Living in the future

I’m slow to dive into new technology unless and until I can see how I might find it useful. It took me until the late ’90s to buy a CD player, although I started downloading MP3s as soon as the first version of iTunes came out. Facebook? It took me until earlier this year to sign up, and then mostly because a friend and I have been playing Scrabble more or less continuously since 1998 or so and Facebook gives us an opportunity to have a game or two going at any given moment. (Okay, that’s not exactly “useful,” and Facebook has come in handy in a few other ways since then, but really, it’s all about the Scrabble.) I don’t dig Digg, Delicious isn’t quite to my taste, and I don’t see the point of keeping all my documents online when the whole point of taking my laptop to the coffee shop around the corner is to get away from the temptations of the Internet.

On the other hand, no one will ever accuse me of being a Luddite. As I noted in a previous post, I qualify as an early Internet adopter, and I’m a member of what’s arguably the oldest online community. Twitter grabbed me as soon as I learned about it, although I don’t use it the same way others might. I watch more TV, thanks to Netflix and Hulu, than I ever did before I cancelled my cable subscription. Digital photography has changed my life. I’m no Stephen Fry, but sometimes I feel like I’m wired six ways to Sunday — this evening, for example, one of my friends back in Boston said on Twitter that she and her husband were on her way to see Mike Doughty play at Regattabar in Cambridge, and a bit later, another friend posted to Facebook that he, too, was headed to the same show. And so I told him to find her and tell her I said hi, and she just informed me that the three of them — whom I don’t think have seen each other since my moving-away party 10 years ago — had drinks together after the show. (And how cool is that? And how much do I wish I’d been there, both for the drinks and for the music beforehand?)

I had a conversation earlier in the day with a friend who is rapidly becoming a social media guru of sorts. We were nattering on at each other about what she calls “communication 2.0″ — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer, wikis, blogs, bla bla — and about the strong points of each one. I said something about being able to do things we weren’t able to imagine as recently as five years ago, and she replied that the people we were five years ago would have found our conversation utterly incomprehensible. (“What’s a Ning?”) Even though I still use fountain pens and kind of miss printing in a darkroom, I have to say: the future’s not half bad.

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Tossed salad post

A random selection of things that have pleased me today, because I can’t think of anything more substantial to say:

• This animation about procrastination is delightful (hat tip to Ze Frank).
• Glee is even more so.
• Who says sex isn’t funny?
• Mushroom-stuffed bean curd skin is tasty, low-cal, high protein crack.
• There are some things I don’t need to see.

That’s all I’ve got this evening. Perhaps I’ll be more inspired after a good night’s sleep.

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The art of rejection

I have fallen crazy mad nutty in love with The Rejectionist, a blog which I gather is written by a literary agent’s brilliant, snarky assistant. Even though this agency seems to handle mostly fiction, which I do not write, I’m still loving the dark and tangy insight into the part of the publishing industry I never get to see. My own agent, much as I like her, would never say these things. I’m filled with the utmost of glee every time a new post appears.

Recently, the genius behind the blog asked her readers to compete in writing the best “sorry, our agency will not be representing you” rejection letter. The results made me laugh so hard, I was afraid I’d have a childish accident. Go. Read. Enjoy. And remember, don’t fuck with the assistant.

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On receiving

There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: Receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it. – John Welwood

***

Recently, two new friends offered to give me some concrete and specific help with a big personal project. I hadn’t asked for the help; they volunteered it. For some inexplicable reason, the project seems important enough to them that they’re willing to take it on as their own. They don’t seem to want anything in return.

I find this amazing. And confusing. And most of all, uncomfortable.  No matter how delightful they may find me, I can’t quite believe my company and my gratitude are enough compensation. Where’s the catch? What’s in it for them? What payback will they demand? I’m exceedingly uneasy about receiving without reciprocating. It makes me wary that I’m taking advantage, or worse, setting myself up to be taken advantage of.

Almost everyone has had the experience of being given something by people whose apparent generosity had strings attached. Many of us have also been ill-treated by people who expected us to thank them for it. As a result, our first reaction to real generosity may well be, “There must be an ulterior motive in here somewhere, even if I can’t spot it yet.” But perhaps that’s why these new friends have come into my life. I barely know them, and they barely know me, and yet here they are, offering precisely the kind of support I need at precisely the right time. If I refuse it, they’ll be hurt, justifiably so.

How many acts of love and generosity have we all missed out on because we were too skeptical, too cynical, too wary to accept them? How much easier would it have been to say a gracious, graceful “yes, thank you”? How much better might our lives become if we choose to believe that more often than not, the world is conspiring in our favor?

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Blast from the past

When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why my parents liked to listen to the music of the mid to late ’50s, the music they grew up with. But tonight, I’m sitting around listening to Radio Nigel, which plays the stuff I listened to in college in the mid to late ’80s, and I get it. I really get it. Nonetheless, I think my nostalgia is better than my parents’. The Cult, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and Depeche Mode are not Johnny Mathis, Brenda Lee, or Paul Anka. And thank goodness for that.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, they just queued up General Public’s “Faults And All” and I need to dance around the living room for a while. While I do that, won’t you tell me what music evokes your nostalgia response?

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