February 4th, 2019

Throwback: April 20, 2009: Old School

Last night I dreamt that I was back in undergrad, and I had chosen a half-year course thinking it was a full-year. So in second term, I was a course short and somehow got thrown into a class not of my choosing, which I was completely unprepared for and hated* and was going to fail. Fairly standard anxiety dream, especially perfect given that I was going back to my old high school to speak this morning.

That’s a pretty fun thing to do, actually–I was anxious mainly because this event was postponed once before due to my laryngitis episode a few weeks ago. I was pretty thrilled to be invited back to my high school by my Writer’s Craft teacher, Pam North. When I was a whippersnapper, sitting in Writer’s Craft class writing ghost stories, Rachel Preston came to talk to us about her writing career, and made a huge impression on me. One, because she was a real writer and she still assumed human form. Two, because she said, “If you put an action or expression by the person into the same line, you don’t need a dialogue tag.” Brilliant. [Note from the future: THIS IS STILL HELPING ME!]

I don’t think I said anything that wonderfully useful to this batch of whippersnappers, but my voice held up through the reading and my little self-intro, and then the Q&A did provide a number of quite insightful questions for me to work with. So I think we managed ok. More than anything, I wanted to convey that being a “real” (ish) writer is hard–endless drafts, rejection letters, balancing other work–but it’s something one can do. I encouraged them to send their best work to journals, to attend readings and meet other writers, to join workshop groups (after Writer’s Craft) and to take their work seriously enough to withstand the endless drafts and rejection. But not so seriously that they didn’t have any fun with it. Because what would be the point in that?

Is your bed made? Is your sweater on?
RR

* The non-standard part of the dream was that it was a drama class called “Social Problem Dramas” and I had to star in one. I was furious, because the play wasn’t even about any particular Social Problem but, rather, the concept in general. My dreams aren’t usually so satirical.

Posted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 10:15 PM

 Labels: nostalgia, Teaching, Writing

4 comments:

The Chapati Kid said…

Your dreams are so elaborate… I just had a dream on Friday night of people lying face down in the ground. Because they got shot. (Not by me!) That’s all. After that, I awoke with a start and could no longer fall asleep again. Sigh.April 21, 2009 at 1:09 AM 

Mark said…

I bought that very song this morning, along with Oxford Comma. Loads of fun!April 21, 2009 at 8:58 AM 

Kerry said…

I LOVE VAMPIRE WEEKEND!

(My word verification is “godsplow”)April 21, 2009 at 12:11 PM 

AMT said…

that is the best dream PS ever. i laughed and alarmed the dog.April 24, 2009 at 12:48 PM 

January 31st, 2019

Talking

I am resentful of the Awareness paradigm Bell Let’s Talk represents. Not that we shouldn’t work towards destigmatizing mental illness–of course we should, and it’s important to do so every day, but one day is a start. But putting pressure, even just a form of social peer pressure, on individuals to share their mental health problems as the HIGHEST GOOD is a bit of an issue for me. The idea that individual creating awareness by sharing their mental health issues and stories in extremely public venues–something that may be cathartic, painful, or just fine, depending on the individual–is the most important thing we can do in the community for mental health is very convenient for major corporations and the government. While decreasing stigma is of course so good and valuable, the most important thing is that everyone who suffers from any illness get appropriate and timely care without struggle, delay or judgment. If your employer or your government stands in the way of that care, all the awareness in the world is going to be a minor comfort. Both are important, I guess–but the scale is off.

Anyway, fine: here’s my mental health story. I’ve always struggled with anxiety to some degree and I suppose I always will. Most people who know me register this as personality quirk and that’s mainly how I would think about it myself, most of the time, but in my late twenties it got out of control. I wouldn’t term it “crippling anxiety” because I was still able to do most of what I wanted to do, but anxiety was draining all my joy from everything I did. I was white-knuckling my whole life.

Because of a variety of circumstances–but mainly because I was a student at the time, and had access to student mental health services–I had to wait one week from the day I asked to see a therapist until the day I saw one. I was asked if I was in crisis and it would have been less if I had said I was. The therapist I was assigned was a psychiatrist–an MD–and at the end of my first session she offered to prescribe me some anti-anxiety medication.

Prescription medication was one of the many things I was afraid of (how present-day RR laughs) and I asked if I could try some other things first and then just save meds as a last resort. She said sure–she offered me some options that had fantastically different timelines and didn’t push for any one option. We tried cognitive behaviour therapy and general “talk therapy” and basically, once a week for a year I had 50 minutes of her time to try to work out some coping strategies and talk about how I was doing with that.

