If you don't stop making that face...

Did your Mom ever tell you, "If you don't stop making that face, it will freeze that way"? When life is moving really fast, people often just get one glimpse of us, like a snapshot. In their minds, that's the way we are -- face, talent, personality, preferences. That's their image of us, our face is "frozen that way".

How closely does my public persona resemble the person I think of as me? Has anyone ever gotten fixated on an inaccurate view of me or formed an image that represents just one side of who I am?

Sometimes, the matter is out of your hands. Parents often think of their offspring as children, even after they grow up, and no amount of rational persuasion or objective evidence will change their minds. Maybe your classmates from high school remember you as that nerdy/freaky/jock/flaky kid even though you've moved past that long ago.

The cast of Star Trek got stuck in the image of the characters from that show, no matter what other roles they played. They got a lot of money and fame for their efforts, but their careers pretty much got stuck there. The movie Galaxy Quest parodied their plight, with a story about a group of actors from a long-defunct television show who could only find work reprising their roles at sci-fi conventions and shopping mall openings.

In the 1960s, four budding musicians and actors signed on for a TV show about a boy band, The Monkees. Their careers were defined by the characters they played on that show for the next 40 years. They got very frustrated at the constraints imposed by their contract, but they raked in a pile of money. That was a good thing, financially speaking, because their most visible source of income in the years to come was band reunion tours and appearances as former members of The Monkees. Was it worth it?

On the other hand, if you don't provide something that your audience, clients, or friends want, you can find yourself all alone.

A folk singer I know insisted so strongly on doing everything on his own terms that he choked off his own career. He didn't care enough about what his audience wanted, and his fellow musicians found him difficult to deal with.

Andrew De Leon, an aspiring singer, gave his first public performance almost as a way to put his dreams to rest, certain that he was going to be hated. The audience responded in an overwhelmingly positive way, and his new-found fans pressed him to release a CD. Now, he's changed genres, blending the operatic style that made him famous with the heavy metal and goth styles that he has admired for several years. Did he perform his least important kind of music so that if he was rejected, at least it wouldn't be for the music that was closest to his heart? Should he please his fans or please himself? You can't blame the fans for wanting more of what drew them in the first place. On the other hand, being typecast in a role that's not really you can choke off your enthusiasm before you can realize your potential.

In my previous job, I became known in my company as a very capable technical editor and trade show exhibit manager. That wasn't inaccurate, but those talents ranked very low on my list of personal priorities. Perhaps I could have pursued my creative writing and visual arts interests in my spare time, but my job left me very little time or energy to pursue the things that I cared about most. My employers didn't require those skills from me, and "creative writer" was not what came to mind when they thought of me. So I provided what my employer wanted, at great cost to my personal priorities.

If you don't care enough about other people's feelings, you're a narcissist, and people walk away from you. If you care too much about what people think of you, you're a people-pleaser, and they take you for granted and exploit you.

There has to be a third way, where you engage with other people while keeping a sense of yourself. You act in a way that shows respect and caring for others, but you respect and care about yourself as well. Reveal your true self, but only as much as appropriate. Actively seek common ground between what you have to offer and what others desire from you. Have boundaries, but give your closest friends a means of access to the self that you think of as "really me".

"Being yourself is not remaining where you are, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure." -- Sydney J. Harris

"As I think more positively, I attract positive-thinking people into my life, with whom I have satisfying relationships." -- Barbara J. Winter

"As I know myself better and act with more integrity and authenticity, I become more capable of entering into close, authentic relationships." -- Nancy McGuire

Enough is Enough

I just sent this letter to Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin:


These past few weeks have shocked us over and over again with senseless killings due to gun violence. It's not just the Newtown shooting, as horrific as that was. It's the Clackamas Mall shooting in Portland. It's the killing of Selina Brown and the wounding of her daughter Kodie by her father as they boarded a bus in DC. It's the shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, the shooting of Gabrielle Gifford and others in Arizona, and before that, the Beltway Sniper, the shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech, the individual shootings that claim so many young lives in the District… well you get the picture. Over and over and over again, someone with easy access to guns decides to claim some fame or revenge, and there is so very little to stop them from acting on their impulse.

I am not advocating a complete ban on private gun ownership. I grew up in a town with a strong hunting culture. I have friends in rural areas who need to protect their livestock, and who cannot wait a half hour or more for the police to arrive if an armed intruder is prowling around their homes. I know that business owners must have some means of protecting against armed criminals. Legitimate gun ownership is not the problem here.

However, I can see no legitimate reason for civilian citizens to own assault weapons, semiautomatic weapons, high-volume ammunition clips, and other weapons best left to the military and law enforcement professionals. Even if there were legitimate uses, surely these instances are rare enough that we can give up access to these weapons to serve the greater good.

Certainly, someone in an insane rage can kill using a knife, a baseball bat, or even bare hands. But such a person, acting alone, cannot kill scores of people in a few short minutes. Only someone armed with a rapid-fire gun can do that.

We require people to register their cars, pass routine inspections, and carry liability insurance. We require drivers to demonstrate proficiency and familiarity with the laws of the road, and we take away their licenses if they violate these laws too often. We require additional qualifications and special licenses for people wishing to drive big-rig trucks and Metro buses. Surely we can institute similar safeguards for gun ownership and use? All that is lacking is the political will to stand up to well-funded special interest groups -- the NRA in particular. Congress is in a lame-duck session right now, and many of your colleagues have nothing to lose by pushing for gun control legislation before they leave office. The nation has been shocked and horrified by one mass killing after another, and people are pleading for some kind of concrete action to curb the violence. Now is the time to say, "enough is enough" and push through the legislation that we need. Australia did it in 1996. We can do it now. Please.

Your constituent,
Nancy McGuire

Keep, Donate, Toss

Three years ago, I decided that my bedroom was a wretched mess. I had already gotten my living room into decent shape with furniture that harmonized and functioned well. I sent a couple of carloads of clutter (plus several large pieces of mismatched furniture) to new homes -- including the landfill, when I couldn't come up with a better solution. The space where I entertained guests was looking pretty respectable, but the space that was just for me was a dumping ground for whatever had landed there over the years.

My first step was to ask for help. The Washington Post runs a weekly article where people send in photos of rooms that they want to remake, and a professional decorator provides a sketch and recommends various furniture pieces and paint colors. The photos I sent in of my hodge-podge bedroom were deemed worthy of the challenge; a professional photographer came and shot several "before" photos to run with the article. A decorator took my comments, asked for measurements and a proposed budget, and set to work on creating the "after" sketch.

The "after" sketch was nothing like what I had asked for. Instead of a soothing, sunny Zen retreat, the decorator had gone for heavy earth tones and a strong Southwestern theme. More than half the budget was devoted to a dresser that had several layers of "artistically" peeled paint. I realized that I was going to have to come up with my own answer on this one. I did, however, like the way that she had arranged the furniture, so I kept that bit of information. Maybe the sketch in the newspaper article would appeal to someone else, so that would be my donation to someone else's inspiration.

I already had some idea of where to start. I knew that the five-drawer lateral file cabinet that dominated the room would have to go. Why was I saving all that paper? I weeded it out the best I could, boxed up the rest, and made myself a promise to scan as much as I could into computer files and send the paper to the recycling bin. I advertised the file cabinet online, and a husband-and-wife counseling team claimed it for their office.

I went through two wicker hampers of things that I hadn't looked at in years. After saving a few precious keepsakes, the hampers went to new homes at the next condo association yard sale.

After a couple of months of searching locally and online, I found a set of furniture that I liked. I placed an order, to be delivered in three weeks. I called a local charity to come and pick up my old bed, mattress, night stand, and chest of drawers. While I waited for my new furniture, I would be sleeping on an air mattress and using cardboard boxes to store my sox and undies.

