Other Things That Matter

Many things are happening here in my world. We have a new kitten, Claddagh, who has come to live with us. I have taken many a picture. Alas, he never holds still, so all the pictures are a mess. Maybe he'll fall asleep soon, and I'll show you his cuteness. He's had a hard start, so he's a little sick and a little scrawny. We will fix this.

But that's not even what I wanted to talk about. It has come to my attention that my personal space and my professional space are blending (or colliding, I suppose) in peculiar ways, in part because of this blog. I've said this before and I'll probably say it again. Only a numbskull has a blog and yet expects it to be private, and I am surely no numbskull. Moreover, I see no need to pretend that I am completely defined by my professional self. A fully professional person can have -MUST have- a personal life. So.... again, and to a different group, welcome. I mean that. All gentle souls are welcome here.

With Socrates, I believe that the unexamined life is not worth living. Of course, the examined life may not be much better, and he forgot to talk about that, but I'll go with Socrates as far as he went on that point. I need to examine all the pieces of my life. The purely professional argument might be that one could examine a life and also refrain from splattering that process across the internet. OK, three points (point-like remarks, anyway.) If I need to write to authentically reflect, and if the comments and assistance of the like-minded gentlefolk who accompany me on this journey are helpful, then.... pish-posh. A blog is a useful tool. And secondly, my blog has 50 readers a day. If I had them, which of course I don't, I could probably post the nuclear launch codes, and it wouldn't matter. So, really, perspective if you please. And finally, we have to think about boundaries. Certainly, some are healthy. Yet, boundaries can be both too diffuse and too rigid. Too rigid boundaries regarding what one shares create an illusion of self-sufficiency that is not sustainable. The universe will provide the needed lesson, and it's a whopper. Of course, I'm in no danger of having too rigid boundaries. I get that ;) But the alternative elliptically being suggested -that one can publicly reveal only one's professional persona- seems truncating and entirely too rigid.

That said, though, it IS time to do something else with this space. I feel no song in my heart when I think about turning this into my strictly-professional persona. It's not that I'm not happy in that role. It's not that there's nothing to think about there. But... there it is... I hear no singing :) And since "all things considered" and even "the panopticon" are taken as titles for things, I have to call my reflections something else.

Other Things That Matter. Because darn it, there are other things that matter. All the things we talk about together... social justice, music, activism, relationships, knitting, yoga, houses, travel, ...and now, kittens, those are all pieces of life as well. Well, not just that. They are pieces of life that have something to teach us. We'll figure out what, exactly, as we go along.

Sentences Heard While Rock Climbing

"Just hook your toe on the roof." Does it bother no one else that that sounded like a reasonable suggestion??

"Don't let me die." Three guesses who said that, but you're only going to need one.

"You could climb around on Chuck Norris again." Somehow I think he might have something to say about that, as would I, come to think about it.

"This clip? Oh, it's for if you have to go to the bathroom while you're climbing." a) You do know there are no bathrooms up there, right? And b) I now know that harnesses were designed by men, because that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

And this sign pretty much tells the whole story:

I'm Easy

Victoria tells me that I'm not supposed to say that.  Quoting the immortal Inigo Montoya, she tells me "I do not think it means what you think it means."  OK.  What I mean is, I'm comfortable with however things turn out.  "Should we see this movie or that one? I'm easy. "  That's what I mean.

Another version of "easy" is one I've noticed in the last two years. When the time is right, the next step is easy.  All the thrashing around and fretting that's come before was either unnecessary or resolves itself, and I step into the next thing.  I'm easy.  It's easy.  Whatever....

Traveling in Italy in high summer has made me think about another kind of easy -one about which I know nothing.  I was in a tiny village in wine country, in a hotel that was a medieval castle.  By hotel standards, it was small.  But the grounds are extensive.  And seriously, can you imagine the logistics behind turning a medieval stronghold into a hotel that meets modern standards for comfort and connection?  Oddly enough, the knights in their shining armour did not plan ahead for, say, Wifi connections and hot tubs.  Or indoor plumbing, for that matter.  So, the owners and the staff work really, really hard.  They must.

But I never saw them do it.  Not once.

If I wandered through the public rooms with that "must have coffee or I might die" look, someone was available to sit with me and have a cup and be companionable.  If they were working in the kitchen garden (roughly the size of my entire yard at home), they would work for a while, stop and rest, have a glass of fizzy water, and then work again for a little while. 

Even preparing the meals had a different sort of flow.  When I cook, I, by God, COOK.  I'm in the kitchen working hard, making lots of mess, and getting dinner on the table in record time.  I like that process well enough, actually.  But there's another way.  They start the bread rising, then go do something else -possibly even sit down for a minute.  Then they wander back into the kitchen (although I'm certain that the timing is probably quite clear to them, it looks like wandering or floating to me), and start the broth cooking that they will need for supper.  Then it's off to something else.

It turns out that I'm kind of a linear person.  I seriously never thought that.  I tend to bang away at one problem until it gives way, or I do.  And then I move on to the next one.  But maybe there's another way -and maybe it's about being easy.  In a good way.

I'm not sure how to do that, of course.  It's not multi-tasking, which is where I will take this if left unattended.  It's one-pointed attention, in the Quaker sense of paying full attention to whatever is in front of you because you know that the full picture is well-tended.   You can relax into this project because that one (whatever it is) isn't pounding at the door, needing attention because it's overdue and neglected and....  Well, you get the picture.

Once again, I need to think in circles and swirls.  I need to think like a dancer thinks -not just shapes in space, but the connections between them.  I need to think about flow.  And when the time is for relaxing, take that time with the certainty that I'll get up in a minute and work again.

This is a major mind-shift, but I think I might be on to something.