I did ok. I never went on the meds and I gradually stopped feeling like I was one breath away from flying apart into shards. I don’t how much of that was the therapist and how much was the work I did and how much was just getting to a more stable point in my life, something that would have happened anyway. I give her a lot credit, though, both for how things improved for me but also just for getting me through that very difficult period.

I never paid for any of that–it was all covered under OHIP and made available to me through the university. It was easy for me to go to appointments, easy to refuse meds, easy to change my mind if I’d decided I wanted them. I never had to justify how much better I was getting or how many more sessions I deserved to have (until I graduated).

That’s my mental health story. I haven’t needed professional support since that time, but I know both that it can work for me if I need it to in the future and that if that happens it’s going to be a lot f*cking harder to get it and make it work out and it won’t be nearly as seamless as it was 10 years ago.

I offer this little story not in the spirit of “awareness” of mental health concerns because I think we all know what anxiety and talk therapy and all the rest are. But maybe you never heard an example of a system working so beautifully for someone who needed it. I want people to be aware of THAT–that it can. I honestly don’t even know if the services I was provided with continue to be as generous and easily accessed in 2019, or if they will be in future–certainly Mr. Ford’s cuts have to come from somewhere.

I’ve volunteered a little bit with people with mental health struggles and I know that sometimes people just aren’t helped, or they get helped by someone like me, people who have maybe 40 or 50 hours of training max. That’s not fair and that’s not supposed to be the society we’re living in. We can do better.

January 29th, 2019

Why the hair, why the pearls?

The title of this post is a line from the Simpsons. If you don’t recognize it, because you have better things to do than remember mid-nineties pop culture, it’s from a scene where brainy Lisa, who has odd hair and wears pearls, has asked her father one too many questions about some stupid plan he has. Defensively, he replies, “Why the hair, why the pearls, why anything?” In my house this has become a shorthand for “let’s just not bother with an explanation because there might not be one, ok?”

I have been blogging for–full disclosure–18 years. Up until 2007, it was under a nickname and just for friends, as a way to keep in touch–back then, everyone was doing it and I was part of a little network of friend-blogs. That year, I realized that with some stories published I might get googled so I should have a blog under my real name for everyone, so I made the blogspot blog, the first Rose-coloured. I got some more readers, and eventually got this blog with my own URL, personalized design, hosting, real-professional-like. Through it all, what have I been doing? Yammering, for the most part. Entertaining myself, keeping some version of a public diary, playing games, writing about whatever was bugging or entertaining me.

There was a period around 2009-2011 where I had the most readers I ever had, which wasn’t very many, but still–if you knew approximately who I was maybe you also knew I had a blog. Crucially, you probably wouldn’t have read it–you just knew it existed and maybe if you also started a blog, asked me to mention it here, which I dutifully did to almost no effect. Even that has dropped away until now, when the loyal few readers I have are a) people who know and like me in real life and thus the people who were likely to have read that first secret blog way back when and b) random googlers, who stop by once or twice.

Kerry wrote this lovely post, The Back to the Blog Movement, when she describes the joy in blogging: “Right back where we started in Web 2.0, with stories and voices in a range that the world has never before been able to read, voices not in chorus, but not so polarized either. Connected, but not in a thread, more like a quilt, if we’re thinking in textiles. Niche onto niche, something for everyone. With room enough for stories, and questions, and nuance, and reflection, and changing your mind. And also for changing the world, in the small and subtle ways that blogs have always mattered—turns out I’m not ready to give up on that one just yet.” 

I thought that sounded so promising and I was really looking forward to whatever Kerry would do next–but then Melanie wrote a Back to the Blog post, and Julia wrote one and Lindsay wrote one and then I realized “Ohh, it’s a movement, you have to participate!”

So here we are. What are blogs for, to me? They are for thinking aloud, and for hearing what others think and yes, for connecting, in those little networks of friend blogs that still exist, a little, per above. It’s nice to yammer and nice to be read, but it’s also lovely to know what it is entertaining and bothering others, especially other people I like. It’s what I always want to do. 

I have never had something I dreamt of so fully come into reality as blogs. When I was in high school, I dreamed of having my own newspaper column, only it wouldn’t be about any one thing–it would just be about life and things and experiences. It was called–don’t laugh–My Dining Companion–because it was sort of a parody restaurant review column where the whole world was a restaurant I was reviewing and everyone I met was my dining companion. Stop laughing!

I was a very lofty teenager.