I took the opportunity to clear everything out of my bedroom except the pictures on the walls and the clothing hanging in the closets. The parquet floor was in need of a new finishing coat, and this was a rare chance to get that done. I had also planned to paint the walls, but I ran out of time, energy, and motivation. The current paint job was just fine -- a total change was not necessary.

When the new furniture came, and it was time to move back into my bedroom, I brought back only the things that I knew I wanted to keep. The rest stayed in the living room, cluttered and under foot -- purposely annoying me to force me to donate or toss them rather than letting them sneak back into my new personal space.

The newly decorated room was not a complete change -- I still had my familiar artwork on the walls, which were the same color as before. I still had that odd little round table that no one seems to like except me. I used the furniture arrangement from the Washington Post article, but the furniture itself was my own choice. It doesn't all match, but it harmonizes quite well. I still have keepsakes on the new, airy bookshelves, but just a few -- not the visual bedlam I had before. The room doesn't look like the photos in the decorating magazines. It looks like where I live, only it's more peaceful now.

This year has been a metaphorical parallel to 2010's bedroom project. I took the radical step of leaving my job so that I could open a space to reconstruct my life. So that I could give the same honor to my own space that I had spent so many years trying to give to others' spaces. For the time being, my own space is a lot emptier than it usually is. I have used that time to get a few things in order -- physical health, stress levels, personal relationships, creative projects.

I'm keeping a few familiar things in place during the renovation -- my home, my friends and family, the kinds of things I read. A lot of the old things have been moved out. Some will come back into this new room, some will not. As I did for my bedroom, I am making three piles of "life stuff": Keep, Donate/Sell, and Toss.

The only things that will be allowed to stay in or return to my metaphorical room are the things that are valuable to me, including friends and family, home, adequate income, music, photography, travel, learning and discovery, creativity. Other things don't fit me so well, but might be useful to someone else: routine technical work, exhibit planning, proposal-writing teams, classroom teaching, "leadership". Some things are going into the dumpster -- if you want to dive for them, be my guest: the long commute, cubicles, being a human dumping ground for someone else's low-priority projects, the chaos and constant sense of crisis that comes from working with people who don't plan in advance or respect other people's plans.

Anyone who has ever done a major decluttering project can tell you that you have to go through a stage where everything is a mess. You have to navigate your way around stuff on its way out. You have to dig through boxes to find stuff you need to use. Things don't fit quite the way you expected, and you have to adapt. Sometimes, you have to go looking for a couple of extra pieces to make the whole thing work. Eventually, though, everything finds its place and you begin to believe that it's all worthwhile.

Chill

Autumn is winding down. The sun can't seem to drag itself more than halfway up in the sky, and some days, it doesn't crawl out at all from under its downy blanket of gray clouds. The trees outside my window have closed up their photosynthesis factories for the season, and the squirrels are topping off their stores of acorns before they bed down for the winter. Slow down, Nature says.

Didn't we used to do that? After the harvest was all in the barns, didn't we put up jam and visit the neighbors and plan next year's gardens? Didn't we grab a few extra hours of sleep or stare dreamily into the fire? Didn't students have a few weeks away from their classes -- time to spend with family and friends?

That's all slipping away now, or at least it seems that way. The relentless grind of the industrial machine demands end-of-year reports. Metrics to be gathered, deadlines to be met. Conferences scheduled adjacent to holiday weekends mean more tourist dollars from attendees tacking a few vacation days onto their business trips. Smart phones and laptop computers let your far-flung team hammer out contract proposals from their seats in various hotel lobbies as they await their airport shuttles. Those few days away from the office just mean a lull in the meeting schedule so that you can finish up that extra paperwork.

Time to reconnect with friends and family, exchange gifts, and sing and dance has morphed into a two-month marathon of jam-packed schedules where every spare moment is crammed with events or commuting between events. Gift-giving requires camping out in front of stores to ensure your place at the head of the predawn stampede on Black Friday -- or foregoing your leisurely pie and coffee after Thanksgiving dinner in order to snag the prime deals available on Thursday evening. Instead of a few precious items, carefully chosen to symbolize a friendship, we fill shopping carts with piles of mass produced commodities. Why drive around delivering plates of homemade candy to your closest friends when you can send them boxes of red and green M&Ms that you ordered online?

The quiet sense of reverence inspired by a candlelight midnight Mass or a Solstice bonfire is drowned out by back-to-back concerts by every performing group in existence -- great throngs of under-rehearsed choristers who are stressed out from generating annual reports and studying for final exams. Every conductor uses the holiday season to stage his grandest effort, but the aggregate is just a cacophonous blur.

Setting aside one time of year for paying special attention to the people we love used to make sense when our communities were small. When we worked, lived, and played together all year long. When the driving force was the connection with each other, and the music and dancing was just a symbol of that connection. Now, the music and dancing have become the main focus, and people are secondary. Commerce has gotten into the act, and so now the holidays are pressed into service as a revenue-generating activity. People are tertiary. Getting together requires airline tickets and tight scheduling and dealing with flight delays and tiny airplane seats. People are quaternary.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm just nostalgic. Maybe the medieval peasants didn't enjoy holidays so much as just survived day to day through the long cold winters. But didn't they dance and go wassailing now and then? I distinctly remember getting small gifts from friends and family that said, "I know what makes you smile." I remember making batches of candy in our family's small kitchen and helping my parents deliver plates of goodies to our closest friends. I remember the intimacy of candlelight church services, and singing "O Magnum Mysterium" with the choir.

This year off has allowed me to stay away from a lot of the craziness that accompanies this time of year. No annual reports to write, no metrics to gather, no conference exhibits to organize. The television screen is dark for much of the week -- I don't have to put up with the advertising mania if the set's turned off. I can take long, contemplative walks in the middle of the afternoon. I'm living off my savings, so my friends and family understand that my gift giving will be simple, and my travel budget does not include airline tickets this year.

The end-of-year mania sounds like a distant roar from my little refuge. It's like watching a street mob from the safety of an upstairs apartment. Like hearing the throb of a stadium concert from an office on the other side of the college campus. Like seeing a news report of thousands of people stranded at an airport, while sitting in a nice warm living room and enjoying a cup of tea with one friend. I'm not oblivious, I'm just not in the thick of it this year. Thank goodness.

Don't Go There

One of my college homework assignments, back in the days when the USSR was going strong, was to read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I studied better with background noise (I still do), so I sat in my dorm room with the door open. My hall-mates would pass by and peek through the door to see what I was doing, and several of them were scandalized by what they saw. They seemed to think that merely reading this forbidden treatise would somehow pull me over to the dark side. I might begin asking questions about things that should not be questioned. I might begin to think independently. It was all very dangerous.

People like their ideas neatly contained, finite and easily managed. In the movie The Truman Show, Truman Burbank grows up on the elaborate set of a reality TV show, but he's not aware that millions of people are watching his every move. Christof, the director of the show, rationalizes this manipulation by saying that he's enabling Truman to live an ideal life, free of the pain and violence of the outside world. When Truman begins suspecting that all is not as it appears, Christof uses every means at his disposal to prevent Truman from discovering that his friends, including his wife, are actors and his world is an artificial construct enclosed in a bubble.

This year has been an exploration outside the bubble for me. I'm exploring who I am and what I like to do when I'm not constrained by the necessities of getting up early every morning and commuting to a cubicle. I'm listening with a sense of amusement to politicians talk about "takers" who don't pay income taxes. I'm one of those "takers" this year, but I'm taking the resources that I earned through my own hard work. I'm listening to talk of jobs and assignments and stress and evaluations with the ears of someone who is standing outside of that culture. And I'm realizing that after my experience of life off of the hamster wheel, I'm not sure that I want to go back.

