Lost in Translation

About twenty years ago, my sister took horse-riding lessons. She was At That Age, where every girl wants a horse*, and for a couple years she lived the dream. There was no horse that was particularly hers, at least as far as I remember, but she rode every weekend, and read up on horses and riding when she couldn’t actually be on the horses. In the fifth grade I checked a book out of the school library about a girl and her horse, and devoured it; and when I told my sister about a particularly vivid scene where the heroine had loped around on her horse, my sister told me in no uncertain terms that there was no such speed as a “lope” and the author clearly didn’t know what she was talking about.

One summer, my sister and I both went to the same camp that revolved around horses. (I think I was starting to feel left out.) She rode, while I did archery and crafts and such. We did all have the opportunity to get on a horse, though, and walk around a bit. They were very well-behaved horses, but when I got on mine, we walked around a bit like we were supposed to and then he reared up a little and I was so startled that I fell off. I figured that my turn was up, so I started walking away. The trainer shook her head. “When you fall off the horse, you get back on.” Then she led the next kid over to my horse and that was the end of my riding experience.

I thought about that day today, for the first time in about twenty years. Today was an exceptionally hard day, in Havi’s parlance. Money stress, and family stress, and work stress – all the big problematic stressors showed up and made a big mess of my day, and every time I’ve tried to push through and get going again, something else comes up to slap me back down. It’s been, to coin a phrase, one of those days.

There’s a significant part of me that’s trying to retreat. One of the things I tend to do when I’m stressed is to go into a quiet room and listen to water falling. In this house, since the only quiet room tends to be the bathroom, I’ll go in and run the shower for a few minutes. Often I’ll turn the showerhead outward, so that it’s spraying against the curtain, and let the pressure and heat relax me. I can’t express how much I’ve wanted to do that, pretty much all day. But instead, for whatever reason, that horse trainer’s voice keeps coming into my head. I can still hear her – with perfect clarity, my memory tells me, although twenty years and the shame and dizziness from falling off a horse have probably introduced a few artifacts. “When you fall off the horse, you get back on.”

So instead of retreating and finding a safe spot, I’ve been getting back up. Every time I fall or am knocked off the horse, I dust myself off and get back on. That trainer keeps prodding me. “No more being the ten-year-old who fell off a horse and just walked away,” she says. “It’d be easy to walk away. You could wipe the slate clean and never have to worry about it again. But if you want to be stronger, and show the people around you what kind of person you are, then you look the horse in the eye and get right back up on its back.”

When you fall off the horse, you get back on.

It’s hard. These difficulties hit me in what’s charitably called the solar plexus. I get dizzy. My vision contracts and I feel my skin tightening and growing hot. My stomach hurts, and I spend a moment reeling. But then I breathe, and smile for ten seconds like my dad taught me to do, and start going again. In the face of so much difficulty I want to be strong. I want to show the people around me that I can come out the other side and be okay. I want to get back on the horse. And it’s strange, because even though today has sucked so hard that Hoover is filing for patent infringement, I’m feeling better about myself than I have in years.

* Yes, I know, you hated horses and wanted a machine gun.

Because I think this is really incredibly cool:

English has nine directional/place words that indicate position in or movement regarding a place. Three of them we use pretty much every day; six have fallen into disuse, which is sad, because they’re pretty amazing words. To illustrate, imagine that you are standing at the other end of a football field from your good friend Bob. Francine, another friend, is moving around the football field:

• Position

  • Here means “in this place”. “Francine is here, next to me.”
  • There means “in that place”. “Francine is there, next to Bob.”
  • Where means “in what place”. “Where is Francine? I don’t see her.”

• Direction toward

  • Hither means “to this place”. “Francine is coming hither, from Bob to me.”
  • Thither means “to that place”. “Francine is going thither, from me to Bob.”
  • Whither means “to what place”. “Whither is Francine going? She’s off to the sidelines and running fast.”