But I got my column! Everybody did, who wanted one, and it suits me. I like blogs that have a personal lens on the universe more than the ones that are just about a specific subject, even if the subject is one I’m interested in. I like book blogs and recipe blogs, but I tend to dip in and out depending on whether I want that recipe or am interested in that author–however, if I’m interested in the *writer*, if it’s the personal journey through food or books that I’m following, it doesn’t matter that I don’t want to eat/read whatever it is. I’ll follow a human being I care about anywhere. 

I’m always sad when people abandon their blogs, even though I think some of them have a natural arc and end to them, like episodic novels or something, and other people are just bad at this format. My Blogger reader, which I still check, is full of ditched blogs but I still keep them in there, just in case–sometimes people come back. If you had a blog once but gave it up eight years ago and then you write a post tomorrow, I will see it in my reader and click on it–I’ll read it. I’ll follow you anywhere, friend.

January 18th, 2019

Kvetch

I never realize how reliant I am on social media to absorb the slings and arrows of a hostile universe until I try to stop using it. I haven’t even fully succeeded in doing so–I posted about getting a wrong-number call from a dog and also did the ten year challenge this week alone–and also my abstention has only been going on a bit more than two weeks total, so the whole thing is pathetic. And yet, I have a lot going unsaid, so I’m going to say it all here in one great burst of complaint:

1. Construction worker gestured for me to drive into what turned out to be oncoming traffic. He gestured much less vaguely to indicate his anger that I had done so.
2. What was intended to be an anonymous gift apparently was not in that I received a thank-you note???
3. RR: Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Mark (husband): No! [Conversation ends]
4. Much anticipated day of Women’s March slated to be -17 degrees!
5. Gnocchi casserole is terrible
6. I don’t care about revolutionary ways of tidying, razor ads, or Instagram influencers, and that’s all there is to read about other than the actual news, which is horrible.
7. Email rudeness. OMG, I hate it so much.

January 8th, 2019

Throwback: April 19, 2009: Learning Style, Teaching Style

[Note from the future: still porting over posts lost in the migration. It is probably relevant context that in spring 2009, I was teaching creative writing 1 day a week in a TCDSB high school thanks to the now defunct Students, Writers and Teachers (SWAT) program, funded by the now defunct Descant Foundation.]

True story: I once had to attend a corporate development seminar (I swear, this happened). I was looking forward to it, and for this was roundly mocked by my colleagues, who were dreading it. When we arrived, the seminar leader told us that the teaching style popular in most post-elementary classrooms–teacher at the front offering information, students taking notes and answering questions–is easily absorbed only by a tiny fraction of the population. We all have a learning style, and most people’s is not to absorb information passively through their ears.

Then we took a test to find out our own learning styles. As it turns out, I’m the minority that those classrooms are designed for, an auditory learner. I had suspected this, as I’m rarely happier than when someone is explaining something to me (although, like a wine connisseur, I can spot fakes and half-assers pretty well). When the room was surveyed, I turned out to be the only one of my kind present.

The rest of the seminar was a lecture on how to make the best use of all the different learning styles. Ahahaha.

Ahem.

If you don’t attend corporate learning seminars, work in education or have children in school, you won’t know lingo like “kinaesthetic learner” but you likely know the truth: many more people can learn by images, actions, models, interpersonal interaction, and experiment than by simply being told. There’s a bunch of tests similar to what I took online, and it’s actually really a fun and satisfying way to procrastinate. Go find out your learning style, and I bet it’ll validate a lot of what you already know about yourself.

What makes me an ideal student in a conservative classroom–ability to concentrate silently, passivity, openmindedness, inability to process simultaneous streams of data, a (reasonably) good memory, high boredom threshhold–is, I think, what’s giving me such a tough time as a teacher. I like to take in information and then, much later and over a long period, analyze and synthesize and think critically and all that other good stuff that more dynamic learners can do on the spot. I’m a bad extemporizer and a worse debater, and I get very worried when I have to think on my feet. 

Teachers *really* need to think on their feet. To give even a minimal foothold to those interpersonal/visual/kinaesthetic learners, there’s got to be some back and forth with the class, a few pictures and diagrams, and a readiness to change gears when something doesn’t work. Even when I am just talking, I try to stay away from “lecture mode.” It’s bad enough kids have to sit there and listen, it’d be that much worse if you just read off a page of notes and didn’t engage in that Emily from Bell Telephone voice [note from the future: I think Emily doesn’t exist anymore, or at least I don’t have to deal with her–how great!] (and we’ve all been in a “that much worse” class, I think, and know the horror). And anyway, I *want* to engage–I love my students and often consider what they say, when I can get them to say anything, far more interesting than what I have brought to the table. But to get the ball rolling, I have say something, and often, quite a lot of somethings.

