Leap Day

Sheesh it has been a while. I've been doing all sorts of last-minute-before-Reading-Week work and now last-minute-after Reading-Week work. Reading Week was a failure for getting work done, but I still enjoyed myself thoroughly! My family adopted two new kitties! They are brother and sister and we named them Keats and Fanny. We adopted them from an independently run animal shelter in Amherst, NS called the Lillian Albon Animal Shelter.

WHOA just discovered how you're REALLY supposed to put pictures into a blog post. I must be blind.

SO one of the things I have been thinking about in the twenty-one days since I last posted is the importance of the question Why. I went to this presentation a couple weeks ago, and the presenter talked about when you're "selling" something to someone (not necessarily selling something for money, but making them understand an idea, perhaps) it is more important to consider Why you are selling something rather than What you are selling. People are more interested in the Why. This concept really struck me, and has actually helped me a lot with writing essays. When I was writing my Philosophy essay on the Mind-Body problem, while I was preparing, I brainstormed What I wanted to write, but I also brainstormed Why I thought what I was writing was important, and Why I wanted to convince the reader of what I was saying. I have asked "why" a lot in my lifetime (what five-year old didn't?) but now I am bringing back the question, but more to ask myself. Why am I going to school? Why am I prioritizing this over that? Why do I think that value is important?

Tonight I finished writing a paper on Woodstock. Whenever I think about Woodstock, I get this incredibly melancholy feeling because of how much I wish I could have been there. In fact, I wish I could have been a young person throughout the sixties, because it was probably the most interesting decade. That way I also could have enjoyed the seventies disco dancing :P. But I feel like I connect very deeply with the issues that were prevalent at that time (I suppose most of them still are). The thing is, this seemed to be the first time when people were finding courage and doing activism in a fearless way. So although some of the issues in the sixties are still present today (like racism and anti-war), I feel like my generation doesn't deal with it in the same way. Maybe we are all a little numbed to what we can achieve. When I was in Assisi, Italy in 2010, the tour guide who showed us around St. Francis' Basilica said some wise things about how we are overwhelming our young people. We tell them all the things that are bad in the world and then say: go do your homework, settle down and play your video games, go to school and sit still all day. He thought we should also be telling them what is being done about things and what could be done about things, not just presenting them with all this heavy information that we don't really know what to do with. That's the irresponsibility of the media, partly, I think. But anyway, I can certainly relate to what that tour guide was pointing out was wrong with how we present information to people my age. I often find myself feeling discouraged and like I'm wasting my time just sitting here in my comfortable life, going to university, and living happily, hearing about the bad stuff and feeling sad but then somewhat forgetting about it. I don't forget about it, of course, but it isn't always on the forefront of my mind because I would be crippled with discouragement all the time. You can see why I feel selfish, then. I feel sad hearing about all the different issues in the world, and I feel like I can't do anything about it. But I guess it's one of the steps just to inform myself about these things. For me, it's hard to narrow it down to one cause that I feel particularly strongly about. Everything is important, where are you supposed to start? I guess I relate most strongly with things that involve children and families, which is why I plan to have a career working with them.

As a fun side note, reading about Woodstock and watching the documentary and looking at pictures makes me long SO MUCH for summer! Summer is my favourite season (I guess I'm a little bit biased because I am a Summer Baby)! I can't wait to spend time outside, go swimming, go biking, read, write, work at the Cafe, go to outdoor concerts (hello Sappyfest!). I love the feeling of summer and the attitude everyone has. I love all the freshly grown food and the clothes you get to wear in summer. It's so close I can taste it!

Leap day is interesting. Today I was thinking about all the people who were born on a February 29th. They must be so happy when they get to celebrate their real birthday every four years. I wish I had thought of this at the beginning of the day so I could have kept my eye out, but it seems like extraordinary things should happen on Leap Days. They're like a secret passage or something that only appears every four years. You never know what magical things could happen.

I can't believe that tomorrow is a new month already. Here's to a good March and more posts and getting all my work done!

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin

Letting it Flow

Last night, I had an interesting insight about writing--at least I hope it's an insight. I was working through Philosophy (I have committed myself to understanding Philosophy, particularly the mind/body problem and induction), and my mind often wanders while I'm reading Philosophy. Last night, it wandered to how I might be able to get the words out. I am confused, because when I'm writing this blog or my morning pages, I just write what comes into my head. It just flows out, no problem. But when I think it's a good time to do some of my fiction writing, it's like everything in my head slams their doors on me and locks up tight. Nothing comes out. It's like trying to think of where you've seen an actor before and it's right there, gagging you but you can't get it out. I have the feelings, the inspiration, the dedication of a piece of time, and yet my hand stays motionless, hovering above the keyboard/page. I feel frozen, like I've been asked to do a presentation I know nothing about.

