Do I not bleed?

I ran into an acquaintance at lunch today, and she told me she had a hard time talking to people. Since we had been talking for 10 minutes by that time, I must have had a skeptical expression on my face, and she quickly said "oh, not you..."

I think she meant I was easy to talk to, rather than the alternative explanation that I am not actually a person, so I'll take the compliment.

I knew what she meant. I have a hard time talking to people too.

Except for you.

What I'm working on

1. The holiday party invitation for my workplace. This takes an inordinately long time each year, as multiple phone calls, emails, and approvals are required. But I love designing the invitation itself.

2. Compiling faculty publications for the December retreat, which involves a lot of copying and pasting from individual CVs to the aggregate document.

3. Copy editing an Editor's Page for a journal.

4. Copy editing a grant.

5. At home, reading Steve Martin's autobiography, which is excellent.

6. Attempting to get in some extra exercise in the form of dog walking.

7. Deciding whether the little tabletop tree is enough this year or whether I should put up the big tree, the idea of which exhausts me. (Not the decision; putting up the big tree.)

8. There must be more, but I can't think of anything else right now.

It's not that much. I was just reminded, because of a kind comment on an earlier post, of my first full-time job, which was working with institutionalized kids. We had fun every day but we also had difficult, sometimes terrible, times every day. My life now is calmer and much less stressful, which is necessary for my health. And I do feel that the work I do now is worthwhile, and I also feel I should go do more of it!

Books, jobs, and blogging brevity

Here I am, back at work after 6 days off, so I must necessarily keep this short.

I finished "The Darling" yesterday and I recommend it. At times it was a bit hard to get through, I think because the main character, who is narrating her own story, is sometimes either detached or not sympathetic. The story was interesting though -- Hannah is a 60's protester, underground, and emigrates to Liberia, where she marries, has children, and starts a chimpanzee sanctuary. The horrors of Liberia during that time period were also hard to read about, which imo is not a good reason not to read it... I thought it was a good book. If you're a Russell Banks fan, it's a must-read. If you're not a Russell Banks fan, become one. I recommend starting with either "The Sweet Hereafter" or "Affliction" although a lot of people would probably recommend "Rule of the Bone."

Now I'm reading Steve Martin's autobiography, "Born Standing Up." I just started it last night, so I can't really tell you much except that I have laughed already, even though it is not primarily comedy, but about practicing stand up comedy, and also about some of S. Martin's history. He's a fascinating guy; I expect to love this book. Which is why I ordered it as soon as it became available.

Not much else to report. Lots of work to do, so let me get back to it.

An interesting passage

Just read the following in Russell Banks' "The Darling":

I'm talking here about the difference between empathy and sympathy, between feeling for the other and feeling with the other. The distinction came to matter to me. It still does. When you abandon and betray those with whom you empathize, you're not abandoning or betraying anyone or anything that's as real as yourself. Taken to its extreme, perhaps even pathological, form, empathy is narcissism.

Ouch. That hits a little close to home for me, and I'm not sure what I think about it. I've always thought of myself as an empathetic person, most of the time. It suddenly came to me, after abandoning my novel, that this is one way in which my imagination runs -- in trying to understand and empathize with the feelings of other people. I've always been interested in human behavior, trying to understand the people around me. And I've also always been interested in the extremes of human behavior -- I want to know what turns someone into a serial killer, how people can form suicide pacts, why people join cults, etc. Part of this fascination, I suppose, is that I can't actually imagine any of this behavior myself. But I'm digressing from my main point.

I used to, before my depression was properly treated, genuinely feel the emotions that others were having. Even at the time, I knew that this was not helpful, because if someone is in the depths of despair, it doesn't help if you're there with them -- then they have to comfort you, in addition to needing comfort of their own. I still can be a bit of a mood sponge, or sometimes a mood reflector, in that others' anxieties sometime make me anxious and others' anger also makes me anxious. But mostly I now have what we like to call "boundaries" and I suppose, according to the passage above, that means that I sympathize now rather than empathizing. But I've always thought of empathy as feeling with the other, and I've always thought it was a good thing.