It’s not like I have nothing to say (you know this if you’ve had dinner with me); it’s that I often require a couple stabs to say it so it makes sense (ditto). That’s the great great thing about writing short stories, blog posts, anything that doesn’t involve any witnesses to “first draft” thoughts. I’m wondering if a lot of writers are similar to me; have an easy time absorbing new info, and enjoy doing so, but it takes a longer time to make use of it in creative ways. If you are–or aren’t–like me, I’d be curious to hear about it.

It’s worth trying this think-fast business. I have had many egregious fumbles–like when students announce to me “I just like to write about death” or “I’m a stud” and I helpfully stare at them for a moment and finally say my all-purpose teacher phrase, “Well, you’ll just have to use your best judgement on that.” But I have managed one or two decent insights. I’m proud of these:

–“Wow, [Student], that writing was so visceral.” Blank faces. “What does ‘visceral’ mean?” Blank faces. “It means describing something physical in such a good way that the reader feels it in their body, or feels as if they could. It’s body writing. Because what’s inside your body?” Blank faces. “Viscera, your organs, all that stuff.” Sadly, still blank faces, but *I* had never made that connection before, so at least somebody learned something. 

–“Everyone’s metaphor examples are really good, ok, but they are all really elaborate. I would love to hear some metaphors that you guys use yourselves.” Blank faces. “What about slang? Slang is often metaphoric.” Blank faces. “Like when [Student] said *The Life of Pi* was “pretty bomb”, she didn’t mean it might blow up, she meant it was good.” (it’s true, she actually said that!!! hooray!) “If you say a movie is cool, you don’t mean it’s below average in temperature, and if you say a girl is sweet, it doesn’t mean you’ve licked her.”

Beyond the highlights and the fumbles are the really really great parts where I don’t talk much, and I get to listen what the students say, leaning back in my chair and happily absorbing all their wicked cool insights about life, the universe, and energy beverages. I hope they’re learning half as much as I am.

Full professor / studying romances
RR

PS–I wrote this post last week, blogger ate it, and this post was reconstructed from memory. I don’t recall *exactly* what was different about the first one, but I estimate that it was about 30% funnier and 18% more insightful. [note from the future: ah, so it did come back!!] Posted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 12:55 PM

 Labels: Teaching, Writing

6 comments:

AMT said…

… laughing. i find that in teaching it’s best to try to avoid any discussion of whether any student ‘has licked her’ 

my talent in teaching is, it sounds, the reverse of yours. i am very good at the reacting to and riffing off students’ questions and points. but i kind of suck at lecturing — i just turn it to a discussion every time. often that’s a good idea, sometimes not.April 19, 2009 at 3:17 PM 

August said…

“if you say a girl is sweet, it doesn’t mean you’ve licked her.”

This was said in front of HS students? I know what my response would have been at that age.

Hell, I’d probably say it now, too, I’ve just learned enough politesse to whisper it under my breath instead of saying it out loud.

😉April 20, 2009 at 1:17 PM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

Hmm…I really only thought of that as an only mildly saucy comment… I don’t know if this means I’m really clean-minded or *really* not. If I’ve scandalized you guys, though, I am sorry!April 20, 2009 at 3:17 PM 

August said…

I can’t speak for others, but it takes a great deal to scandalize me. So much so, in fact, that I rather keep my eye out for folks who are capable of doing so; they are rare pleasures.

Though I only know you through the written word, you seem to be fairly near the median of clean-mindedness, a quite reasonable place to be.April 20, 2009 at 3:37 PM 

Kerry said…

RR is actually *filthy*.

January 7th, 2019

Throwback: April 17, 2009: Tragedy and You Imply, I’ll Infer

Tragedy

Please note: evil Blogger ate my really long, really fascinating post about teaching. I am sad and frustrated, but will eventually not feel that way and then recreate the post. Although I doubt it will be as amusing as the first version. Until that time, please think about kittens.

No excuse to be so tragic
RR

You Imply, I’ll Infer

You imply, I’ll infer

I’m skipping ahead on the teaching post [Note from the future: I don’t think this post ever appears…:(], being as I am still too sad about its demise to work on version 2.0. Instead, a vocabulary rant. Have you ever noticed that rants are the easiest sort of writing to do quickly? And the kind that one probably really *shouldn’t* do quickly? But whatever, I am impassioned!

