“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~Mark Twain
Category Archives: deep thoughts
reflections
Life has been moving at such a brisk pace, I’ve hardly had time to reflect lately. But I just couldn’t let April slip by without a nod to just how good I’m feeling these days. It hardly seems real to me that it was just two years ago that I had the injury that started with this, then developed into this, and then turned into six months of trauma that ended in surgery. I still have the shiny pink seam on my lower left leg as a reminder, but the muscle tissue has filled in nicely since then.
At the moment I don’t have anything terribly profound to say in addition to marking the time that’s passing. Except that I still don’t take it for granted. Everyday I’m grateful for my leg and for my healthy body that just keeps getting stronger and stronger.
These roses are blooming up a storm in my garden right now. Such beauty!
my life-square
Recently I signed up for Foursquare, thinking that it would be groovy-cool to join in a real-life location-based game. However, I haven’t actually played along yet. It seems that I’m already more-than-visible to the world through my various internet presence(s), and I’m not sure that I want to add to that. At least not yet.
It anything, I’ve been feeling rather exposed by having so many online venues, clamoring for my attention. For example, I’m on Twitter under various aliases: @janaremy, @MHpodcast, @theexponent, @ATChapman, @PDP2010, @dhsocal. Granted, several of these logins I share with other group members….but it’s still a lot to manage! Blogwise, I can be found in numerous spaces, too: PilgrimSteps, MakingHistoryPodcast: Blog, HistoryCompass, DHSoCal, The Exponent, etc. Then there’s flickr and Facebook and LinkedIn and Posterous. Not to mention GoogleBuzz and GChat and Skype.
These online presences all complement my “in-real-life” busy-ness. I’m shuffling between two campuses, fulfilling parenting/household duties, and escaping to the ocean as often as is reasonable.
Of course, it would be uber-awesome to be mayor of the Pacific–or at least of Newport Harbor. But I’m not yet convinced that I need a web app to tell me I own those spaces.
retreat
As happens in academia, March and April are the season where you learn the results of all those grant applications you sent out in November and December. The last time I applied for funding I received nearly every grant that I applied for–a rare thing in History, for sure. But this past grant cycle has been nearly the opposite–the rejections far outweighing the acceptances. Of course it’s to be expected. Of course it doesn’t mean anything about my intrinsic worth as a scholar, but it is…wearying to keep finding all of those skinny envelopes.
So that’s just one reason that some news I received in Friday was extra-exciting, that I was selected as one of the twelve “barn-raisers” for the One Week | One Tool summer institute. I read and re-read that letter, just to make sure that it wasn’t another rejection. And then stomped my feet with glee!
Just shortly after I received that news, we left town for our annual Spring retreat with our Quaker Meeting. We gather in the mountains above Julian, CA, and spend three days strengthening our connections with each other and with our shared values. The setting couldn’t be more idyllic. We made blood-orange marmalade together, cheered the children’s Easter egg hunt, celebrated two friends’ engagement with some sweet champagne, played Eurogames, sipped tea, chased wild turkeys, took naps, wandered the forest dotted with wild daffodils, and ate apple pie. It’s quite different from the Easter celebrations when our kids were younger–there were no pastel dresses or baskets filled with plastic grass. No church choir. No talk of resurrection. After the egg hunt the children continued playing together while the adults sat in a silent circle.
I realized, while I was there, how much I needed time to simply be with my family, my friends, and my self. I needed the time to think and to imagine. I needed to watch the firelight dance. I needed to remember who I am and what I can be.
yet another reason I haven’t been blogging as much lately
My apologies for the grainy photo. But you get the general idea…
A few weeks ago I took a part-time temporary position at Chapman University as the Associate Director of Instructional Technology. Balancing that work with my dissertation-writing and my other obligations (podcasting! blogging! attending conferences! poetry! parenting! gardening! paddling!) has not been easy. But the work is incredibly stimulating. I have a lovely office location and great resources at my fingertips. My new colleagues are smart and supportive. I am learning so much.
I fear that what has suffered the most for these past few weeks is my ability to support my family, my friendships, and my spiritual life. Because becoming a better juggler of my ‘to-do’ list does not necessarily make me a better human being or a better partner. But in that, I am learning, too.
My path to technology
A blog entry for Ada Lovelace Day
Yesterday I was nearly exploding with the news that I’d had my first few PHP successes. Just small things, but it felt so satisfying to troubleshoot an issue and muddle through the fix. It took lots of websearching and reading, a brief convo with an IT tech at my hosting provider, and lots of trial and error. But it worked. Woot!
In general, lately, I’m finding huge satisfaction with acquiring new technical knowledge, much of which has come my way through my work in digital humanities. My capacity to learn new things seems to be increasing with each new step, and I’m intuitively becoming more capable at describing, managing, and troubleshooting technology. The thrill that accompanies each of these successes is not something I would have expected. How fun it is to learn–even as late as my 30s–that I like tech.
