Life Tip #3 Online Relationship Advice

Any relationship advice found on Yahoo! is invalid. Ignore it. Good advice is "encounter each person as an individual, adapt to them individually as much as you can (and expect the same in return) without becoming dysfunctional and without any harm coming to either of you. If you cannot do this or they cannot do this, this is not the right person for you. Move on."

Statements that begin with "men are/think" or "women are/think" are, largely, incorrect. And, if not incorrect, deeply tragic.

Life Tip #2 Being Your Best Self

It has come to my attention that a lot of people are throwing out the term "be yourself" pretty liberally. That and "never change." I'd like to address that.

Now, I'm very much for being you, hopefully you can see that if you look at my other blog, but we're hitting some disparities here.

You should always strive to be your BEST SELF. Not just yourself.

And, you should change. You will change. Change is the nature of all living things. Only the dead are unchanged. Don't give up the choice of what about you will change to the forces of time and nature.

I read a "secret" (you know, that post secret thing) where a young guy says "everyone thinks I'm an asshole, but I'm not going to change, because an asshole is who I am."

Well...that sucks.

This is where our society (and apparently our teens) have gotten so confused.

Remember when you were six and you were still eating your boogies or you wouldn't let anyone clean your face or you always wet your bed? Remember? If "not changing" was the best thing you'd still have a dirty face, and still be picking your nose and licking your fingers, and still be peeing your bed. Why did you have to change? It was "natural," right? It was "you," right?

But it wasn't your best you.

You know the kid at the daycare who bites? And the one who steals the other kids' snacks? The kid who screams for hours after his mom leaves? Do we let them do this? Do we encourage little Johnny to keep biting and the kids who scream or slap him when he does to keep screaming and slapping? No, we don't. Why? Just like this self-described "asshole" in the post secret, he's just being "himself." Why then, do we tell him to apologize or encourage pro-social behavior? Why do we stop the other kids from screaming and hitting him?

Because he's not being his best self.

It's a tragedy when someone looks at themselves, and believes that by being stagnate, by holding on to qualities that hurt themselves and others, they're somehow being "true" to themselves.

When I was younger I used to have panic attacks- they sucked. I also didn't trust men. I corrected everyone's grammar. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? But I realized that though having panic attacks might be natural, it wasn't best. And while I had good reasons not to trust men, it wasn't conducive to my happiness or to that of others. And while the language was falling down around me, correcting everyone only made other people feel stupid and resentful and it didn't stop bad grammar from happening.

So, I change. I learned to be better. And it was a good thing.

So, how about this;

Don't be yourself, be your best self.

Life Tip #1 Insulting Yourself

Here's a little bit of info that I know changed my life when I learned it (really learned it).

When you insult yourself, people tend to believe you. After all, it's coming strait from the source.
Humility and self-self-flagellation are not the same thing.

Boston Bombing

Today two bombs went off during the Boston marathon. Last I knew three were dead, several critical, around 130 wounded.

My heart breaks for all those effected. My heart breaks for Boston.

This was evil. Tragic, and evil. Done by people who have given themselves to evil.

But there is also still good in the world; kindness, trustworthiness, valor. Cling to those things.

Seek justice, refuse fear, cling to virtue

and sleep in peace.

My heart and prayers go out to all tonight.

Matt Long Throwing Demo

Had the privilege of going to a demo yesterday. Master potter Matt Long was the one doing the demo. I guess he's teaching at the University of Mississippi right now, as well as doing his own work. As the only novice potter in the group I was quite enamoured by what he was doing.

He often designs his pieces using slip, and, what appears to me, strong control over a goo-like medium.

He also made a really wonky looking teapot. Not bad-wonky, he did it on purpose. Though my mind kept thinking that it wasn't so practical for actually drinking tea, but he'd said that in the beginning, that practicality for drinking tea was not his purpose in making it.

What I find amazes me about potters, is that many of them seem much more like "smiths" than artists. It's like a smith that has full use of all the artistic vocabulary. Far more than the art girls I see wandering the halls. These men (and I'm sure there are women, too) own the words, these words are part of their everyday vocabulary, and yet the physical appearance doesn't match the assumed stereotype. These men do hard work, they get dirty, they don't exist in an existential land of finery. I love it! I wonder if it's just the 3-D mediums, or only some 3-D mediums or if it's "men" taking art for themselves (and there's nothing wrong with that).

I can see how mediums like clay can really draw in men, because it requires an understanding of math and chemistry as well as a physicality that mediums like painting don't. And, I've heard before, though it was mentioned again today, that it can satisfy different interests inside of you. Pottery (and perhaps glass, and wood, and metal) are multidisciplinary.

I'm also struck by how gentle and confident their hands are, and they seem perpetually patient. I have a hard time conceiving of potters screaming.

I wonder, do men feel free from the expectation of appearance, or is it that once they've come to a point where they're regularly selling their work that whether or not they look like people expect no longer matters to them?

Matt long also said a couple things I thought were kind of awesome while he was working on the wheel (and who can talk and do that at the same time? I can't even listen to music and do pottery) so I'm going to quote him now;
"You can do whatever you want to do if you're willing to do whatever it takes to get there."

"Happiness is worth a lot, so is your health."

"Why try so hard to ascribe concept to a coffee cup when its' a damn good coffee cup and people are going to love it?"