These are things I’ve been pointing out to my students, but in truth, they are mistakes that grown ups make all the time, too. I mean, grown ups do all kinds of crazy stuff with language, myself included, but these are things that, for whatever reason, drive me insane.

You can’t be jealous of what you don’t have.Envy is the correct word for coveting our neighbour’s car, cow, or cash, as well as the resentment we feel for his good fortune in possessing those things. Jealousy is what we feel about our *own* cow, car, or cash if we feel our neighbour might sneak over and take it. About the only time people use the word jealousy correctly is in romantic relationships; you are jealous of your significant other not because he/she has something you want but because you want him/herself. Also, a pirate guards treasure jealousy; a toddler jealously eyes his candy stash. 

This might be a battle I’ve lost due to the evolution of language, but that would be stupid, because then we’d just have two words for envy and no word for jealousy. [Note from the future: still trying on this one, nearly 10 years later, while still feeling vaguely like it’s a lost cause. It’s not one of the ones where people laugh at you when you do it right, though, so it’s fine.]

Most people don’t have the authority to inquire. If you enquire after dinner reservations, my father’s garden, or my state of health, that’s correct–enquire is synonymous with ask. Police inquire into a murder, an auditor launches an inquiry into missing funds, maybe even as a joke parents would hold a formal inquiry about the whereabouts of the the cookie jar. In general, lay people aren’t inquiring; that’s a professional role.

Again, this one’s probably dying, and when I write “enquire” in an email I get condescending remarks indicating people think I’m trying to be snooty and Britsy. But again, this is a slice of meaning that we are losing if there is no dedicated word for a professional or formal request for information. [Note from the future: Weird hill to die on, past Rebecca. This was dead 10 years ago and super-dead now. Yes, I still do write enquire in emails sometimes, but it’s embarrassing, and I’m ashamed of myself. MOVE ON, current Rebecca!]

Regressive taxation is just that. Regressive taxes take a greater proportion of the taxee’s income the smaller that income is. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basics. You normally hear this term as related to sales taxes and the like. For example, income and commuting distance do not correlate, but everyone pays the same gas tax. Thus, the group of people who average $8/h income pay approximately the same *amount* of money on gas and gas taxes as those who make around $60/h, but those poorer folk pay a much higher percentage of their total cash flow. This is why there is no sales tax on food or children’s clothing in this country; people don’t have a choice but to buy that stuff, and it eats up a huge percentage of low-income folks’ dough.

Progressive taxation is the opposite, when the government takes an escalating percentage of income the *more* income there is. That is how the income tax system in Canada (and the US) is structured.

Ok, my students never made this mistake (in my hearing) but adults do, and I never speak up because I can’t explain much more than what I’ve put here, and I’m afraid they’ll ask questions. So I’m shoehorning it in here. [Note from the future: I have not heard a single person make this mistake since I wrote this post, and I can’t recall who I was mad at at the time.]

The past tense of cast is cast. The plural of moose is moose. That’s just how it is; I don’t know why. [Note from the future: I spend less time with teens than I did then–adults don’t tend to make these types of errors.]

Of course, if anyone’s reading this (and why would they be–it’s gorgeous outside!) they might be thinking about the times I’ve said, “Are you cellphonic?” instead of “Do you have a cellphone?” how I address groups of women as “You guys,” and I can’t pronounce the words “origin” or “reticent.” Or one of my many regularly featured typos here on this blog. Welcome to my glass house. Feel free to chime in with your own vocab pet peeves, mine or otherwise.

No excuse to be so callous
RRPosted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 2:29 PM

 Labels: Words

3 comments:

Ferd said…

My mom likes to think that the plural of moose is meese. I humour her.April 17, 2009 at 5:41 PM 

saleema said…

These are some good ones! Just last night I was at a party where somebody brought up the difference between jealousy and envy to me — I’d never thought of the distinction before.

Since you’ve so kindly invited us to rant, my pet peeves:

More a pronunciation thing that anything else, but when people say “weary” when they must mean “wary” or “leery,” e.g. “I am really weary of online dictionaries.” Now I suppose one could also be weary of them (but why? so convenient!), but I’ve heard enough people say this in similar contexts that I’m convinced it’s becoming a thing.  

And this pair below — I am pretty sure J.K. Rowling is the only person left using them correctly (and, I suppose, a fairly influential advocate for their continued correct usage):

Nonplussed: It means bewildered, or perplexed, but people seem to think based on the sound of the word that it means not excited about something.  