I suppose what I described above is the reason my new insight doesn't work, but here it is: If I can just listen to my thoughts and write them down effortlessly in morning pages, why can't I do the same for whatever ideas I may have for fictional writing? Why can't I just write it down? Why can't I listen to the story in my head or describe the images in my head? Why can't I get them on the page? I proposed to myself drawing pictures of whatever ideas I might get, and then writing about the drawing I've made. This sounds great, and is an intriguing suggestion for how to get writing done, but once again, the freezing blankness in my mind that I described above is the biggest issue.

I would write ideas down if I HAD them. It's very frustrating to call yourself a writer and not have ideas. I sense, however, that there's something that's still just scared inside me, despite The Artist's Way course and all the thinking and growing I've done since then. Now and then I do have ideas, but the juice of them dries up quickly. I guess the key there is to forge on, which is what I learned from National Novel Writing Month. I am also able to write if I have a prompt. I'll get something down no problem if I have a suggestion. But as a writer, shouldn't I have some kind of ability to come up with ideas on my own? I get scared back into my hole when people like my professor (who is also a "professional" writer) says things like "If you're really a writer, nothing can stop you from writing" and "if you're a writer, you get that feeling, and calling that you need to write, you just have to, you have no choice." I don't feel like this applies to me. I'm afraid, first of all, that as a university student, I'm likely to put priority on my work rather than creative inspiration. I also don't feel like I was born to write, except that I've held onto the concept of being a writer for my entire life. But I don't feel some kind of metaphysical pull. This worries me. When people put these specifications on what it means to be a writer, I seriously doubt myself and my abilities. It's discouraging and heartbreaking and frustrating.

Of course, it's to people like my professor that I should stand up and say "you're an egotistical fool, I'll do writing my own way." That's another specification he outlined: that you have to be "malignantly self-absorbed" to be a writer. He sat there at the head of the class like he knew everything there was to know about writing, and that we could ask him anything about it. I have a question, Professor: If you had to teach a class, but you had an inspiration to write, would you really leave us all waiting for the sake of the inspiration? It all sounds a little too romantic and implausible. But it certainly has sewn my creative lips shut for a while, and I'm angry about it. These are the kinds of people The Artist's Way helps you deal with when you're trying to get your inspiration back. These people with doctrines and ideas about what good writing/writers is/are, the ones that bring you down with their ideals. I think I can fairly say to myself that all of them are right and all of them are wrong because I've heard different pieces of advice from every single writer I've talked to. They are right about what works for themselves, but they might be wrong about what works for me. Quite often the advice is contradictory. "Make yourself sit down every day to write." "Don't make yourself write everyday, but have committed times to write." "You can't control when you have inspiration, so write whenever you have the inspiration." "Write about real life situations, that's the only thing that's interesting." "Write whatever you feel inside, even if it sounds goofy." "Never edit as you work." BLAH BLAH BLAH. I don't know what to believe, and I'm not even sure I know how to go about figuring out what I believe about writing. After I read The Artist's Way, I felt uncomfortable reading other writing advice because I didn't want the impression of Julie's advice to get tarnished and confused. That's obviously not the right way to be thinking about it. I should be open to all kinds of advice. I guess what I really need to do, is find out what advice works for me, but also find advice to give myself, from myself, because only I know what is best for me (I think).

In other news, we started moral philosophy in philosophy class, which is DELIGHTFUL. It encompasses just about everything else I'm interested in in my other classes. Culture, comparing cultures, what is right/wrong, how do you know what is right/wrong (are your opinions influenced by society?), why we follow the unspoken moral code. It's great. It has even made me consider taking a second year Philosophy course about moral philosophy. GASP. It has also made me much more open-minded now that I have spent a good couple hours trying to understand Smart's "identity theory" and to concretize my understanding of Descartes' dualism and Ryle's objection to it. It turns out I don't agree with Descartes as fully as I thought. He says mind and body are separate kinds of things with separate properties and laws (so mental states have mental properties and there are special laws which govern the activity of the mind). While I think I'm a dualist (someone who believes that the mind and body are made of different things, namely spiritual and material things, respectively), I'm not sure we can brush off the difference by pretending there might be a whole different world of laws and properties just for the mind. But I think what we need to keep in mind (ha ha), especially materialists like Smart, is that the body has an effect on the mind (it tells the mind when something is wrong, and we feel everything we feel in and around our bodies because of signals sent to the mind) and the mind has an effect on the body (it dictates how the body behaves, I should think). So, they definitely interact (which I guess Smart says). And I would even say that most of these interactions between the mind and the body are brain processes, BUT there are certain things that go on in the mind that are indeed entirely private and exclusive to the mind. There is no language to describe these processes (oops, an easy way out of explaining) and the experience of them is entirely subjective. So, sorry Smart, we will never find a way of describing all mental states in mechanistic terms. We can never generalize these experiences. Smart did not give a very direct or satisfactory response to this objection, for instance: compare the mind to Wittgenstein's "beetle in a box." If everyone is given a box with a beetle in it, we think we know what everybody else's beetle looks like (even though we may never see someone else's beetle) because we assume it must look like our own. But someone else's box may be entirely empty, or the descriptions different people give, though they may be similar, may be describing completely different things. It is the same with the subjective, private experiences of the mind. For this reason, I think that there are parts of the mind that are entirely spiritual, while other parts, like the brain's processes, can be explained by science. I don't know if I am being entirely clear either, but these are the opinions I have formed since applying a greater effort to the issue.

