I was reading Susan Sontag’s best productivity tips on Lifehacker, and they were… as you would suspect from Sontag… simple and brilliant:

I will have lunch only with Roger. (‘No, I don’t go out for lunch.’ Can break this rule once every two weeks.)

I will write in the Notebook every day. (Model: Lichtenberg’s Waste Books.)

I will tell people not to call in the morning, or not answer the phone.

I will try to confine my reading to the evening. (I read too much — as an escape from writing.)

Lifehacker’s point was that she made rules for breaking her rules, but I was sort of more amazed that she set up clear, unapologetic boundaries for herself.  I do not have said boundaries.  I mean, yes, I have them in theory, tucked somewhere in my brain, but I rarely follow them.  I also do not want to “do lunch” in the sense that I lose an hour or more of work time when I do (from an already truncated work day).  And yet I say yes to lunch.  Because I like the person and want to spend time with them.

Because I work from home, people think nothing of calling to chat during my work day.  When I’m not on deadline, it isn’t technically a problem, except every minute I spend on the phone talking is a minute I’m not moving forward with a project.  The answer is that I should pull a Sontag and not answer the phone.  But then I feel rude.  I guess the point is that Sontag didn’t care if she was rude, and she reaped the consequences of having people think of her as rude.  But she got stuff done.

And I guess I was struck by her admittance that she used reading as an escape from writing.  I have two ways I use reading — to enjoy a story and as an on-ramp to my own writing projects.  I don’t really need the on-ramp for blog post writing, but I often need to read a chapter before I can work on a fiction manuscript.  Reading that she confined her reading to the evening made me wonder what she used as an on-ramp.  Or did she not need an on-ramp?  Could she sit down and just… write.

Interesting thoughts.

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This is a really cool video on how passwords work on a lot of sites:

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Yes, this is your weekly reminder to back up your blog, social media accounts, and email.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

And if you don’t know how to back up your blog, read this post on BlogHer that talks about manual backups and plugins.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Should Adoptive Parents be in the Delivery Room?” (Creating a Family)
• “Love is All You Need” (No Way to Say It)
• “We are Finally Having a Baby” (Dreaming of Dimples)
• “The Incredible Privilege” (Losing Lucy and Finding Hope)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about the wall of baby photographs seen in the doctor’s office or clinic.  She wonders if the hope that some take from the wall balances with the pain seeing those pictures brings for others.  If they get under the skin of some people, whereas others don’t consider them at all.  It’s an interesting post and an interesting discussion in the comment section.

Climbing the Pomegranate Tree has a post about a divorced friend who lamented three years ago that she would never meet someone to build her family with who recently announced her pregnancy.  It’s a brief post that packs a punch.  And the title made me think of the difference between the sail boats and motor boats zipping around the harbour.

Lastly, An Engineer Becomes a Mom has a post that I want to hand people every time they say the words “just adopt.”  There is no “just” in adoption, for any member of the triad, and this post sums up the complicated nature of adoption, considering a situation from a multitude of angles.  Your heart will go out to everyone in the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Susan Sontag’s productivity notes.  How passwords are stored (or not stored).  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 1st and August 8th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

My library book was due.  I know the rules: you check out a book from the library, and you return said library book on time.

There are different types of checkout situations at the library; some books can be renewed three times, some books need to be returned after three weeks.  Various items carry with them various overdue fines.  The menu is simple to navigate: X book + Y time – Overdue Rates = free book to read.

I was a little under 100 pages to the end, and paused at a turning point in the book.

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It has been a shit few months, and sometimes it feels as if we’re on a messed up board of Snakes and Ladders, where someone has removed all the ladders and left only the snakes.

This past week has felt particularly snakey, with people not following through on things.  You’re always told that you’re not supposed to take other people’s flakiness personally.  But I do.  Maybe just to be contrary.  Maybe just because I don’t believe that it isn’t personal.  I think we put out an effort when we care about the other person; even if that relationship is transient and the care is minimal.  A waitress can care about her customers.  A reader can care about a blog writer.

What I’m getting at is that I wanted a librarian to care about me.

As I slipped down another snake, I wanted a librarian to put her hand out and slow my fall, saying kindly, “Let me do something nice for you.”

That isn’t what happened.

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I drove to the library and walked up to the desk, handing in two of the three books in my hand.

“I have a huge favour to ask,” I told her, holding the third book closer to me.  “I’m about 100 pages from the end of this book, and I could finish it by Friday.  Is there any chance you could extend my checkout time by a few days?”

“No, I can’t,” she answered.

Well, yes, she could.  I’ve seen her do it.  I’ve seen this very same librarian give extra days to other people.  I’ve been in line behind people who have asked and been granted the same favour.  She could do it.  It’s a matter of hitting over-ride on the software.  I know.  I used to check in library books.