He sells his porcelain clay if you want to buy it. It seemed very obedient but I am too new at clay to know if that was a quality of the clay or of the potter's skill.

I also enjoyed hearing him talk about his home and family and enjoying life in Mississippi. Overall it was a very good demo and really really amazing to see him work and to see the way such a small community of individuals interact.

Here are a few more pictures from the event:

Review of the $64 Tomato by William Alexander

I got this book from my local library a few days ago (in lieu of returning the other books). I may not make it through the *whole* book because I have 100+ pages of psych reading to do in the next few days but I wanted to give a review of it because the quality is evident.

Picture of the book The $64 Tomato by William
Alexader, picture from NPR

Let me explain through a personal anecdote;

Yesterday, I went to my experimental psychology class; bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to study t-tests and one way ANOVAs. The professor spent most of the class talking about what could and could not constitute observational research. It was...I'm not going to say a waste of my time, no learning is a waste of my time, but it wasn't what I was expecting or interested in. Well, I thought, now would be a perfect time to read a bit more in that Expensive Tomato book. So, I pulled out the book, laid it open on my text book like a dirty magazine I didn't want to get caught with, and began reading. At one point, I read a line and began to choke. Now, I'm a front-row student, in an auditorium class, and it would be rude, and draw lots of attention, if I were to suddenly double over laughing while the professor is pointing out the downsides of archival research. So, instead I found myself snorting and choking, trying to hold in peels of joviality, and looking for all the world like I was having problems with breathing.

Later, when I was free from the class, and the day's restraints, I went to a pub, bought a beer, and read some more where no one would mind the occasional peal of laughter.

This is a wonderful book.

The writing is superb. This is what writing should be like. And yet, it has a fun wit, a hopefulness, and a fondness for life that most literary works thoroughly lack. It definitely leans more towards A.J. Jacobs territory in (memoir)humor, which I can't complain about since I also love .A.J. Jacobs books. Laughter is medicine for the soul, laughter and information, who could ask for better than that?

I find the sexual innuendo in the book to be wonderful and tactful and tactless at the same time. Being relatively low on the sexual activity scale myself, I find I have the humor of a 13 year-old boy, so this suited me quite well.

The fondness with which he speaks of his wife and his family and his life are deeply refreshing and encouraging.

I also find the information about gardening to be fun and interesting as I'm growing a garden of my own (I may not want to know what my own "overhead" is). He describes the highs and lows of that glorious and gorry dance called "gardening" with a comforting sense of awe, determination, and self-deprication.

And the voice, though the narrator is male, is one that I relate to without fail (it could be the writing is that good, it could be that all English majors think a little alike, it could be I wouldn't have picked up the book except that it struck a fraternal cord in me).

I find myself sad that I can't just put the book on my shelf to go back and pick up and read whenever I need information or a laugh. I find myself wanting to highlight the really witty or profound parts so I can quote them on facebook.

I may not have finished the book, but I already know the quality of it; very very high.

I give it a 4.6 of 5 stars.

Burheim Forest

It's been a long day, a long week (emotionally). I could complain, but I bought a paper journal for that. I plan to burn it once it's full.

I spent some hours at Berheim forest today. Though, really, it feels more like an extensive park. Not that I'm complaining. I love it and have wanted to go back since I visited last summer for my painting class. It was just what my trite heartsickness needed. That and a healthy dose of JJ Heller music and some dripping out of that internal vitriol into the journal.

My latest art project is horrible. Horrible...might be too kind of a word. The only way it could be worse is if it were a blob of over-wet clay, or made to poorly resemble a penis. It's not done, I wasted all my clay on it. Critique is tomorrow.

Have I mentioned I'm a perfectionist?

So, when other people think "aw, shucks," my brain almost automatically goes to 'why is suicide a bad option?' (answer; "Because it always is. Any permanent solution to a temporary problem is a VERY BAD OPTION)

Now, I would call this a fit of pique, but that would be like calling a tsunami a "bit of a wave."

There's a reason I don't trust my own emotions, especially at first. This is pretty much why. I'm high affect intensity.

Get this, perfectionist and high affect intensity. Yeah, I know.

Now, 5 years ago an episode like this would have resulted in me being sucked into the miry black pit of despair for days, or giving up all together.

Now, I got to my car and cry, mope around for a few hours in the forest, and pick myself back up with a plan. That plan is to beg my professor to let me sit out of critique tomorrow and just start over, even if that means my last piece isn't fired.

There's more to the plan, but there was more to me being upset and that's just for me to know.


A picture of Bernheim from the Ky toursim website

Berheim was lovely, even without much color, or warmth. Actually, I loved the cold weather because I didn't spend the entire time terrified of ticks. Ticks are, to me, what spiders are to most. They are, literally, the stuff of my nightmares. Anything to reduce the likelihood of those disease infested blood suckers attaching their armoured bodies to me is good in my book.

That said, the grasses were lovely, the pond was lovely, the gnarled twisted trees were lovely, the ground cover was lovely. It was nice. I saw birds I don't usually see. I got to read a bit in my psychology book, which made me feel productive, which is vital to making me feel not depressed and despairing.

I got to practice being mindful and in-the-moment.

The silent peaceful moment.

It was nice. I needed it. I hope to go back soon.

The evening ended with a chat on the phone with a friend and a red ale at the local micro-brewery.

This week has been rough on my psyche. I could complain, but I won't.