balance

I fell asleep on the couch at 9PM earlier today and had a dream about work.  Nothing interesting happened in my dream.  It was basically a continuation of my day at work.  It wasn't even a dramatic workday dream, it was just a busy non-dramatic day at work kind of dream.  I woke up at midnight, and I thought, seriously, this is what I dream about now?

I thought about whether my life is stagnant, about whether I've become complacent about it, and I considered what kind of things would bring me excitement.  A new project?  A new book?  A vacation?  Then I realized the more apt question is, what does excitement mean to me and is that what I really want?  I realized it's not excitement I want, it's not something new that I want, but I want to enjoy the great things I already have, and in order to do this I need balance.

I love my job, but I don't want to do it all day.  I love a lot of things, but anything in excess becomes un-enjoyable.  If I'm always mired in work (as I've been the past few months), then I can't see it for what it is and I won't be able to appreciate it, and in turn I won't fully enjoy it.

So the real question is: how do I balance my life?

life before us

A couple weeks ago I was looking at a family picture of my father's side of family.  This picture was taken in the 70's when my dad was a teenager.  Then the strangest thing happened: I saw my parents talk for real.

I know this sounds weird.  They've been married for almost 3 decades, they talk all the time, and I've seen them talk all the time, but I can only remember them talking about logistics and parenting stuff.  Like they would talk about what time they need to pick somebody up, what they need for groceries, or they'd bicker at each other.

Anyway, as my father was staring at the picture, he said, "I wore that shirt when I swam from China to Hong Kong."
My mother replied, "you must have liked that shirt a lot to recognize it from that picture."
"It took us 10 days to get to Hong Kong.  That shirt lasted the entire trip."
"You must have been sad when it wore out."
"Of course.  I had so few shirts, and that was a good one.  I did so many things wearing that shirt."

My dad started talking about all the things he did in Hong Kong.  Working in restaurants.  Working in poultry houses.  Gambling and getting into a lot of fights.  And get this: my mother laughed.  And then she said, "your father was a real rebel.  He was always willing to do anything and he did everything.  He was always getting into fights."

She said this so fondly.  And then I realized this: My mother liked the bad boys!  And then she married him and had 3 kids with him!

It's strange to think of a time before my parents were parents.  I never knew my dad swam from China to Hong Kong.  I know a lot of people did it back then to escape from China, and I just felt so small and insignificant.  How can I be 25 years old and have never known my dad swam from China to Hong Kong?

My parents had this whole life before my brothers and I ever got here, and it was nothing like how mine has been.  They did so much more than I have ever had to do in my entire life. When I was 17 I was just messing around in high school, worrying about college and my boyfriend.  My dad was swimming to Hong Kong with his 3 older brothers and working for peanuts doing multiple jobs, sending his money back home to help his parents and the rest of his siblings, and still managing to have a wild time and getting into street fights.  Could I have done that at 17?  I don't know, but how can I feel anything but respect for everything they've ever had to do?

hope is not lost

I started my education in YA literature 2 years ago at 23.  I read at least one new contemporary YA book every couple months, and by new and contemporary I mean published in the last 5 years.  To my dismay, I have not found many great YA novels.  Most of them are mediocre and forgettable and I think they are so mediocre and forgettable because a lot of these authors fail to make a connection with the reader.  I often cannot sympathize or empathize with the character because they haven't been fleshed out enough.

I find often that the characters lack a clear definition of values.  For example, Holden Caulfield  was a cocky character, and he was lonely, and you knew this because he was constantly talking about how phony everyone was, he didn't really have any friends, and he was more interested in talking to the prostitute than sleeping with her.  From this you could understand that Holden valued truth and companionship and was struggling to find it.  Even if you didn't like him, you could understand him, and you could feel something towards him.  Contemporary YA seems to be lacking this.  How can I feel emotion for an intangible person?

I'm puzzled at the amount of shallow books out there.  How can there be so many?  Why is the market becoming saturated with books like this?  It's not as prevalent in adult literature, but it's terrible that it should be so prevalent in YA literature.  Is this the kind of literature available to teens?  It's just sad.

My previous reading habits involved practically no contemporary YA literature.  At 12, the only new books I read for leisure was Harry Potter, and at 13 I started reading adult fiction.  I had accidentally skipped YA completely, and now I am catching up and I am saddened by what I see.

Our whole culture is saturated in shallowness.  Once I looked around ojectively, it was obvious that our culture is breeding this.  Practically everything in the media is about me and I.  American life has become about instant gratification and having every thing a person could ever want cheaply and in abundance.  Was it really so surprising that I found so many YA books lacking this aspect of connecting to the reader?

