332nd Friday Blog Roundup
I’m finding it difficult this week to get any traction on work. Part of me feels like it would be better to just let it go, stop stressing, release myself from any feeling of pressure and try again next week. Part of me knows that it’s really a waste of time to not be getting work done AND to spend the time beating myself up about it. That part of me knows that if I’m not going to get anything accomplished the least I can do is count it as a mental vacation and take the time to read a book or watch a movie. De-stress.
But instead of doing that, I spend all my time arguing with myself about the fact that I don’t deserve a break. That I’m an idiot for wasting time when I could be working. I am really hating my internal voice right now.
I wish I could slap her sometimes.
Please tell me it was something in the air and not my own fault. Did you have trouble focusing this week?
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I haven’t gotten a chance to see the book yet, but Michael Barr, a blogger, put out a book about infertility from the male perspective called Swimming in Circles. From the book information on Amazon:
Swimming in Circles provides an all-access pass into the private life of a couple faced with situations ranging from the embarrassing to the absurd, and decisions that are impossible one moment and incomprehensible the next. This truly unique memoir is told from the usually neglected male perspective and is filled with gallows humor peppered in between the depths of disappointment and the peaks of possibility.
It just feels like there’s a real dearth of the male perspective out there, so I thought I’d put this out there.
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The Weekly What If: What if you could read, internalize, and have a complete understanding of any work of literature without having to actually sit down and read it simply by touching the cover? You could only do this with one book. Which one would you choose?
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And now, the blogs…
Baby, Interrupted had a post about an accident that was avoided though the residue of what could have been still remains. I read the post with my hand over my mouth. She writes, “If I had been looking down, changing the radio station. If I had been reaching into the back seat to retrieve her teething ring. If I had taken the moment to glance at my phone. If, if, if…” The post will make your heart stop.
Sugar Donor had a post last Thursday that I didn’t read until Friday about a horrible, irreversible mistake with the doctor’s office. I sat on commenting because it was so raw that I couldn’t pull my thoughts together; and I still can’t now. She calls it a small part of the whole, but it’s not just the mistake, it’s what it represents. She writes so heartbreakingly at the end of the post: “I literally have nothing from this pregnancy, nothing. No pictures, no connections, nothing.” It’s the repetition of all the times the letters N and O come together in those two sentences that makes me want to scream for her. Losing that information is both part of the whole and its own loss. And my heart just went out to her.
Flotsam often asks good questions, and this post is about drawing your personal lines. She promises this question ties into a specific post, one that hints that her line has been pushed (perhaps I’m reading too much into that?), and says, “How much do you let others dictate what remains private and what becomes public?” The discussion is interesting as well.
Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post that made me smile about the pregnancy of fictive kin. Maybe it’s because she captured in words the love and fear and longing and hope and excitement that she feels about this impending birth. About how it will change things.
The roundup to the Roundup: Absolutely no ability to concentrate this week. Book about the male perspective with infertility. Answer the Weekly What If. And lots of great posts to read.
13 comments
James Joyce Ulysses. Didn’t even have to think about that one!
hmmm, I need some time to think about the book that I would pick, maybe something about History, I’ve also wanted a better understanding of how we got here. I’ll be back with my choice.
off to read the posts! Happy Friday my friend.
xo
Thank you, Mel. I’ve been having an awful week at work, running off my feet & full of doubts about myself & the value I add to my far-too-rapidly changing workplace. Your shoutout was a huge and much-needed ego boost. : )
There are so many to pick but to have complete understanding…I’d have to pick the Bible.
I’m also leaning toward Joyce’s Ulysses. I’ve had to read it twice, both times enjoyed it but really feel like there is too much in there that I can’t process/understand. I’d like to without putting in the work to do so.
Don’t laugh – but the dictionary. Why? Because then I would be totally killer at Scrabble . . .
After years of being the designated loser in my family, this is what I come up with!
War and Peace. Because that book is one that I would like to check off of my ‘should read’ list, but that I haven’t been able to actually like enough to make time to read. Or maybe Crime and Punishment. The Bible would be a good one, too, but I don’t think that understanding that one completely is possible, or even really the point.
I’m a bit more than halfway through a 2ww, which is affecting my focus, but there is also a full moon…so maybe that’s the problem.
Overactive superegos stink – try visualizing a blinking stop sign in your head whenever yours gets out of control. Sometimes that works for me. 🙂
Not sure about the book. Would you choose a book that you were never able to get through and thus classified as “bad”? Would you want to gain understanding of a “bad” book?
The Complete Works of Shakespeare – because while I love the plays, I’m currently too lazy to wade through the language and translate it into things I understand. I just want them all to be in my brain…now!
I finally finished Ulysses last summer…and what I took away from it is that it was a huge joke on everyone. Or, it was jokes inside of a larger joke. And an illustration of how wonderfully words can be put together – they can be useless or meaningful, hilarious or disgusting, rambling or concise. I don’t know what Joyce meant for people to get from it, but I feel pretty satisfied. (But then, my degree is in biochemistry, not fine arts.) Also, I’m pretty sure you can track his level of sobriety throughout the book based on how easy it is to follow the story. 🙂
So funny…my gut reaction was Ulysses too! Although there is a novel by Nabokov called Ada or Ardor that I wouldn’t mind another crack at (it was part of an English course in university that was about “the grotesque” in literature… Ah, memories!).
And maybe your ‘misplaced’ focus has to do with the beginning of spring this weekend…? Could be you’re just super-attuned to the changing of the seasons!
I can’t choose just one that would be unfair!
It would have to be some sort of religious book. Like BigP says. To be able to “get” why the universe works would be… well, I’m not really sure what it’d be like. I’m beginning to accept that I’ll never know (in this lifetime?) . Perhaps it’d be a relief to finally understand, or perhaps – especially if I didn’t like the answer – it’d be worse than not knowing. Wouldn’t it be a bugger to choose the wrong text and gain nothing except the understanding that that particular text (out of all available religious texts) is a load of bollocks?
Bea