“Please.  It would mean a lot to me.  I’m at this turning point in the book.”

She finally met my eye and said, “Sorry, I can’t do anything about it.  Why don’t you come back tomorrow and check it out again?  It just has to be in the system for 24 hours before you can take it out.”

By tomorrow, the book would be on a truck, traveling back to a different library branch.

“Okay,” I said, and handed her the book.

Suddenly it didn’t really matter how the story ended.  I mean, what was the point?  The librarian didn’t care if I finished the book — and frankly, she didn’t have to.  That’s not her job.  There are rules in place, and it is her right to stick to the rules.  The author might care if I finished her book, but she had no clue that I started it so she certainly won’t know that I didn’t finish it.  And maybe I didn’t even care anymore if I finished the book.  If no one else cares, it’s hard to muster up the care, you know?

Part of me wanted to walk back into the library and tell her, “I know you owe me nothing.  I am not entitled to four extra days with a book.  But I brought it back and asked rather than being rude and making it overdue.  I support my local library both with my attention and money.  So I repeat, you owe me nothing, and it was entirely your right not to grant me the extra time.  But I just needed someone to be kind to me today.  Why couldn’t you simply be kind for the sake of being kind?  You would have made an enormous difference in my life by granting me that extra time, and just imagine the trickle effect that could have taken place where the care I received goes into spreading care to others.”

But I didn’t do that.  I just got into the car and drove away.  Because that’s what a lack of kindness does.  It makes all the effort of speaking your heart shrivel up in your throat like shed snake skin.

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I wasn’t okay when I started writing this post.

I’m okay now.

Thank you for reading this.

So… I missed my 40s entirely.  I went into the movie theater with Josh, expecting to finish off our date night with a late night coffee, but I emerged from the AFI’s Silver Theater with grey hair and a touch of arthritis in my hips.  I’m now 52.

Oh.

No, I only felt like I was 52 by the time I got out of the theater.

Mr. Linklater, if you’re reading this, it’s a long movie.

It’s long enough that at one point, I started thinking, “Holy crap, the boy still doesn’t have facial hair.  According to the movie poster, he needs to end this movie with scraggly facial hair.  How long does it take a teenager to grow a beard?”

So be prepared if you go — and you should go if you want to see something cool — and bring whatever you need (stadium pal?) to sit still for almost 3 hours.

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So the movie was shot over a 12 year period, following the same boy, Ellar Coltrane (who is playing a character named Mason Evans Jr), from 6 to 18.  It’s fiction, but because of the production schedule, you’re also seeing a real — actually many real people — age in front of your eyes.  Because Ethan Hawke also ages 12 years as does Patrician Arquette and Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei (who plays Mason’s sister).  And then most of the peripheral characters are frozen in time, sectioned off to where they came in and out of Mason’s life.

Which is what life is like, itself.  You have the people who age with you, and you have the people that you will always remember looking a certain way or being a certain way because they fell out of your life and frozen indefinitely as a five-year-old or twelve-year-old or twenty-year-old.  When I imagine old friends and ex-boyfriends, they all still have the faces they had when we lost touch, and when I encounter them on Facebook now, it’s jarring.  It isn’t how I think they should look.

You end up caring more about Mason (Ellar Coltrane) because you are cognizant that this isn’t a similar-looking actor playing the main character as a child and later a young adult: it’s the same actor.  Ellar’s not “acting” vulnerable as a child: he is a vulnerable, inquisitive, irresponsible child.  And he’s not “acting” confused as a young adult: his fictional life mirrors his real life, and he is now 18 and on the cusp of the next stage of his life.  Like his character, the actor is trying to figure out who he wants to be and what sort of person he wants to date and how to relate to his parents now that he’s no longer dependent upon them.

The movie will make you cry.

Because you can’t help but think of the people in your own life aging 12 years.  Perhaps it helped that I sat in the theater with twins close to Ellar’s age when the film began, and therefore ended up thinking of my kids as preteens and teenagers and finally young adults going out into the world (while I remain like Patricia Arquette crying at the kitchen table).  But even if you don’t have a boy in your life that will age into adulthood, you have yourself, and much of the film is also about the changes his parents go through, the changes all the on-going actors in the film go through over a 12 year period.

It broke my heart that Linklater’s daughter lost her sparkle and spirit over the film, becoming flatter and flatter as she aged.  I don’t want my daughter to lose her sassiness, but it calls into question whether it’s possible to retain even those core traits of childhood into adulthood.  Ellar lost a lot of his sweetness.  I started crying when he asked his father if there were real elves in the world.  The ChickieNob and I had a similar conversation the other day about whether there was a real Hogwarts; real magic.  Because you don’t want your child to lose that idea.  As adults, we know how much it sucks to not believe in things anymore.  I wanted to freeze Ellar in his youth.

