Stay of Execution

Blog Therapy?

I've gotten a couple of email inquiries in the past few days from people who found this blog on Google, and have decided it means I know something they want to know about.  One is from a nontraditional student who wants to finish up his undergraduate education at an Ivy League school and wonders which ones I think are the most prestigious.  ?!  A second is from someone doing a research project about "blog therapy."  She wrote, "I noticed that you don't believe in blog therapy, and I wanted to ask you about your beliefs."  I wrote back, "I'm happy to answer your questions, but I don't even know what blog therapy is, so I'm not sure why you'd want to ask me anything.  What's blog therapy?"  In her response email she included a snippet from this post, way back when, where I made my beliefs on blog therapy known. 

Hmmm.

It was interesting to go back and read that post, written while I was still reeling from being unexpectedly dumped.  I was sad and hurt and confused and mad at myself for having believed that my love was reciprocated in the first place.  I needed to write to sort all that out but I was ashamed of my own vulnerability, and I sure as heck didn't want to put my sadness out on the Internet for the whole world to see.  And yet I couldn't really omit it.  It's interesting to look back at way I thought about my identity and this blog, and to compare it to how I now view that relationship.  I'm not sure what to tell this researcher about my views on "blog therapy," whatever that may be, but I think there's a complex, and in some ways perhaps therapeutic, relationship between my own sense of self and this blog. 

Writing has always been a habit of mine -- I have an overflowing shelf full of journals -- and I've shifted a lot of my writing to this blog.  Which has changed what I write about, consciously and unconsciously.  I have trouble opening up about hard things.  I am generally happy and optimistic, resilient, confident, hopeful.  I think sometimes I start to believe that I HAVE to be that way, all the time.  That if I were to show people my moments of doubt, my neediness, or my longing, I would be pitied or despised.  I don't know where this instinct comes from, but I'm fighting it consciously, and it's very very hard.  I isolate myself when I'm sad; I'm ashamed of the parts of me that aren't unfailingly positive, capable, delighted, self-assured.  I want to hide them away. 

This is true of my life, but it's also true of the blog.  Jeremy was recently asked how his blog would be different if it were anonymous.  I knew my answer right away.  It would look more like my journals -- I would work things out, problems or fears or sticky troubling situations where I don't know the conclusion.  I would write about them in detail, thinking them through.  I would ask for help.  I would admit to wanting things I might not be able to get.  I don't do that here, because my social identity and my professional identity are here for anyone to Google and find, and an admission of wanting something that you're unable to get looks a lot like a public failure.  A temporary mood becomes permanent thanks to Google.  An angry response to someone involves not just me but them, too, and it wouldn't be fair to air that out on the Internet.  Job interviewers have looked across the desk at me and said, "I like your weblog.  You're a good writer."  (And others, "This weblog thing....um....it makes us uncomfortable.")  I don't self-censor much.  It's not worth writing to me if I don't write honestly.  But there are whole topics I don't write about at all, because I don't want my honesty here for the world to see, infinitely indexable by Google, and linked to my real-world identity.  I change my mind and my mood, but what I write is here forever. 

At the same time, I think I'm learning a lot by writing here.  I do take risks and when I do I tend to be surprised by the kindness of the response of my readers.  Just as when I take risks with my friends and confess to being afraid, or doubtful, or sad, or lonely, I'm always amazed by the kindness with which I'm received.

Blog therapy?  I guess in some ways I've changed my tune since last January.  By committing to writing this thing every day, I am involved in a practice of observation that is perhaps a little bit like meditation.  I notice what I'm seeing, doing, thinking.  I capture my thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  And when I sit down to write, the self-censorship voice fights the instinct for honest disclosure, and the dialogue is instructive.  "You can't write about that."  Why not?  "Because then people would know that you're ______."  But I am _____, at least right now.  It's lying if I pretend I'm not. "But if you write about it, people will think you're ALWAYS like that, and then nobody will like you. (or nobody will want to work with you)."  Really? "Well, maybe not.  But you better not risk it."  Are you sure?