Now that the year is coming to an end, I'm getting a lot of questions about what kind of a job I'm looking for. Friends and family are genuinely concerned about me, since I had told them that I wasn't financially ready for retirement and I would have to find a source of income after my year is over. I have been trying to use the term "source of income" rather than "job", because money can come from a variety of sources. What would be the point of taking this year if I merely went back to the same life I left behind?

Some people get that idea, some don't. For some, "money" means "job". Job means office, commute, benefits package, managers, promotions, and performance evaluations. Jobs mean productivity, efficiency, being a team player, and working hard so that some executive or business owner can live out his dream (and if you're lucky, you can live a few of your dreams after you hit 65). Some part of my mind believes that, too. My career has been such a big part of my life for so long, it's hard to think in other terms. No one in my immediate family has been an entrepreneur for any great period of time. My sister and I have both done freelance gigs, but they tend to span the periods between job-type jobs.

Some people have told me how brave I am to be breaking out of this mold, but they could never even consider doing something similar. Some people are distressed when I tell them that I'm not sure what my next move will be. I tell them about the freelance projects I'm doing, the work I'm publishing, the little networking opportunities. That seems to reassure them that I'm doing something that might get me a job and bring me in from my wanderings in the wilderness. It tends to reassure me that I'm not just wasting my time, waiting for the money to run out.

For the time being, my savings are holding out rather well. I'm well aware that I will need to step up my efforts very soon. But it feels like cutting corners on my grand adventure to start looking too hard too soon for another niche in the machine. Might it be possible to make a life outside the office? If I succeed at that, would it disturb those friends of mine who are silently suffering in jobs that they hate, but have told themselves they must endure? Is it safer if we just don't ask certain questions?

Prison on a Pedestal

I read Chris Richards' concert review in the Washington Post today (Bieber Live: Less Than Believable) about last night's Justin Bieber concert at Washington DC's Verizon Center. The fans had a great night. The business side of the Bieber Empire had a great night. Apparently, The Biebs did not have a great night. Richards wrote, “The star didn’t seem to want to be there. His audience didn’t seem to want to be anywhere else.”

One photo that ran with the article showed Bieber descending onto the stage, strapped into a harness that sported 15-foot "angel wings" fashioned from cymbals, guitars, and other musical paraphernalia. This was no angel, just an 18-year-old kid who had posted a little music video on YouTube just a few short years ago, and who had been transformed into a hugely successful commercial product.

Beiber's fans have created an image in their own minds of what he must be like, incorporating a large dose of their own hopes, dreams, and needs, with a small sprinkling of what's left of the actual human that is Justin. The business end of his mammoth commercial enterprise relies on the human that is Justin to occupy this larger-than-life persona, born of the union between preteen fantasy and savvy marketing, in order to continue generating the huge amounts of money that the enterprise needs in order to perpetuate itself.

Bieber did not work his way up through smoky bars and small-town auditoriums. He is not grounded by a small following of fans who have been with him since the beginning, and who know him close-up. No, he burst into international fame overnight through the magic of social media. His far-flung fans enjoy a one-sided familiarity, the illusion of knowing this person whom they have never met. Like Sovietologists, they search out and dissect the tiniest factoids for some small insight into this mythical being. One wonders if they would turn away in disappointment if they caught an accidental glimpse of the man-boy behind the curtain.

Chris Richards immersed himself in this online world in preparation for yesterday's concert and wrote an article about it earlier this week. Says Richards, "On Twitter, Bieber’s name is tweeted roughly every second of the day, and he’s amassed more than 29 million followers. ... Tweeting at Justin Bieber is like sending a prayer to God. You hope you’ll be answered, but the real comfort comes from believing he can hear you.”

Quoting one of Bieber's Twitter fans: “Dear Justin Drew Bieber...can you notice me and follow me? I EXIST.”

Watching Bieber perform, Richards mused, "Makes ya wonder: Did Bieber even want to be onstage? Were his dreamy doe eyes actually spaced-out stares of exhaustion? His vocals — a mix of live singing and pre-recorded backing tracks — lacked a pulse and frequently sounded Bible-paper thin." The commercial persona had grown so large that it was becoming too heavy for the human being to carry.

I have no idea what this kind of dual existence must be like on this scale. Not even close. I do know, however, what it's like to be burdened with someone else's expectations of what I should be like. I know how miserable I can make myself when I try to be the person that someone else expects me to be. Someone sees some small part of me that they like, or that fits in with their agenda. They don't really know the rest of me -- my hopes, dreams, needs, and desires. Nor do they want to know.

Sometimes, it goes beyond not caring enough to find out. I once dated a young man for more than two years before I could no longer bend and distort myself to satisfy his demands that I become the ideal woman that he had created in his mind. I was just as deluded about him as he was about me. I had mistaken his ego and coerciveness for confidence and leadership. I had thought that he would continue to care about me after I became a "sure thing". Had he bothered to know me on an intimate level, however, I would have ceased to be the blank slate on which he could draw his fantasy woman. Not knowing me was central to his agenda.

More recently, my need for comfort and support in the face of an impending job loss (mine) revealed the weaknesses in my year-long relationship with a man who had made his life into a shrine memorializing a traumatic event from his teenage years -- 30 years before. Again, I was just as deluded as he was. I mistook his appearance of vulnerability and his willingness to talk about his trauma for true sensitivity and openness. When I became the vulnerable one, however, it became apparent that he had no interest in reciprocating my care and concern. The painful story that he had shared with me was well rehearsed and intended to solicit empathy from tender-hearted women. When I allowed myself to step back and observe him, I heard him recite his tale many times, almost exactly word for word, and then bask in the rescue fantasies of his carefully selected audience.

One of my discoveries about the government contracting world is the extent to which contracting companies engage in creating a shiny, enticing product with which to win over the government agents in charge of awarding the contracts. This includes recruiting and hiring highly credentialed people to back up a rosy picture of what the contract could be at its most ambitious and innovative. Once the ink is dry and reality sets in, the job usually turns out to be much less challenging and satisfying than the picture in the contract proposal. The "science communications" job turns out to be aggregating dry prose for quarterly reports and cobbling together exhibits for trade shows. If your manager knew how deeply you yearned to write informative, engaging articles about research and its context in society, he or she would be forced to acknowledge how deeply unsatisfying your actual job was. It would be that much harder to report up the chain of command that all is well, and the worker bees are happily productive. So much easier just not to know. Your boss is not your friend.

I have also experienced real friendship and real concern for others in my life. The biggest difference that I see is that the more I find out about the person, the better I like them. I don't have to agree with the person, nor do I have to share all of their interests. Getting my preconceived notions blown to bits feels like a good thing. Here are real human beings, with all their strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and personal histories, and I like them better the more I know.

I do not normally join celebrity fan groups -- I left breathless boy-band worship behind with my adolescence. However, I am following the emerging career of Andrew De Leon. Like Justin Bieber, he became famous overnight (he auditioned for America's Got Talent, and the videos are all over YouTube). He has a very active Twitter account. His fan base spans around the world.

Unlike The Biebs, he was not immediately picked up by a high-level talent scout and catapulted to platinum-record fame and fortune. He's back home now, working his way through small-venue performances and sessions in a local recording studio. His family and long-time friends are in close proximity, and he still has time for trips to WalMart and The Cheesecake Factory. He makes videos for his fans, but they are the musings (and belches and funny faces) of a very normal 20-year-old, not the lavishly produced performances of a rock superstar. I find that very reassuring. Andrew is still a human being.