I still am not sure I really know how to continue my writing career. At one point over Christmas Break, I even allowed myself to abandon it entirely. I said to myself, if you're going to get so stressed out over never being inspired and never having any work to show for yourself, just don't write anymore. You don't have  to be a writer, no one is telling you that you have to do it. Writing has become a part of my identity, though. It's one of the ways I define myself. I can't seem to let it go. It's true that I don't write regularly and that I have embarrassingly little inspiration, but I can't seem to drop the notion and the desire to be a writer. I just don't want it to be all-or-nothing. It's not what my life revolves around, and it never will be, but I want it to be a part of my life. I will never come to point where I would drop everything for writing, and I don't think I would ever make an actual career out of it, but I want to do it. It's part of how my brain thinks about and views the world. I'm always looking for stories (and more importantly, the interesting, relatable phenomena we experience in life). But I still don't know how to get them out. Maybe I just haven't found my style. But I think I could ever stop myself from trying to write.

I've gone and squandered an afternoon of work. I guess I do this writing no matter what else is supposed to be important in my life. Maybe that's a start.

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin.

Preferences and Priorities

Last week some time I was talking to my mom on the phone and she told me about preferences. There are regular preferences, like preferring red over green or preferring cats over dogs, in other words, aesthetic preferences. Then there are preferences regarding the decisions you make in your life. Right now, I have to study. I would prefer to be writing my blog, but I would also prefer to do well on my midterm tomorrow. We talk about this in Peace by PEACE as well, except we call it "choices and consequences." It seems so simple, but it's such an effective frame of mind to have. If you don't feel like doing something important, which for me right now is studying for my midterms, then you need to reflect about what would ultimately benefit you (I happened to think that sharing my thoughts on my blog would benefit me more right now... It's good to get them out). This afternoon I decided to play computer games instead of studying because I haven't let myself relax by myself all week... I've been catching up on reading and working non-stop. So despite the fact that I have a limited amount of time to be working today, I thought that would be a priority. Sometimes it's hard to trust yourself on your preferences. But I think the important thing to do is to look at the bigger picture and try to think about what aspect of your life you've been neglecting. Lately, it has been my self.

Spending time with myself has always been pretty important to me. I love spending time with my family and friends, and of course it's very important to spend time doing school work, but spending time alone recharges me in a way that nothing else can. Often though, it is hard to justify making time for myself. It feel like I'm neglecting friendships, or that I'm inflicting a lame night on myself by spending it alone. It's hard to realize that sometimes I need to let myself do that. In The Artist's Way it was required of you to go on "Artist Dates," which were essentially outings that you would plan to go on all by yourself. I always felt like I never completely understood the concept. I think that's because I already do make sure to spend time with myself. I suppose the more daring aspect would be to go out and do something alone. Eat a restaurant, go to a museum, go for a long walk... do something in public, alone. And there were very strict instructions not to ever invite someone else along. I guess these "dates" were supposed to help you get in touch with yourself and your ideas. You aren't talking out loud, but conversations are going on in your head, and apparently, insights were likely to occur on these dates. I went to a movie during the time I was doing the course. I found it was actually alright going to a movie alone, except there was no one to whisper to about handsome actors and it felt a little silly to laugh out loud on your own. It was a romantic comedy, and at the time I got upset about being alone romantically (I think I was in a long distance relationship at the time). I'm not sure how successful it was. I guess if I kept up with doing one every week, I might start noticing the promised insights. Maybe I should start making conscious commitments to myself.

I hate it when you find yourself faced with many desirable options with how to spend your time, and you're forced to choose only one (sometimes you can manage to fit everything you'd like to do in some way or another, by compromising). I guess this is one of the main themes of life. This weekend, obviously top priority has been studying, but I was also invited to watch the Superbowl at my aunt's house. Upon accepting the invitation, I realized that my residence was having its overdue Traditional Ceremony tonight, in which the people in the residence get indoctrinated officially. Although I've been looking forward to Traditionals for a long time, I decided that I would much prefer spending time with my family. This decision was based off of what my mental health needs are at the moment. I'm really looking forward to it!

