The big picture

In almost a year of pottering around with this blog and the concept of confronting my fears, I’ve discovered, to my delight, that the list of things I don’t dare risk is short indeed. Sure, there are things that make my pulse pound and my stomach flip. Heights. Spiders. Inexplicable rejection. Incurring someone else’s bad opinion. (That’s a tough one, that is. I have to remind myself daily that what other people think of me is none of my business.) But it turns out not much intimidates me so much that I literally can’t bring myself to do it.

Which is good. Because I’m beginning to realize that the things I really need to worry about are the things there’s no point worrying about. The ice in the Arctic is melting faster than even the worst-case scenarios had predicted, and the new worst-case scenarios now involve coping — figuring out which disasters to respond to, which hungry mouths to feed, which thirsty people to whom to provide safe water — rather than trying to keep the worst from happening.

Sigh.

Now that’s intimidating. And yet what can I do but accept it, do my tiny part, and hope it adds up?

Yes, I feel guilty about getting on a plane later this week to go halfway around the world. All that CO2 wasted for my whims! But I’m not going to cancel. The people whose artifacts I’ll be digging up could never have imagined what life would be like 1000, 1500, 2000 years in the future. They may not have imagined life would still exist; the medieval ones, at any rate, expected the end of the world to come a lot sooner. Standing in a ditch, digging up their ovens, their rubbish pits, their skeletons, and their … um … fossilized poop is a good way to remind myself that I have no idea what life will be like 1000, 1500, 2000 years from now. The world may all go pear-shaped in my lifetime, or in the next century. Then again, it might continue on in some way I can’t even begin to imagine. All I know is that by the time I’ve receded into history, the world will be as unimaginably different as our world would look to the Romans, the Saxons, or the Vikings.

Looked at that way, what, really, do I have to be afraid of?

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There’s no “I” in “supply”

In the last week, I’ve turned down two opportunities to help out other people because there wasn’t anything in it for me.

Hold your horses. Before you start accusing me of being a calculating, selfish user, let me elaborate.

In the first case, I got a request for an introduction to a professional connection from someone who’s been entirely off my radar for several years. No hi-how-ya-doing, no “I know we’ve been out of touch but I was wondering if you’d be willing to…” — just the expectation that I’ll open up my virtual Rolodex on demand for someone I haven’t seen or spoken to since John Kerry was the Democratic candidate for president. I’m all about logrolling, but at least butter me up a little first!

In the second case, a friend of someone I dated many years ago contacted me to ask if I’d be willing to offer emotional support while he goes through a rough patch in his personal life. I’m sure the friend meant well, but the request was just…odd. Let’s set aside (as if that was possible) how a man might feel about having his dirty laundry aired to an long-ago girlfriend. I’ve exchanged holiday cards with this ancient ex now and then over the years, but that’s pretty much the only contact we’ve had since the Pleistocene. I’m not inclined to offer up my shoulder to anyone but my closest friends — and certainly not someone who no longer knows me and might be tempted to idealize me as the girl who got away, now grown up into a woman-shaped bandage for his emotional wounds.

I politely responded to both situations by saying I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to do what they were asking.

This is a bigger deal than you might imagine. I used to worry so much about whether saying no was “nice” that I considered a ringing telephone a demand, not a request, and felt guilty if I screened my calls. I didn’t feel the slightest hesitation over saying no this time. No second-guessing, no regrets. Apparently, I’ve finally given myself permission to be discerning about where I offer up my contacts, my shoulder, my time, and my effort.

The energy has to flow both ways. I’m not a battery. I’m not willing to drain myself to charge someone else up.

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Brainwork

My ability to survive and thrive in my day-to-day life depends on two brains. One is the approximately three pounds of lumpy grey and white matter between my ears. The other, about 2.5 pounds heavier and also grey and white, is my laptop. They aren’t a truly redundant system — I haven’t yet figured out how to sync them, and let’s not even get into the mutual failover issue. But I’m equally dependent on each, for different reasons, and I fiddle with either one only with great caution.

Technically, it’s easier to muck around with the computer. If I don’t like the results, I delete the file or application and try again. If I mess up, I restore from my latest backup. If I really mess up, I always have the option of wiping the hard drive and reinstalling everything from scratch, or if necessary trotting the whole shebang over to the Genius Bar at the Apple store. And if all else fails, I can move the contents onto a new machine.

With the so-called wetware, it’s not quite so simple. I can upgrade some of the software, so to speak, but there’s no such thing as migrating to a new cerebral cortex, so it’s taken me a while to get everything running smoothly. If you’ll pardon the nerdy analogy, I’m still resolving various conflicts and incompatibilities — but by and large, things are finally operating as they should, and given how much time and effort (not to mention cash) I’ve expended to get there, I’m reluctant to experiment.

I rely so much on my two brains that tinkering with either one of them makes me anxious. This week I’ve been tweaking both at once, which I consider brave and/or foolhardy, even though I pretty much know what I’m doing.

This afternoon, I’m wrapping up the complex and somewhat nervewracking ritual of setting up a new laptop. Each stage has its own attendant anxieties, from transferring data from the old laptop to the new one (What if I lose something important, like the article I’m writing that’s due next week, and can’t get it back?) to doing a total erase and system reinstall so the old laptop is ready for its new owner (What if I accidentally pass along the Quicken file with almost 20 years of my financial records?).

