Category — Uncategorized

Last weekend, I went to Mom 2.0 in Orlando.  It was great, thank you for asking.  I met interesting people and ate a lot of cupcakes and got to hang out with friends I rarely get to see.

And then it was time to go home.

When I got to the airport, there was a long line at check-in, and I couldn’t figure out how to get into the line itself.  I finally asked an airport employee who informed me that the end of the line was back by the Sea World store.  I dragged my suitcase to the end of the line, my heart pounding, where another employee informed me that there was absolutely no chance that I would make my flight.

The woman in front of me snarled that we would make our flights.  We had almost two hours until our respective flights.  This was not going to be a problem.

This was going to be a problem.  You know that, right?

I learned a lot about this woman’s life because we were together in line for an hour.  Her elderly mother informed me that she just loved the enormous grey streak in the front of my hair and that it was very “brave.”  (Yeah, it is brave, you know why?  Because I’m doing a freakin’ Rogue cosplay every single day of my life.)

I finally made it to the front and checked my bag, asking what would happen if I couldn’t make it through security in the next half hour when my flight boarded.  The employee shrugged.  I moved into the security line where I inched forward for about 45 minutes until I got through and could take an Ativan as I ran for the gate.  I jumped onto the plane.  Five more minutes and I would have missed it.

The Ativan (remember, I’m a bad flyer) started kicking in as we were taxiing away from the gate.  And that’s when the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker.  “Everyone, I want to apologize, but we’re going to hit turbulence this whole trip.  Start to finish.  It’s going to be bumpy on the way up.  We’ll hit pockets of turbulence while we’re in cruising altitude.  And it is going to be bumpy coming down.  All of it.  All of it filled with turbulence.  Melissa in row 9, you are now stuck on this flight for the next two hours.  Try not to pee yourself.”

I looked around and everyone had a look of disappointment on their face because they may not be able to get their precious Schweppes if the flight crew couldn’t get up from their seats.  But I was screaming on the inside (and possibly the outside — I don’t know) over this news.

The plane took off and, as promised, it was bumpy.  The flight crew remained seated.  I knew that they would get very cranky with me if I seeped onto the floor in a weepy mess so I panted in my seat like a dying animal.  The boy by the window gallantly asked the girl between us if she was okay.  I leaned forward and heard myself tell him, “I am not okay.”  The college boy stared at my grey hair and sweaty face and choose to ignore me.  I spent two hours in this state.

Finally the plane wobbled down to the ground and I exhaled and unfroze.  (You know how animals go through fight, flight, or freeze when dealing with stress?  I freeze in order to trick my stress into not seeing me.)

Please don’t ask me to go anywhere.  I don’t think I am ever flying again.

Pace yourself.  I still have a few more thoughts from Matthew Quick’s book, Every Exquisite Thing.  You don’t have to read the book to follow these posts and have an opinion because I’m using the book as a springboard to other mental spaces.  If you want to read the other posts I’ve written about this book, you can find them here, here, and here.

I learned that I really don’t like it when people speak about themselves in third person.

This was not a shocking revelation — I’m always annoyed when I see people writing about themselves in third person.  Nor is it a shocking revelation for anyone else in the book.  When the main character, Nanette, begins to speak in third-person, she is greeted with this bon mot:

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but your talking in third person is positively unnerving. It’s like a punishment for the rest of the world (p. 168).”

Yeah, that’s how I feel, too.

But backing up for a moment, it was enlightening to first read why she is speaking about herself in third person and then realize that I was still annoyed with her usage of third person.

The idea comes from her therapist, June, who asks her to stop using the word “I.”

“We live in our heads, Nanette, which can be very scary places. We forget that we are not just an I, but a she and a you, too. We forget to see ourselves as others see us. For some people, the problem is narcissism—meaning they are selfish, too self-absorbed. But I think that your problem is that you are too selfless. You care about the needs of others more than you care about your own needs. You are strong for them even when it’s a detriment to your own well-being” (p. 146).

The solution is to move into a third person mindset. The therapist leads her to this experiment:

“I want you to do an experiment,” June says, and then suggests that I should begin to think of myself in the third person—not as an I but as a she. “Nanette is very good at making decisions for other people. She clearly sees that Alex shouldn’t have done what he did. But when she is deciding for the first-person I, Nanette, she is much less sure. So why not live in the third person for a bit and see how that goes? See yourself as someone else. Refer to yourself as Nanette in your inner monologue—the words that run through your brain all day. Kill the I. Maybe begin to keep a diary in the third person, too (p. 147 – 148).

But here’s the interesting thing: even knowing that this is sound advice — that we are better at thinking through solutions for other people and terrible at giving advice to ourselves and that we all could benefit from getting outside of our heads and considering ourselves from a different angle — still… I WAS COMPLETELY ANNOYED BY HER SPEAKING IN THIRD PERSON.

Like the whole book moves from first person to third person.  And it annoyed me.  Completely.

And, at the same time, intrigued me.  What would I learn about myself by speaking in third person day in and day out?

