I'll be home for Christmas

I'm heading home to Indiana for the weekend. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any time off this year, but I'm flying so I'll have a couple of days to see everyone, at least. I've never missed a Christmas with the family, although I almost missed the Christmas dinner one year I had to work the morning of Christmas Day. It's hard to believe that was eight years ago now.

A good friend of the family passed away recently, and I wish I had gotten to see him one more time beforehand, but it was not to be. He was much loved, with a large family of good people. (Okay, one of them kind of dropped me on my head when I was an infant, but no harm done.) I used to go fishing in one of the ponds on their property with my dad, and we've always appreciated their generosity. My thoughts are with them this holiday season.

Blogging for an audience

I’ve been blogging for a little more than two years now, and it still surprises me what prompts a response and what doesn’t. For instance, three people responded to my post on the “nice guy” conversation below, while a post about a hot topic goes by unnoticed, be it an election, the war in Iraq, or what have you. I guess it just depends on who’s listening at the time, but it’s nice to know someone’s getting something out of it.

In case you’re curious, I don’t have a set method for writing posts. Sometimes something grabs my attention and I write it up right away, other times I let an idea gestate or compose some of it in my head before I start to put anything down. Once in a while, I’ll write down a topic I know I’ll want to return to, but don’t have anything articulate to say about yet. If it’s tied to a current event, sometimes these fall by the wayside. Occasionally, I’ll bounce an idea off someone. I did this with the conversation referred to in the “nice guy” post, with my roommate.

My intention wasn’t to criticize anybody in particular, or anyone who’s called me nice in the past, but rather to explore the idea a little bit in different contexts, and how that idea manifests itself in perception or behavior. Given the questioning of my mental health that ensued, this probably wasn’t as clear as it could’ve been. But I would ask anyone reading this blog not to read too much into any one post. Sometimes how a post turns out just depends on the day I’m having. Sometimes I start writing one idea, and halfway through it gets taken over by another.

I’ve occasionally posted previously written material, but I’ve never deleted a post. When I’ve edited, it’s been for grammar or clarity. I realize that with the rise in RSS feeds, any editing done after the fact is lost on some readers anyway. At the risk of sounding uninspired, if anyone would like to suggest a topic they’d like me to post about (that doesn’t involve selling something), email me.

A clarification

In case it wasn't obvious in my last post, I was being sarcastic when I suggested being a jerk would attract women. The internet isn't always good for conveying that kind of humor, especially when you adopt a conversational tone to begin with. Regardless, being myself and trying to be a good person are the only things I know or want to do with my life. After all, you're looking at yourself in the mirror every morning.

Who finishes first?

I’ve been told by many people, under various circumstances, that I’m a “nice guy”, but an incident this week bears repeating. I’ve recently been thinking that when a prospective romantic interest tells you this, he or she (as this undoubtedly happens to women as well as men) is not just seeking to spare your feelings, but also his or her own. Rather than tell someone “I’m just not attracted to you” or “I find you boring,” which may be just as accurate, saying “I think you’re really nice” spares one the discomfort of having caused someone else disappointment.

But it doesn’t really. The other person is still disappointed – it’s just the romantic interest who gets to feel off the hook, at least to some extent. Wanting to spare someone else’s feelings is an admirable goal, provided not giving the real reason doesn’t do the other person a disservice. Wanting to spare your own, while perfectly understandable, is somewhat less than noble if you could provide insight on what the asker could do to improve his or her chances in the future. But who wants to do that, and why should they be expected to? They didn't ask for the question (presumably).

Then there’s the whole “nice guys finish last” maxim. On a Simpsons commentary track for a season 8 episode in which Lisa falls for the bully Nelson, who’s stolen a hood ornament, one of the writers gives his advice on getting the girl. If you have the chance, “steal the hood ornament,” because otherwise “you’ll end up someone’s second husband.” Leaving aside the +50% divorce rate after five years in this country, is being someone’s second spouse such a bad thing? Does it imply, as he indicates, that one has failed to attract a more desirable person? What happened to the idea of falling in love, and that being what matters? My mother is my father’s second wife, and they’ve been married 34 years.

Anyway, ponder if you will: a married, older woman says to me, “You know, you’re a really nice guy. Has anyone ever told you that?” I replied yes, but it doesn’t always seem to be a good thing for some reason. She tells me one of her relatives was a nice guy, and he ended up marrying a very overweight woman her family disapproved of. When asked why he would want to marry her when he could do so much better, he apparently told her “I know she loves me, and I may never find that again. I just don’t want to end up alone.”

I can’t help but wonder what I was meant to take away from this exchange, if anything at all. To be clear, she disapproved of this, but was it because her relative didn’t return that love, or because she thought he should have held out for something better? Or, as I took it, was it because he was too much of a “nice guy”? The criticism seems to be, if you were more of a jerk you could do better with women and get what you want (because everyone knows women love jerks). So my question is, how much of a jerk would she have me be? Is 10% less helpful and kind enough? 20%? Shall I blow off everybody for an hour a day, or just a few people all day long?

All I know to do is be myself, and try to be good person. If anyone has any other advice, I’d love to hear it.

Rewind

Phil asked me what brought that last post to mind, seeing as how it's been a while since it came up. I started reading Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky recently, hence the title of the post, and there was a quote in there that had something to do with it. Also, I've been reading a running dialogue on the TV series The Wire, including some of the people who make it, and a quote by creator David Simon has come up more than once. "(T)his season is to take argument with those who feel that if you're born without privilege, but make the right set of choices, that you will be spared. To do away with that bit of national mythology." The season centers around middle schoolers slowly being sucked into drugs and violence by their inner city Baltimore surroundings.