Hope is not lost though!  Even though I think our culture is becoming more shallow, I know it can't go on forever because humans crave connection.  Why else would Facebook be so popular?  Humans want real connection though and eventually I believe we will all remember what that was and we'll get tired of this shallowness one day, and then we'll find our way back.

say no and make it assertive

Today (or I guess technically yesterday since it is past midnight pacific time) was our last full day in Seattle, WA. Jimmy and I have been blessed with unusually sunny and warm weather during our short stay here, but today it was cloudy as standard.

We were hanging out around the Space Needle on Sunday, and this crazy homeless guy shuffled up to us and mumbled some crazy talk at us. He stuck out his fist and requested a pound, and I kept my eyes downward and averted. My standard behavior for any soliciter is to avoid eye contact because whenever I make eye contact it apparently means they should bother me more, but this is the exact opposite thing that Jimmy did.

When the bum indicated for Jimmy to give him a pound, he looked him straight in the eye and said, "no, I am not going to do that." The bum gestured again and mumbled something incoherent, and looking him in the eye again Jimmy said firmly once more, "No." He shuffled away and I was so glad to not be harassed by this homeless man any longer. I wish I could be as assertive as Jimmy, but alas I find myself constantly being harassed by soliciting bums and hawkers. Obviously my eye contact avoidance technique doesn't work, or perhaps I am looking at them wrong. That or I just have SUCKER written on my forehead.

Overall, a great trip, but I miss New York a lot already. While we were in Victoria, BC last week we were craving rice so bad, so we gorged at their Chinatown. Unfortunately we were too full for bubble tea afterwards, which I am also craving now, but I'll get to appease my tummy in just 21 hours!

disconnected

Diablo 3 is slowly absorbing my life.  I spent most of this 3 day weekend playing D3.  Trying to get some better gear so my wizard will stop getting her ass kicked in inferno.  I love video games, especially RPGs, but I've noticed as I get older that if I get too absorbed into a game I'll get myself stuck in this funk where I feel disconnected and just out of it.

Well, I guess I'm in that funk now.  If it's an online game I can play with friends that will help a bit.  Unfortunately most of my friends weren't playing this weekend so I'm in my weird funk tonight.  What to do?  I love video games, but I hate this funk.  I should just learn to balance it out more.

I walked all around Brooklyn with my brother today, and I realized I don't know my neighborhood that well at all.  It was really nice to just walk and see the shops and to see people sitting on stoops, shopping, playing, talking, and just basically living life.  I really enjoy these random excursions with my brother, and even though I'm in my weird disconnected funk, I felt really content and happy to have been able to share it with him.

I got my hair trimmed last Monday and the stylist just did not seem to know what she was doing.  She cut my bangs straight across, like I had asked for a some weird half bowl cut across the front of my face, so I asked her to taper it.  This apparently means to cut the hair to the side of my bangs, not my actual bangs.  I asked her again to please taper my actual bangs.  I even pointed to her own bangs, which are tapered, and told her to do it like that.  She said, "oh OK, I understand," and cuts the hair to the side of my bangs AGAIN.  I really wanted to ask her if she was blind and dumb, because it was truly horrible, but I just can't yell at someone cutting my hair.  She's got a sharp pair of scissors next to my face.  What if she goes Sweeny Todd on me?  Anyway, I decided to not say anything further and just paid for my ridiculously overpriced ugly haircut and got the heck out of there.  I went home and slept and fumed, and then in the morning I committed the cardinal hair sin of cutting my own bangs.  It didn't come out great, but it's better than what it was.

On a more positive note, I thought my husband had overtime today, but he didn't and was able to come home earlier, so that was a nice little surprise.  I had this random thought this morning about how fortunate I am to have Jimmy, and I suddenly felt comforted but lonely at the same time.  I missed him incredibly today for some reason, so I was really happy to see him.

the reading experience

It is finally 2012, and this means the last book in the Wheel of Time series will soon be released.  I never caught up to the latest book-- I stopped at book 10, and I'm in the process of re-reading them from the beginning since I've forgotten many of the important plot turns.