Bemused: Again, bewildered or perplexed, though it’s true that the word seems to suggest some kind of wry amusement. I’ve seen this in more than one book with the wrong implied meaning. (And confession: one of my first published stories used it in the wrong sense, too.)April 18, 2009 at 10:25 AM 

Rachel Power said…

Thanks for those explanations. The other day I was talking to someone about a woman I approached for advice who didn’t respond kindly. I said she guards her knowledge jealously, and my friend thought that was a strange way to use the word. I feel vindicated now! 
The one I love is “for all intensive purposes” instead of “intents and purposes”–have started to see that one all the time.
Tense-wise, the other one I find confusing (related to cast perhaps) is ‘past’ versus ‘passed’.May 7, 2009 at 9:20 AM 

Throwback: April 15, 2009: Classics in a Narrow Category

Note from the future: I’m still porting over the posts lost in the great BlueHost thingy. Because I stripped out a lot of the functionality when I left the old Rose-coloured blog behind, it is somewhat tedious to search these old posts. Not very tedious, though, because I’m really enjoying seeing what I was up to nearly 10 years ago. It turns out–a LOT. I did a lot and posted a lot back then, and also got a lot of comments back then so there were a lot of posts like this one, very crowd-source-y. It’s fun to remember, and reread. I hope you enjoy too!

Classics in a narrow category

This morning in the shower, I firmly decided that MTA by the Kingston Triois the best song ever written about public transit (and that was before I realized there was extant video footage of a performance, or of anything that happened in 1959, which only makes it better).

But then I wondered, who exactly are they beating out? *Are* there other public transit songs? Many about planes, that one about the submarine, but subways and intracity buses? Streetcars? 

I came up with the bit about the crosstown bus (double decker!) in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and of course The Weakerthans “A Civil Twilight but…is there anything else? There must be!

Play this silly game with me, even if only in sympathy that I have nothing better to think about in the shower in the pre-dawn hours!

Why I’m always remembering you
RRPosted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 6:18 AM

 Labels: Music, Random

4 comments:

writer_guy said…

You’re missing the greatest transit song of all time: the Shuffle Demons’ classic “Spadina Bus.” (Dated only by the fact Spadina bus no longer exists. The tune, however, is utterly timeless.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZnLjRi_g9oApril 15, 2009 at 9:18 AM 

August said…

“Magic Bus” by The Who.

And of course the spectacular “I Get On (The TTC) – I Put on (for my city)” by Randal Paul 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Ky7dQLuNgApril 15, 2009 at 1:57 PM 

saleema said…

M79 by Vampire Weekend is named after a bus route!

M79 on YouTubeApril 15, 2009 at 2:51 PM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

OMG, OMG, my head is exploding! There are *two* raps about the TTC. And one includes the line, “pocket full of celery / when I get off at Bellamy.” 

The world is amazing.

Also, it turns out I like Vampire Weekend. I think I had them confused with the Cancer Bats before.

Thank you guys so much!!
RRApril 15, 2009 at 8:52 PM

December 21st, 2018

Year-end something

There’s a thing on Twitter going around this week about posting your three biggest accomplishments of the year. Some people posted some pretty great stuff but some others are whiffing on it because they don’t want to brag and others still are posting very hesitantly for the same reason, and there have been some response tweets that indicate that this in fact does read as bragging to some and people who had a hard year read the accomplishment tweets and feel worthless. And whereas at first I was just merrily going along feeling good about everyone else’s accomplishments and not too bad about not having anything much of my own to post–I’ve had other big years recently, and I kind of feel like life owed me a breather in 2018–after a while I came to think, “Man, we all do feel like shit a lot of the time, don’t we?”

Please don’t begrudge me my 5 or 6 hours of emotional healthiness–I’m sure I’ll be back on the floor any minute now, wondering if I’ll ever publish another book or even another blog post, and eating the entire box of maple-sugar candy someone gave me today (edit: two hours later, I’ve only eaten two but also three truffles). I used to be really into year-end encapsulations, year-beginning goals, mid-year checkins, all of that quantifying stuff. If you go all the way back through the blog, you’ll see some of that and it’s fine–I was actually really successful with a lot of my goal-setting right up until I stop doing it. It was a phase and now I’m in a different one.

If I set more goals, would I achieve more? Or is the fact that I’m not using these metrics anymore a symptom of the fact that I know I can’t work to the clock like that anymore, so I don’t even try. I kinda think the latter. Maybe that’s letting myself off the hook, but I don’t care. I like the way my more complicated, messier life is now, too. And I still accomplish things…eventually.