Anyway, it's a practice that's rewarding.  The blogs I like the best are those where people are brave, and honest.  I aspire to be both, but I think there are lots of ways in which I fall short.  Just like I do in life.  A blog, like a real-world identity, is a set of conscious choices about what you project about yourself to the public.  I've said before that I think a blog is like a mosaic, an aggregation of hundreds of small observations, dark and light, many shades and shadows and textures.   The truth is in the aggregation, not in any one of the fragments.   I guess life is like that too.  My project is to trust my audience -- in life and on this blog -- enough to include the dark pieces as well as the light, without fearing that you will mistake those bits for the whole picture. 

Thankful

The hum and bump of clothes in the dryer; the splash and rattle of rain on the windowpane; the rising hiss of the kettle starting to warm up on the burner; the heavy breath of a dog falling asleep; the yellow glow of a floor lamp on a thick red carpet; the solid weariness of a belly full of food digesting.  It makes for a pretty cozy November night. 

Quit Law School Regret

This post is for the person who found my blog with the Google query: "quit law school regret."  I just wanted to say that the smartest person in my law school class, bar none, dropped out in September or October of our 2L year.  He was so happy about it.  He snuck into my car and left business cards all over, in the sun visor and the ashtray and the glove compartment and squeezed between the pages of my textbooks, with little messages on the back, saying things like, "Who's still in law school -- CHUMP?"  I don't think he had any regrets.  And he could have been a great lawyer.  He was an accountant, with training in and an instinct for business valuation.  He worked at that job way more than the officially permitted 20 hours a week while in school.  He had one of the nimblest, most playful minds I've seen.  In our moot court exercise I watched, amazed, as he handled the judges' questions, cool as a cucumber.  He left because his fiance's father was dying, and his sister had just had a baby born without a small intestine, and he wanted to give them his time, his money, and his attention.  And because he didn't care that much about being a lawyer, and thought the indulgence of a legal education wasn't the best use of time or money.  And because he wasn't trying to prove anything with law school.  If he was at the outset, he'd abandoned those pretenses by second year. 

I was pulling up to the school, stopped at a red light across the street, on the day he dropped out.  I watched him coming out of the building.  He was wearing a suit, as he often did because of his accounting clients.  He hadn't told me that he was dropping out, or even that he was thinking about it, but somehow by the way he walked and held his head I knew he had turned in the paperwork, and that he wasn't coming back.  I wished for the light to change so I could catch him, but it didn't, and I watched him get into his car and drive away, leaving the law school behind.

He's a teacher now, and from my spies in the middle school I understand he's a very good one.  We, in my law school class, were poorer for his absence.  I missed him for a long time; I still miss him sometimes.  I've never had another intellectual playmate who had quite the same clever, playful mind.  But I think he did the right thing.  I thought that then, watching him walking across the lawn to his car.  Sometimes you can tell by the way someone carries themselves that they have utter faith in a decision.  I'm not saying it's right for you.  But if you know your priorities, and you ask yourself why think you should leave, and why you think you should stay, I think you'll make a good decision.  Good luck. 

[Someone asked me, recently, if I regretted going to law school.  No way.  I liked it, even when it sucked, and I liked doing it and doing it well.  I liked the kind of mental work I learned to do there, the language and vocabulary and precision of thought I got from it, and the introduction to the geography of the common law and federal and state statutes.  I value the confidence I have from having done well at the study of law, and my general sense that nobody can bully me with the law.  I don't regret law school, even if I never practice law a day in my life again.  For me, quitting would have been the wrong decision.]          