Recently, he released a song, "The Devil's Knight", that he wrote himself. If you had really listened to his earlier interviews, the dark style and lyrics of the song would have come as no surprise. Andrew may have sung opera, art songs, and Ave Maria during the talent competition, but he made no secret of his admiration for Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie as well. He toned down his Goth makeup for his television appearances, but he also let it be known that he was a makeup artist for low-budget horror flicks.

Predictably, some of his fans were scandalized and let it be known that they would no longer be following him. I check in now and then on his Twitter page, and I could see it coming. The fans who had cooed and fussed over him, the ones who tweeted him as if they were sending prayers to a deity, the ones who begged him for just one little reply -- how much of their version of Andrew was really a creation of their own minds? The hyper-religious fans who left him because of the dark metaphors in his song -- well, really, what did they expect? One especially astute line from his song states, "Perfection to the blind, true devil lies inside. No lies when I tell you that my soul is in the night."

Unlike The Biebs, Andrew did not don the angel wings and dutifully shoulder his public persona for the fantasy-fulfillment of his fans. Part of the reason that he did not go further in the talent competitions is that he refused to be the clean, neatly packaged product that fills up the seats in the Las Vegas theaters. Andrew's reaction to the loss of his disillusioned fans? "Apparently I have lost my 'Christian' fans due to The Devil's Knight. How many f***s given? Zero. I still have you guys <3." (That's a sideways heart at the end, in case you didn't know.) Mr. De Leon isn't much of a diplomat. I find that very encouraging.

Update: On November 17, Andrew De Leon tweeted me: "I came across your article about me. I wish more people could be as understanding as you. <3"

The Storm This Time

Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days cooped up indoors, riding out Hurricane Sandy. Looking back, I realize how different this experience was from the time I spent in this same little home in 2003, riding out Hurricane Isabel.

Back then, I had been living in this condo apartment a little less than 6 months, and I didn't know any of my neighbors well. We were directly in the path of the hurricane. The power went out fairly quickly and was not restored for a week and a half. Only one of the building's backup generators was running at full power. One had partial power, and the other had none at all.

Fortunately, my kitchen was on the line to the fully functional generator, but it wasn't safe to use my electronic devices because of the power fluctuations. No television, no email, spotty telephone service -- and no lights in my bedroom. I suppose I could have sought out company in the building lobby, but I was afraid of being so close to the window wall that fills the lobby with sunlight on a normal day. I had never been directly in the path of a hurricane, and I had no idea what to expect. I felt so alone.

Fortunately, I had booked airline tickets many weeks in advance for a trip to see my family in New Mexico. Thus, after a few days (that felt like an eternity), I was able to board the plane right on schedule and fly away from my windswept exile. My sister kidded me that I had to go almost 2000 miles to get a hot shower and cash from a working ATM machine. I was just glad to be back among familiar faces.

This time around, the Washington DC area was hit with a glancing blow. Again, I spent a couple of days housebound, but it was a very different experience. The day before the storm, my neighbors and I chatted in the lobby. I knew that if I needed anything, I could knock on any one of a dozen doors and find a friend to help me. We never did lose power, but I knew from previous storms that our current building maintenance crew was diligent about keeping the generators ready to go. I didn't have plane tickets this time, but I didn't need them. I was prepared and well connected.

I thought that I might work on several projects around the house during the storm, but instead I spent a lot of the time online chatting with friends and family all over the country. I posted photographs and status reports online and kept up with my local friends who were doing the same.

I surprised myself by what I didn't do during the storm. I didn't turn on the television until late in the day. I knew from past experience that all of the stations would be broadcasting nonstop, breathless coverage of the very worst effects of the storm. There's only so much of that I can take, especially if I'm looking out the window to see how much damage is in my own back yard. I didn't watch movies or work on craft projects. I didn't do any writing (although I filled up six pages in my journal the day after the storm).

No, what I did was to seek out my friends and stay connected with them. It was a more concentrated version of what I've been doing lately during normal weather. I'm not nearly the news junkie I used to be, and I have a whole list of household projects that I haven't even started. Sometimes, I criticize myself for not being more "productive". Then I realize that I am doing exactly what I need to do.

When I started this year, my goals included improving my mental and physical health, making more time for the people in my life, working on creative projects, and finding a way to make a living that uses and builds my strengths. I have a pretty good handle on the mind/body thing, and now I'm working on building up my friendships. I'm making small inroads on the list of projects (paying and not), but for now, I'm building and strengthening my own personal community. The rest of it will come in good time.

Serendipity and Intention

Last night, my Deepening Circle celebrated our tenth anniversary with cake and sparkling wine. Twice a month, since October 23, 2002, we have gathered in a living room or a restaurant to discuss prearranged topics, enjoy free-form discussions, and share our music, histories, and dreams with each other. Members have come and gone, but the group goes on.

We were all a little hazy on our starting date. The original agreement was to meet for six months, then disband or continue as we saw fit. Our beginning had none of the trappings of a ten-year journey, just an experiment that we had agreed to carry out for a few months. The historical record surfaced when Callie, one of the two women responsible for launching the group, found an old e-mail printout as she was decluttering her house. The e-mail had a list of the original members of our group, our contact information, and the time and date of our first scheduled meeting. Callie found this just a couple of days before last night's scheduled meeting, just in time to get the cake and wine (one of her dad's favorite brands, which happened to be on sale) so that she could surprise us with her discovery.

October 23, 2002 was a Wednesday, and we've been meeting on Tuesdays. I don't remember if we changed our meeting day after that first meeting, but it doesn't matter. Callie's serendipitous finding of that e-mail added a touch of magic that honored our ten years of intentional community.

I like to think that we discover things that have been there all along by focusing our attention toward finding them. Like tuning in to a particular radio station -- the radio waves are there all the time, but you have to tune your receiver to a specific frequency in order to hear the music. That presupposes, however, that you have the right kind of receiver already and that you either know what kind of music that station plays, or you scan all the frequencies available to you until you find what you want.

But what about things that come to you unbidden -- things that you didn't even know how to ask for (consciously, anyway)? What is it that goes on outside of our consciousness that brings just what we need when we need it, even if we didn't know we needed it? Things have come to me that I didn't know how to ask for, or that I have asked for but that came in a form that I couldn't have imagined. Job offers, a cherished pet cat, lovers, a 35-mm camera, my current home, an artist whose work moves me in ways that I still don't understand.

So we do this curious dance, acting intentionally and purposefully, while keeping a space open for the unexpected. Too much open space, and you lose all focus. You drift aimlessly through the fog. Too little space, and your possibilities become limited to what you already know, what your mind is willing to admit. The world sees you as being self-sufficient, so it offers you no help. Other people need to see some open space so that they can gain access to your life.

But even there, we have to maintain a balance. You don't just leave your front door open to let strangers wander through your home and take what they please. You don't invite the neighbors in to watch your most intimate moments with someone you love. (Or maybe you do! I don't.) There has to be a safe space where you can guard the tenderest and most precious things. A place where you can retreat to safety when the world gets to be too much. But if you spend too much time in your sanctuary, the world goes on without you. People forget that you exist, and it's hard to come back out and find a friend when you need one.

Serendipity and intentions. Engagement and retreat. It's all a big balancing act, a big ebb and flow. An acknowledgement that we have the power to love things into existence, and a willingness to receive what we did not create.

The image at the top of this blog posting is something that I've been using as an icon for a some of my social media accounts for the last few years. I found it on the Internet, unexpectedly, while I was looking for something else. It really captures the concept of the balancing act for me. If you know the original source of this image, please leave a comment below.

Blueprints and Data Mining and Jigsaw Puzzles

There are many ways to go about finding something when the way ahead is not entirely clear. Some of my friends take a goal-oriented approach. Assess where you are now, define where you want to be, then make a detailed outline of the steps you need to take to get from here to there. That's great when you have a clear idea of what "there" looks like.