Along with my recent successes in the technical realm, I’ve been part of numerous discussions about the gender gap in technology-related fields. As a result, I’ve reflected on my own path in this direction. I can’t point to any one thing that steered me away from math and hard science, except my own deep belief that I wasn’t good in those areas. I felt no thrill when faced with a math problem. I merely endured Physics. The quantitative elements of Chemistry and Economics were my least favorite. It’s possible that I simply wasn’t good at any of those things when I was younger, and my stronger skills in writing and memorization steered me towards Biology and Journalism. Or it may be that I simply wasn’t validated for performing well in my Math or Science classes in the same way that I was when I did well in English. It’s hard to say.
But I think the real reason probably lies with being more often rewarded for what came easily (such as writing a story) and less often rewarded for what came hard (like a well-argued geometry proof). My own experience leads me to believe that my male peers often received praise that affirmed the skills needed to work through a difficult problem set, whereas us girls were not encouraged in that same way.
I also suspect that much of the reason I steered clear of math & science was that I wanted to be attractive to boys, and winning such attention meant more to me than the satisfaction of an elegant lab writeup. Although I typically dated the kind of boys who liked brainy girls, I still knew, deep-down, that the girls who were ‘too smart’ were far less likely to have a date on Friday night. My being raised Mormon particularly reinforced the notion that a ‘soft’ career choice was a better one, because the more important goal was to be a wife and a mother. Mormon women are strongly discouraged from full-time work, or even pursuing graduate study, unless it is after their children are grown.
I’m not sure yet where my growing passion for technology will take me, but as I move forward on this path it’s exciting to add new tools to my tech-kit and to find such satisfaction in problem-solving.
pilgrim classic: Saint or Sinner?
Republishing this post from 2/19/07:
[Full disclosure: I kifed this book
Are you good? Are you bad? A host of consequences hangs on the answer. Yet, a brief experiment can easily convince you that the question, so grave in appearance, has little foundation.
Consider how you spent yesterday. Retrace the main events, how one led to the next, and, as far as possible, reconstruct the thoughts that went with them hour after hour.
From this reconstruction, consider your attitude. Not objectively. In a partial, exagerated, and tendentious way. Note first the extreme magnanimity of your smallest actions. Be a benevolent judge of your innermost thoughts. Look how devoted you have been, how attentive, altruistic, sympathetic, humane, supportive, charitable, etc
And then do exactly the reverse. Force yourself to discern, in your acts and thoughts during that day, the obvious signs of perversity, your ability to harm, your taste for destruction, your fundamental wickedness…
And then, if you have carried this out completely enough, try believing in moral judgements and the searchings of conscience. What have you learned?
A bit of my experience (note: somewhat sanitized to avoid speaking of particular interactions w/people who might be reading my blog):
The Saint
In worship yesterday I felt lightness, love, goodness. A closeness with the spirit. I reached out to newcomers after Meeting. I ate lunch with friends and enjoyed their thoughts and their humor. I ate a divinely-tasty egg salad sandwich. I spent time interacting with my kids and John in the afternoon. I did the family’s laundry rather than spending time on my own tasks. Assembled a favorite salad to share with friends at dinnertime. Was gracious to Friends for their hospitality, etc, etc.
The Sinner
Slept in and was grumpy in the morning, as usual. Was testy with John and the kids because I was ready for Meeting before they were. Got to church late, despite having arranged to meet newcomers there beforehand. Resented some disruptions during worship. Had difficulty quieting my mind. Thought mostly of myself and all I want to/need to do. After meeting, left fellowship early to spend time with my friends. Ate egg salad sandwich for lunch w/no remorse about consuming animal protein. After dinner, poked fun of 50s movie and traditional Quakers. Tried to be funnier to impress friends. Thought more about how I was feeling than about others. Didn’t reach out to those I didn’t know well.
Upshot:
More than ever I agree with C.S. Lewis that:
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
It seems to me that we are, all of us, both gods and devils simultaneously. We are selfish and selfless in the same moment. And as such, we should be gentle with judging ourselves, and also with judging others.
on passion, evangelism and madness
Yesterday I led another workshop about some of my favorite web-based research tools. My colleagues like to tease me about how zealous I am about such things–my enthusiasm causing me to talk very quickly, show too many glitzy features, and gush. I suspect that my evangelism is charming rather than off-putting (at least, I hope so). I try not to say that using Zotero or GoogleSuite will change the world as we know it, but sometimes I sort of think it will.
Of late, I’ve come to realize that I need to believe in what I’m doing to be enthusiastic about it. For example, my loss of faith the UC has made it increasingly hard to be tied to that ship, despite all the good that’s come of my years at UCI. And while I’ve spearheaded some small efforts for change at UC, I no longer feel that our high-level administrators have the interests of the humanities at heart (departmental admins, OTOH, rock), so I’m looking forward to moving on. A similar thing happened with the LDS church. I was a super-champion of Mormonism until the foundation gave way (for me), and then it became impossible–even repulsive–to carry on with the organization. I’m not halfway person. Either I love it and believe in it, or I lose interest.