Mommy Blogging

I know. Mommy blogging is the subject of much scorn and derision. Tough beans. We mommies are a tough lot, and we can take your ridicule. Just LOOK at this handsome lad. Holy mackerel. The groom (seated) looked nice, too. But that best man... he is something!

Who Am I?

I'm Andrea Buford, that's who I am. I no longer want my ex-husband's last name. It makes me sad every time I see "Rusin" written anywhere with "Andrea" attached to the front. Who IS that person, I wonder.

Like any change, it's been a little more complicated than I would have liked. I'm working on it, though -one step at a time. A small thing has been to change the name and e-mail account that is associated with this blog, without losing all the content associated with the old name. I needed space, time, and patience to figure it out, but apparently I finally did -and without moving the blog to another server. So, I THINK that from the reader's point of view, nothing has changed, except that you'll see my new name attached to posts from here on out. If that's not true, please let me know. From my point of view, this is now one more place where the new-me (the old me?) is fully present.

Whew! That feels good!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 17 people with the name Andrea Buford in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Vacationing in Andrea-world:

1)Definitely, go to a week-long workshop that has three yoga sessions a day, when the longest yoga session you've done in 2 years is probably 45 minutes. Yeah, that's a good idea. Oh my lands, I hurt everywhere.

2)Since this is a "girl's weekend" for you, pack all your girly face products, which will then spill on the clothes in your suitcase, doing what face masque does -become rock hard. So now you have two outfits.

3)Get asked out by a very interesting Italian man, and then realize type-wise, he IS your ex-husband. And you don't have any clothes to wear that don't have green goo solidified on them, anyway.

4) And definitely, definitely, when you know full-well that you are the kind of person who can get lost in her own bathroom, leave your GPS in the car.

5)And forget the cord for the camera. I have pictures, but no way to upload them. I'll take care of that when I get home.

I'm having fun, and I'm very glad that I took this time for myself. But that thing I say "wherever you go, there you are" -it turns out to be true.

Academic Arrogance

Ummmmm.... you guys, am I arrogant??? (Don't answer that, please; I think I don't want that answer.)

I know those of you who know the in-real-life me are probably expecting a different post. You'll get the yoga and knitting and travel and Tuscany posts, I promise, but I don't want to lose this germ-cell of a thought.

Here's the back story. (You knew THAT was coming.) It doesn't take long hanging around the ivory tower before you notice that there's a certain amount of pomposity; about 5 minutes will do it. Well, probably you noticed in the first minute. It just took you another 4 minutes to realize that some of it is unmerited posturing. That nonsense depends for its success on the innocents among us (and I usually count myself in this camp -maybe it's time for a facebook quiz on this question) believing that arrogance is the same as aptitude.

Yet, some people do have just flat-out jaw-dropping intellect. Through a series of youthful misadventures that involved accidentally (I still believe) getting admitted to a world-class college, I have had the privilege of hanging around with some of these people for a good bit of my adult life. I think it's false to say that the best minds don't need arrogance and can just be relaxed good-natured folks. Some are, but even then... a certain kind of idiotic questioning and challenging can bring out arrogance that is a SIGHT to behold. It's there all right. And it does what it's designed to do -put idiots in their place. This arrogance is just the certainty that very VERY few people play in their playground and that there's work to be done to get an invitation to this party. OK, there's a little bit of smackdown going on, too.

And academics aren't the only ones I don't understand. What gives people the audacity to challenge someone they don't even know, simply assuming they are on equal footing given the subject-at-hand? Say, hypothetically, you're on an airplane and someone sits next to you and asks what you do. So you try to describe it. OK, so it's not all that hypothetical. For the record, I stuck with social worker and described my research a little; it's true, and way easier than describing the whole story. This person had already told me his life story. He probably took one course in psychology in high school (because it was an easy A, he reveals), 15 or so years ago. He remembers THAT imperfectly, and has certainly not followed the research and the literature. But he knows my research plan is flawed in the following million ways, and that homeless people are all mentally ill and deserve their fate, and won't change, and....

A year ago, I would have rolled my eyes (possibly visibly), but not gone for the smackdown. I would have thought it, right enough, but I wouldn't actually have said anything. And then I would have been upset for hours. I think, though, it's possible that there is something in between the arrogance earned by those with jaw-dropping intellect and foolish preening (which is just a measure of a lack of self-confidence, when you get right down to it.)

Before I go any further, there are things that need to be clarified. I don't think a PhD is the only thing in the world worth wanting. I don't think an academic life is the only life worth living. I know plenty of people without advanced degrees, and some of them are brilliant.

But, and oh dear, here come the truly obnoxious question. Are brilliant and untrained people qualified to question and challenge? OK, of course they are. The knowledge that professional researchers come up with is pointless if it can't be explained -and knowledge isn't the same thing as wisdom, anyway. But what if their questions are just flat-out dumb? (Another falsehood is that there are no dumb questions. I think Fox TV and Rush Limbaugh have pretty much proven that one.) And some questions reveal by their word choice and the questioner's tone a political agenda and its attendant assumption that there can only be one right known-in-advance answer. I am a smart-enough person, but I wouldn't go up to a chemist and suggest that he's misunderstood the subtleties of the polymerase chain reaction. I wouldn't do that, because I know that I don't have the first freakin' clue if he's done that or not. I don't even know what the polymerase chain reaction IS. I might have made it up.

When you're questioning from a position of fundamental ignorance, you should probably shut up and listen instead. Being smart IS NOT ENOUGH. There is work to be done, reading and thinking and making connections between this body of work and that one, and extending and nudging theory. Then you can play in the sandbox.

Yeah, I went for the lady-like smackdown. "My goodness, that might have been more effective as a question rather than an assertion." But now, of course, I'm upset about having done that. And I am wondering if I've taken a path that just leads to trouble.

Sigh.