Some problems can be solved by diving into books and articles and advice from friends. Find out what someone else already knows, and use that to make your design. That's great when the question you want to answer is something that someone else has already answered.

My problem is that I seldom know what my goal will look like. I may have a general dissatisfaction with the way things are and a vague sense of what direction I need to go, and that's about it. The life I imagined for myself 30 years ago bears little resemblance to the life I have today, and that's not such a bad thing. I didn't have the ability back then to imagine this life. I discovered it as I went along.

I did the best I could with what I had, and every now and then I took stock of things and saw where the pieces fit together and suggested the outlines of a next step or two. It's been like solving a puzzle.

First, you clear out an empty space where you can work. It's much harder putting a jigsaw puzzle together on a cluttered table. The pieces don't fit because of all the stuff underneath. You can't see what fits where because there are too many things in the way.

When you begin, you don't have a clue where most of the pieces are supposed to go. You might not even have a picture to help you along. So you start with what you have. Edges and corners, pieces that are clearly part of a bright pattern, like a flower or a jewel. You fit those together, and the spaces between them suggest other pieces that might fit in. The colors along the edges suggest interior pieces that might fit that general area. You try pieces out, and sometimes they fit and sometimes they don't.

You take a break when you need to, then you come back and fit a few more pieces into place. Pieces that you wouldn't have known how to place before you put those first pieces in. Sometimes, you realize that the pieces aren't fitting properly, and you have to undo a section before you plow on ahead.

Little by little, the picture emerges. Maybe it's what you expected, maybe not. Sometimes, pieces get lost and you wind up with blank spots in your puzzle. As long as the picture is relatively clear, it's enough.

I cleared things out in a big way over the past couple of years. I cleaned closets and weeded out files and got furniture that harmonized and fit my space. I quit a job that was taking up too much space in my life. I made time for quiet, reading, long walks -- and blogging!

I have begun to fit a few pieces into this clear space:
Yoga and walking, for a quiet mind and a healthy body. I went from "plank pose is gonna kill me!" to "I can do this!" The balance poses need more work, but I'm getting better. A three-mile walk now seems very ordinary to me.

A new guitar and several new CDs, for more music in my life. I feel self-conscious about playing my piano, especially with my touchy downstairs neighbors. My guitar is quieter -- and much more portable. I'm having to re-learn what little I knew about playing guitar from my few lessons in the 1970s, and I am in serious need of some finger callouses. That will come.

Movies, art exhibits, panel discussions, and other events for mental stimulation. Sometimes with friends, sometimes by myself. Sometimes, I come away with an idea for the next move in my career. Sometimes, I just come away feeling inspired and happy. Both are valuable to me.

Writing projects, because this is a big part of who I am. I have a fiction piece coming out online next month, and a nonfiction piece being published this month. (I'll put in some links when they go live.) I am getting small bits of inspiration for several stories in progress. And most mornings, I write Morning Pages (a la The Artist's Way), which vary from brain dumps to aimless meanderings to bloody brilliant.

Social media, as a way of getting the word out there and reminding people I still exist. I'm learning my way around Twitter and news feeds and my very own website, and a professional FaceBook page. It's kind of disjointed right now, and I can spend way too much time just looking at other people's updates. Gradually, I'm getting a feel for how to skim the important stuff, avoid the negativity, and make a presence for myself. It's a skill, like anything else.

Little pieces of the puzzle, coming together. I'm still not sure what the picture is, but something is starting to emerge.

Pushing Back Against the Haters

Some of my best writing is inspired by the occasional convergence of news items around a common theme. I'm right in the middle of one such convergence, and I just have to share this with you all. I am getting a lot of this from my FaceBook friends, whose news links are a great way to aggregate stories from all over the web. The theme that is coming through almost on a daily basis is this: people are beginning to push back against the haters.

Story 1: A quiet, "free spirit" of a teen girl is elected to her school's homecoming court as a cruel joke. The entire town comes together to give her the royal treatment.

For the homecoming dance Saturday, businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her hair and nails, and dress her in a gown, shoes and a tiara.

For the homecoming game Friday, residents will pack the football stadium so they can cheer when she is introduced at halftime.

They will be wearing her favorite color (orange) and T-shirts with messages of support. A 68-year-old grandmother offered to be her escort.

"I am in awe, overwhelmed at the amount of support," said Jamie Kline, 35, who began a Facebook support page. "I never expected it to spread as far as it has."

From The Detroit News

Story 2: Someone sees a young Sikh woman who has an unusual amount of facial hair, which she made no attempt to hide or remove. The person posts a surreptitious photograph of the young woman on Reddit, and "wait[ed] for the abuse to flood in." The young woman's friend alerted her to the photo, and she posted a response that was so gracious and kind that the photographer posted a sincere apology.

... I've read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

From Jezebel.com

Story 3: Nate Phelps, a son of the "minister" who runs the Westboro Baptist Church, left his family just after midnight on his 18th birthday, and has pursued a much more loving path in his life. He has had to work hard to heal from the psychological wounds of his abusive upbringing, but now he is reaching out to help others.

Now in his 50s, Nate finds himself publicly squaring off with his father and siblings to reverse their legacy of intolerance. He lives in Calgary, where he has become a public speaker who champions LGBT rights and raises awareness about the connection between extreme religion and child abuse. He is currently writing a book about his life and is the subject of an upcoming documentary.

From Salon.com

Story 4: Andrew DeLeon, a teen from a small town near Austin, wasn't into sports or athletics. He became accustomed to being "hated" and "rejected" by the kids in his school, but he summoned up his courage and auditioned for America's Got Talent this year. I've written about him before, and I continue to be amazed by his generous and loving attitude toward his many, many adoring fans. This young man, who is now 20, amazed everyone by singing operatic arias in an other-worldly falsetto voice. Even though Andrew didn't get past the semi-finals in the competition, his fans continue to support him. He is currently paying his dues, performing in small venues and recording songs from a makeshift studio.

Here's his Austin audition, and here's a more recent clip that he made to keep in touch with his fans. The comments on his Facebook fan page and on his YouTube video page are almost entirely positive and supportive (an amazing feat), and he routinely gets messages from depressed, rejected, and out-of-the-mainstream teens who have been inspired and encouraged by his example.

Story 5: Lady Gaga, back when she was just Stefani Germanotta, was once thrown into a trash can by a group of bullies from her school.

“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point,” she said. “I didn’t want to go to class. And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was.”
From the New York Times

Lady Gaga went on to become an immense success as a musician and performer (to put it mildly!), but she hasn't forgotten the pain she experienced during her teens. She and her mother have founded the Born this Way Foundation, which is " is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a kinder, braver world."

Bit by bit, kind souls are pushing the pendulum back from the mean-spirited, winner-take-all attitudes that have dominated our environment for far too long. I hope to see many more such stories, and I will pass them along to you, gentle readers.

Signal to Noise Ratios

Back to the science metaphors today. I got to thinking about how radically I have emptied out my schedule this year, and how it's helping me pay attention to things too long ignored. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio, as it were.

Right after grad school, I spent three years as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Lab. I was studying the way that surfaces influence the structure of thin coatings, to see if you could set up a surface that could direct a thin film to form with the properties you wanted. In order to pick up any kind of a signal at all on my instruments, I had to start out with substrate materials that had a whole lot of surface area, just to have enough of the thin film to make a detectable signal.

I had to make sure that the substrate surface was as clean as humanly possible, to eliminate interference from contaminants -- including air. For every sample I made, I had to start by baking my substrate material at a high temperature, under vacuum. This required custom-built glass furnace tubes that had to be made in the lab's glass shop, by the resident glass-working experts. My fellow researchers showed me how to set up the furnace and vacuum pump setup, and they clued me in on putting a cold trap between the two parts, so that pump oil would not back-flow into the furnace tube. They also told me that the copper coil I needed for this could be found at a local auto supply store.

