Lock in and let go

I'm not a Celebrity Cult kind of person, but I was really struck by this interview when I caught it on NPR this morning.

"Lock in and let go" seems to be good advice for lots of things, not just acting and riding cutting horses.

A Little Online Dating Advice

This is not advice about finding Twoo Wuv online.  I have no experience with that.

I do, however, have some suggestions about how to go on Nice First Dates.  About four years ago, I tried online dating for the first time, and it was kind of a disaster.  Not a disaster for my comedy routine, should I ever have one, but I went on a lot of bad dates.  If we were friends then, you probably remember some of the stories: the suicidal robin, the tattoo artist and ferret breeder, etc.

This time, however, it's been different.  I've gone on four first dates in six weeks with four different guys, and every single one of them has been pleasant.  I am four for four!  And while four is not a statistically significant result, but here's what I've done differently this time, and what I suggest. 

Be honest.  Or, in other words, own it.  I am not apologizing about the PhD or hiding the fact that I have one.  Nor am I hiding the fact that I'm short, curvy, and have a crooked nose and glasses.  Get that up on your profile right away so you can weed out the guys who aren't into that sort of thing.

Be selective.  In my first attempt, I decided to accept every date and write back to every (non-offensive) message, just to keep my options open.  This was a bad move.  It was a waste of energy and I spent a lot of time being frustrated that I spent time corresponding with jerks.  So don't correspond with jerks.  And don't get involved in elaborate correspondence with some computer scientist in Finland.  Talk to people you could actually meet.  Speaking of which...

Meet early. All the written chemistry in the world does not necessarily mean chemistry in person.  So don't let the messaging go on for ever.  A cup of coffee after three or four messages is totally fine.

Set low expectations.  Remember that it's just coffee.  Or dinner.  Or a walk through the farmer's market.  Or whatever it is.  It is not a referendum on your attractiveness or lovable-ness.  It is not a marriage proposal. So you go, then, not expecting to meet The One (tm), but rather expecting to have a pleasant hour or so. 

Give him a chance.  If the guy seems polite and reasonably attractive, then go.  If it isn't pleasant, you never have to go again.  But it's worthwhile, particularly for academics, to practice basic social skills.  So give it a shot. 

Be kind. Not working out?  Say so clearly, kindly, and quickly.  "Thanks so much for a lovely evening.  You seem like a great guy, but I don't think we're a match."  Done.

Be safe.  I did this the first time, but it's worth emphasizing.  Meet in a public place.  Tell your best friend who you're meeting, where you're meeting, and what time you'll call her to let her know how it went. 

Thursday reading

There's a new report out from Pew Research on singleness, marriage, education, and economics in America, if you're in interested in that kind of thing.

A few particularly relevant findings for this blog and its (two) readers:

• "Today’s young adults are slow to tie the knot, and a rising share may end up not getting married at all." 
• "For young adults who want to get married, financial security is a significant hurdle."
• "Among never-married young adults with post-graduate degrees, women outnumber men by a large margin." [No surprise there, sez I.]

Do read it all.

On ISIS, education, and women

Dear all,

Here's your reading for today.

Fondly,

A girl with a book

What would I do differently?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately for some reason.  What would I do differently in my life if I knew I were never going to get married? And you know, having thought about it for a while, here's what I've got:

1. I would stop looking.  I would de-activate the online profile thing, I would stop glancing at the left hand of every cute man who's roughly my age that I meet.  I would simply stop caring.  This big lurking question would be answered, and I would have to think about other things, but not about that any more. 

2. I would cut my hair.  I have had short(ish) hair most of my life, and about four years ago, I decided to grow it out.   It's been long(ish) ever since.  Several years ago, though, a male friend of mine made the kind of remark in passing that has stuck with me.  As a throwaway comment, he quipped, "if you'd always had long hair, you would have been married years ago!"  It was profoundly hurtful, implying not only that my primary value as a woman is in the way men (particularly him) think of my appearance, but also that the solution to something that has been hard--being single for almost all of my adult life--could easily have been mine had I only followed this one totally obvious piece of advice.  I'm not consciously keeping my hair long because I think he was right, but I wonder how much those words are rattling around in the back of my head.

I don't think I'm ready to stop looking--although I should probably stop doing the ring scan--but I may get a dramatic haircut anyway. 

Small victories in street harassment

One of my favorite things about my new life is that I can walk to my office. 

Today was the first day in six weeks that I have walked all the way there and all the way back home without a single instance of a man: whistling at me, screaming at me, honking a car horn at me, making a rude gesture at me, yelling at me, or grabbing his crotch in front of me.