This week I had an amazing experience at Peace by PEACE. Our programming went really well, because we divided the kids up into smaller groups. There was also a substitute teacher in the classroom this week, and I found myself with the necessary respect from the children to be able to get them out the door for recess and get them settled down, as children often have a hard time reconciling themselves to listening to substitute teachers. It felt like something I could see myself doing everyday and feeling satisfied. I know that teaching isn't always peachy, and that some days it would be hard to control any classroom, and it would be hard to gain the class' respect in the first place, but for the first time it felt attainable. Since then I've tried to sort out my program of study to make sure I have teachables, to leave open the possibility of continuing after my undergrad to become a teacher. Right now, I've decided on a Major in Psychology, and Minors in Sociology and English (at U of T you have to do a Major and two Minors, or two Majors, or one Specialist). I was delighted to find out that Sociology is a teachable. The major in Psychology is useful for education in itself, but it will also set me up for any kind of career in counselling.

SO reflecting on preferences and priorities when making decisions, big or small, in life seems to be helpful. Though I've found it's still hard to listen to yourself once you have made a decision. I was reading about "Culture" in my Sociology textbook, and it seems like a hard thing to define, first of all. But I thought it was interesting that it said that often if you compare your culture with others, you can clarify to yourself what is important to you about your own culture. I guess that's what the purpose of this blog is, except that I'm also looking at other cultures and ideas and beliefs to try and clarify WHAT my culture is, or what my beliefs and values are. It's good to remember that and keep an eye out for more ideas and values to incorporate into my life. I have to be careful though, because the textbook pointed out that often we have "ideal cultures" and "real cultures." So basically we all have idealized beliefs about how we live our lives. I think that is very insightful. Of course we all have noble values and ambitious routines and things we would like to be practising, but sometimes everyday life just doesn't have room for them. It is hard to live by your own ideals. But the best we can do is keep those ideals in mind and implement them whenever we can, but also stay open-minded and constantly re-evaluate.

My poor wrist. It is aching from writing and typing. I've been taking a lot of notes this week... I just hope it doesn't turn into anything serious and that it's just a temporary strain. I can't exactly change how I hold my pen. Last night, I was worried I wouldn't be able to move in the morning because my back had so many achy parts and sensitive nerve strains. That's what happens if I skip yoga for a couple days, which, I admit guiltily, I had done. Today I did my yoga and then spent a few extra minutes lying flat on my back on the floor, and it seems to have worked itself out. PHEWF.

I've got a packed week ahead of me, but I think a lot of the little activities I've committed to are going to be fun. I'm going to see The Artist on Friday, so that's something I will really be looking forward to.

That's it for now. I hope there was some tasty food for your thoughts in this entry.

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin.

Comic Relief

It's been a long, strange week. But I made it to the end. Congratulations to everyone else for making it to Friday too.

It's been one of those weeks where it feels like I was trapped inside myself, unable to stop myself from being irresponsible and lazy. I did eventually get that Murrow presentation finished, the night before I had to do it. Things started looking up on Thursday (yesterday), because the presentation went really well. I didn't do much else yesterday though, because I thought I deserved to just chill. Then I realized that's what I've been doing all week: coasting, avoiding. Today I feel like a new woman. I've made one of my lists of everything I need to do and the amount of time I have to do it. I feel much more organized and focused now. I guess we all get in ruts like the one I was in this week. The important thing is not to get too upset at yourself for doing that. Everybody needs a break sometimes.

Yesterday and today I drew some comics:

These comics have provided me with a wonderful way to remove myself from any other kind of thought. I am starting to remember the magical healing powers of drawing and colouring. Especially colouring, because it's so systematic and satisfying. I feel like seeking out a colouring book and buying myself one of those 64-packs of crayons. Crayons have always been my favourite colouring stick. Markers are too bold, and sometimes pencil crayons remind me of this horrible project I was forced to do in middle school for art class. The teacher wanted us to do a pointillism-style picture. Needless to say, as a perfectionist child, it took me weeks. And we had to use pencil crayons. I remember one night crying over it because I had to get it done because the teacher was mad at me for it being so late. It ruined pencil crayons and dots for me. I don't know why she wouldn't let us use paint, that would have been much easier.

