Category — Uncategorized

Happy new year!

One of my resolutions — surprise surprise — has to do with reading. I finished 57 books in 2019. At the same time, I actively avoided tomes such as Gnomon or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell because I knew committing the time to those books would mean walking away with a lower overall number.

So this year, instead of counting books, I’m counting pages. I’m aiming for 20,200 (so 2020 with an extra zero), which makes longer books more enticing because I read faster the deeper I get in a book. This comes out to 55 pages per day… which may not be entirely realistic… or maybe it is. Who knows? I guess I’ll have a better sense after the first month.

And now… back to my book.

What are your resolutions?

The Guardian had a piece where a self-described pessimist attempted to become an optimist. Spoiler alert: he’s able to change his outlook. (I’m thinking that if Tim had not been moderately successful, he wouldn’t have spent 800 or so words talking about the experiment. So I guessed the ending.)

That’s all optimism or pessimism is… an outlook. He writes near the end of the article: “Once you accept that at least a portion of your pessimism is just a story you tell yourself – and an inaccurate one at that – it’s hard to hang on to it.” But the opposite is true, too.

Optimism is just a story you tell yourself — and an inaccurate one at that, too.

I spent the last year taking 15 minutes out of every day to better myself. And I really do feel like I’ve improved my life, either with new knowledge or a new way of seeing the world. I’ve rounded up new hobbies and joined groups. But I thought I would end the year somehow more optimistic. A sunnier person. I thought it was inevitable as I read book after book on happiness psychology.

But that didn’t happen. I’m still Melissa. And I’m still fairly pessimistic, though clearly there has to be some optimism in there or I wouldn’t believe I could better myself. Pessimism is just the story I tell myself. It’s interesting that I would choose to tell myself that story; that it would still feel true after spending a year listening to and thinking about other types of stories.

But the pessimism one fits me like a favourite coat. One that I believe I can take on and off but still opt to wear out into the cold, cold world.

It’s the end of a decade; the first decade where I spent every year in it blogging. Isn’t that a strange thought? From the beginning of 2010 until the end of 2019–I captured a decade of my life with words.

Cheers to 2020.

I’m reading Maria Konnikova’s Mastermind right now, which is about how to think like Sherlock Holmes. I realized about five pages into the book that I don’t want to think like Sherlock Holmes, but I’m finishing the book nonetheless because it’s fascinating.

Starting with the dedication page. She kicks off the book with two related quotes. The first comes from WH Auden:

Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences. As Ortega y Gasset said: “Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are.” —W. H. AUDEN

Later, on the third page of the book, she includes a second quote from William James:

William James, the father of modern psychology, wrote that “the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”

It’s an interesting question: are you in complete control of what you pay attention to? If we think about control as a continuum, actions are on one end of the control line. I can decide to do or not do something (most of the time). On the other end of the spectrum, though still pretty close to the center, is control of my reactions. I can mostly decide how I’m going to react to someone else’s actions or words.

But attention? I can choose to pay attention to something, but can I really choose not to pay attention to something? I mean, sure, I can show a person that I’m not giving their antics attention, but I still need to technically pay attention in order to not pay attention. I need to notice so I know to avoid.

Does that make sense?

So in the end, the only way to ignore is to focus on the thing you want to ignore.

This pretty much sums up my day: “The Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóðið is a mashup of slumber party and holiday-themed Scholastic Book Fair for grownups. With chocolate.”

We are not having a traditional Jólabókaflóðið because the books come from the library (though I really love giving and receiving stories as gifts). But we have books and chocolate and blankets to snuggle under and nowhere to go because nothing is open.

Merry Christmas, if you’re celebrating today.

I found wonderful advice a few weeks ago and tucked it away to read when I had a moment. It was advice from a resilience expert who used her own research after her child was killed in a car accident.

She explains, “In the blink of an eye, I found myself flung to the other side of the equation, waking up with a whole new identity. Instead of being the resilience expert, I became the grieving mother, trying to wrap my head around unthinkable news with my world smashed to smithereens.”

I appreciated her words because she acknowledges that she didn’t instantly switch to using her advice. She was in an emotionally impossible place, and some days she got through better than others. But this was the advice that she used to get through the five years following the accident; all of it applicable for getting through any difficult situation.

Which is why I’m passing it along today. Just in case you’re dreading the holidays this week.

I think her third question — is this helping or hurting (and answering it honestly) — is maybe the most applicable, but I found all of the advice a good perspective shift. Maybe it’s the equivalent to giving someone a Band-Aid when you’re bleeding, but at the right time, these types of words can be guidance if you’re looking for a way forward into the next minute.