Letting Go

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions for the simple fact that I prefer not to set myself up for failure. Frankly, if I wanted to do any of the stuff that usually generates a New Year's resolution, I’d already be doing it.

But yesterday on the way to work I had an epiphany. I will make a NYR for 2010, to wit: I will no longer worry about stuff I can’t do anything about.

This epiphany came to me over something really ridiculous. I had a hard time getting out of the house yesterday for one reason and another, and was running late. Nevertheless, I have a Christmas party to go to this Saturday night and a new outfit to wear to it, the pants to which outfit are about an inch too long for me. (I won’t go into the problems I have buying any kind of pants—slacks, jeans, sweats—just suffice to say that I’m either on the tall side of short or the short side of tall.) So my plan was to stop at the cleaners on my way in to work and drop off said pants to be altered.

Only I hadn’t yet decided how much the pants needed to be altered. So in the middle of trying to get ready for work, getting the dog out into 2 inches of new-fallen snow and back in again, dried off, fed, watered, and happily crated, my lunch packed, and everything from the Miata transferred to the truck (the Miata does not do well in any amount of snow), I took the time to pin up the pants and try them on with the relevant high-heeled party shoes. Perfect.

Now the roads were bad and it was slow-going. We live in a city that gets snow every winter and has an armada of salt trucks and snow plows, but Hoosiers are the most tax-averse people in the nation, and we have a Republican mayor who blames unsalted streets on faulty forecasts, so services are often sparingly employed.

And the only advantage to driving our Ford Ranger pick-up truck on icy roads is that the truck is heavy, considerably heavier than the Miata. Both have rear-wheel drive and both will fish-tail, so the truck is only slightly more useful than the Miata; the only real difference is in getting started. The Miata will simply slide all over the place whereas the truck will, eventually, through sheer poundage, eventually catch and get rolling.

So I’m rolling, albeit slowly, toward America’s One-Hour Cleaners when I suddenly realize, with utter clarity, that I have left the pants at home, sitting on the kitchen countertop (where I had put them to ensure I would not forget them).

Damn. What if tomorrow is too late, and the alterationist can’t get the job done in time? Should I turn around? No way. I am more than half way to work, and I am probably lucky to have made it this far without sliding into a telephone pole or another car. But what if I can’t get the pants back in time?

Epiphanal moment. Who the fuck cares? It’s not like I don’t have other clothes, even other party clothes, and even if I didn’t, who the fuck cares? I’m practically hyperventilating over this, and it’s just a pair of pants. Moreover, I have never taken anything to this place to be altered that I couldn’t get back the very next day.

But what if? What if the worst-case scenarios are that 1) I wear something to this party I’ve worn before or 2) I go shopping and buy yet another outfit? I like to go shopping, and I like going shopping for party clothes. And I know it all sounds silly and trivial, but who the fuck cares about that, either? I’m 57 years old, I work for a living, and if I like shopping for myself, SO WHAT?

All of this went through my mind in about 30 seconds, after which I had this just huge sense of relief. I had gone to a lot of trouble for nothing, but it was too late to fix it and no point getting worked up about it. And not being worked up about it felt so much better than being worked up about it that I decided that would be my New Year’s Resolution for 2010.

If I can’t do anything about it, I’m not worrying about it.

On Gratitude

It’s almost Thanksgiving. Here’s my Top Ten:

1. I’m thankful for Josh, Catherine, and Michael. Every single day, you are the three people who bring joy to my life and make it worthwhile.
2. I’m thankful for my girlfriends, who understand that having fun just for the sake of having fun is important. Even at our age.
3. I’m thankful for Max, who is a good dog and makes me laugh. And I’m even thankful for Stella (for keeping Max humble).
4. I’m thankful to have a job. Having any kind of job right now would be enough, but I am fortunate to (a) have a job I like and (b) work with a great group of people.
5. I’m thankful for my health, which is good despite the aches and pains that come with the territory of late middle age.
6. I’m thankful that this year, there’s a Democrat in the White House.
7. And on that note, I’m thankful that Bush and Cheney are not.
8. I’m thankful that somebody, a very long time ago in Scotland, invented the “greatest game ever played.”
9. I’m thankful to Mazda for building the Miata. I’m not kidding. If you think I am, you don’t like to drive.
10. I’m thankful to live in America, where it is possible to have all of the above to be grateful for, and I raise my glass to celebrate this holiday. Cheers!

Happy Birthday, Nelle.

You'd have been 78 today.

Photography Tip #1

Here's a photography tip from me to all my many fans. See this picture? (The blurring is mine to protect the privacy of the innocent.)

Don’t do this shit. Absolutely nothing about this photograph is clever or artful (well, except for my blurring): any 2-year old with a button-mashing finger and a Fisher-Price camera can take this kind of picture.

I don’t know when this “angle” trend in photography got started, or by whom, but I have noticed a lot of it lately. At the place where I work, I actually hired a “professional” photographer to take the pictures at an event we hosted, thinking he would be able to get better pictures than I’d get simply because he was a professional.

Wrong. He got a few better pictures than I would have simply because he was 6’5” and could stand at the back of the room and photograph someone at the front, effortlessly holding his camera up over the heads of the audience. (He had a telephoto lens.) But other than that, he took way, way too many of these kinds of shots. And I had to pay him for all 57 of them.

This kind of photography is showing up all over the university where I work, in its publications and its many Web sites. I’m told by my tech guru that the theory behind it is that the eye finds anything on a diagonal “more interesting” than anything on a straight line. This may be true, but if so, it should be found in the subject of the photograph itself, not by holding the camera crooked or by taking the photo into Photoshop and rotating it.

I repeat: don’t do that shit. If Ansel Adams or Helmut Newton didn’t do it, you probably shouldn’t, either.

No time to blog

This is going well, isn't it?

The Waste Land

Okay, this is harder than I thought it would be. I am out of practice when it comes to writing anything longer than an email, and worse, out of practice when it comes to making myself do anything I really don’t have to do (a pitfall once your children are grown and gone). I think about writing way more than I actually do any writing because I have new rituals for my spare time that don’t include it.

After work today I went to a lecture, came home, made dinner, ate, and took the dog for a walk. It was 8:30 by then. I wasted the next hour and a half doing absolutely nothing but chilling in front of the TV. There wasn’t even anything on I really wanted to watch, but I ended up at GAC listening to new country artists do old George Jones songs and flipping over to HGTV at commercials. I could have watched Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, but honestly, I have to take a break from the political scene sometime.

Anyway, after wallowing in sad country songs for way too long, I came upstairs, got ready for bed, let the dog in and brushed him, then answered a few work-related emails. Now here I am, too tired to write a clever blog. This is the point in the evening when I play a computer game, then go to bed with a good book and read 5-10 pages before falling asleep.

Only I don’t have a good book. I have a mediocre book. It’s one of Russo’s, and I love Russo, but Mohawk is not one of his best. I have to check tomorrow at B&N on campus to see if maybe they have Stieg Larsson’s second book.

And I have to get some new rituals.

So you think you can blog

Blogging, someone opined recently, is a sign we as a people have become narcissistic. I don't think that's true, at least no truer than it's ever been. America has a pretty long tradition of autobiographical writing, and what could be more indulgent and narcissistic than writing an entire book about yourself? I mean, think about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Unbridled narcissism. If Franklin were alive today, he'd be all about having a blog.

So I'm in. This is my blog, and it will mostly be all about me, my family and friends, my dog, my cat, my Miata, golf, food, gardening, politics, religion, books, photography, movies, travel—whatever is on my mind.

And it will be indulgent and narcissistic. Oh yes.