August 2023 – a simple man

Back to School

This morning I had my third official graduate level class. I am taking two this semester, and both have their challenges and joys, as one might expect. I’m also working at the same university, so that is at times convenient and busy making. But there is a nice intersection between my work and my studies that hopefully will be fun and productive.

I am working as the Writing Consultant. What does that mean? I assist students with papers and assignments. Punch up language, brainstorm, outline, higher-order thinking about logic and flow – everything is fair game. I haven’t met with any students yet (did I mention the semester just started?) so I have been filling my time by hanging flyers and speaking in various undergraduate classes about my services.

I am studying Oral Traditions and Literature alongside Abrahamic Shared Stories. Both are fascinating. In Oral Traditions I am examining four traditionally oral parts of literature that occur within a culture: proverbs (or idioms or sayings), riddles, poetry, and stories. It has been fun to think about proverbs, what proverbs are common in a language or cultural group, and what exactly makes a proverb (more on that later when I study it, I suppose!). Shared Stories will look at a few religious texts that are common between the Abrahamic faiths of the world, that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. This class is way more technical and foreign to me.

I say foreign in that Shared Stories involves Ancient Near East, or even current Near East, thought patterns which to me (as a modern Westerner through-and-through) are not familiar. I know the Bible stories that we will be examining, but again, only through my fundamentalist Christian upbringing. I will look forward to examining these stories through different lenses to encounter their differences, similarities, peculiarities, and what it all means. My professor for Shared Stories is Jewish, so the class will come front loaded with his worldview. I must confess, his way of thinking was very off-putting during his first class, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue in his class. However, I had a meeting with his co-teacher and she allayed many of my fears and encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone. Step I shall!

Oral Traditions will be more up my alley, though it, too, will look at many different cultures and locales around the world. That’s fine. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to explore the world as best I can. Seeing as I haven’t budget to hop a plane and actually travel, I’ll take travel through literature. The university I am at, Dallas International University, began life as a linguistics-only school. It has since, and is still, growing beyond those beginnings. Getting back into education is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and I figured dipping my toes in where I live and work wouldn’t be a bad idea. Being that still most of the classes here are linguistic or anthropologic in nature, it was hard to find some that fit my literary bent. I think, in the end, I am taking the only two real literature courses that are offered.

Which brings me back to being the Writing Consultant. I will interact with my own classmates in Oral Traditions on at least one assignment, so I get to be paid for doing my own homework I guess. Ha! Works for me. At any rate, I am excited to be back in school. It is challenging, fun, has already been exasperating, and a little bit like riding the old metaphorical bicycle. I’m a little wobbly, but I think I’ll straighten out the wheels here in no time. I get to do reading, research, a little bit of creative writing, and help others at the same time. These are all things I love to do!

All that’s lacking to really feel scholastic again is leaves falling because it is cold (not hot as is the case here in Texas) and the changing of the season from summer to autumn (which, again, won’t happen here for some time in Texas, at least, not from a temperature standpoint). Still, being in school feels like the times-they-are-a-changing. Ahhh! But it’s good.

Finished

The last time I wrote on this blog, I started reading Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t remember because my memory is unreliable these days. I know because I use an app to track my reading, and it says it took me thirteen days to read On Writing.

In the Before Times Long Ago, I would have read King’s book in an afternoon, or even quicker, but since graduating university, my ability to read books has lessened over time. I’d not be able to concentrate, and the will to read would not materialize for weeks (or even longer).

Then came the bout with Covid that nearly killed me. I think I read during that week, but in a haphazard way. I didn’t start or finish a book, but read selections from the Star Wars trilogy novelizations. That exercise was to stave off the boredom of potential death more than a real effort to read anything straight through.

Since Covid, all I have really read, aside from a few books here and there (I think Carrie Fisher’s and Anthony Daniels’s memoirs were among the longest), were picture books: The Art of Star Wars in several volumes. I am certain I’ve written about my frustration with being unable to read before on this blog.

Finishing On Writing feels like a breakthrough. King endorses reading as much as possible if one wishes to be a writer. That advice you will find in any treatise on writing. I also believe it. Something about the way King espouses that sentiment struck through my mental fog straight to my reader’s core. I want to read again, and frequently. I cannot say the desire existed much before.

I wanted to read in the way that people want to exercise or eat healthily: they know they should. But they don’t want to, really. Doing such things becomes a chore, a necessity, an aggravation, and usually, a non-starter. With me and reading it was similar: I just didn’t do it. Even reading King’s book took thirteen days because there were several in those almost two weeks that I just didn’t want to pick up the book. Persevere I did and finish I did.