Having such passion serves me well in many circumstances. When I’m in the front of the classroom I am teaching, believing, and professing with everything I’ve got. Parenting absorbs me completely. My friends know of my wholehearted love affair with my two perfect children (and the amazing man that I made them with)–there is no ambivalence there. Whether I am gardening or traveling or swimming, it is done with body and soul. And there is a thrill with being able to live so fully, so committed. If I say or do something, it’s because I believe in it.
Life itself seems lunatic. Who knows where madness lies? Perhaps being too practical is madness. To surrender to dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash is madder still. Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
(adapted from Dale Wasserman’s screenplay, “The Man of La Mancha”)
Photo above is of us riding the tram up to the Getty museum when GameBoy was about 6 and CatGirl was 3-ish years old. We love taking our kidlings to museums! I’d forgotten that John and I had matchy-matchy black Dickies messenger bags back then. So cute!
living a life different enough to be worth writing about
I’ve been attempting to articulate a particular feeling for several days now, and here Jeffrey Tayler has done it so well.
If you had 99 lives, what would you do with them? With the one life you have, what will you do that will be different and exciting, worthy of recounting in print? If you’re short on ideas, as I was, let the protagonists of novels and short stories show you how to live; let the great writers, with their imagined plots and characters, introduce you to new paths in real life. I don’t necessarily mean milquetoast paths, easy ways out. So, if you’ve read “A Bend in the River,” let Salim the Indian trader, who came up from the coast to open a shop on the Congo River, show you what you can do when you have nowhere else to go. Let Georges Duroy, the pitiless hero of Maupassant’s “Bel-Ami,” show you what you can do if you arrive penniless in Paris. “The Sheltering Sky” might serve as your guide to Morocco, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” to the U.S. The point is that great writers and their works can provide blueprints for changes in our lives. They can teach us about how many possible ways ahead there are, both good and bad. And bad is not as bad as all that. Remember, for a writer, adversity makes good subject material.
The protagonist of “The Death of Ivan Il’ich” died moaning, in agony, overcome with the realization that he had wasted his days on earth following social conventions. He lacked l’esprit frondeur, and he paid for it. Conventions now are hardly less pervasive than they were in Tolstoy’s day; we’re pressured to start a career, build our résumé, earn a certain amount of money, and so forth. But remember: None of us gets out of here alive. So don’t fear risks. Rebel. Be bold, try hard, and embrace adversity; let both success and failure provide you with unique material for your writing, let them give you a life different enough to be worth writing about.
Picture from my trip to China a few years ago–a charming round “hobbit door” that I discovered in a garden. What a wonderful adventure that was!
Bridges
Cross posted at History Compass
Since I started paddling an outrigger canoe through the Newport harbor, I’ve gone under a lot of bridges. I learned, very quickly, that the current around bridges can be unpredictable–even dangerously so. In my small boat if I hit a bridge it means that I’ll likely end up going for an unintentional swim and the blow from hitting a cement pylon can easily cause irreparable damage to my fragile canoe.
As I paddled under a low-lying bridge last week and heard the uncanny echo of water and wind through that space, I realized why trolls always live under bridges in folktales. Bridges are important places–necessary crossroads. But they are also liminal places where danger lurks. It might be in the form of a malintentioned someone hiding in the shadows, or it might be a whirl of current that pulls the boat toward a cement piling encrusted with mussel shells. Whatever the possibilities, bridge-crossings demand heightened attention.
Like the dangers of the bridges that I face as I paddle around segments of the harbor, there seem to be trolls lurking around the bridges of academia, too.
Right now the trolls that I’m facing are the distractions that pull me away from finishing my dissertation–the largest being the specter of the awful job market, but others include my inner perfectionist that needles me with reminders that the dissertation will never be as good as I wanted it to be.
Every morning as I plan my day and make my “To Do” list, I realize that some choices I make keep me on a straight and safe course, while others bring me dangerously close to wrecking my boat as I let the current pull me this way and that. And some days I don’t get anywhere–eschewing the list of daily tasks and paddling around in circles rather than making measurable progress toward my end goal.
John & I were, at the last minute today, offered some tickets to an afternoon of art with the students at the Laguna College of Art + Design (we skipped out on an afternoon paddle to do so, but with no regrets!). It was incredibly inspiring to see the artists at work and to discuss their process. I was awfully tempted by a few items, until I remembered that I already have more art than I do wallspace. So I walked away empty-handed, but with a resolve to tackle my own life with more creativity & passion.
For some reason there was a moment at the art show where I remembered something a friend said to me awhile ago. She was lamenting that when she was young she was so insecure about her body that she never dared wear a bathing suit in public. After having given birth to several children, she was wishing that she’d been more bold when she actually had a body worth showing off. Her comment has stayed with me for numerous reasons. I was sad that she couldn’t go swimming with me because of her discomfort about wearing a swimsuit. I was sad to think of the times that my own inhibitions prevented me from having fun. And I was sad to think that someday I might look back on my current life and wish that I’d been more unafraid and adventurous…