Today, I just walked there and walked home. 

Moving on

I had a tough time in graduate school.  Many (most?) people do, so I am certainly not unique in that.  It was, however, nearly always grueling and very often traumatic.  I felt like I was the worst version of myself: the most neurotic, anxious, tightly-wound, unhappy, irritable person I could be.  But now, miraculously, I find myself in a vibrant small city, with kind colleagues and interesting students, with a paycheck and dental insurance.  I feel the surfeit of anxiety and anger and cynicism and defensiveness beginning to wash away.  And that---stay with me through the apparent non sequitur here---is in large part why I was so excited about The Dates. They seemed somehow emblematic of this new life, of new possibilities and opportunities, of potential.

Making a glass of wine emblematic of a major life change assigns it enormous weight, so I'm trying simply to note this feeling and do the next thing: grade the papers, find a place to jog, begin to meet people at my new church, reply to emails, go on another date... all without freaking out too much.  

Update: Actual Dates

So the first one was fine: nice conversation, nice guy.  It was friendly and collegial.  Sitting on a dock on a river watching the sunset while engaging in a little pleasant chatter with a beer in hand is a nice way to spend the evening. 


The second one was...

Well...

The second one was the way I imagine first dates should go.

This is even though I was late [&@£$ one-way streets and poorly marked parking garages in new cities!!] and overdressed [Miss Manners would say it's better to be overdressed than underdressed, and my friend A. would firmly insist that there's no such thing as overdressed].  There was a glass of good wine and a stroll around the historic downtown of the city and a few art galleries.  He was a good conversationalist, kind, funny, interesting, and well-mannered.  I found him delightful.  It was a lovely evening.   

So now I am trying to remember that you can't know much about a person in half-a-dozen emails and one evening.  I am trying to remember that a lovely evening is simultaneously both no small thing and a very small thing indeed.  I am trying not to check my phone compulsively to see if he has called.  

Not Not-A-Dates

Stop the presses.  I went on A Real Date last night (pint on a deck overlooking the river) and am going on another one tonight (swanky cocktail bar downtown).  If you're counting, that's two real dates in thirty-six hours, approximately the same number that I went on in four years in my previous town.

I continue to feel as though I am leading somebody else's life, not my own.

What's for dinner

David Lebovitz's roasted tomatoes.  Because my eyes are bigger than my stomach where the farmer's market is concerned, I have had a surfeit of cherry tomatoes over the past few weeks.  I have cooked them as Lebovitz recommends and eaten them: with a spoon directly from the pan, tossed with linguine with a teeny bit of pecornio romano grated across the top, and thrown on top of a pile of mixed greens with a few kalamata olives.

Settling in

So the antique mirror is above the fireplace.  A huge bouquet of flowers, courtesy of Best Friend O. is overflowing from a vase on the dining room table.  My grandmother's silver tea set is on the cabinet, and my great-grandmother's tea cups are inside.  The bookshelf is up, anchored to the wall, and filled with all the fiction (alphabetized by author), poetry (ditto), and miscellaneous art books, atlases of foreign countries, and crumbling antique foreign-language grammar books.  None of the plants, dug up in haste from my perennial herb garden and dumped unceremoniously into an assortment of pots, have yet died on the balcony.  The keys are in the little bowl I made as a small child on a table by the door, the good sheets are on the bed, and the cat is lounging on the desk, draping his paws over the edge.

In short, we are settling in. 

And part of that settling in means looking around and imagining a new life in a new place.

So there's the overwhelming task, overwhelming even to an extrovert like myself, of saying yes to every. single. invitation, even when it means you end up at a departmental party, looking lost, trying desperately to find some nice cheerful soul who will introduce you around so you can talk to somebody.

There's the trip to the grocery store that takes twice as long as it should, because you have to walk the entire length of the store three times before you find the bread. 

There's the church-hopping.  Best part of church hopping?  Getting to sing one of my favorite hymns four weeks in a row at four different churches.  Worst part?  Sheepishly raising hand during the "Are-there-any-newcomers-here?-please-raise-your-hand" announcement at one church, and the being completely ignored by those around me.  Awesome.

I don't feel lonely yet.  I'm recovering from a stressful summer and I am, frankly, still tired, so I've been sleeping in my spare time.  But can imagine that some time soon I may be lonely, in part because everyone is married here.  Now, I'm sure that's not true.  It can't possibly be true.  But in almost a month in new town at new job, I can't think of one person I've met who's single.  Not the co-workers, not my boss, not the new postdoc, not the IT folks, not the people I've talked to at the churches, not my TA.  Not one. 