Reading On Writing turned into a journey I needed to take. I had no idea what the book was going to say, nor did I expect the emotional impact it has had on my psyche. King talks about his life of writing, which includes his eventual sobriety and concludes with a life-threatening accident. I knew of neither. Look, the rest of King’s compendium really isn’t my thing and I knew almost nothing about him personally, but I picked up On Writing on a whim because I knew he was a good, established author. I figured something he had to say could be useful.

King’s advice was more than helpful: it was life-changing. Not least will be if I can read again because it was permissive. I know pretty much what King said already: eliminate adverbs, read plenty, write regularly, and so on, but the simple way in which he presented his advice, and life story, said to me that I can do those things, too. He doesn’t pretend to be some great writer, as opposed to a best-selling author, and he doesn’t stand on pretense. He is, and he invited me to be as well. Read what I like to read; write what I like to write (minus a few adverbs). And no worries about the rest.

Sometimes we all need the permission to do what we already know to do. Permission can take us from inaction to action. As kids we all wanted to do things, but it wasn’t until a parent or other authority gave us permission that we actually went out to do the thing (usually). I think Stephen King gave me permission to read, as weird as that sounds. I didn’t pick up his book asking for that, but late-90’s King communicated permission anyway.

I have a large backlog of books to read, including the Lord of the Rings. (Anyone reading right now knows that Lord of the Rings is among my favorite reads, which is to say, I’ve read it.) I set out to read Tolkien’s masterpiece once a year. That dream died when reading died. Now I just might try again. Autumn is the time of year I usually crack open Tolkien, in honor of Bilbo’s September birthday, and I think this year I will do the same. I have textbooks to read, and other reading on my horizon, but Lord of the Rings will be read!

I have a new purpose in reading. Enjoyment, of course, but to learn as well. Learn how other writers write. Learn how to craft wonder, intrigue, suspense, or put forth knowledge. I never read with that in mind before, but King told me to read with my eyes open, to note what other writers do and why and to emulate. I will do my best. After all, hand in hand with reading is writing. Ever since I first started reading thirty some years ago, I have wanted to recreate the experience I had in pages for someone else. If I am going to be a good writer, I must as well be a good reader.

I feel reborn, relieved, and reinvigorated. Light and full of light. Hyperbolic as well. I’ll take it all. I’ve not felt this way in a long time. A good book will do that for me, but I’ve forgotten the feeling. All that I had included dim memory and stale knowledge. Now I’ve got first hand experience once more! It feels good. Plus, life is short and if reading and writing get me through the pain of it all, so much the better. It did when I was a teenager, starting a mental health decline, but like so many things, I’d forgotten what billions know: reading is a pathway: to betterment, to amusement, to knowledge, and to joy. Yes, to escape as well. Who doesn’t need escape from time to time?

I’ve finished On Writing. But I’ve not finished writing, in fact where I’ve been precocious before, I plan to be prolific now. I’ve not finished reading, either. Where I may have been voracious before, I now plan to be insatiable. As author George McFly once said, “Like I’ve always told you, you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!” I still contend with mental illness, life, and a host of adversity, but anything can be accomplished, and I’ve put my mind to overcoming!

Grey Pilgrim

I am in the midst of a downturn in my mental health. I have been labeled as having a high likelihood of having a bipolar disorder, and this feels more true now than it has in a long time. For a while I was doing very well. I was creating, I felt good, and I spent time in the metaphorical sun. Today, and for a while now, I haven’t created, I’ve felt out of sorts, and I’ve been lurking in a metaphorical Mirkwood.

I often think of Gandalf, one of my favorite characters from JRR Tolkien’s imagination. He is called the Grey Pilgrim, because his wizard color is grey. Pilgrim is an interesting moniker. It means “a person who journeys to a sacred place” and the thesaurus adds the connotations of “traveler” or “wayfarer”. In Tolkien’s mythology there are a few sacred places in Middle-Earth, and out of it is the most sacred place of all: The Undying Lands, or Valinor, sort of a heaven realm.

Gandalf was certainly a wayfarer and traveler as he journeyed all over Middle-Earth during his long years, but he was also tasked with opposing the Dark Lord Sauron. Once that mission was complete, he was allowed to return to Valinor, and thus embarked on a final journey to the most sacred place of all.