• Direction away from

  • Hence means “from this place”. “Francine is going hence, from me to Bob.”
  • Thence means “from that place”. “Francine is coming thence, from Bob to me.”
  • Whence means “from what place”. “Whence is Francine coming? She just reappeared with a bucket of Gatorade…”

(Incidentally, this means that “from whence” is redundant. “Whence” already means “from where”.)

This is a Very Personal Ad, in the style of Havi’s. In fact, I pretty much copied it directly from my comment there. I too am trying to get better at asking for what I want. Unfortunately, most of what I want is internal…

Here’s what I want:

I feel like I’m still a kid. I was young for my class (August birthday) AND I was skipped ahead a grade, so I was always about two years behind everyone else in school. So I always feel like the youngest one in the room.

I take myself WAY too seriously. Even though I was young for my class, I was still the oldest of three children, and I felt like I was constantly being told to “be mature” and “just deal with [perceived hardship or favoritism] because [I'm] older”. I stopped taking piano lessons because my sister was also taking them, and she got precedence on practice time because she was younger, and by the time she was done my mom was sick of hearing the piano so I never got to practice. Long story short, I learned at an early age to take myself REALLY seriously because it was the best way I’d found to Act My Age.

Even if I felt like I was Younger Than Everyone Else.

So what I want is a way to be myself without feeling like I’m way too young to be taken seriously (I’m older than Naomi, for heaven’s sake) and without feeling like I have to take MYSELF excessively seriously.

How this could work:

I’m actually open to advice on this one. Suggestions that aren’t just “suck it up and grow up” are welcome. I’m really not sure how to proceed. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about this.

My commitment:

I will do my best to notice when I’m feeling excessively young or taking myself too seriously. I will do my best to correct for it, without BLAMING myself for it. Just because it’s a part of me I’d rather not have doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad to have it.

One of the most common “grammatical” arguments you will hear is “either something is unique or it isn’t! Something can’t be ‘very unique’!” To an extent, this is true. But – as will be apparent to anyone who has studied calculus and therefore dealt with degrees of infinity – there are also degrees of uniquity, which is a word I may have just made up to describe something’s quality of being unique.

Consider the following number sets:

1. {1,2,3,4,5}
2. {1,2,3,4,5}
3. {1,2,3,4,5}
4. {1,2,3,4,5,6}
5. {1,2,3,4,5,7,8}

Clearly 1, 2, and 3 are not unique among these number sets: each is duplicated exactly by another set.

Clearly 4 and 5 are unique among these number sets: each contains at least one number that is contained in no other set in the group. (A putative 6th set that lacked one number – say, {1,3,4,5} – would also be unique, because it didn’t duplicate another set exactly.)

However, 5 can be characterized as more unique than 4; that is, it has more characteristics that set it apart from the rest of the sets.

This opens the door.

Assume a group of sets with increasing variance from the baseline:

1. {1,2,3,4,5}
2. {1,2,3,4,5}
3. {1,2,3,4,5}
4. {1,2,3,4,5,6}
5. {1,2,3,4,5,7,8}
6. {1,2,3,4,5,9,10,11}
7. {1,2,3,4,5,12,13,14,15}
8. etc.

Each of the sets 4-7 is still unique, because no other set duplicates it. In addition, the more degrees of difference a set has from the baseline, the more unique it is. Therefore, by the standard established by 7 (the most unique of the listed sets, with four degrees of uniqueness), set 4 is only relatively unique (with only one degree of uniqueness). Set 6 is rather unique; and so on.

(Thank goodness I have this blog to absorb my random thoughts.)