But he had to age.

Just like we all have to age.

When I came home, I finally read things about the film.  (I sort of wish I had read a bit before I went, though none of the reviews I read mentioned how it was almost 3 hours long.  3 hours, people!)  Ellar never watched the footage until after the film wrapped and the whole thing came together.  He admits,

I didn’t see any of the footage until it was wrapped. And it was brutal. It was very, very emotional, very cathartic. Not negatively, but just very emotional. I was laid out for a couple days, really. I think that’s kind of an elusive part of existence, the way you mature and they way you change and don’t change over time. I’ve always kind of wondered how much I change from day-to-day, much less years. To see that is very humbling in a way, just very settling. It’s hard to describe, but it’s easy to worry about who you are and what you’ve become and forgetting who you are. It’s reassuring in a way. Even though it’s not me, there is a lot of me in the character. So it’s kind of self-actualizing I guess, to see it all catalogued like that. I guess I am a person, after all. It’s still happening.

That’s why you should see the film.

It is so hard to see the changes, so hard to see aging when you’re in it.  And yes, you can look back on old photographs and do Throwback Thursdays and scan family videos; but Linklater has presented a fictional scope of a life, and allowed the viewer to place themselves over each character since they are so thinly drawn.  Yes, that is both a benefit and drawback of the film.  Even with 3 hours, it’s hard to go deeply into any story.  People marry, people divorce, friends come and go, and you never really get a feel for any of the relationships.  Why did Mason get together with that girl?  Why did they break up?  Because the relationships and characters are so thinly drawn, you can mentally shunt almost all of them out of the way and replace them with yourself.

I don’t regret giving Linklater 3 hours of my life in exchange for 12 years of Mason Evans Jr.  Linklater is at his best when he is capturing the moments that make a life: poking siblings and baseball games with your dad and sleeping over in your sister’s college dorm room.  He is at his weakest when the characters start talking about the meaning of life, attempting to wax philosophical.  Give us more pillow fights and fewer “deep thoughts.”  But even when the movie slogs, there is still something magical about watching a character age.

Well done, Mr. Linklater.

Updated at the Bottom

If you’re in your late twenties, not only are your more-nubile-than-mine ovaries churning out follicles each month (unless you have POF), but you also probably have more friends than the average grade schooler.  A somewhat unscientific-sounding study conducted in England found that people have the largest concentration of friends in their late twenties.  The reason given is that people still haven’t drifted away from college friends (or school friends), and they’ve added work friends.

The article states: “A survey of 1,505 Britons found that the average person has 64 friends.”

Whoa.

Wait.

I’m going to call bullshit on this.  64 friends?  64 people you keep in touch with on a regular basis?  In addition to family members?  64 people you would call if you had a miscarriage, or to hold your hair back when you vomit, or invite to your 30th birthday party.  Your milestone 30th birthday — you’re inviting 64 people AND their significant others?  You’re inviting 128 friends to your party?  That doesn’t sound quite right.

In your late twenties, you may have 64 close acquaintances or former friends, but if you are working, and especially if you are additionally married or parenting, you are not socializing with 64 people.  You aren’t even remotely socializing on a regular basis with 64 people.  Remotely, as in, keeping in touch over email or the phone.  At least, not in any deep way.

We need to move away from counting every relationship we have as a friendship.  They’re not all friendships, and THAT’S OKAY.  Due to Facebook, we call everyone our friend.  But here’s the thing, not everyone is an actual friend.  Most people are an acquaintance.  They may be an acquaintance you’re fond of, or an acquaintance you wish you had more time to turn into a friend, but acquaintances aren’t friends.  They are not dependable as friends.  They are not as intimate as friends.

And, again, that’s okay.  Not everyone has to be a friend.  You can hang out with a person and enjoy their company without elevating them to the special status of friendship.

Here’s a good list of questions to ask yourself when determining whether they are a friend or acquaintance:

1. Would they be invited to your small, limited-space wedding?  That would make them a friend. (Unless you’re only inviting them because your mother told you to invite them.)
2. Would they be invited to your trunk sale?  That would make them an acquaintance.
3. Would they find out about your death via a phone call?  Friend.
4. Would they find out about your death via Facebook?  Acquaintance.
5. Would you go on vacation with them?  Friend.
6. Would you look at their vacation photos on Instagram?  Acquaintance.