I feel like a different kind of grey pilgrim. I am certainly no wizard, but since my early teenage years I’ve often felt a grey or murky blackness hang over me. Also, since even earlier than being a teen, I’ve been inculcated in religious things, and read John Bunyan’s famous story Pilgrim’s Progress. An allegory for spiritual things, the pilgrim Christian treks ever towards the Celestial City, certainly a “journey to a sacred place”. I was always taught to strive towards Heaven, an eventual home beyond earth and death. My depression, bipolar disorder, or whatever this is that I’ve had since 10 or 11, has made the doctrine of heaven problematic for me.

For one thing, I was suicidal for a long time, not that many knew or paid attention to the signs. As a young kid taught that a paradise awaited me on the other side, it was difficult to resist the temptation to shuffle off this depressing mortal coil and thus enter blissful realms. I know the Catholic Church used to preach that suicide victims couldn’t enter Heaven, probably for this macabre reason of keeping the downtrodden from seeking a better existence. But my fundamentalist church had no such teaching. Anyway, I obviously survived suicide and haven’t arrived on “God’s golden shores” but I often wished that I could have go through with various plans. The lure of a bright peaceful afterlife was a tantalizing vision.

For another thing, the idea that A Better Place (C) awaits would perhaps imply that suffering on Earth will yield rewards later on in that better place, either in the place itself, or through some sort of riches being doled out. In a city paved with supposed golden streets and boasting pearl gates, riches seemed sort of a cheap reward to me, but anyway I never liked the idea that I was being made to suffer so that I could reap later. That idea rings cruel, especially because there are many worse off than depressed, bipolar(?) me. That’s a lot of copping out on easing real, immediate pain in order to make belated reparations later. Why go through the charade if God could wave his spiritual hand and ease all suffering immediately?

What then is my pilgrimage about, if I am a different sort of grey pilgrim than a wandering, world-weary wizard or a 17th century wayfarer? When I discover that, I will let you know. For today, as Gandalf did for a time, I am stepping through the oppressive, murky, and dismal Mirkwood. I don’t have a hobbit, or thirteen surly dwarves, in tow, neither do I have a stronghold of darkness in Dol Guldor to exorcise, but wander I still. I often wish my purpose was as clear cut as kicking dragon-butt or tossing jewelry in a volcano. Incredibly difficult, dangerous, and downright depressing as those journeys turned out to be at times, there at least was a drive behind them, and a world or mountain to be gained in the here and now.

Eventually, as did Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo were admitted into the Undying Lands as a respite for all the pain they endured in Middle-Earth, but they also had many years of rest in their homes as well (maybe not Gandalf, but Bilbo hung out in Rivendell for many years after defeating the dragon and that was pretty good by all accounts). Where is my Last Homely House? Where is my Bag End? Maybe I haven’t found it yet, but I wish I could.

Ultimately, I don’t know if heaven awaits me after death, or if it is a forever sleep I will definitely have earned whenever I do die, but I do know that I have life in me yet to live. It is sad and depressing right now, but I’ve also ridden these waves enough to know that as down as I am now, I will (should) surge upwards once more. It’s just the constant surfing is making me sick and tired. As I haven’t a choice but to be a pilgrim, I will keep moving. Maybe there is at least a cozy inn on the horizon that will serve a good meal and provide a bed better than a forest root.

I don’t know how to shake my depression. I don’t feel I’ve done a terribly good job of doing anything but enduring the troughs, and nothing really seems to work to bring me out except time. Gandalf himself had many long years of waiting before the Ring was found and he could formulate a plan to defeat Sauron, and in the end, such defeat (and Ring) was out of his hands anyway. So I guess I will wait for this greyness to lift. At least then I will feel more myself again, for a time. Damn, but this is frustrating.

But, to take a page from Tolkien’s book, Gandalf looked for and found happiness and pleasure where he could. Whether in lighting fireworks for young hobbits at Bilbo’s birthday, or in fighting for those less fortunate many a time, he always found a way to rise above his circumstances. That’s what I see I must do. Not necessarily go out and light off a firecracker, but enjoy what I can when I can. Gandalf, my old friend, I will do my best!

(A friend of mine would recommend pipe-weed to me, but as Old Toby doesn’t exist, I’ll have to do without smoke rings. And I’m not one for smoking anyway.)

Free Time

What is free time? Some people might say that it is time without anything assigned to it, that one is “free” to use it as they wish. I suppose that definition works well enough. In between work, chores, sleep, bodily care, and scheduled events lies this elusive “free time”. How do you use yours?

I don’t quite know what to do with my free time. I have many options, but I don’t always feel “free” to choose most of them. And I don’t quite know why this is. I have written before on this blog about being paralyzed by choice, a sort of executive dysfunction I endure from time to time, but I don’t always think that is to blame.

