Adulthood

My husband and I live in a bubble, I admit it.  Our bubble is mostly comprised of the stark division between 'those who watch TV' and 'those who do not watch TV' (ie - us).  But our bubble is insulated by the type of people we surround ourselves with - each layer dividing us farther from the reality of the American populace - level of education, political leaning, religiosity, sexual preference, parenthood, attention to the same types of news sources from which we derive our understanding of the world, etc., etc.  That is all to say, we don't meet with very much adversity in our very little world, aside from refuting students' uninformed, self-conscious blabber all day, which ranges from annoying comments to sexual harassment on a daily basis.

We are continuously amazed, though, by the fact that adulthood is terrible. (See this diagram for more).

For a few months, I tried to hone my personal habits to improve the quality of my life.  This was an experiment I didn't talk about much with my husband, but put for conscientious effort into things like: drink less during the week, go to bed early, go to the gym, don't drink caffeine at night.  After a summer of gluttonous indulgence, I found that I was exhausted during the days - the kind of exhaustion that a warm cuppa joe in the morning doesn't even begin to extinguish; I was too tired to work out after school, and I was too anxious to sleep at night.  Needless to say, only a few days of this living hell caused me to re-prioritize, but here's what I learned:

Drinking less only left me feeling nauseous in the mornings for unrelated reasons (mostly acid reflux, which has plagued me since I was an adolescent); going to bed early did not foster sleep due to the increased anxiety (caused by refraining from alcohol), going to the gym -- OK, so this one does help on a number of levels, but seriously, who likes to go to the gym? and drinking caffeine at night did not seem to affect how much or little sleep I got as much as whether I had a glass of wine or a sleeping pill at night did!

In fact, here's the insight I actually gained from my little experiment - an outcome I had feared and hoped to disprove:

• ALL adults are tired ALL the time!  (If they say they aren't, they're lying!)
• Going to the gym is always awful (but always worth it for the feeling of accomplishment afterward)

That's it!  my experiment did not accomplish anything in terms of motivating me to be a better person; I guess the only thing I succeeded in doing is proving to myself that everyone else in the world is just about as bad off as I am.

So, and this is the second half of living in a bubble - my husband and I are often surprised by how difficult life is.  I mean, last time I went to the DMV, I had to wait for 6 hours - no joke - 6 HOURS - to change my license from an IL license to a KS license.  I also had to have approx. 3 specific pieces of documentation and 2 forms of ID.  And you know how I knew that?  Because I got on the website to check and/or I called ahead before I went because (I thought) I was a genius!  There were apparently 120 other people who had done the exact same things, though, and arrived before me, so I was in line behind them.  Really?  You mean I'm not more prepared and awesome than the rest of society?  We're all just getting by the best we can?  Ludicrous.

At other times, we have prided ourselves in doing our own taxes.  I mean, I have an accordion folder and everything where all tax-related forms are stored all year, so, when it comes time to do taxes in April, I can dump it out and feel awesome because I'm such an uber-organized master of paperwork.  But -- you know what?  Most other people manage to do their taxes and get them in on time, too!

Other items in life that I thought I trounced other people at but turns out I only kind of stay afloat are as follows:
 - Cleaning the house
 - Paying bills
 - Taking care of animals
 - Remembering important dates (ie - birthdays)
 - Completing to-do lists

So as not to lose all faith in myself, though, areas in which I still dominate are:
 - amount of time I spend reading
 - staying in touch with people I care about
 - traveling
 - remaining calm in traffic / tense situations
 - professionalism
 - spelling

What are some things you are surprised other people manage to accomplish that you thought maybe made you better than them, but don't?

Writing on writing

I've begun a challenge -- provoked by Ms. Barbara Abercrombie here, I've begun writing dangerously for 365 days, which is to say that for 5-15 minutes a day, I read an anecdote followed by a quote by a known (sometimes and sometimes not-to-me) author, and then I ruminate on what was said.  Sometimes I respond directly, as when Toni Morrison asks her students to describe their ideal writing space; then I respond by trying to do just that.  But other prompts are less direct.  They are musings on writing from writers.  Like yesterday's page, for example, cited a Samuel Beckett quote that many authors use for inspiration, but I didn't find it very inspirational, so I simply explored the idea of failure and how many pages authors probably write for every 100 that gets published.  (My guess was 1000).

In other news -- and speaking of authors who have been posited as failures or has-beens, J.D. Salinger is supposedly making a come back. I mean, as we all know, he never really fell out of popularity, thanks to pop-culture, emo kids, and pseudo-intellectuals who laud Catcher in the Rye as the greatest piece of literature ever (blasphemy!), but, as has been predicted, he has been working on pieces that are going to be released ~2015-2020.  I wonder if any other canonical writers are hoarding literature from the world?  Morrison?  Marquez?

So the challenge has been fun - a release, like a self-meditation in a way, but I've still not figured out how to 'release my inner writer,' (as apparently 28,500,000 google searches call it).  I'm still looking for a muse.

Any takers?