I’m being facetious, and perhaps it is because I am old and crotchety and apparently past my friend prime.  But I think — on the whole — we need to stop focusing on quantity and start looking at quality.  I’ve seen numerous studies and books counting up friends.  But who is measuring the strength of the friendship?

Who cares if you have 64 friends if none will be there for you when you need them, and none let you be there for them when they’re celebrating or mourning?

A girl needs a handful of friends; people close by and people who live far away (so they don’t know the people you want to gossip about), people who have known you a long time and people who just met you, people that are good for fun activities and others that are good to be around when you need a cry.  10 is a decent number.  3 is fine too.  1 can do in a pinch.  But 64 is overkill.  No one needs 64 friends.

A friend (yes, she is a friend!) commented as we drove over windy roads this past weekend, that items are no longer made with good materials.  That we’re trading quality for faster, cheaper ways of making things, and by default, our tangible items — our phones and appliances and even houses — tend to breakdown faster and need replacing sooner.

And I think we’re heading in the same direction with friendships.  When we water them down, calling every relationship a friend, we cheapen the institution of friendship.  We make friends expendable.  We don’t think about building stronger friendships because we can always replace those people with a new friend, like Verizon’s New-Every-Two plan.

I have 64 people I can state one or two facts about.  But I only have 14 people who are contacts in my phone, and a handful of additional people that I converse with daily or semi-daily via email.  Think I’m doing okay for 40.

Updated:

Pulling this thought from the comment section because I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle.

I like the idea of creating a new lexicon that describes the various levels of friendship.  But I think we need to stop lumping acquaintances into the concept of friendship.  We have this delineation already in the definition of both words, and yet we’ve started calling (and thinking of) our acquaintances as friends.

I think the danger in these studies (and the reporting on them) is that people become self-conscious of their relationships.  They think, “I don’t have 64 friends, so what am I doing wrong?  What is wrong with me?”  They look at the people they call friends and wonder how others ended up with so many while they have so few.  And then they attempt to fix themselves, or consider “fixing” themselves or their situation.

And so these studies are the emotional/social equivalent to the media airbrushing models and selling us on a false concept of beauty.  Yes, an airbrushed model is a real person, but she’s not a “real” person.  She’s a trumped up, changed version of a person.  And calling 64 people that you used to know and don’t know well now or were acquaintances all along “friends” is similar — the creator of these studies are airbrushing friendships.  They’re airbrushing relationships.

Merriam-Webster defines friendship as a person with whom you are attached to by affection or esteem.  It’s a favoured companion.  And many thinkers from Maya Angelou to nameless individuals have worked to draw boundaries around the words.  The common denominator is that friendships contain depth.  It’s not the amount of time spent together, but how deep the relationship goes.  I have a lot of acquaintances, and some are serious and constant acquaintances, according to Angelou, and I think my kids have 64 playmates, which is very different from having 64 friends.

But I only have 14 people I can call a friend, not counting my siblings and Josh who are my best friends.  And I don’t believe you can have true depth with 64 people on an on-going basis.  You can have connection with more than 64 people, but if you are truly going deep, and leaving time for your marriage, children, and career, I’m not sure how you can be there, in-depth, for 64 people.  Or how they can be there for you.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, gave a TED Talk where he predicted that in the future, “humans will be able to learn an entire language by eating a pill.”  It’s not just languages.  It’s anything you want to learn.

The prediction starts around minute 18:10 of the TED Talk:

“This is a prediction because it will be 30 years; I won’t be here. But one of the things about learning how to read… we have been doing a lot of consuming of information through our eyes. That may be a very inefficient channel. So my prediction is that we are going to ingest information. You’re going to swallow a pill and know English. You’re going to swallow a pill and know Shakespeare. And the way to do it is through the bloodstream. So once it’s in your bloodstream… it gets into the brain, and when it knows that it is in the brain, it deposits it in the right places. So it’s ingested.”

The man has predicted other technological advances, including touch screens and wearable technology.  Why not this?

If it is true, even though I’ll be 70 (and perhaps even more likely to take the risk seeing that I won’t have to worry about the long-term effects of said pill), I would like to ingest several programming languages and have a greater understanding of engineering and computer programming.  I’d like to ingest some of the books I don’t want to take the time to read, such as Middlemarch.  I wouldn’t mind a greater understanding of math concepts.  And I’d like to know how to work a DSLR camera.

I will be hopefully long gone before someone abuses this development and begins using it as a way to control our minds, place ideas firmly inside our brains so they can’t be unlearned or forgotten.  Before it stops being a single pill and something that is sprinkled into a food source.  As much as the idea is a thing of beauty, I can also see all the ways it could be abused.

But let’s not think too hard about that reality.

What do you want to learn if you can know it simply by swallowing a pill?