I'm starting with New Spring, and I've been reading it mostly on the subway.  This is the first physical book I've read on the subway in a while.  Ever since I got an Android phone, I've been reading mostly ebooks on the subway.  It's just way more convenient.  Reading a physical book on the subway is annoying, especially when you can't find a seat.  If you're standing and reading, you have to hold the book open with one hand, which strains my fingers, especially if it is a thick book.  Most annoying is that reading a physical book usually takes two hands on the subway, especially if the book hasn't been broken in.  New paperback books just naturally want to fall back into a closed position.  Old books that I reread over and over will generally want to stay open since the binding has been worn and the pages lift apart from each other easily with a flick of the wrist, but this does not happen in new or gently read books.  If I'm standing and on a subway, I have to find the tipping point in the momentum of the subway so I can safety remove my hold from the pole and flip the page without falling over into somebody else.  This is especially annoying when I've come to a very interesting part of the book and the subway is lurching to a start or stop.

As convenient as eBooks are, I still strongly prefer phsyical books.  Many people think I am anti-ebooks because I work in publishing, but working in publishing has nothing to do with my preference for a physical book.  For me, eBooks are simply just not as good as physical books.  The convenience is wonderful, but the drawbacks are far too great for me to prefer them over a physical book.  For starters, the lines break differently and you don't get the same fonts.  People underestimate what a font can do to a book.  For example, the Harry Potter books are set in Garamond font.  When I read Harry Potter, this is the font I associate it with.  It fits the story and the writing style.  Garamond is a old-style looking font that looks neat and flows smoothly enough to still look modern.  Is this not a perfect font for a book about wizardry set in modern day England?  It just wouldn't be the same if I read Harry Potter in Arial or Comic Sans.  Reading eBooks also strains my eyes faster than reading a physical book.  This is because you are staring at a screen that emits some light instead of having light naturally bounce off the page.  I've also found that I usually cannot read eBooks on the default font.  If the default font for an eBook is not sans-serif, I will always always change it to one that is.  I always hate doing this because I always want to read a book the way it was originally meant to read.  The thing with reading things on a digital device is that a font on screen is displayed with pixels, and pixels just don't display serifs very nicely.  The serifs will seem to bleed too far into the next letter and if your eyes are tired, you may find that the words appear blurry.

My second biggest complaint against eBooks is that I love the feel of paper.  Paper does wonders to a book.  Some books just feel like they were meant to be printed on wonderfully thick, creamy paper that turns crisp, or on a glossy, heavy, bright white paper that lays flat and refuses to warp.  Let's use Harry Potter as another example.  I bought a set of the UK paperback editions of Harry Potter and the paper has a medium density, perhaps it is a 50# stock, and it has a wonderful cream color.  It also has a look of graininess, but when I run my finger over it, it feels smooth like a buffed, but not yet lacquered, piece of wood.  When I turn the pages of this book, my fingers and eyes register the weight, color, transparency, and feel of this paper, and it feeds into my senses as I am reading and it participates to the mood of the book.  The stock that Harry Potter is printed on is obviously a common paper stock and I'm not saying that a book has to have a special paper stock, but it's obvious that a heavy photo stock would not do for Harry Potter.  When I am reading an eBook, I lose this.  I lose the paper completely, and I lose the feedback that the paper lends to the reading experience.

For me, a physical book creates a different reading experience than an eBook, and I think a lot of people who also prefer physical books probably feel the same way.  I suppose this is why I fell in love with publishing though, because as much as I love good writing I also love everything else that a book has to offer.  If eBooks get people to read more though, then why not.  I really don't care how people read or what they read.  I just think it's good if a person is reading and they enjoy it!

inward

My titles have decreased significantly at work as we move towards summer pub months.  A good portion of my work day is spent sitting quietly.  At first I found this difficult.  When the number of titles drops from 120 to 30 in a matter of a couple weeks the difference is staggering, and the sudden shift creates a feeling of vertigo.  Once the vertigo passes my mind is able to drift inwards, and the empty hours I found long and difficult to endure now slide by like water over a smooth stone.

I used to spend slow days reviewing color on hardcover reprints, and I would plow through a stack 6 hours straight, methodically comparing hues and taking meticulous notes.  I quickly learned that this will strain my eyes and I had headaches for a week, but I did it anyway because I wanted to learn about color, and the best way I saw to do this was to throw myself into it completely.  I think some people find this hard to do, but it becomes very easy when your mind is focused.  This is the same way I am able to sit still and not fall asleep or become frustrated with the slow passing of time.  It is singular focus.  I am not thinking about time, or food, or anything outside.  When I am sitting still, meditative, I am focusing inward on quieting my mind and only on this.

This is something I should aim to do more often.  To practice focusing my mind and to quiet distractions.  And there seem to be some many things for my mind to stray to.  What to prepare for the next meal, how to decorate the apartment, how to spend money, how to stop the cat from peeing on the shoes-- I could go on for ages, but I won't and I shouldn't because to allow my mind to dwell on temporal things is mindless waste.