After I baked out my samples, I had to close off the glass tube and transfer it to one of those big glove boxes that you may have seen on TV shows where people are working in a lab. The man in charge of keeping the glove box maintained had very large hands, so the gloves were sized to fit him. I have very small hands, so I had to learn to manipulate tiny tweezers and allen wrenches using thick rubber gloves that were several sizes too big for me.

Coating the sample surface was an exercise in patience. Meter in a little gas, let it condense onto the surface, wait for things to settle down, meter in a little more, repeat. Do this until the gas pressure gauge shows that no more gas is condensing down onto the surface. This sometimes took hours. Once, I tried to put two layers down on a surface, and I stayed at it for 36 hours straight before I finally gave up.

After I collected data from my instrument, I used a computer program (written by another colleague) to tease out the tiny signal from the thin film from the much larger signal from my supporting surface. Another computer program would interpret the resulting pattern, but the specific material I was studying hadn't been studied much as a thin film, so I had to piece together what I could from existing information and make reasonable assumptions.

I did manage to put together a general picture of what the surfaces were doing to the thin films. It's been almost 25 years, and others have gone much farther than this than I could.

What I'm getting at is this. In order to see anything at all out of this year-long experience of mine, I had to set up a situation in which I had a lot of time just for me -- my supporting substrate surface. I had to clear out any interfering noise from this time -- residual stress from a long day at work and commuting, much of my extracurricular activity, anything that would take away from what I'm trying to find. After the initial clearing-out, I had to protect my time from re-contamination. Only then could I begin to let in the things that I want to pay attention to.

I'm getting a lot of advice and assistance from friends and colleagues, but ultimately, I'm having to put this thing together myself. And now that little hints of answers are starting to come in, I'm having to try and make sense of what I'm finding out. Looking at what other people have done is giving me a general direction, but ultimately, I'm having to take what I can find and make some reasonable assumptions about the rest.

Very slowly, a little pattern is starting to emerge from the background. Other people may do this more elegantly or simply, but this is my project, and I am having to put together an answer that applies to me. The learning how to do it, the actual process of doing it, and the friends and mentors I'm meeting along the way are just as important (if not more so) than whatever answers I may come up with.

Radio Stations

Every now and then, I notice how life seems to bring me just what I happened to be needing at the time. For example, I was feeling restless during this sweltering summer we just had, and wishing that I could find some motivation to get out more and reconnect with my life. Boom -- educational events, a women's getaway weekend, lunches with friends, invitations to write and speak.

Some people attribute this kind of thing to supernatural forces that bring us what we want if we just wish hard enough. Conversely, if you're not getting what you want, you must not be focusing your attention properly or wishing hard enough or some such thing. Too bad for you, unemployed, under-insured, stuck-in-poverty people! You just need to try harder. I just can't buy that kind of thinking. It turns this whole thing into a rationalization for the wealthy and fortunate to hang onto what they have and not care about anyone else.

On the other hand, I do believe that we tend to find things more easily when we are actively looking for them. It's like tuning in to a specific radio station -- all the other radio stations are there, but the one you're tuned in to is the one you hear. If you have preset buttons or a favorites list, then you go back to those stations again and again, and you tend to forget about the other stations. If you only listen to the same playlist that's already on your iPod, how will you discover anything new?

So -- if my usual radio stations are playing crap, it's time to go searching for something else. Better radio stations, or CDs, or YouTube, or live concerts. Where are they playing the music I want to hear? Who listens to the same music that I do?

I'll back off from the music metaphor and turn to life in general now. When I'm just working as hard as I can to get through the day-to-day, I don't have much energy to devote to thinking about what I need out of life. My life gets into a rut, ruled by other people's urgent needs and ambitions. The nagging little voice that calls me to something higher is overwhelmed by the rush of things that really don't matter in the long run. It's only when I step back, claim and defend my own territory, that I can pay attention to that insistent little voice.

I might not achieve fame and fortune, but I can start here and now with what I already have and nurture those things. I can turn my intentions toward those things that make me more alive. I can tune into the station that says, "Yes. These things aren't just for someone else. You're capable of so much more than you've given yourself permission to try. These things aren't reserved exclusively for some privileged class of 'other people'. Step into this new territory and explore."

The Dream of Constant Okayness

Olga Rasmussen, my mentor and instructor at the beginning of my efforts to reclaim the physical part of myself, shared this on her FaceBook page today. I thought it was worth passing along here.

THE DREAM OF CONSTANT OKAYNESS - Pema Chödrön

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom —- freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

You can follow Olga's blog, Aligning With Grace, at aligningwithgrace.blogspot.com

UPDATE: This was too good not to share: "The Meaning of "Personal Responsibility". This is a Buddhist's response to Mitt Romney's assertion that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax see themselves as victims, entitled, etc. Ethan Nichtern, the author, points out that this number includes hard-working people who are temporarily out of a job or who earn too little to pay taxes, as well as the elderly and disabled. The main reason I'm including this link, though, is Ethan's wonderful explanation of what it means to take personal responsibility for your life while becoming fully interdependent (not dependent, not independent) with the people around you. Thanks, Susan Runner, for passing this along.

A Year of "Idleness"

This morning, I joined two fellow members of the Washington Ethical Society in giving a three-part talk "In Praise of Idleness" on this Labor Day Sunday. My part of the story dealt with stepping off the career treadmill to re-evaluate where my life was headed and where I want it to go -- just what I've been blogging about here. Here's the text of my talk:

Good morning. My name is Nancy McGuire. I've been a member here at the Washington Ethical Society for just over 12 years. I have been a science writer for the last 16 years. This year I am taking a "reboot break" away from my career to re-evaluate my goals and directions. I'm going to be talking about why I'm doing that and how it's going so far.

The idea of taking a break started forming in my mind in July 2010, when my sister Linda and I went to New Mexico to stay with our Mom during her last week of life.
Mom had been slipping into dementia for several years, so by the time she reached that final week, we had already done much of our grieving. The Mom we knew was long gone. There was no shock that the time had come, we only needed to see a long process through to its conclusion.

Linda and I were surrounded by love and support from the hospice staff, our parents' friends, and our own friends, some of whom we had not seen for many years.
We shared dinners and long conversations together, and we allowed ourselves to laugh again. It occurred to me that I hadn't been laughing much lately. I hadn't spent much time with friends, or seeing movies, or walking around taking photographs like I used to -- all of which Linda and I were doing during our three weeks away from the daily routine.

At the time, I was more financially secure than I had been in a long time, but every day seemed pretty much the same: get up, commute to Arlington: one bus / two trains / and a quarter-mile walk, spend all day sitting in a cubicle staring at a computer screen, commute back home to Silver Spring. Stare at the TV for a couple of hours, go to bed, then get up the next day and do it all again. The weeks and months seemed to fly by, but I can't point to anything I did that was really significant -- nothing that you could really call "living my life".

I told myself all the things that grownups are supposed to say:

• "I'm just glad I have a job, especially in this economy."
• "If it was fun, they wouldn't call it work."
• "Just ride it out. This too shall pass."
• "Find what you can do to make your work situation better."

At the beginning of August, I was home from New Mexico and back on the job, writing up my performance goals for the next year, getting documents ready for the upcoming government contract renewal.

Two weeks later, I was back on a plane to Palo Alto, California for our contract's annual performance review at Stanford University.

Then it was time for the end-of-year reports and and preparing and staffing three exhibits for two conferences that bracketed Thanksgiving week -- same as every year. I didn't have the time or energy for turkey dinner with family or friends -- I was too busy dealing with vendors, shippers, and staffing schedules.