Naturally, that sentiment is a lot easier to come by when you're writing about inner city African-Americans, but being a white man, Simon has caught some flak for his take on the subject. Whether or not you feel it's warranted depends on if you believe in the universality of human experience, which most artists, including myself, take for granted. There is no human experience that is completely foreign to me, because I am human.

Reading Dostoevsky

Some time ago, my roommate brought up the idea that maybe it's a mistake for parents to tell their children they can grow up to be anything they want, because when they grow up and realize this isn't true, they become disillusioned and (I would add) maybe even resentful. Would it be better if your folks skipped the optimism and let their kids decide for themselves what was possible and, by extension, not possible in their futures?

Most if not all people reach that conclusion on their own eventually, and at least superficially this seems a profoundly anti-American idea. After all, our media is full of stories where people overcome the circumstances of their upbringing to succeed in the world and grow rich and/or famous in the process. Movies are made about their lives to inspire the parents of the next generation to continue the cycle.

But what about the (vast) majority of people who don't? What if those same people who strive would strive regardless of what they're encouraged to believe as kids, and those who settle for a decent life quietly lived staring up at them would be happier as adults without ever having the possibility dangled in front of them, just out of reach in a future that will never come? Would we be better off both as individuals and a country without the expectations?

Well, I can't quite believe that.

While it's true there was plenty of innovation and economy prior to the very idea of America, much of it was relatively anonymous or to the credit of the aristocracy at the time, and it's more than luck that drives America to still be the dream for countless people all over the world. The promise of America lies in its ideas, foremost among them that you can do what you set your mind to do. Whether that involves working a farm or starting a media empire, we believe the opportunity is there, even despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

And if we as a people ever stop believing that could be us on the TV screens or in the White House, America is likely to become a far darker place, because the impulses and moods kept in check by that hope have been decidedly uglier since at least Vietnam. Fear, paranoia, and a will to dominate are dangerous in any country, but as armed as the U.S. has been and will remain, woe to the country that eclipses us in the future. We're going to need to hold onto our ideas and ideals because they're the most effective weapon we have against our own darker natures.

Day trippin'

I managed to come down with the worst sore throat of my life by the time we left Pedernales on Saturday, although I didn't realize it until I woke up around midnight. I got about eight hours of sleep total over the weekend, given the whole sleeping on the ground thing.

I think I realize now why it had been so long since I'd been camping - I don't enjoy it very much.

Seeing the falls was really cool and hanging out with friends was fun, but I think I prefer the idea of day trips ending in a nice, soft bed at night. It was definitely worth seeing, though.

Speaking of worth seeing, if you skipped The Prestige a few weeks ago, definitely check it out. This is one creepy, mind-bending, suspense movie, reminiscent of Memento. It's based on a novel, but is at no time less than compelling watching. And the ending is a kick in the gut, even if you see it coming.

Pedernales camping.

Getting animated

I saw Flushed Away after work today, Aardman's new computer-animated film. It retained all the wit and inventiveness of the claymation films in the move to the new medium, a feat in and of itself. It's also one of the best films I've seen this year. I envy kids growing up now the quality of their animated entertainment. I watched cartoons growing up, but the only thing that really holds up to adult viewing is Batman: The Animated Series on the television side, and some of the Disney movies. (I'm referring to what was originally released while I was a kid, not the classics.) Between Pixar, Aardman, Miyazaki, and Dreamworks, there have been more great animated movies released in the last five to ten years than in all of my childhood combined. This is undoubtedly the reason I'm still such a fan of the medium that I go see them in the theater by myself, as I did tonight.

I'm going camping this weekend for the first time in almost ten years, so I had to go buy a tent. I went to Wal-Mart looking for just a couple things, including the tent. Both the air filter and the headlamp bulb I needed for my car were out of stock, the only models of each that they didn't have. I told the woman helping me there must be a lot of Eclipse owners shopping there lately.

Journals

I was just reading a review of a book I'll likely never read that referenced a scene in which the narrator refers to a room of his house where one wall is concealed floor-to-ceiling with journals, some of which are written in huckleberry juice. This immediately made me think of Fight Club, when Edward Norton is reading stacks of old books and magazines rotting away in a house with leaky ceilings and sporadic electricity. But I also wondered, how long would it take to read all that stuff?

When you consider how long it takes you to write a page versus read one, it's pretty clear you could do it up until a certain point in your life, even if you wrote in your journal everyday. The serial killers and mentally ill you read about may even write all day everyday to accumulate their libraries. But there would eventually come a time in everyone's life when it will become impossible to read everything you had written up to that point in the remaining life left to you.

This blog is only the fourth journal I have ever kept, following an English class assignment, my travels on my semester abroad, and "Notes from the Road", published here in February 2004. My roommate keeps journals, and when he comes to the end of one, he re-reads what he's written before starting the next one.

Now imagine how much better of a grasp you could have on your own history if you were to read your journals all the way from the beginning to the present. Memory is unreliable, personality is malleable, but the written word doesn't change. Assuming you weren't making things up, and allowing for the fact that you may have consciously or unconsciously held things back when writing, you may discover truths that you were blind to at the time and gain real insight into yourself. Or you may just unearth forgotten memories and the faces of lost friends, like looking through a photo album.

But this is the promise of blogging for me, and probably many others, keeping a record and being able to reflect on it in the future. Sometimes we lose ourselves to our circumstances or surroundings, and this is a new tool available to us to find our way back. It's up to each individual whether or not to let others peek in at the same time, like handing someone your diary, and here's the difference: almost everyone blogs for the world, while reading someone's diary is still an intimate act, and done without permission, a violation. I don't know if that's a sign of the connected world's narcissism or truly a blossoming of openness in expression, but it feels like a good thing to me.