Once again, Sam Roberts has been the hero of my life. Lately his music has been uplifting, and calming and inspiring when it needs to be. I have been listening to and trying to get to know his new album, Collider. I still haven't listened to it enough to know all the songs, but I find myself "craving" some of them, if you know what I mean. It's a very nice mix of his old style and a newer, almost bluesy style. I don't know music terms very well, or at least don't really know how to critique music because I don't have a very big repertoire of artists in my mind, but I appreciate music. Sometimes it takes me a few listens to really get certain music, but I'm always trying to see what is good about it. Music is an amazing thing. I feel like it's quite unlike any other thing in the world. I just wish I had more of an affinity to playing it. I used to play piano, and I enjoyed it. But I wish I had to ability to write my own music. Music is such a unique language. Everybody can understand it. And it has the ability to convey so much feeling and so emotion. It can tell stories, and make you empathize. I love it. It's beautiful. The best way to experience music by far is by going to live concerts. Such an energy is created during concerts, because you're able to see the musicians at their work, loving it, and loving that you're there to hear them, loving that they get to share their passion with you.

I have started wrapping my mind around writing for my college's newspaper. I don't know how I would do writing newspaper articles. I guess what I do here is a little bit like that. I would just hope that I could find interesting things to write about. The only thing I worry about is how much of an extra commitment it would be. But I guess it wouldn't feel like a commitment if I enjoyed doing it. I met some people who work at The Strand (that's what the newspaper is called) last night and they were people I liked being around. Of course, one of my best friends in Toronto does art for it, so it's no surprise.

I'm hoping that this week, in between catching up on all my readings and preparing for future essays and projects, that I will be able to do some writing. Today I have been feeling particularly inspired. The annoying thing that happens is when I don't feel like doing work, so I procrastinate by doing useless things like playing Tetris and scrolling through Facebook, when I could have been spending all that time not doing work and writing instead. I think it feels like writing would be some kind of admission that I am not doing my work, because I'm completely committing to doing something else. Whereas with Facebook you can keep pretending that you're going to get off in a few minutes. What a fiend Facebook is. I've been considering taking a week or two off from it. My mom is thinking of "giving it up for lent." It's an idea.

One of my friends told me that he got some advice about making specific weekly times to write for yourself, and never, ever, breaking those commitments. I think that's a great idea. Maybe I'll try it. The next step is deciding how much time and when...

As for this blog, I'm afraid this post hasn't been very exciting, but I haven't done a post in a while, and I wanted to reconnect. Hopefully this coming week I will have lots to say about how much work I got done and what a productive week it was. Maybe I'll have some writing to post.

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Every once in a while, when I have a particularly important presentation, that I must finish in a very specific amount of time... I completely waste the time provided. This leads to a generally panicked couple of days until the presentation is over with. Welcome to my Edward R. Murrow presentation.

I am finding the man is actually pretty fascinating, but I feel like I could never get all the details right. Either way, I'm learning that he had a lot of integrity and determination, and spent a lot of time in Europe learning about world affairs first hand. He interviewed famous writers, and even people like Gandhi and Trotsky. Or at least, organized the interviews. He made sure that CBS was there for minute-by-minute updates of the war, broadcasting during the London bombing. I am shocked at what an outspoken and short-tempered man he is made out to be. I suppose my only impression of him comes from the youtube videos of his broadcasts, in which he seems calm and collected, but serious and knowledgeable (of course he would be on television). I watched the movie made about him, Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney (who also plays Fred Friendly, the man Murrow worked on the program that aired the episodes about McCarthy). The guy who plays Murrow makes him out to be above any kind of overreaction to worrisome events. He takes everything in stride. According to my sources, everything else about that movie is extremely accurate. But anyway, Murrow eventually started a program with Friendly called See It Now, in which he aired episodes demonstrating the unjust tactics McCarthy was using to convict supposed Communists in the US government. Murrow agreed that the Communists should be rooted out, but McCarthy was giving people unfair trials, and Murrow didn't agree with that. There is a famous broadcast in which he points out McCarthy making a fool of himself with false accusations and hearsay. This was a HUGE risk for Murrow, especially considering the subject of McCarthy's convictions---Murrow was risking his own reputation, knowing that McCarthy would return with an accusation of him being a Communist. He had also lost the funding of advertisers when they knew that Murrow was going to do the episode. He had everyone on edge, all for the sake of giving the American people substance, not froth, in their news. Murrow also had always been against "editorializing," and by doing the McCarthy broadcast, he was breaking his own policy, representing a very clearly biased view. He gave McCarthy fair time to respond, and requested that it be McCarthy directly, not a correspondent. McCarthy's response made him a fool, and he was soon put under investigation by the US Senate (I think... anyway, some kind of governing body put him under investigation). But despite his triumph, Murrow was shelved, because advertisers didn't like his risky presentations. They didn't want to be affiliated with controversial news delivery. So Murrow was all but fired when he was demoted to fewer shows, and in a crappy time slot. He went on to work for the United States Information Agency, appointed by JFK. He resigned after JFK's assassination and Lyndon B. Johnson's rise to presidency. I haven't read much about that time period in his life, because his work with CBS had much more of an impact on his decade. My favourite thing about him was a speech he made at a Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) Convention in 1958. Here's the link:
http://www.rtdna.org/pages/media_items/edward-r.-murrow1106.php?id=1106