Stay of Execution Mix

I just got a thank-you email from the first recipient of my mix CD (you're welcome!), so I'm  publishing the songlist here.  I started with a batch of about 50 songs that seemed like good contenders, then culled it down to 14 based on how they worked together.  My criteria for inclusion were: it has to be a song that gets stuck in my head with some frequency; it has to be a song that I find evocative in some kind of meaningful way.  I guess I wanted it to sound like me, and to resonate with the way I write.  There are lots of songs I love that don't sound like that, and I didn't consider them at all.  I tried not to be deliberately obscure -- when I caught myself being obscure I chucked the selection.  The three songs I took out that I most regret leaving out were Thad Cockrell's Some Tears (from Warmth & Beauty), and the pairing I wanted to do to conclude the mix, of Radiohead's Exit Music (for a Film) and Christopher O'Reilly's arrangement of the same song for classical piano.  None of them really fit with the general feel and sound of the rest of the mix, so I left them off, but I'm second-guessing that a bit.  The songlist is below the fold.  I've seen 9 of the 14 acts live, and I expect that almost all of them have played at South by Southwest over the years. 

Apostasy

In the midst of marriages and co-habitations everywhere, I have a few friends divorcing.  One of them is having a party to celebrate the divorce being final.  He told me about it, and, with a bit of a wry laugh, suggested, "So if you have any promises you wish to renounce, or commitments you'd like to break, bring them along.  We'll have a bonfire." 

I liked the idea, and am pondering which commitments I am ready to abandon, which promises it is time to forsake. 

Down The Rabbit Hole

Saw the movie "What the @#%?*! Do We Know" last night.  Loved it.  The little movie theater showing it has been mobbed for the whole time it's been showing -- long lines outside, all the seats full inside.  They're extending the run for another week, which is a nice sign.  I may go back and see it again.  Besides the point of the movie, which is that quantum mechanics means we live in a world of infinite possibility, and our consciousness and intentions affect those possibilities, I liked the structure of the film.  Some quibbles, for sure, but they are small.  I recommend it highly.

Then immediately afterward I scurried over to a friend's house to watch Frontline, about the credit card industry.  I'm reading Elizabeth Warren's book (The Two Income Trap) right now, and thought the special would be interesting.  It was, but it was something of a dramatic contrast to the movie that preceded it.  Not a lot of possibilities or heightened consciousness or wonder on Frontline; instead a technical, pedestrian story about human greed. 

All Request Tuesday: Best 3 Places to Sail

1) Penobscot Bay -- it's beautiful, achingly beautiful.  There are islands and seals and puffins and pink granite and pines and lovely wooden boats that fill you with longing.  It's quiet and complex, and there are rocks and fog and lobster pots to catch on your rudder and secret anchorages to discover and mussels to gather.  That's where I love to cruise.

2) Short Beach, Branford, CT on a windy day when there are waves.  That's where I practiced at Yale.  On certain days the breeze blows all the way across the Sound and the water piled up into nice big waves.  Steering 420s through the waves is a thrill and a skill and a rush.  Your legs get sore, your abdominal muscles and your quads are screaming when you're going upwind, and then you turn around the buoy and suddenly you're hurtling along down these waves, with the centerboard vibrating and spray everywhere and it's one of the best sensations in the world.

3) (tie) Newport, Rhode Island or Cowes, England.  I pick these venues because both often host big regattas, and I like sailing in big big fleets, with a professional race committee and well-run races.  I like being at a regatta where you can look from horizon to horizon and see sailboats, hundreds of them, in all directions.  Where you come ashore and the beer tent is full of sunburned people making gestures with their hands, telling stories about mark roundings and spinnaker takedowns.  Cowes is a little more exotic, but there's not much breeze there and a ripping current.  But more sailors have accents.  I could go either way. 

All Request Tuesday: All Jobs Considered

An anonymous reader asks for a post on the novel things I have considered doing to support myself since I have become unemployed.  A partial list follows:

Selling cars, editing academic texts and writing indexes, running a nonprofit, painting houses, tending bar, being assistant dean of the law school (student affairs), editing a newsletter, writing spam, fundraising, teaching sailing, founding a nonprofit, selling yachts, waiting tables, selling boat parts, developing real estate, being a criminal lawyer, doing market research, working for a venture capital firm, commercial lending, facilitating and/or mediating, publishing legal study materials, reporting/freelance writing, importing wine, answering telephones, working as a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee, being a parking garage attendant, joining the Peace Corps, selling everything and living in my parents basement, selling everything and living with my best friend in Montana, working as a bankruptcy associate at BIGLAW, teaching basic personal finance to laypeople or debtors, analyzing legislation for a nonprofit group, public relations/marketing, clerking for a bankruptcy judge someplace, selling real estate, loading fishing boats with ice, water, and fuel, educating low-income first-time homebuyers, selling office equipment, researching pharmaceutical companies, consulting/strategic planning, teaching English, freelance legal research/writing.

