ll learn to be gentler on myself.<\/p>\n
Oh crap, look at this. A performance review from several jobs ago. I remember this one. My first ‘needs improvement’ ever.<\/p>\n
Ever.<\/p>\n
AND HE WAS SO WRONG!!!<\/p>\n
I was shocked at the unfairness of that manager. He was peeved over a serious of other things that weren’t going his way, and he took it out on me so hard. I could barely believe it. In fact, I carried the memory of that review around like a trophy of horror. I told friends and co-workers, repeating it and fully expecting gasps of “he didn’t!”<\/p>\n
I got them. I got affirmation I prompted them for.<\/p>\n
What I didn’t do? Fight the unfair review at the time. I didn’t refuse to sign it. I should have. That’s the real lesson of that unfair review.<\/p>\n
So now…more than a decade later…I still have that review. Like a dark shadow, saved and treasured in my garage.<\/p>\n
What a foolish thing!<\/p>\n
I flipped through the pages, remembered how it had shocked me at the time. Then I walked out to the recycle bin and dumped it.<\/p>\n
Some old memories and acquaintances can be forgot.<\/p>\n
It’s okay to make room for the memories that have a better return on investment.<\/p>\n
I still have friends from that old job. And from the jobs that followed. I don’t need to spend another minute nursing an old wound.<\/p>\n
It would be better spending time with my college friends, the transcendentalists. Emerson provides better food for contemplation:<\/p>\n
\u201cBe not the slave of your own past \u2013 plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”<\/p>\n
So if you want to make resolutions for this New Year, go for it. More than anything, dive in. Look at this delicious smooth-surfaced year we have to play in! There will be old friends and new, adventures and doubtless a few regrets.<\/p>\n
And always our each and glorious individual self to carry through.\u00a0I am so ready to toss the ballast and make more room for my best self.<\/p>\n
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Seth Godin declares that there is no more mass culture anymore, and I believe it.\u00a0So why do I feel like I’m being trite by having so many mass-culture-reference blog posts in a row? Maybe the New Year is one of … Continue reading