Here is a youtube video of his McCarthy episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anNEJJYLU8M

SO that's my blurb of what I know and think is interesting about McCarthy, but still, here I am late on Sunday night, after wasting a Saturday worrying, with the bear bones of what I'm going to say down, and a timeline half-finished to enable me to clarify for myself everything that happened to Murrow. Sometimes I worry that doing things like this are a waste of time. But I think I do them because I want to do projects well. I spend a lot of time on details, which is also often my downfall. I need some kind of expression about how details are not as important as the whole or something. But anyway. The lack of work that has been completed is extremely worrisome, because tomorrow my day is so packed, I don't think there will be any time to breathe. Tuesday, it will be somewhat as busy, but I'm going to put my Murrow project as a priority over other work for now (remember how I said presentations and projects put all other school work/things in my life on hold? I know it's a bad work habit, but once again, I've left myself no choice). This means that I'll be behind on Sociology readings, and I'm already behind on Psychology readings. Next year, I definitely won't be taking on so much. I only did because every one told me it was the right thing to do to get super involved. I thought so myself, but I think I forgot about "everything in moderation."

Well, I suppose I should get some sleep before my big day tomorrow. I'm going to be absolutely exhausted by the end of my day tomorrow. Then it's another early morning on Tuesday...

The only thing I know is that, despite how impossible my week seems right now, and how far away the completion of my presentation preparation seems, time keeps going, which means that eventually, all this stuff is going to happen, some way, some how. I am just going to do my best to keep my cool, and trust that it will go smoothly.

Good night, and good luck.

Erin

Tossing and Turning in Toronto

As is apparent from my title (get it? It's like Sleepless in Seattle), I am having major troubles falling asleep at night. The frustrating thing is that I can't seem to stop sleeping in the morning. So why can't I garner the desire to sleep from the morning and apply it to my nights?

I hate the feeling of lying there, first on your back, then on one side, then the other... and knowing that the minutes are ticking by and you still aren't sleeping. Being aware of not sleeping makes the possibility of sleep even worse. Turning the light on to read I feel is counter to falling asleep or feeling tired. I guess lately I just can't turn my mind off. Some nights it's because of worrying or feeling sad, some nights it's because I'm so excited about all the things that are going on. I wish I could tell my brain to save the thoughts til morning. I just hope this problem remedies itself soon, because I'm sick of sleeping away my mornings and feeling disgruntled because of it.

Today, I read a lot about brains and how they work. It was one of my Psychology chapters. What a crazily complex system that resides inside us! I am most amazed that humans were able to get down to the nitty gritty of the structures of neurons and the structure of DNA. Neurons aren't actually attached, but the information is passed from one to the next somehow through the synapse or the synaptic cleft (which is the space between the dendrites and the terminal buttons)...I haven't got it all straight yet, but it's still incredible. Just the awesome (in the true sense of the word) ability of the brain to compensate for itself, by taking on functions of damaged parts, or growing new parts blows my mind (is that possible?).

I still have an entire chapter to read before Monday (another fifty pages or so), as well as a Sociology chapter. And of course my Murrow presentation. We've decided to put off Pulp Fiction until next Saturday, so instead I'm going to watch Good Night, and Good Luck which is a film about Edward Murrow. I consulted my professor and he said it's a great movie. Hooray.

Speaking of reading, I just "finished" one of my Philosophy readings. This one was by Thomas Nagel called "What is it Like to be a Bat?" or something like that. The funny thing about getting my Philosophy readings done is that reading them is like a race to see how quickly I can read the words. They meant absolutely nothing to me. It's pretty much an exercise in word-recognition. It's a very good activity to do for getting other thinking done while you do it. Oh dear, Philosophy. How you fail to capture my interest. This one was actually pretty accessibly written I think, but still none of it registered. Usually it's all in some foreign version of English, like reading a whole different language and pretending you understand. When I'm tired, I try to read and I fall asleep. When I'm perfectly awake, I read and nothing computes. There's no way to win. Then, in lectures, no matter how rested I feel, I doze off or get engrossed in my doodling. Good thing there's a handout for every class and good thing he gives us review pages that give us exactly what will be on the exam. I just feel bad for my TA in tutorials when he asks us questions about the readings or anything else, and at first, without prompting, the class is silent, staring at the desk, pretending to think... eventually some discussions get going, but I find even those make me end up questioning why we even bother because the TA makes it impossible to come up with a satisfactory answer. And some of his arguments don't make sense, or they do, but, like many comparisons and objections in Philosophy, are overexaggerations or use unrealistic reasoning. My brain just aches by the end of it. At this point, I'm just trying to get through Philosophy and looking forward to the time when I never have to take another Philosophy class in my life.