I'm sure there are more things that I've considered, but that's a glimpse. 

All Request Tuesday: Fictional/Dead Companion

CMC asks me which historical or literary figure I'd choose to spend some time with, and why.  When I was a sophomore in high school I thought the grass was greener at a private school in a neighboring town, and I entered a scholarship contest to see if I could get a slot there.  The essay portion of the test was this question.  I wrote about Mark Twain -- I thought it would be cool to spend a day or two with him.  I liked his humor and his imagination, and I said I thought I'd talk to him about being a girl and how it seemed like being a girl back in his day was a lot more limiting than being a girl in my generation.  I think I imagined that we were strolling along a back road in some southern town, with glimpses of river here and there through the trees, dawdling before we had to go to a tea party in town.  I won the scholarship, but realized that my public high school was better than the fancy prep school for about a dozen reasons, so I stayed where I was. 

Anyway, that's what I first thought of when I read the question.  Would my pick still be Mark Twain?  No, probably not.  I considered picking a judge -- Oliver Wendell Holmes was pretty smart -- but I think I'd get shy and tongue-tied.  And for me, spending a day with a literary or historical figure is as much about the day spent and the experience we could have as it would be about the ideas and the conversation.  I mean, a lot of the coolness of Oliver Wendell Holmes, for example, is his mind and his words, and I have access to that in the writings he left behind.   What would we do, go sailing?  Sit in a library discussing legal theory?  Yikes. 

So I think I'd want to spend a day with Archie Goodwin (and, of course, the cranky and brilliant Nero Wolfe), from the Rex Stout mystery novel series.  Nero Wolfe is the literary figure -- Archie's not particularly interesting without Nero -- but Mr. Wolfe would be completely mean and dismissive to me, so I don't have any hope we'd have a good conversation.  But Archie and I would go into the kitchen, and he would shrug and apologize for Mr. Wolfe's rudeness, and we'd eat some of Fritz's amazing cooking, and talk about what a jerk Nero Wolfe is, and we'd go off to do Nero Wolfe's bidding, solving some murder involving a rich family and a beautiful woman and perhaps a stolen gemstone.  Nero wouldn't want anything to do with me, but I'd get to watch him being smart and idiosyncratic, and Archie would be fun and companionable, and I might get to go up to the greenhouse and walk in the humid air among the delicate orchids, and perhaps Cramer would come storming in and insult Nero Wolfe, and the whole experience would be rich and fascinating and memorable and fun. 

If you haven't read the Nero Wolfe series, they're really quite wonderful detective books.  Formulaic, silly, hard-boiled, dated, yes.  But Nero Wolfe is one of the strongest fictional characters around.  His standard of living is a lot better than Sherlock Holmes', and Archie's a lot more fun as a straight man or sidekick than Watson. 

Cranberry Conserve

I made this last Thanksgiving, when I had 15 "orphans" here for a yummy dinner.  It was really good, and I've been assigned the cranberry sauce for dinner at my uncle Ben's.  I also need to bring an hors d'oeuvre; if you have suggestions I'm listening.

Cranberry Conserve:
1 or two thinly sliced, unpeeled oranges (remove seeds, and cut slices in semicircles)
1/2 cup apple cider or juice
1 1/2 cups pineapple chunks (fresh)
1 pound cranberries
3.5 - 4 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp cloves (whole)

Simmer the orange slices with the cider until the peel softens, approx 15-20 mins.  Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for about 35 minutes, until the mixture thickens.  You'll want to stir a lot.  Cool overnight. 

I found this recipe in the new version of the Joy of Cooking.  It's yummy, and pretty.