But at the same time, I'm more relaxed in my single state than I've been in a while.  Firing up that old online dating profile to see if anything new floats to the surface in a new town several years since the last attempt has reminded me that what I've got on my own is no bad thing.  For instance, I was matched with a man who had a self-disclosed preference for a girl with "nice eyebrows."  I have no idea what that even means, and must confess that I giggled.  I mean, who on earth thinks that, much less writes it down for other people to read?  And the bigger issue still is that I promptly thought "are my eyebrows nice?" and actually thought about this later that night when I was brushing my teeth.  I looked in the mirror and evaluated my eyebrows because some stranger on the internet said he like nice eyebrows.  That's clearly a stop on the train line to CrazyTown.  So I just need to remember that being single, even if it is the extreme minority, is frankly more appealing than assessing eyebrows.

For the first day of the semester

A useful reminder: students want professors who challenge them and care about them.

A call to arms: teachers need to shape the discussion about education reform.

A soundtrack: something to hum on your way to class.

"Wisdom about love is not limited to those blessed with partners."

Sara Eckel does it again.  Read it all.

An update

Since my last post, I have finished my dissertation, moved to a new city, and started a new job.  E had already finished her PhD, but she also moved to a new city and started a new job.

So the béguinage has been full of boxes, the stress of trying to find the grocery store, eager anticipation of the actual arrival of that first paycheck, and a little bit of looking around thinking, "what have I done?"

Posting will resume at a slightly more reasonable rate soon, I hope. 

Things you should read this week

(In order of priority)

The Washington Post on the backlog in processing evidence of sexual assault.

Then, on a lighter note:

The Dissolve on female characters in movies.

First Things on Not-A-Dates.

Quotidian happenings

These things happened today:

• I got called Mrs. Lastname twice by strangers.
• I ran into an ex-boyfriend.  [Most of the men I know -- including ex-boyfriends -- are really wonderful guys and I am very fond of them.  But there are exceptions every once in a while, and this one is an exception.  Ugh.]
• I stopped at a local sandwich place for lunch and was asked, "are you two paying together?" I said no -- I had no idea who the guy in line behind me was -- and the cashier said, very loudly, "You're here ALL ALONE?!?" Because no woman could ever walk into a chain sandwich restaurant and say yes, she's dining in.  
• I was in a 45-minute meeting with one other woman and a man.  The man -- who was not originally supposed to be attending the meeting -- interrupted me and the other woman again and again and again.  I got three uninterrupted comments in.  She got two.  The meeting was supposed to be between the two of us, and we got a total of five sentences.

Not one of these things on its own is a big deal, but the weight of all of it together (especially the meeting!) took a lot out of me today. 

John Steinbeck on love

From a 1958 letter to his oldest son.  

"There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had."

Concerning #yesallwomen

I've been trying to stay apart from the #yesallwomen phenomenon sparked by egregious acts of violence at UC Santa Barbara not long ago.  This is primarily a survival strategy on my part -- I can't afford to loose that kind of anger right now.

But I do want to respond briefly by (1) posting a link which provides a glimpse of what the movement is all about, and (2) stating what I take to be the underlying point.

(1) This link publishes together 17 tweets affiliated with the movement that succinctly provide common responses to the myriad issues being discussed.  All of them are representative of the broader movement; many of them express attitudes I readily relate to.

(2) I want to respond briefly to the #notallmen counter-movement with a statement that many others have already made, but nevertheless which I believe is the major lesson to be gleaned from this:

Those of us who are speaking out against sexual harassment are not claiming that all men engage in such activities. Yet the fact remains that all of the women we know have been sexually harassed by men (hence "yes, all women").   Can you appreciate the logic here? The issue is not a call to misandry, but rather a call for men to recognize that sexual harassment is a "fact of life" for women -- even in the U.S. -- and that this is an unacceptable, intolerable state of affairs. 

In the country where I currently live, I am harassed (to varying degrees) nearly every day.  This is part of the reason why I haven't been more vocal about #yesallwomen -- it's hard enough to fight my own individual battle.  Just walking to the bus or to buy groceries or to choir practice or taking a taxi is an anxiety-inducing, stressful occasion that saps my strength noticeably.  I am constantly on-edge and often seething with anger just below the surface. It isn't this intense in the U.S. (thank God), as far as just walking on the street goes.  But it is still intolerably bad in other venues.

Awareness is the first step --and that means you, men.  Because all women are/have been/continue to be sexually harassed whether or not you are aware of it, and whether or not you are the cause of it.

We Can't Have It All... But Neither Can Men

I've been re-watching The West Wing lately. And yes -- for those of you keeping track, this marks the second time I've watched the series in less than 8 months -- a level of nerdiness on my part that is only eclipsed by the fact that I read the Tolkien cannon with even higher average frequency...