The comment about narcissism scares the crap out of me. I've been involved in different roles with several narcissists in my life, and they don't seem to feel any empathy at all for others. I've often thought that what separates me from them, and what draws them to me, in that "opposites attract" kind of way, is that I am extremely empathetic.

I'd be very interested in hearing other opinions on this -- not on me, but on the quotation and distinctions between empathy and sympathy.

An excerpt from my abandoned novel

Do not laugh too much; I actually like this but I am probably nuts to post it in its raw form:

[Julia's car was towed, and she paid an exorbitant amount to redeem it.]

“It’s sad though,” Julia thought, as she drove toward the ferry, “how little leeway people give each other. When I was young, somehow people always believed me when I said I didn’t know something or didn’t mean to do something. I always got off with warning tickets, and it wasn’t because of my good looks. It was because of my youth and earnestness” (and indeed, she had had more good looks than she gave herself credit for). “And I’m still earnest, but now no more to be trusted than the next person. Oh I know, rules are meant for everybody, but I miss being believed, being trusted. I am, after all, even more trustworthy now than I was when I was young. But somehow age taints us, and we seem like we’re trying to escape justice even when we’re just trying to be honest and get a fair shake.”

Marta, misinterpreting Julia’s silence, apologized for criticizing her handling of the situation. “Are you mad?” she asked.

“Of course not,” replied Julia. “No, I was just thinking, do you ever miss, well, not being young exactly, and I don’t really mean this the way it sounds, but getting away with things? Being let off the hook? Now it seems we’re always on the hook, no matter what happens.”

“I do know what you mean,” Marta said. “I never got a traffic ticket until I was 40. When I did get one, it made me feel so old. So, I don’t know, irrelevant? Like the policeman was looking at me and seeing an old lady, someone you wouldn’t look at twice.”

“I actually like not being looked at,” Julia said. “I like the cloak of invisibility that’s around me now.” She had never been comfortable with constantly being evaluated by men when out in public. Catcalls and teasing had both been hard on her sensitive nature. But now she wondered, sadly, why the choice had to be between objectification and invisibility? Couldn’t there be something in the middle? It seemed natural that people were always sizing each other up, but why not a more holistic approach, and the realization that everyone had something to offer, even if it wasn’t sex or even love? But she supposed this kind of thinking was an effect of age itself. When she was young, she too was constantly evaluating men as to their suitability as partners. The difference was that she hadn’t based that evaluation on looks at all, or on money or ambition, not that she hadn’t been drawn to some attractive men. But attraction for her seemed to mean something entirely different than was meant by the rest of the world, and she found it hard to be so different, to feel so incomprehensible even to those to whom she was closest.

Your friend the lizard

Taken on Ocracoke Island a couple of years ago.

A novel decision

I'm trying this decision on for size -- if it doesn't fit, I'll amend.

Perhaps I seem wishy-washy to you. I often seem that way. It usually happens when I'm warring between what I want to do and what I think I should do.

After all, one "should" stick with the commitments one makes, right? But what if one has made a commitment that turns out to be inappropriate for them?

I have decided to stop work on my novel. I've enjoyed the process of writing, to a large extent, and I loved the whole "write a novel in a month" concept. But I was sitting here this morning, reading Russell Banks' The Darling, and knowing that writing will probably never be as important to me as reading, and knowing that I could never write a book as good as that one.

Of course, R. Banks has been writing for years, and I can hardly be said to have practiced my craft. But the thing is, writing novels isn't my craft. Writing blog posts is fun for me. And when I did write intensively in the past, I wrote poetry.

I haven't written any poetry since being on antidepressants, which I sometimes think is sad, and sometimes think is a reasonable trade-off for not being miserable all the time.

Right now, I'm going through some holiday blahs, which are largely short-winter-day blahs, have started on a new med -- yes, another chemistry experiment -- and do not want to spend my remaining three day weekend working on a novel. I want to be free to read and putter around and be creative in other ways, when I choose to, and spend time with the dogs and maybe even, oh I don't know, take them for a walk.

So that's it, I'm done, unless I change my mind after posting this. Sometimes when a decision is difficult, it's best to just choose one option and sit with it for a while.