Thoughts about Dystopia

Is it just me, or does the popular young adult literature of the moment all seem a little...less than idealistic?  Of course it's not just me.  Haven't you noticed?  Dystopia has been all the rage of late.  I'll readily grant that each individual novel I've read (the first few that pop into mind are The Hunger Games, Veronica Roth's Divergent, Ally Condie's Matched, and Caragh O'Brien's not-yet-fully-comple Birthmarked trilogy) has been differently dystopic.  But they're all dystopic nonetheless. 

And I find myself wondering: why dystopia?  Why now?  Why so many?  And again, more emphatically: why dystopia?

I often find myself wondering if this may be a way we content ourselves with the current state of the world: yes, we say to ourselves, it's bad.  But it's not this bad.  A reassurance, if you will, that things could always be worse.  Perhaps reassurance is the wrong word; this would seem an instance where there's a world of difference between saying we see a bright side and saying that we see a less dark side.

It's also easy to look at these as morbid thought-experiments.  If society started restricted this, if we no longer could think of that, if somehow we managed to restructure everything completely...this fascinates me, because I feel as though utopias of any kind are also thought-experiments.  Cause and effect: if we caused this, what effects would it have?  Except that right now doesn't seem to be the time for speculating what would happen if we found a way to feed everyone or if a fountain of youth existed or any...happy...thought experiment.  Instead the thought experiment generally seems to be what if somehow the world ended, the apocalypse came, etc.

But then, and I suppose this might be the optimist in me peeking out, I wonder if these books aren't so popular because of the type of conflict that it allows a hero/heroine to rise above.  Could it be possible these concepts are idealism in cynicism's clothing, teaching us that any of us might rise to our potential in even the worst of times?

I find that I can't decide, and so I take the only rational approach I can think of: upon exiting dystopia, I choose a happier environment to lose myself in for a while.  I read a happier book.

On Being Patient

I don't like it.

But if that were all I were thinking about, this would be a short blog post.  I really don't like it.

And so I find myself learning it anyway.  Isn't it funny how life works that way?

If you spoke with anyone who knows me and who has had sustained interactions with me, I tend not to think this is a word often used to describe me.  I am many things, but I am not always the most patient person.  Once, when my mom told me she thought me to be patient, I questioned her realization she was speaking to the right child.  She then told me about specific ways in which she thought I'd been patient and I said, oh, ok, I guess that's true.  But here's the thing: none of those specific ways involved people.

So okay, I think, I'm good at being patient with things, but I'm unsure that's a helpful form of patience to have.

There's no need to go into any detail, but I'm learning more patience with people--with myself and with other people.  And I hate it, because you know how you end up learning more patience?  Any patience that you innately have gets tried.  And tried.  And then tried some more.  Ergo the hate.

And then what happens is that I find myself struggling to have patience with the process of gaining patience, which just adds insult to injury...but maybe helps with the whole process (even if it seems mean and meta.)

In Which I Remember How I Used To Compete with Myself

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I might find motivation if I could find a way to be contrary to myself.  You probably thought I was talking gibberish.  I was pretty sure I was talking gibberish.  (Gibberish and I have been very comfortable together for a very long time.)

But I remembered something.

Whenever I was supposed to get a task done quickly, I competed with myself.

Hm.  Is there any way to describe this that won't make me sound like I was slightly schizoid as a child...?  Probably not.

When I used to make my bed, I used to compete with myself to see who could make my bed faster...me or...me.  I used to imagine that there was, for lack of better terms, a parallel me in a different universe that was super speedy.  If I could make my bed faster than alternate-me made my bed, I won.  If I couldn't, I lost.

There was also a parallel me who took fast baths, who cleaned her room more quickly...  I recall beating her a few times.

Now if only I could find a similar--maybe less crazy--way to compete with myself.  (Parallel-me, I'm sure, has already written 3 novels by now...)

The Silly Things I Sometimes Ask the Internet

Sometimes, when I get bored or when I'm seeking out motivation, I google.

And in many instances, my friends, this is a very silly thing to do.

Just now, because I'm trying to work myself out of this armchair and over to my room to gather up dirty clothes and do my laundry, I googled "compelling reasons to do my laundry."  Hey, I thought, if anywhere can give me a REALLY compelling reason to do my laundry...

Try it.  You know you want to. 

It was super helpful, right?

As soon as I saw that lovely list of links, I thought: "Oh, you ridiculous person, you.  You have virtually no clean clothes left.  That is quite a compelling reason."