What do you think of this idea?  Are you also annoyed when people speak about themselves in third person?

My mind was blown last week with a Modern Mrs. Darcy post about interest span.

So you know your attention span — the length of time we pay attention to something before becoming distracted (about 8 seconds) — and how segments of the self-help movement are focused on helping you lengthen your attention span?

But what about your interest span?  When you’re interested in something, you stick with it for a long time.  You watch the whole episode.  You read the whole book.  She writes,

It’s not our attention span that causes us to zone out when we’re bored; it’s our interest span. We don’t lose focus when we care about what we’re watching, or reading, or listening to. And, interestingly, the thing that’s most likely to hook us, to get us to care, is empathy.

So she points out that certain things make us zone out and check our phones or fidget or daydream, and other things keep our focus.  She has started asking herself important questions: “when am I tempted to zone out? When do I get distracted, and what do I do when I am? Do I truly not struggle (much) to pay attention to the things I care deeply about?”

That’s what I mean — mind blown.

Because… there are plenty of times I don’t zone out.  Sometimes it’s because the stakes are high (driving).  Other times it’s because I am so into what I’m reading or watching or whom I’m talking to.  But… yeah… there are other times when I grab the phone while I’m watching a television show and check email.

My actions are stating that the email is more important than the episode on the screen.  While the episode’s feelings are never going to be hurt from that, showing another human being in front of me that they’re not holding my interest will lead to hurt feelings.  So… knowing that I’m showing that waning interest through my actions, I am paying close attention to the signals I’m sending out to the people around me.

What do you think about that distinction between interest span and attention span?  Does your mind always wander or are there times when you are absorbed in the moment?

It is really hard to answer “why” questions, and now someone has actually done research to explain how it gets easier to think when you change “why” questions into “what” questions.  The author states:

Why questions draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential. Why questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious. Why questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future.

If someone asked me, “what kind of ice cream do you like?” I would say, “Coffee chip.”  Black-and-white question, concrete answer.  But if someone follows that up with, “why do you like coffee chip?” the answer gets a lot more muddled.  Because… it’s bitter and sweet at the same time?  But I don’t really like other bitter and sweet combinations.  Because… it reminds me of coffee in the morning?  Not really…  I don’t know why I like it; I just do.

What asks us for information.  Why asks us to explain ourselves.

I really liked the part where she talked about how answering “what” questions got the guy rolling towards helpful information.  It’s as if hearing some truth sparks a person toward deeper truths because the words feel right.  It’s like when you put on a new pair of jeans and you know it’s the right fit before they’re over your hips.  I mean, once the jeans are zipped up, you know it’s right.  But even before that, you have a sense that you’re putting on something that fits.

And maybe hearing some facts that ring true as we work toward understanding drives us closer to gathering useful information about ourselves.  If we can just take a few steps down that road, the rest of the thoughts come to us.  Like therapy, like talking things out with a therapist and realizing things that were dormant in your brain the whole time.

I don’t have a huge decision to make right now, but I’m going to try this the next time I have to figure something out.  Switch my “whys” to “whats” and see where things go.

And lest you worry that “why” questions have no place, the author points out that “a good rule of thumb, then, is that why questions are generally better to help us understand events in our environment but what questions are generally better to help us understand ourselves.”

Grappling with anything at the moment?  Does changing your questions from why to what bring you toward clarity?

I really love linguist Deborah Tannen’s work (and I think every writer should read her books before tackling conversations between characters) so I was excited to read her recent article in New York magazine about female friendships.  She writes,

As a linguist, I’ve tried to figure out how language can be both an unseen source of trouble in relationships and the key to making them better; why it can be so comforting when an exchange feels perfectly tuned, or so disconcerting when it goes awry; and how the words we use to describe relationships can also help to define them.

Specifically, why do we call some women our close friends?

While some people used the term to mean people they see often, more women used it to mean someone they spoke to intimately.  “True friends, I tell them everything I feel and everything I think.”  I’m assuming that by “everything,” they mean a curated intimacy.  (There are people I speak with more openly and I would never hide a major moment in my life from them, but everyone gets a curated intimacy.  I don’t think anyone out there wants to know everything I feel and think.)

But it’s not really the information imparted, it’s the fact that someone is willing to listen.  You can have a close friendship without imparting anything you wouldn’t technically tell the rest of the world: “You feel closer to someone if you know they care about where you went, what you ate, and who you saw. ”

I thought that was the most interesting part of the research.  Closeness isn’t defined by what is being revealed.  It’s not as if people need to spill their secrets to consider each other close friends.  It’s entirely based on whether we believe the other person cares.

It made me think about how often I reach out (an action that lets other people know I care) or how well I listen.  The types of questions I ask.  Am I good friend?  Someone worth being close with?  Do other people think they can be themselves with me?

I aim to be someone “you can just be sitting quietly on a log and feel good and happy that you are with that person.”  Whether I achieve that is determined by other people.  But I can say, on my part, that I’m grateful for my log-sitting close friends.