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed that I don't enjoy Philosophy. And many people tell me not to judge it by the Intro course, but I have a feeling that I won't enjoy Philosophy, the way it's taught, in any form. Of course I'm interested in the issues, but I'm almost turned off the by the ambition and confidence with which it's dealt with. All these writers write like they have the key. And the professor and my TA tell me to write like I have the answers and to support my answers. How can they and how can I? There are no answers, that's why we study it. And I'm just a university student! These valiant attempts are always bound to be nit-picked apart by all the other philosophers, leaving you discouraged. I know you can't find answers without a lot of attempts at hypotheses, but a lot of the attempts just seem like a waste of time. I think I'm having a hard time explaining myself here. I think basically, there are some things that we really just can't explain and never will be able to explain. And I hate the philosophers who try to explain the unexplainable (for instance, something that we have mostly agreed is spiritual) by saying that there is an intricate scientific process to it because you can compare it to some other scientific process. I don't know why we don't all get stumped at skepticism. All philosophers arrive there at some point, and yet they keep going. I think most of all I hate the obsession, the mania, with trying to make everything in life something you can explain. Why does everything we experience have to be concretely understandable? Why can't we let some things just be? I feel like we're going to lose knowledge with some of the solutions we find, or rather, if we find solutions to certain things.

On the other hand, I'm about to dive into an exploration of Psychology (because I'm hoping to major in it). Psychology is explaining behaviours, feelings, thoughts. It might be getting close to the point I described above, but it's fascinating. I want to know more. It's amazing the things that can subconsciously alter your mind. I want to understand it, so I can understand myself, and help others understand themselves.

MIND. That is the big question that has been raised in my Philosophy class these days: What is your mind? Is it spiritual or physical? To me, it seems like a silly question. Even though I've just learned about all the complex functions of the brain, I still believe there's something about the mind that isn't the result of those functions. Something immeasurable, and therefore spiritual. What is it? I don't know if I would call it consciousness. I don't even think it is necessarily confined to your brain. I feel like the mind is what connects us to our history, like Octavio Paz's Other Voice. The mind carries the consciousness and experience of generations. It carries the wisdom of creativity and inspiration and the ability to think abstractly. I will have to keep thinking about how I feel about it, especially because I'm already starting to question if I'm so sure that it isn't just the physical processes of our brains. That just seems like such a cold, hard explanation. Maybe mind is soul? I don't know, apparently it's already too late in the night  for me to be contemplating these things.

I have a theory (or hypothesis...I'm confused) that my most creative time of day is around noon. I have class at noon every single day, and throughout those classes I see designs in every open space of my page and I can't seem to stop drawing. Either that's my most creative time of day, or those are boring classes. I think I would like to test this theo...hypothesis? by doing something creative at noon on a day that I don't have class. I wonder if there even is a creative time of day. Maybe the theory is that I have a particularly creative time of day, and the hypothesis is that my most creative time of day is at noon... I think this is evidence of my brain trying to absorb the Psychology knowledge.

Well, I think I will bring this rather eclectic and questioning post to an end. Hopefully now that some of these thoughts have been typed out, I won't have such a hard time falling asleep tonight. I want to get up early and get things done before my tutorial.

By the way, I'd just like to make a note about how often I'd like to be doing these posts. Really, I've been doing them when I feel like doing them, which so far, has been every day. But I won't be expecting myself to do them every day. But you never know, I might. I think in future I'd like to take a few days to ruminate on a subject before I write a post so it can be a little bit more structured and coherent... as it is I'm just splatting my thoughts onto the post. Which is good in some ways, I suppose. Stay tuned.

Good night, and good luck.

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin.

The English Patient

PHEWF. You know that feeling when you're nearing the end of a book, and you don't want it to end, but you have to keep going because you have to see how it will end up? That was my adventure last night with The English Patient.


