It's the same me, new site, and most importantly, hopefully all of you.
I don't really have an agenda or theme for this blog. I mostly don't even have time to write, let alone write well. I used to dream of having lots of time and space for a big house with lots of guests and we'd all be together with lots of food and hours of conversation. A grand bed and breakfast filled with abundant friends, family, and food.
These days, though, my days are filled to the brim with jobs, kids, and perpetual responsibility. No kidding, my routine often runs from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. I'm not complaining, not at all. Well, maybe a wee bit. To be honest, I hate keeping up this pace. While I'm grateful for jobs and kids, I still want more things: minutes, hours, weeks. I am weary of the constant string of very long days, the poverty of having it all. I am the dishrag.
A few years ago I saw a job coach, seeking ideas for how I could make professional changes. I'd been working for an international aid agency for ten years or so. I was fully puffed up with self righteousness about the fact that my day job entailed changing the global landscape one village at a time. But still, something was missing (apparently saving the world wasn't enough) and therefore I sought advise.
"It's not like you're solving world hunger," the career coach said to me before she knew what I did. "Make a change." She was telling me to move on and get over myself. She just didn't get me, I thought. Yeah, I actually was solving world hunger, I responded stupidly. I really believed it. In hindsight that career coach could probably see right through my delusion of self-importance, yet that dumb bleeding heart act of mine was in full gear and couldn't be stopped even with the full blunt force of insightful professional advise.
I got fired from saving the world, as you may already know. I'm not being metaphorical -- they terminated me, eliminated my position, ended the relationship. World peace broke up with me due to economic recession reasons thus and such etcetera. The weekend following the ax I watched the entire boxed set of "Providence" in my pajamas, shell shocked at the proof of my inability to rescue mankind from self annihilation. (Now you understand why I torture my students and myself with a six-week unit on the post-apocalyptic novel "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.) My merciful 13-year-old daughter joined me for a weekend of sappy one hour episodes of boyfriends and sisters and love songs and feel good melodrama.
My beautiful family and friends stayed with me throughout the entire season of my job loss grief and beyond.
The other day a friend pointed me to this article, "How to Live Without Irony" by Christy Wampole. Did you see it? The article makes the case that sarcasm has taken over sincerity as a way of relating to one another, mostly because we are all too afraid are afraid of rejection and so we pretend we don't care. How to overcome this collective irony? Wampole says we need to say what we mean and mean what we say, despite the risks. She says we need to cultivate sincerity and humility.
If you have a few minutes to read this article, let me know what you think. Part of it is thick and heavy, but even the illustrations are worth a look -- and not lost on me that a truck driver is the subject for one of the drawings. (I find the picture ironic because I've been connected to the industry my whole life, my dad still drives an 18-wheeler coast to coast at age 70.) I'm still trying to understand the definition of a hipster.
Your thoughts?
P.S. Here's link to another article that completely refutes Wampole's points, saying that we are now in the age of sincerity. I would never read either of these articles if it were not for the once-a-year occasion of a Thanksgiving break, so no worries if you don't get to them. I just put them out there because for today, I could.
Yours truly,
The Natural Born Bleeding Heart
Hello test comment number two.
ReplyDeleteDelightful, Terri, as always. I'd read you anywhere.
ReplyDeleteHi Jeni, thanks.
ReplyDelete