Stay of Execution

Cooking

I just cooked a nice fish dinner -- broiled hake, brown rice, pureed spinach with red onion and mint, stewed cauliflower with tomatoes. My friend D came over and made bananas foster for dessert.

It's been a while since I've cooked regularly. I think I want to make it part of my life again. I listened to a book on tape while I chopped and simmered, and the time passed under the spell of the recipes and the narrator's voice. Once upon a time I used to cook moderate to elaborate meals four or five times a week. It was wonderful time spent each night, partly sensual experience -- the smell of garlic or cilantro, the texture of a thickening sauce, the chilly feeling of shelling Maine shrimp, the sizzle of oil when I dropped bread in to make pooris -- and partly mental escape. I often disappeared into thought while I chopped onions and peppers, or else listened to All Things Considered and Marketplace and Fresh Air. Nowadays I'm usually rushing off somewhere, or out with friends, or too busy or tired to devote a whole evening to making and eating a meal. But I miss it. I might make a weekly friend date, where I cook for two or three people on the same day of the week each week. I'd like to plan meals again, thumb through recipe books, soak beans overnight and take note of the ingredients I'll need, the timing of the different steps. I'm ready to start up again.

Pop!Tech: Pretty Pictures

Really cool graphic notes done by Peter Durand about each of the sessions are available for viewing here.

I used to make notes and posters like this when I was studying subjects in law school, and for the bar exam. Using pictures, color, and space to depict concepts, relate them to one another, and inject humor and insight into the way I thought about hard subjects, made me learn them much better. I recommend it.

Seven Secrets

I came across Betsy Bernard's 7 Golden Rules of Leadership today. Number one made me think about the legal profession. Maybe that's what's so troubling about the billable hour. Everyone's time is valuable, but by measuring some people's hours and not others, and by creating a very clear system of relative value of different people's time, it might make it easy to forget this rule. Everyone's time is valuable.

Question for Early Adopters

Are tablet PCs ready yet?  By "ready" I guess I mean robust, high-quality, and able to capture doodles and drawings and notes with color and resolution equivalent to what one could do on a pad of paper or the back of an envelope. 

Weary

I'm tired. I'm indecisive. I'm sick of not knowing what my professional calling is. I'm scared that I won't see it or know it or, worse, that I'll see it and not be able to get to it. I'm scared that people I respect won't respect me any more because I'm sort of foundering here. I'm doubting myself. I'm paralyzed by possibility. I just need to commit to one thing and do it but instead I keep turning over more stones and finding more possibilities. Some of this is good, I suppose -- working in parallel is conservative, because already there have been some prospects that turned out to be illusory, and I'm glad I didn't drop everything just to chase them. But maybe if I'd dropped everything and chased them, they wouldn't have dissolved away.

It's funny because I have this dark tired pessism about the short term. I feel like I'm wandering around in a dark forest. And yet I have this wonderful warm confidence about my long term prospects, this sense that the clearing, when I find it, will be sunny and there will be a team of fast-running horses there with one saddled up and ready for me and when I stumble out of these woods, zoom, I'll be galloping off on an amazing journey full of treasures and scenery better than anything I've seen yet. I can't really explain it. In the short term, day to day, I feel more lost than I have in a long time. But I also feel like I'm moving in the right direction, like this lost wayward stumbling is going to prove valuable and essential to the next phase.

Still, it's dark in these woods. I try not to write much about the dark places on this blog. It makes me feel even more vulnerable. I know how permanent Google can make a temporary mood. I don't want to be tainted by my own discouragement. But omitting it, always, is kind of tiring, too.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping. The primary reason was that I drank caffeine and stayed up later than usual. And I was around a lot of people whose lives made me deeply depressed. I have a thin skin, I think. Maybe it's a downside of having imagination and empathy and a strong curiousity about people. Being around people who lack a sense of possibility, whose lives are constricted and small, affects my sleep almost as much as caffeine.

Today I walked six or seven miles in the midday sun, along the water, looking at a lot of yellow and orange leaves. It helped. My legs are tired, but my soul a little less tired.

Stay of Execution Book Report: Misc.

I've been reading a lot of children's books recently. Just re-read The Phantom Tollbooth, Freaky Friday, and The Westing Game. Also read Louis Sacher's Holes. All good, although Freaky Friday is weak and dated. The Westing Game is certainly the best of the bunch. Everyone should read it. If you need to find a fourth or fifth grader as an excuse, fine. But pay attention, it's tricky.