Havi has been talking a lot recently about Monsters – the parts of yourself that are holding you in a stuck pattern. Havi encourages addressing your monsters, identifying with them, seeing what they need, and helping them see what you need. As part of my progress toward Life On My Terms, I’ve wanted to address my monsters for a while, and today I got the opportunity to do that. I woke up this morning believing that my monsters were goblins, part of a tiny but teeming army, all gnashing their teeth and bearing spears. After listening to Havi’s Habits Detective recording this afternoon, I became convinced that what I was really seeing were just the foot soldiers – each of them a part of the stuckness but under the control of a General – and that the General was the Monster with whom I needed to deal.

I was expecting to have a conversation with my Goblin General when I sat down this evening. I started sketching my Monster – part of engaging these monsters is visualizing them – and I was surprised.

Hello, Monsters, I said. “Monsters”. Because: I see three of you. All three had little goblins scurrying around below them, carrying out orders.

The first was – is – me, but colossal. A parody of overweight. Hand in a bowl of popcorn and candy, too heavy to even sit up, having to look over his massive stomach to meet my gaze. You’re how I see myself, I said. You want to protect me from disappointment.

He nodded, with effort. “Look, giving up isn’t so bad. You get to relax all the time. You get to eat tasty food. And you’re still alive, right? I mean, you’ve lived through everything so far. Why not assume that’ll hold?”

I turned my attention to the second. He was me, too, but just a head, with no body, floating next to the first. I’d thought I’d recognized his expression out of the corner of my eye, but when I really looked I realized I was mistaken. I thought he was angry, passing judgment, telling me how awful I was. Instead he was worried, eyebrows raised, brow furrowed a little, his frown one of compassion rather than upset. You’re trying to protect me too, I said, just in a different way.

“Do you really want to put your work out in front of everybody?” he asked. “You don’t really think it’s any good, so why should you think anyone else will think so? And since you don’t think you’re improving, you’re probably right. No sense in continuing to practice if you’re not going to get any better.”

I looked at the third. This was difficult, because he was a long way off. He was recognizably me even at that distance, but the me I’d like to be in my wildest dreams – successful, thinner, and happy. You’re trying to protect me by staying away from me, I called out.

He shouted back: “It’s such a long way to your goals, and you’ll have to move so slowly to get here. It’s so much easier and pleasant to stay where you are; I’m just trying to save you effort. And you remember how much you dislike driving long distances? Getting here is even harder than that.”

I sighed, and spoke so they could all hear me. O my Monster Selves, I said, thank you for trying to protect me. I know that you want me to be happy and you’re just doing your jobs. It’s hard for you to see me try and fail.

But I need something from you: I need to move forward. I need to get going again. I need to start taking risks and putting myself out there and getting things done.

Self-Image Monster, I said, I won’t live through becoming you. I am already dangerously unhealthy. I need to change in order to live. Instead of encouraging me to give up, would you please protect me by reminding me that that’s not how I want to be?

The first monster nodded again. “But,” he said, “you have to make me a promise. I want to change too. I’m your self-image and if you can’t live being me, then I can’t live being me either. I want to change.” I agreed.

I turned to the second. Concerned Monster, I need you to drive me to improve instead of discouraging me. Help me keep moving forward by helping me recognize what I have left to do. You’re good at seeing my shortcomings; help me turn them into successes instead.

The Concerned Monster was recalcitrant. “You’ll still get laughed at and judged,” he said. “You’ll still get hurt.”

Let’s give it a trial, then, I told him. Until the end of the month. If nothing horrible has happened, then we’ll keep going.

“Okay,” he said, “but only if I get to decide what counts as horrible.”

I turned to the third and pulled out a megaphone. Future Monster, I am willing to move as slowly as you need me to, if you will help me by standing still, so that I know that my journey has an end. When I reach you I promise that you can move away again so I have something new to aim for. I won’t stop just because I’ve reached you.

He said nothing, but a green sign popped up next to me. It had “Future Me: ?? Miles” written on it in white Futurist lettering. I took that as a positive sign.

The little goblin armies had scattered. They were nowhere to be seen.

I got up and opened my eyes, and here I am.