So now I'll do my laundry.

(But I guess I'm not entirely cured of my silliness if I blogged about it first.)

Notebooks, Notebooks, Everywhere

I really, really need to start keeping a notebook right next to me when I go to bed.  It wouldn't be terribly hard at all.  After all, my desk is right next to my bed.  It's there, because that's where it fits.  There's a semi-permanent bruise on my left leg to prove my desk's location.  (Really, it's kind of pitiful.  I mean, I know my depth perception is abysmal, but it's kind of silly to keep running into the same edge of the desk over and over again.)

Anyway.

Sometimes as I'm falling asleep I have these ideas.  Ideas that I could turn into a story.  Ideas that, at least as I'm falling asleep, seem very workable indeed.  But that I don't fully remember when I wake up.

Last night's was something about...pets.  What about pets?  Well, what about pets indeed.  Pets seems to be the only part of the thought that stuck in my head.  (Perhaps I'm subconsciously already preparing to be that crazy old maid with a lot of cats, except I'm not a big cat person and I'm mildly allergic so I'd end up being the hamster lady or the gerbil lady or the bird lady...all of which, incidentally, I've been told sound much more creepy than being a cat lady.)

I have a notebook that lives in my purse, a small one, for scratching down thoughts during the day.  Why shouldn't I have a night-time notebook?

Except I'm really scared of how ridiculous the ideas might look in the morning.  But then, there's a fine, fine line between ridiculous and great.

Possibility of Motivation

Motivation seems to be a tricksy little hobbit these days.  For me, anyway.

I can think of plenty of things to do, but actually finding some oomph with which to do them proves fairly difficult sometimes.

A groundbreaking conclusion occurred to me recently: that's mostly my fault.

Well, okay, pretty much all my fault.

In pondering how I've managed to motivate myself in the past, I've come to realize that I have a certain streak of stubbornness that has lent itself in my favor.  Accompanying that, intertwined in much the same fashion as a vanilla-chocolate-twist cone, I also have a streak of contrariness.

There are a worrisome number of instances where I went ahead and did something because someone emphatically told me I couldn't do it.  It was impossible.  Wouldn't happen.  No go.

To which I said: well, you just watch me.  I don't care what you say!

Psychologists would, I'm sure, have something to say about this.  But then, psychologists would have something to say about most things.  That doesn't make them right.  It just makes them people who are able to have conversations. 

Anyhow.  These days I find that the one person to whom I will accede is, well, myself.  I would never listen to anyone else who told me that I couldn't learn the guitar or write a decent novel or be competitive enough for admission for yet another advanced degree.

It would seem the most ready solution to this problem would be to find a way to be a little, well, schizoid.  If I could convince myself to be contrary to...myself...I almost feel as though I'd be doing more.  Achieving more.

Or maybe not.  Maybe I'd just be that much more crazy.

Due For a Change? I Can't Decide...

There are some days, more than others, where I can tell that I really miss being in school.

All of a sudden, in the middle of answering someone's question, I will realize that I have subconsciously been analyzing--the last movie I saw, the last book I read, something I read a while ago but have just suddenly had an ephiphany about.

And at these moments I miss school, because when you have these epiphanies, nobody looks at you as though you're utterly crazy.  If you dare voice these epiphanies, they nod along because even if they don't agree with the line of reasoning--they follow.

These days I don't voice these things aloud, because in an office environment, people tend to treat such behaviors as...well...crazy.

In all fairness: how many people stop, frozen, in the middle of their workdays because a sonnet is echoing in their heads.  Or because, as happened the other day while sitting in the midst of what felt a swarm of people who were all talking all at once, suddenly Walt Whitman made much more sense?

I'm willing to bet: not many.

This happens to be more and more frequently lately.  E.D. Hirsch pops up in my recreational reading.  It suddenly seems important to re-attempt The Great Gatsby.  (I didn't much care for it the first time around, but then, I was seventeen.  Maybe I'd like it now...although after reading This Side of Paradise, I'm pretty sure my original impression of Gatsby was pretty much spot-on: Fitzgerald writes wonderful prose, but I pretty much hate all of his characters.)  People are starting to resemble book characters, book characters are echoing elsewhere in the real world.

At the moment, I'm treating this as a cue to look back into Ph.D. programs.  We'll see if this time around I manage to stick out the whole process.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll find another way to silence the echoes.  Or at least quiet them a little.