One of the meanest things someone has said to me was, many years ago, “I wonder if you’d get so much done if you had a boyfriend.” And that’s even an indicator of what a privileged life I’ve led, because it’s not that mean. But still–ouch. I am obviously still thinking about it, since I bring it up, but I have largely forgiven the person who said it, who obviously had issues with productivity themselves and was pointing out that I wasn’t winning on all vectors.

And you know what? That person was right: I am NOT as productive with a partner as I was single. Marriage, in-law-dom, other family responsibilities, a more demanding job, even my success as a writer, all have taken me away from actual writing in big and small ways. It’s sad when I’m looking at writing achievements, sure, but happy when I’m spending time doing all that other stuff I need and want to do. And for the most part, I have chosen my life–I have the power to change things to spend more time writing, as many people do and many people don’t, but like a lot of people, I don’t actually want to change my life that much, not in the ways that are available to me. Like, my health is definitely much poorer than it was 10 years ago and there’s not much I can do about that except spend time taking care of myself that didn’t used to be necessary–but I’d still rather do that than just suffer and be a martyr for my art. That’s a choice, I guess, but I still usually get 8 hours of sleep instead of writing my poor neglected chapter until after midnight and getting a migraine the next day.

I don’t know what my point is. Maybe: I feel weird quantifying things, when that used to be the only way I could tell if I could succeeding at being a writer. These days, I’m pretty sure I’ll be a writer forever, because I love it and it’s what I want to do. But I also want to love my whole life, so sometimes I choose writing and sometimes I choose my partner and sometimes I choose my health or my friends or my cats or reading and sometimes I choose the floor and the maple candies. Defining my whole self by writing success is a recipe for disaster (per previous post https://rebeccarosenblum.com/indignities/).

This is a somewhat lukewarm holiday post–I haven’t been good at writing these in some years either, though I used to write lovely ones (https://rebeccarosenblum.com/the-merriest/. I don’t know why all this looking back right now–maybe because of all the blog problems causing me to look over old posts. Or maybe it’s because Mark is out of town for a couple days, leaving me on my own to recollect the single life I once had, where I got so much done and could have scrambled eggs for dinner whenever I wanted (mainly always) but no one wanted to hear a play-by-play of everything I’d thought and felt while making those eggs.

I’m actually feeling fine, don’t be concerned–things are pretty festive here, with much candy and work and friends and hugs. I will see Mark soon too (and tell him about the eggs!) I even made a writing-related resolution http://open-book.ca/News/New-Year-s-Resolutions-Literary-Style!-Writers-Share-Their-2019-Goals(though it was only because someone asked me to</a>) so maybe things will get more productive around here in 2019. Or not.

I hope everyone reading this (now even fewer than usual since my email alerts are broken–going to get those fixed soon, I think–another resolution) are doing ok, and not feeling bad about low productivity or no productivity or Twitter in general or anything at all, ideally.

Take care, friends–let me know if you need any maple candies!

December 14th, 2018

Throwback: April 14 and 15, 2009

This is new

Boring work anecdote: I have been working on a very long story for quite some time. I tried to some of the structural issues with such a long piece by breaking it into sections. There are 4, and each was originally named for something the characters try to purchase or get within the section: Dress, Car, Salad, and Repair. Just now, beginning to go over some details in the final section, I find that someone who is most likely me has changed the title to Light. Light???? What did I mean by that? Seriously, I can’t make one connection between that title and the content of the section, let alone remember my actual thought process when I chose it. Could this be a very specific computer virus, or a sign that I’m working too much when I’m tired?

NOTE from the future: I have no memory of any of this, including what story I was working on. But wait…

April 15, 2009: Fest

Still struggling with the same story as last night. I’ve finally cut a paragraph that hasn’t been needed in a long time, but that I have a ridiculous fondness for. So, as with all my ridiculousnesses, I’m posting it here, just so it’ll have a home.

It’s hot in Western Ohio. It was hot in Montreal too, but back then it was also dawn, which gave your clothes some clearance from your body. Now everything is slicked tight, even the baggy canvas of his shorts, even the thin cotton of the street-stand t-shirt that says, Fest. It is a generic t-shirt, bought for four-dollars in Outremont when he spilled red wine at a party and ran downstairs to see if he could by a new one. For four dollars, he didn’t care what Fest it referred to, although here, in Western Ohio, with the rubber-decal letters sweating to the hair on his chest, he panics briefly that someone might ask him. Not Iz, of course; Iz was at the party.