I realized that unless I made a change, this was going to be my life for the next 15 years or so. I had been looking around for other jobs, not really knowing what I wanted. But there was no time to do any serious looking, and not many openings were available.

One day, it occurred to me that I had enough money in my emergency fund to live on for just over a year. I thought to myself, "If THIS is not an emergency, then what IS?"
In fact, I had already spent one evening in a hospital emergency room because I had not taken time away from my work schedule to have a doctor examine an infected spot on my knee until it was too bad to ignore. Also, I had no time or energy for friends, family, or fun.

There was no way to reconfigure my current job to make things tolerable. I realized that I was going to need a full year off, and I would not be coming back to that job afterward.

The option period for the government contract I was working on was over at the end of the year, and much of what I did find rewarding about my job would be ending. The end of 2011 seemed like a good time to bow out.

Julia Cameron writes about the events that always seem to follow a major decision. It's almost as if the universe is testing your resolve, seeing if you're really serious about making the change.

After I had decided to leave my job, I received an award from my company, followed by a promotion and a raise. Should I stay? I thought it over carefully -- for about 10 minutes. No, I had to leave.

I spent the year making preparations:

• Tracking my spending to see how much money I would need, where I could economize
• Researching what kind of health insurance I could get
• Reading about other people who had taken "reboot breaks"

That last year at work was chaotic and stressful, but I stayed on because we were so thinly staffed that my presence was needed. I knew that I was going to leave, but I didn't tell any of my co-workers until December.

As my reboot year began, I expected that I would spend a month or two in vacation mode, then launch into my massive do-list, based on retirees I know who are busier than ever.

I expected that my progress (rest, projects, reconnecting) would follow somewhat the same schedule as what I had read about.

Now that I am eight months into this year, I am actually much less focused and less driven than I anticipated, but this bothers me less than I thought it would. Clearing out the daily routines and the mental chatter is opening up a space for new things to emerge. My do-list is shrinking, but very slowly.

Time has slowed down considerably -- it used to rush by so quickly. Last year seems like the far distant past.

The noise level in my mind is down as well, allowing me to pay attention to things that I had pushed aside. I'm more aware of what I truly enjoy and care about, rather than what is merely urgent.

I am finding support and inspiration from a variety of sources:

• Encouraging and thought-provoking responses to my blog posts
• My monthly writer's group, where we read and comment on each others' creative work
• My Deepening Circle, which frequently provides me with some very powerful insights, as well as friendship and encouragement
• I am really listening to what my inner voice is asking/telling me -- sometimes in a very oblique way, through mental images or "hot button" responses

I'm beginning to reconnect with the world, but more on MY terms now. I'm not what you would call efficient or highly productive just yet. It feels more like sampling dishes at a buffet -- trying little bits of a lot of things to see what I want more of.
I get together with long-time friends and former co-workers for social occasions and for my writing group.

Freelance projects are finding me -- not enough to live on yet, but not bad for doing hardly any marketing. I am interviewing some of my colleagues for an article I'm writing, and thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm sending out my fiction pieces for publication -- only one acceptance so far, but I have several pieces in the works.

My days are a mix of projects, long walks, yoga classes, and activities with friends and by myself. I also set aside plenty of time for daydreaming.

What's next?

• I am exploring the career possibilities related to the various interfaces in my life, especially science and society
• I am selectively taking on more freelance writing projects
• Preparing more of my writing for publication
• Sharpening my focus -- what do I really want?

I don't have any profound answers yet. It's typical for me that when I have a big decision to make, I spend a long time floundering around, not knowing what I want. Then, unpredictably, something will snap it all into focus. That's when I become decisive and start putting things into place, but not before. I trust that this process is playing itself out again in my life, and I think that this year is one of the best investments I've ever made.

Checking in

It's been a little while since I last posted. I'm still here, but I'm working on some things that I'm not ready to share with the whole world just yet. Bear with me. I'll keep you posted.

Wiring Diagrams

According to the books and articles I read before launching into this year-long adventure, I could expect to spend 2-3 months in "detox". My energy levels would be low, and I would enjoy staying at home and doing quiet activities with a few close friends. This was supposed to give way to a more exploratory phase, during which I would go to art exhibits, take day trips, join groups, and generally make my way back into the wider world. After a few months of this, I would be ready to start ramping up to rejoin the workforce. Yeah, right.

Here I am, after 7-plus months, enjoying a blend of hibernation, exploratory activities, and small freelance projects. The "supposed to" schedule has fallen by the wayside, and I am just taking life as it comes for as long as I can. This approach has turned out to have unexpected benefits.

I find myself taking small, one-off, noncommittal samples of things that I might be interested in, interspersed with long stretches of relaxation. The noise level in my life is the lowest it has been since, well maybe ever. In the quiet spaces, I'm starting to pick up signals of long-suppressed ideas, wants, and needs.

I'm working like an electrician, first shutting off all the breaker switches, then turning them on one by one to see what lights up. When something affects me strongly, I pause to examine the reasons for the reaction. As I find my hot buttons, I examine the wiring diagrams to see what they are connected to.

This kind of careful examination requires stepping back from the gaudy, flashing carnival midway that is city life in the 21st century. Just as a careful electrician makes sure that the power is shut off before she begins working on the wiring, I am stepping back from the political campaigns, protest rallies, committees, social events, and jam-packed schedules that are so typical of life in Washington, DC. Perhaps an election year was not the best time to start this retreat into my own quiet space, but my interior clock is dictating things for the time being.

I still keep myself informed, but I find myself alienated from the mud-slinging and the snark. I yearn for more understanding about why intelligent, rational people of good will take such radically different stands on the issues. I grow impatient with the trite slogans, marketing spin, and outright lies that each side tells about the other. Why can't we look at both sides, find out what our highest priorities are, and come to a compromise that we all can live with? Please don't say that it's because the other guys have gone insane or given themselves over to pure evil -- we all know that's not true.

And maybe this is where my future direction lies. Maybe I am a person who listens to varying points of view and puts them out in a calm way for others to examine and discuss. I have spent a lifetime gathering facts and observations, putting things in order and juxtaposing things in an interesting way. If I can find a way to make that pursuit pay my bills, I might just have something.

So please don't be offended if I don't sign your petition, show up at your rally, join your committee (although nobody I know has actually expressed any sense of being offended). Only a few small lights are on in my metaphorical house just now--I'm still working on the wiring.

Pondering Life in the Real World

Last week, I listened to a thought-provoking talk on the myths that we create to explain the world to ourselves and our communities. By "myths", I mean stories that, although fictional, contain some element of truth, morality, or human nature. During the audience comment period that followed, several people responded that they had no use for tall tales and fiction, preferring instead to deal with the world as it is.

It's a noble thought, avoiding fantasy and make-believe in order to spend more time solving problems in the here and now. The problem I have with this mindset is that it misunderstands the role of story-telling. Far from being a way to avoid reality, myth-making is a device for setting up simplified model systems in order to better grasp some concept that is too complex or emotionally charged to deal with head-on.

Scientists use model systems all the time. When they first delve into a new concept or discovery, they often set up a simplified version in the lab or in a computer program. They control all but a few variables so that they can observe each variable separately to see how it affects the system as a whole. The real world seldom lets us tease out individual variables in this manner, so the model system is a necessary first step toward an accurate understanding of a real-world system.

After the foundations are laid, the model must be validated against a more realistic system. Often, a series of increasingly complex models are necessary before the whole thing is ready for validation in the outside world.