Your thoughts

Like Havi, I’m practicing asking for what I want. Here’s what I’d like to receive in the comments:

• Your experiences with your monsters.
• Support and friendly chatter.

What I don’t want:

• Criticism of my methods or results.
• Other kinds of thrown shoes.
• Shoulds, judgment, and other kinds of negative thoughts.
• Non-productive “advice”.

Thanks for reading!

An odd thought I had today in the shower:

1. Imagine yourself as you want to be. (This does not need to be concrete.)
2. Envision the kinds of problems that the person you want to be has to deal with.
3. Deal with a few of those problems.

It’s an odd exercise, and I don’t know if it works, but it seems like it ought to at least get you partway into the mindset of the person you want to be.

Written and drawn over the course of two hours today. Consciously minimal cleaning-up.

I’ve decided to adopt a new model for goal-setting, because resolutions and concrete goals just aren’t doing it for me. I still haven’t figured out – a month and a half in – how I want this year to pan out, but I do have some things I’d like to change and things I’d like to do.

I’m taking a three-prong approach to this, because it seems like the most logical way to go about it. All of the below start with “I want to…”, but they’re divided into sections according to their function.

Intentions

These are aspects of myself that I’ve decided I want to change, or actions that I want to take. They’re not endpoints; they’re processes and beginnings. (You might recall my issues with process, and focusing on these is a way to work on that.) They’re roughly analogous to Havi’s “My commitment” section in her Very Personal Ads. My current intentions are that I want to

• improve my posture;
• exercise more frequently;
• eat better (by which I mean both higher-quality food and food that’s better for me);
• do at least one thing each day that makes me actively happy;
• spend at least one hour each day learning a new skill;
• spend less time in front of the computer; and
• write more often.

Desires

On my paper list, this went under the heading “What I Want”, but I figured for the formal writeup it’d be better to have a consistent naming scheme. These are the desired results of the intentions. They’re deliberately vague, to represent that this is, in fact, a process; I’ll never be done improving. I can’t just get to 180 pounds, say, and decide that okay, I’m done that agenda item; by keeping my desires nebulous, I’m reminding myself to keep moving forward.

As a result of my intentions, I want to

• feel healthier, lighter, and more active;
• improve my skill in things I actually enjoy doing;
• be generally happier with myself and my life; and
• help my family be happier with me and with their lives.

Milestones

These are concrete, but they’re not goals; a goal implies an endpoint. Rather, they’re signals that I’m moving ahead in my intentions and achieving my desires.

In the pursuit of my intentions and desires, I want to

• release a Flash game;
• finish 10,000 words on a single writing project;
• have someone commission art from me; and
• hold a brief conversation in a modern non-English language.

Your thoughts

Like Havi, I’m practicing asking for what I want.

What I’d like to receive in the comments:

• Your intentions, desires, and milestones.
• Thoughts on how I could start on my intentions.
• General support.

What I don’t want:

• To quote Havi, practical concerns (“you realize you need X because…”).
• Negative thoughts.
• Shoulds.
• Judgment.
• Non-productive “advice”.

Thanks for reading!

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

- Don Marquis, The Lesson of the Moth

I sit on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, I want to write a blog that provides actual value and has readers who are there for the content.

On the other hand, I want a place to talk about the issues I’m dealing with.

Lost In Translation is, sadly, kind of a middle ground, and suffering for it. On the one hand, I feel somewhat safe talking about my issues here, because frankly, I don’t have a lot of readers and so I’m relatively insulated from shoe-throwing. On the other hand, I feel like I should be providing value with my blog, and so I tone down the discussion of issues (and often don’t discuss them at all). On the gripping hand, I never post any content that’s not All About Me because I feel like anyone who came here, saw that, and then went back into the archives and saw just me and my subscription would be disappointed and frustrated.

And yet I don’t really want to start Yet Another Blog, because it’s already hard enough keeping up with two.

Back to the horns for now.