NOTE from the future: Now I remember–I only ever wrote one story that went from Montreal to Western Ohio. This was published the following year in my chapbook Road Trips as “I Have Never Loved You Less” in a very different form. Man 2009 was a long time ago.

Throwback all the time

As you may have noticed (or maybe not–I wouldn’t blame you if not), Rose-coloured has encountered some interesting adventures lately. It was down, then it was up, then it was down again–and now obviously up again. Google was saying “this blog may be hacked” for a while, then not, comments were turned off on all posts briefly–plus six years of posts disappeared for a while. 

Almost everything is fixed now, mainly thanks to the know-how and patience of Stuart at Create Me This. Also thanks to the people at BlueHost, who now host this blog and hopefully will be nice to it, but it’s Stuart I’m grateful to.

Which is why I’m really trying not to bother him, at least for a few weeks. So when I realized a few more weeks of posts were missing than I initially reported, I really didn’t want to interrupt his life anymore. I thought about letting them go–it’s only about 6 weeks and certainly not everything I write on this blog is gold–but it’s sort of an important 6 weeks for me for a few reasons. But THEN I realized those posts still exist somewhere, on the old Blogger version of Rose-coloured. So I can just copy them over myself, one post every whenever I get around to it, until they are back living on the blog again, albeit somewhat out of order.

I’m not planning to recreate link posts, as the lost posts are from April/May 2009, and most of those links are now dead, and ditto posts about upcoming events that are now 9 years in the past (let us have a moment of mourning for how on top of things 2009 Rebecca was, though, eh?) But anything that could possibly be relevant to 2018 audiences (and maybe 2019, by the time I get done with this project), I’ll attempt to wrangle over here.

So without further ado, my post from Tuesday April 14, 2009
[ok, actually, some ado, for context–my brother moved to Tokyo in September 2008, and this post is part of a series I introduced in January 2009 about my preparations to go visit him. The main reason I want to save these posts is that they actually cover the trip, which was in May 2009.]

Planning for Tokyo

I have now read the first 50 pages of the Rough Guide: Tokyo (I have the version prior to the current one here, but you get the idea) and I have learned *much*! Thanks so to SKS for lending me the book!

First, the word of the week, which is “onna”=female. Not that I will have cause to say it aloud; I think if anyone is talking to me, my gender should be as apparent as it needs to be. But the guide tells me I’ll need to learn the written Japanese for my gender if I have hope of using the appropriate bathroom. Hence, my first kanji!

Other things I’ve learned:
–I want to ride in a boat designed by a cartoonist
–I will be in Tokyo for the portable shrine festival (Kanda Matsuri) and another festival (Sanja Matsuri) that also features portable shrines, but seems to focus more on an ancient tale of fishermen finding a statue. I’m sure I have this all wrong, but I’m looking forward to it.
–you have to take your shoes off indoors and put on slippers, which I am fine with and in fact always do at home, because I a) don’t like wearing shoes but b) get cold easily. However, even when you are indoors, you have to change out of your normal slippers and into toilet slippers when you go to the bathroom, and that seems *exactly* like the sort of thing I’d forget to do. Worrying. [Note from the future: Most of the above actually wound up happening in some form, but I never did encounter “toilet slippers.” Maybe that’s something in private homes–or the book made it up?]

More soon, I’m sure. 

I craved / I ate hearts
RR

Here are the original comments because why not:

7 comments:

Frederique said…

When do you leave? Will you be blogging from Tokyo?April 14, 2009 at 10:04 AM 

Kerry said…

I never learned to read anything during my 14 months in Japan, so I wouldn’t stress out too much if I were you. Also, everyone will expect you to do things, you being foreign, so don’t worry too much when/if it happens. You should also learn the word “sugoi!” which means cool/awesome/amazing and is used as an exuberant exclamation. Pronounced, “sa-goy!!!!!” (with at least five exclamation marks).April 14, 2009 at 10:14 AM 

Kerry said…

“Also every will expect you to do things WRONG”April 14, 2009 at 10:14 AM 

Kerry said…

Um, everyONE (I am tired. Obvious? Enough of this).April 14, 2009 at 10:15 AM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

I leave in a month–eek! I mean, yay! I mean…oh, my goodness, I have a lot to get done between now and then.

I don’t imagine I’ll have *much* blogging time in Japan, but I should be able to manage a few posts!April 14, 2009 at 2:15 PM 

Careygirl said…

Japan! Purrrr, such a wonderful place. How long are you going for, gaijin?April 14, 2009 at 3:01 PM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

Two whole weeks–long enough to get good and lost, and found again! Very excited!!