Once upon a time I used to read out loud to my boyfriend. I would read to him while he drifted off to sleep. Sometimes children's books, sometimes short stories, sometimes poetry. I like doing that. I miss it, far more than I miss him. I suppose I could read to the dog.

I've also recently read Ella Minnow Pea, which didn't particularly do it for me. All concept, no characters. I just don't dig words that much. I tried, but couldn't stand, Doug Rushkoff's Exit Strategy. Again, all concept, lousy execution. You get no literary credit with me for being an interesting social experiment. And Jane Austen's Persuasion, which I found fresh and entertaining, of course, but not up to Pride and Prejudice standards.

Darkness Falls

This morning when I got up at quarter to six to walk it was nighttime dark, not dawn dark. And now at 6:16 it's nighttime dark, not dusk dark. Coming into November is so hard for me, with the days so short and grey, and the knowledge that they're only going to get shorter and shorter for another two months. By the solstice, it will be dark at 4.

GIT

Returning from Pop!Tech I had a couple of letters, real live pen and ink letters, waiting for me, and then I got a phone call from a New York friend of mine who was in town visiting. She and her traveling companion and I had lunch today. All three of us are in transition -- we've left stability behind and have no idea what's ahead and we're all giddy and terrified and delighted by the unknown-ness of it all. We went for a walk and as we walked across the causeway looking at the ocean I proposed that we meet again in six months, and again in a year, to report on what we've learned. (GIT = Girls In Transition) It is so useful to meet and talk with people who are being brave in their own lives. It makes it easier, or a little less lonely, to be brave in mine.

Attention Reader Hal, (and others interested in Googoosh)

Hello, Hal. I've just received an email responding to your comment about the Iranian diva Googosh. A gentleman named Nima has two websites about her, and offers to email you more information.

"just tell him googosh is in the hearts and souls of iranians and many other nations and she is treated like a goddess in central asian republics."

I will put the two of you in touch if you wish to email me. Ain't weblogs cool?

Pop!Tech: Recovery

I'm finally home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea and the three-legged wonder dog snoring beside me. I'm beat. Was up until almost three last night. This morning I went to a post-conference brunch and discovered myself barely able to talk to anyone. There were all these interesting smart Pop!Tech folks around and whenever one came over and sat down near me I just found myself exhausted and wishing I didn't have to talk. No more ideas, please. No more connections, no more discussion or intriguing points or clever insights. No more summaries of the interesting work you've been doing. I just want to eat my coffeecake and look out the window at the yellow leaves falling against the grey sky. As soon as I figured out that I was incapable of making good conversation I left and drove home here, listening to my new CDs. First Howard Fishman played for me, as I drove through Damariscotta and Wiscasset and Bath, and then Jonathan Coulton made me smile the rest of the way home.

There are lots lots lots of ideas I didn't get to write about, lots of people I really liked. The next book I want to read is Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice; and there's a documentary about the Amish called The Devil's Playground that I want to see. I'm tired from four days of rich food and no exercise and too little sleep and too many ideas and fascinating people. I feel like I *should* blog about what I saw and what I learned and what I'm still confused about and who I met and who I really liked and what I found tiresome and disappointing and what I found fresh and wonderful. Maybe later. Instead I'll put in a partial placeholder -- thought Barry Schwartz and Janine Benyus and Frans de Waal and Malcolm Gladwell and Tom Daniel and Thomas Barnett and Ze Frank were wonderful, felt great about the way my role in this year's conference helped me get to know Bob Metcalfe and David Weinberger better, am going to try to continue conversations begun with Peter Durand and Jerry Michalski and Dina Mehta. I hope it won't be another year before I see Jonathan Coulton again, and I hope to make Howard Fishman a friend.

Maybe it's just because I'm drained, but when I think about the conference one of the things I am most proud of was pulling some New Yorkers and an LA hipster out of the after-hours party and walking them down the dark, quiet streets of Camden, crunching through the leaves on the side of the road, and walking them down to sit in the chilly wind on the shore, listening to the water and watching the flash of the red buoy at the mouth of the harbor and smelling the salt. We wished on shooting stars and they went quiet and said, "Thank you so much, I would have hated to miss this."