Take reading for example. I used to love to read, and would do so voraciously. Now it takes extraordinary effort for me to read. I have bookshelves full of books I would love to read, but any time that is free to me, I don’t find myself choosing to read. Instead, I end up playing Scrabble on my iPad or watching baseball, or, which is psychologically worse for me, just…sitting there. I rather hate the choosing to do nothing, actually. I feel terrible for having wasted the time, and not having accomplished anything, reading or otherwise.

I should mention that it isn’t always a conscious choice. I sit down in the evening, usually when my free time occurs, and think “I’ll just play one game of Scrabble, and then move on” but I also have this thing where I hate losing, so if I lose, I play until I win.

Wait…

Having just written that, and thought about it, that sounds like gambling. I don’t wager anything on these games and nothing is risked, but the high I get from winning may be no different. This just took a left turn. Hmm.

…

Still thinking here. Bear with me a moment…

If playing Scrabble is like gambling, where I am chasing a high, and it is interfering with what I may ordinarily do, then maybe I need to quit playing Scrabble altogether. Maybe you figured that out already and have been laughing at me, but I’ve just now worked this out.

I have been puzzling over how to chose to do other things, and now it is a little silly to me that the solution may have been that obvious all along, but let me continue with my original thought and see if that leads down the same path. Scrabble. Playing until I win sometimes takes the next game, sometimes ten (I am fairly evenly matched with the Advanced computer I play against, so winning isn’t ever guaranteed). By the time I finish with Scrabble, I am out of sorts, sometimes frustrated, and more mentally drained than I was when I began.

The negative momentum is strong at that point, and I don’t often get off my butt and start something else. That is where I end up sitting and doing nothing or turning on a baseball game. And then I feel I have wasted the evening. So yeah, maybe Scrabble does need to go. Look, I’ve been playing Scrabble because I am afraid of losing my mind. No, really, that has been my rationale! I read that doing crosswords could stave off dementia and other age-related mental decline, and I figured maybe Scrabble against a sufficiently advanced computer would do the same thing (don’t know about that, actually) so I played Scrabble. But it has become, apparently, a sort of addiction.

Back to free time, then. I have thought before about actually scheduling my free time so that I do what I want to do. I think I even wrote about that a while back on this blog: Tuesdays for podcasts and Wednesdays for reading, that sort of thing. I never actually did it, because doesn’t that defeat the purpose of free time? I also get weary thinking about being forced to do a thing, as if maybe that would rob the joy I receive from doing something.

I feel like I am rambling at this point, but also maybe getting somewhere. I read something the other day about being intentional and allotting time for things during free time, which kinda brought all this up in my mind. I think perhaps I do need to, perhaps loosely, schedule what I want to do. Or give myself permission to do whatever I want to do, whether reading or watching baseball or something else.

The other angle to this is the cult of achieving. I have been inculcated with the idea that a product must result from an activity, else it is wasted or frivolous. Sure, reading results in knowledge or pleasure, but I’ve felt it must be something more tangible. Example: I mess around with my action figures, but it only “counts” if I take a picture and post it to social media. Reading hasn’t felt like it counted because it was only for me. Which, again, now that I type that sounds like an absurd thing to say.

Absurd or not, the feeling is valid. I haven’t felt that I can do things just for me because the end achievement was rarely visible to others. And there we have it! I have been living life in the shadow of how it appeared to others. I know in my mind that a life spent listening to bird song and tending to flowers is not a life wasted. It is only this damnable capitalistic society that says only products are valuable, but that is bullshit. And I do know that. But it is so hard for me to resist that ingrained ideology.

I want to break free! I want to use my free time for me, after all, isn’t that why it exists? I will try this thought on for size: time for me isn’t wasted, in fact, it is the most valuable thing there is. Time for me rejuvenates me, enriches me, and adds immeasurable value to my life for me. And that powerful thought is hacking its way through my intellectual thicket.

Where have I come to, then?

1) no more Scrabble!

2) loosely scheduling free time is ok!

3) things done just for myself are valid!

I feel liberated! I have the ability to choose what to do in my free time! It amazes me how well writing works as a tool to work through a problem I have been having for a long time. I feel ashamed that it has taken this long to find my answer, but so glad that I may have one at last. We will see how well this works to break through the fog and indecision paralysis, but for now I am excited!

I began by asking what you do in your free time. I suppose I’ll end by asking: what will I do in my free time?