I usually pull whatever book that I'm reading out while I floss (because my flossing takes time, I have a built in retainer...anyhoo). I happened to be nearing the end of The English Patient last night, but I kind of thought I could get another evening out of it. Not so. This novel is so brilliantly written. A review on the front of it calls the writing "dreamlike" and I think I would describe it that way too. You get this strange perspective on the characters, but nevertheless get thoroughly attached and invested. I found Ondaatje's writing to be like poetry and it was a delicious read. And needless to say he dragged me kicking and screaming through the conclusion of the book...I was physically unable to put it down until I had finished it. The ending was...impeccable. I always get worried at the end of books because endings are a very tricky thing to handle, and, most often, are very disappointing and sometimes careless. Although it wasn't happy-ever-after, it was satisfying. And he ended the book with an amazing case of synchronicity. I'm not even kidding (how synchronous is that). I'm not sure if I should even explain, because everybody that reads this blog has to go and read The English Patient. But the very last instance of the book was heartbreakingly romantic and wonderful. It's only three hundred pages, the writing is beautiful and the story is compelling. For me, it was a refreshing take on writing. I have been starting books and putting them down, just feeling like everyone is doing the same thing over and over again. But this completely differently style hooked me and dragged me. I am very sad it's over, but, I am filled with the satisfaction of an author handling me responsibly as a reader.

In other news, I have been having a rough day. My work is becoming a pile threatening to topple. I am beating myself up for thinking I could afford to take a break last Friday. Suddenly, I have not one, but TWO fifty-page Psychology chapters, another long, boring Sociology chapter, lecture notes to go over, and worst of all... a presentation next week. The presentation is what has kicked me in the shins. Suddenly, it's here, and I have to do it next Thursday. I knew it would creep up on me because it's so early in the semester. Basically I have to impersonate Edward R. Murrow, a controversial American news anchor from the fifties. His claim to fame is a hounding of McCarthy. It's interesting, but I'm the kind of person that likes to be prepared and I feel like a week isn't enough. But I have to make the best of it, and that's that.

Wouldn't it be nice if university was just lectures and readings? Those are easy enough to balance throughout the week. There's just enough time in a week to get that basic work done. But throw a presentation or an essay in, and I crumple. I guess that's one of the big things you learn in university: time management. Refiguring of the way you manage your time CONSTANTLY. It drives me nuts.

The other thing that overwhelms me when I have a lot of work to do, is my extra-curricular commitments. They're very minor, and they're enjoyable and always turn out to be a nice break, but nevertheless, it feels like there's no time left in your day if there's an extra-curricular thing you have to do. Tomorrow morning, for an hour, I am volunteering at the fair trade cafe at my college. It's only an hour, and I love the person I work with, and I always come out feeling calm and centered. But every week it's a fight to remind myself how much I like it, and that my morning wouldn't have consisted of anything much more productive than that. In fact, I manage to use the small blocks of time surrounding it to get stuff done. Then, on Fridays, I go to a school in the afternoon after my Philosophy tutorial. I kind of fell into this by accident. I applied because (for some reason) I thought there would be consultation if I were accepted, to see if I still wanted to do it. Counting on that, I signed up for a different school opportunity that I wanted to do much more. Then, one day, I get an email telling me what school I'll be going to and the name of the teacher. YIKES! WAIT! WHAT? But anyway, being raised as a person who follows through on commitments, I went. And it definitely wasn't my cup of tea. I struggled with the teacher at first and the way she did things, and felt awkward and like I had no experience (because I don't). But now, as the weeks have gone by, I have become inevitably attached to and charmed by the kids, and I understand the teacher's relationship with them much better than when I first started out. I also understand the way the teacher functions. It's still not how I like to do things, but I get it and I respect it and I just flit around the world she has created and do what she tells me to do to the best of my ability. And it is good experience.

The other "school thing" I'm doing is called Peace by PEACE and it's a conflict resolution workshop that, with a team, I go in and teach to a grade four class. We talk about how conflict is an inevitable part of everyone's life and can't be avoided. We talk about the escalation of conflict, and recognizing where you are in that escalation so you can use methods to cool down from your anger. Next week, we'll be teaching them about empathy and I-statements (taking ownership of your feelings and not trying to implicate other people in their side of the conflict). Later on, we'll talk about self esteem and inner power and bullying and accepting each other's differences.  It's pretty great. What I like is the fact that we're reaching out to people while they're young and trying to give them skills to grow with. I'd like to develop a similar program of some sort when I'm older, and maybe something I can incorporate into the education system that makes education less competitive and more beneficial, that teaches kids social skills and awareness and acceptance. It's very idealistic, but it's what matters to me. You want the world to be different? You have to reach out and respect the younger generation. Stop filling them with hopelessness and doom and give them power and aspirations. Anyway, Peace by PEACE is a cool program, but it also requires a small amount of preparation, which means more work for me on top of my school work. And an early Tuesday morning *groan.*

I think that's all the time I can sacrifice today, and I think this has been a productive way to procrastinate, rather than browsing the pages of Facebook. Tell me where you think we need to start in order to see changes in the world.

Your friendly neighbourhood Erin.