Likewise, our myths allow us to isolate and explore just a few aspects of our complicated existence using idealized worlds and simplified characters. The simplicity allows a clarity that is seldom available in the daily onrush of events and interpersonal interactions. Myths and stories make no attempt to explain all of reality -- how could they ever succeed?

Fantasy stories are a proven tool for talking about topics that are too emotionally charged to address head-on. The television show Star Trek talked about real-world racism using space aliens as stand-ins for present-day humans. JRR Tolkien explored the concept of evil via the malevolent Sauron, the amoral Saruman, and the obsessive Gollum. These stories stood a better chance of getting a point across to audiences who had their guard up against full frontal attacks on their cherished beliefs. Subversive, but effective.

Myths, allegories, fantasy literature -- I suppose some people just aren't into this form of truth-seeking. If they have methods that work better for them, I respect that, and I hope that they respect my love of metaphorical worlds. The real world needs both Muggles and Wizards, after all.

Respecting Each Others' Creative Work

Just a link today. Roni Loren blogs about the do's and don'ts of posting images with your blog, Pinterest, Tumblr, and other ways of expressing yourself on the Internet. This is a very clear, concise explanation (NOT in the sense of legal advice, just an overview!) of where the safe ground is for using the works of others and claiming the rights to your own work. She includes several links to sources of images that you may use with confidence. Ms. Loren knows whereof she speaks: she was sued for using one photo in one of her postings, and she had to "pay money that I didn't have for a use of a photo I didn't need."

Here's her post:
Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog - My Story

Just FYI, most of the photos on my blog are the product of my very own finger on the shutter button of my very own camera. Which means that I own them outright. Where I use someone else's photo, I post a photo credit, and it's almost always something explicitly in the public domain. Now you know.

Unopened Gifts

A long time ago, I heard a story (probably fictional) about an elderly couple who had saved their money for years so that they could afford an ocean cruise. They booked the most basic accommodations, and they carefully looked for ways to economize. They had the time of their lives, but they were always conscious of the need to keep expenses to a minimum.

Every evening, they retired to their cabin and made a modest dinner out of the bread, cheese, and apples that they had brought with them. On the last night of the cruise, they allowed themselves the luxury of eating dinner in the main dining room. They enjoyed a wonderful meal, and afterward, the husband asked the server for the check. The server looked at him very strangely. "Sir," he said, "There is no extra charge. The cost of all your meals was included in the price of your cruise."

What is life offering me that I am ignoring because I think that I have to take care of everything all by myself? What opportunities am I missing because I think that they are only for other people?

It's only been during the last ten years or so that I have started to learn to ask for what I want -- or even admit to myself that I want certain things. My upbringing emphasized self sufficiency: accepting and living with whatever role I was given to play, whatever resources "someone else" wasn't using, whatever I could scrounge up for myself. Great accomplishments, brave adventures, unfettered creative expression -- those things were all reserved for "someone else". No explanation was ever given as to why "someone else" was more deserving than I, it was just taken for granted. Like all those unclaimed meals on the cruise ship, the gifts that I could have had either went to "someone else", or they went to waste.

When my sister was getting our mother's house ready for sale, she came across a stash of fancy soaps and lotions that we had bought for Mom over the years. We had thought that we were giving Mom a little something to brighten up her day -- a pleasant scent, a soothing touch for her dry skin.

Mom had saved up all these gifts in their unopened containers, some of them for fifteen years or more. Some of the older items had become unusable. Was she waiting for a special occasion that never came? If she didn't enjoy these things, did she think that we would be offended if she offered them to someone else? Would she rather have had some other gift? We had spent our money on items that never served their purpose because we didn't know that she wasn't using them.

Unopened gifts are not just wasted resources, they choke off the streams of generosity and gratitude. The care and sacrifice that the giver put into selecting the gift fall by the wayside, unappreciated. The chance to enjoy something out of the ordinary goes untaken. The gift-giving stops short, never paid forward to someone else. The possibility of taking that gift and using it to make something wonderful is closed off.

I get a real kick out of those times when I can do something small that makes a big difference in someone's day. Running an errand that saves someone a long side trip, checking on a friend's house while they are out of town, opening the door for someone who has both hands full. I get a bigger kick out of doing small things that open up the door for someone else to do bigger and better things. Giving an inspirational book or art supplies to a creative person, being there to listen when a friend is working through a big issue. It would make me sad if my friend refused my gift. Am I being blind to the gifts of love that my friends (or life itself) is offering me? Am I closing myself off to some great thing that I could do because I won't ask for or accept the help I need -- a gift that the world is yearning to give?

Isaac, Andrew, and Mick

To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. -- Sir Isaac Newton

What is literally true for planets and stars is metaphorically true for humans interacting with each other. Any time you reach out to another person, you reach inward toward yourself.

I realized this a few weeks ago as I watched some of the televised auditions for "America's Got Talent" (one of my guilty pleasures). Up until that point, the contestants had been interesting, but not compelling.

The last audition of the night was by Andrew De Leon, a young man dressed in Goth attire, ready to try his skills as a singer. The amount of interview time the producers included before they showed his audition was a signal that Andrew's audition was going to be spectacularly good or painfully bad. The young man admitted that he had never sung in front of anyone before, not even his parents. His Goth look was a response to and a defense against the alienation and rejection that he felt, the sense of being a misfit, "not really good at anything," in his words.

Andrew was clearly nervous as he walked onto the stage. His black leather jacket, heavy black eyeliner, icy blue contact lenses, and long raven-black hair set up a whole package of expectations about what kind of music he was into.

When the stage hand started the recorded musical accompaniment, he had clearly cued up the wrong track. Harps and violins? Surely not. Then, Andrew began to sing "O Mio Babbino Caro" in a clear, strong, falsetto voice. He poured his whole soul into his aria, earning a standing ovation from the audience, effusive praise from the judges, and tearful joy from his parents, who were in the audience.

In the next round of auditions, Andrew choked up and bombed rather spectacularly. The judges eliminated him from the competition and sent him home. All of this was pre-recorded, so by the time the television audience saw his fall from grace, Andrew had been living with that reality for about a month.

In the days after the broadcast, Andrew's auditions were viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, multiple FaceBook fan pages sprouted up, and fans circulated a petition to get him back onto the show, gaining thousands of signatures. Yes, I admit it -- I signed the petition and I wrote him a note of encouragement. I don't know if he read it, but it did me some good.

Andrew De Leon's time on camera totaled about 15 minutes -- 15 minutes of fame in a very literal sense. So why did hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world care so deeply about whether this shy young man could finally come out of his room and shine?

I think it's because he had the courage to face his fear and take one desperate chance. Because he had something beautiful to offer, and just singing for himself wasn't enough anymore. Because so many of us have felt like misfits and outsiders at one time or another, and we know how wonderful it is when someone else reaches out and accepts us for who we are. His action prompted our reaction.

By responding to him, I had to ask myself if I could take a bold step like that. I had to remind myself that sitting around and daydreaming is only a beginning. At some point, you have to roll up your sleeves and plunge into the real world. Sometimes, the response from the real world is more affirming than you could ever imagine, even with all the hard work and obstacles that come with the package. Just the act of saying "this is who I am" can cause another person to say "I'm that way too -- it's such a relief to know I'm not the only one."

I started with a quote from Isaac Newton, and I'll end with a quote from Mick Jagger:
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need."

Update, August 24, 2012 -- Andrew came back to the competition as a "wild card" act this week, and he was spectacular. His painful setback made him all the more determined to make the most of his second chance. He was "overwhelmed" (again, his word) by the outpouring of support from all his fans. The Andrew we saw this week was more reserved (keeping his nerves in check?) but clearly looking toward a more professional presence on stage. He's still in the competition, moving forward to the semifinals. Whatever happens now, whether he wins or not, he is already well on his way to bigger and better things.