But I digress.  Last night I watched an episode in which the First Family's oldest daughter, Elizabeth, has decided to help her politically clueless husband run for Congress. Her father (President Bartlet) isn't a fan of the arrangement:

BARTLET
[Your husband's] a great guy and a fantastic father. You're the politician. Why the hell don't you run?

LIZ
Because Annie [Liz's teenaged daughter] pierced her face. And this one [holding up her son's baseball mitt] can't catch, or bathe.

BARTLET
You can handle it.

LIZ
You can't. Forgive me, Ms. Steinem and Ms. Friedan, you cannot do it
all.

BARTLET
Your mother did.

LIZ
No, Daddy. She didn't.


Bartlet goes on to apologize (in so many words) for the moments he sacrificed fatherhood on behalf of a political career, but later in the episode the First Lady -- Dr Bartlet -- also apologizes for the sacrifice her children made on behalf of her career.

And that's what got me thinking.  Elizabeth Bartlet is wrong to invoke famous feminists in the scene quoted above, because she's only taking one side of the perspective -- that of the woman/mother -- whereas the parents, President and Dr Bartlet, correctly recognize that when both parents have a career, neither parent can "have it all". Nor should they expect to.

If "having it all" for a woman means being able to pursue her career just as she would were she not a mother, than this old feminist mantra is an obvious (and, I might add, rather silly) falsehood:  having kids requires sacrifice.  But the same is true for men, and this is something we've not often talked about in connection to the question of "having it all". Should men with children be urged or expected to pursue a career as if they didn't have children? Should women?

If what is meant by "having it all" is that women can and should be enabled to successfully manage a career and a family at the same time, then I couldn't agree more -- but with qualification: it must be recognized that the success of both career and family on the part of the woman is contingent on the man's also pitching in and sacrificing in his career in order to have a family.  In other words: a woman cannot have it all if she's the only one making sacrifices.

The ultimate goal for society should not be, contra third-wave feminists, to get to a place where women can approach their careers "as if on a par with men", because this view relies on an overturned, outmoded, misplaced Mad-Men-esque gender bias that allows -- nay, encourages or even expects -- all men, including those with children, to go on behaving like bachelors.  That is, to align their time, energies, focus and career priorities in a way that supersedes or neglects all other considerations. Instead, we should aim for a society that encourages both women and men to think very differently about their careers and how they will direct their own finite resources once children are part of their story.  Hint: it ought to look different than if they were single.

This is a point the church has understood for several millennia now.  It's why until very recently (relative to its venerable age, that is) the church has always had celibates in prominent leadership roles -- people without children, without spouses.  Because the church has always recognized that the project of puzzling the deep questions of God and leading God's people in right ways is a job that requires total sacrifice to the gig.  When one has a wife or a husband or children, one cannot serve the church in the same way, and that's because he or she has a family requiring nurture as well.

The same is true of other callings, and for me that means as an academic.  I will use this time of my life when I am single to give all I can to the sort of research, teaching, and building of personal and professional relationships as only a single person can. Because I know that if one day I should enter a relationship, then having children will become a possibility and that will mean sacrifice in lots of directions... as well as great reward, of course.

Just as I was finalizing this entry, I was forwarded by a dear friend (thanks B!) a really excellent HuffPost article about Having It All, written by a woman/mother/author I know and greatly admire. I resonated with her deeply on her main point: it's important to ponder how we're defining the "all" in "having it all".  Give it a whirl (click here to read) and get back to me, will ya? Otherwise I'll go on re-watching The West Wing ad infinitum instead of pondering the deep questions of life...

Job Interview Tips

As someone who recently entered and then (thanks be to the good, sweet, merciful Lord) exited the job market, I thought I might share some nuggets of wisdom with y'all about the whole experience.

Nice thought, right?  Yeah, I'm a nice girl.
 
But then I had second thought. And that thought went something like this: "Damn! Who am I kidding? I have two book projects, four talks, and a few papers to finish before I start my first tenure-track job in three months, Oh GOD WHAT AM I DOING?!?!?!!?!"  [panicked breathing, muscle convulsions, whimpering...]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I decided not to share job market wisdom with you.  Isn't that a nice story with some sort of lurking moral? But I don't want to leave you high and dry either, dear The Readers.  So instead I've decided to post this helpful video on job interview tactics.  And by "helpful" I mean "hilarious", and by "tactics" I mean "as interpreted through the eyes of two small children."

You're welcome.

Now back to those two book projects.... [more whimpering]