I’ve done this plenty of times; I know what I’m doing, and besides, the Migration Assistant in OSX makes it damn near idiotproof. And yet I still cringed last night when I put the system disks in the old laptop and told it to restore itself to factory-fresh settings, and again when I set up a seven-pass erase on the old external drive. Even with two other copies of my data, one on the new laptop and one on its new backup drive, I still had to push past that last tiny bit of oh no, what if I make a mistake that can’t be undone?

Meanwhile, I’m also testing a couple of medications meant to reset my circadian clock when it’s been badly thrown off. Two or three times a year, I get turned upside down chronologically somehow, and I want a way to get myself back on local time in a day or two rather than struggling to function for a week as I inch my wake/sleep patterns forward or backwards by an hour or two every night. This is definitely not something I’ll be trying on a regular basis, mind you, but knowing it’s possible is a comfort.

I’m trying both medications now, when my clock is properly set, because I want to be sure they don’t make me twitch, puke, lose touch with reality, or sprout an extra limb, so that if and when I need them, I at least know they won’t make matters worse. I’m doing this with a doctor’s approval, but even so, when I swallowed half a white tablet this morning, I felt a rush of deja vu from last night. That niggling apprehension, that last tiny bit of oh no, what if I make a mistake that can’t be undone?

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Travel Tuesdays: what not to wear

I just got back from visiting family in the Midwest, and I have two questions about the brilliant sartorial parade that is an airport at peak travel season.

First, rubber flip-flops are just this side of barefoot. Is it really necessary to make people take them off to go through security?

And second, when did rubber flip-flops — not to mention pajama pants, backless sequinned halter tops, and t-shirts with blatantly misogynist slogans — become appropriate travel attire?

It’s possible to be comfortable and still look at least somewhat put together and appropriate for public viewing — and no, you don’t have to buy special clothes from travel catalogs. I certainly like my simple cotton tank dress with the secret passport pocket hidden in the hem and my microfiber pants that can be washed in a hotel sink at night and dry by morning, but those are for major trips, not quick jaunts to see the relatives or hang out with friends. For those trips, I get on the plane wearing what I’ve come to think of as my personal uniform:

• a plain t-shirt (not crewneck!), short-sleeved except in the dead of winter, preferably in a dark color to hide the inevitable in-flight spills
• jeans or pants with a little stretch, not too tight but not loose enough to require a belt, again in a dark color
• a fitted cardigan sweater (lightweight in summer, heavier the rest of the year) that I can wear on the plane if I’m cold and remove if I’m warm, because I’m often both in the space of a single flight
• low-heeled but polished or at least quirky shoes that slip on and off easily at security (i.e. no laces!)

No sweats, no (oh heavens no) sandals with socks, no clothing with an offensive punchline. Just simple, flattering basics chosen because they’re comfortable enough for the carrying, standing, sitting, and waiting that modern air travel has become.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for a return to the days when flying was such a special occasion that it called for dressing in one’s Sunday best; let’s face it, seats were bigger and more comfortable then, and four hours in coach weren’t likely to turn a tailored jacket or well-pressed shirt into a rumpled, sweaty mess. I’m also not willing to traipse through the terminal in heels, especially given my preference for traveling carry-on only. But neither do I believe travel is an excuse to dress like you’re planning to spend the day lying on your couch (or someone else’s). Clothing makes a statement, and I’m not convinced “I’m a slob” or “I hate women” or “I’m not wearing a bra” are good statements to make in transit from point A to point B.

What do you wear when you travel, and why?

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A place I used to know

I’m writing this in the middle of the night, in what was once my bedroom. I’m surrounded by the furniture I picked out in 1976. I can still see faint smudges on one wall from the tacky adhesive where I once hung a dozen Shaun Cassidy posters. My prom dress is still in one far corner of the closet. The girl who slept in this room almost every night from age 9 through 16 grew up to be me. But she doesn’t exist any more.

Once upon a time, no matter how old I was when I walked in the door, I reverted in two hours or less to the driven teen, the withdrawn adolescent, or the shy and awkward child I used to be. I reacted to criticism by arguing or sulking; I felt I had to prove myself all over again. I found myself asking for permission to do things I do in my adult life without thinking — as though by returning to this house, I was also returning to being a child without the right to make independent decisions. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I just slipped seamlessly, as many people do, into the assumption that if I was in this house, I was by definition under parental authority again, whether I liked it or not.

And I didn’t like it.

The girl who grew up in this room believed that her job was to be the person her parents wanted and expected her to be. That if she disagreed with them, she had to argue or persuade them into agreeing with her, and if she failed at that, that it was her duty to concede. That because they were her parents,  she was always required, around them, to be the child. But as I said, that girl doesn’t exist any more.

It’s one thing to be 9 or 12 or 15 and unready to accept the responsibility and power of adult life. It’s another thing entirely to be 22 or 35 or 40 and feel like that responsibility and power is being snatched away, or worse, to feel like you’re obligated to hand it over. The catch, though, is that if you’re 22 or 35 or 40 and you find yourself reverting to childhood around your parents, that’s no longer your parents’ fault. No matter how much they may like it, it’s not your job to go along with it. At a certain point, “growing up” means being willing and able to say, “Topic X is not up for discussion” or “I’m sorry, I won’t be doing Y” or “I realize you’re not comfortable with it, but I’m going to do Z anyway.”

For some of us, that comes naturally. For others, not so much. But it has to come. Otherwise, no matter how much of an adult you seem to be on the outside, a part of you is still sleeping on a twin bed underneath a dozen posters of a long-deposed teen idol.

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