I find habitual individuals wildly interesting- "really?? So, every morning you get up, return emails and then go to the gym? Every morning??"... yet have a great deal of trouble sticking to my own.
Habits reflect discipline and commitment to ones goals,
growth and, well, self. One of the reasons for my odd, okay, weird infatuation is because the most habitual people I know are some of the most compelling and successful (see my review of The Creative Habit). When I say successful I am referring to individuals who are
grounded, satisfied, and committed to growing towards some larger goal
that fulfills them each day.
We pick and choose our
experiences. The beauty of habits is that they reflect intentional
choices that add value to our greater self and take us closer to our
goals. Now of course life gets in the away, the dog must go to the vet,
the car needs an oil change, your best friend breaks up with her
boyfriend and needs support. Still, all of these are not ‘musts’ but
conscious choices that reflect your character.
I used to have a thing for Jackson Pollock and his kind. I would sit in museums, trying to look very deep and intellectual and mysterious, trying to think very deep and profound thoughts while waiting for Mr. Pollock or Mr. de Kooning or Mr. Rothko to hit me with an even deeper emotional epiphany that one would expect from, I don’t know, Gandhi or something.
“Oh the power of the profound,” I would muse, “oh the abstract expressionists… a authentic image of human reaction to increasingly chaotic world of the nuclear nineteen fifties family.”
Yes. You are correct. I used to be a professional dilettante. If you know anyone who pays for this service, by all means, send that email on over.
I imagined Pollock as an angsty artistic genius beating out his emotions with paint. I fervently defended his works among those subscribed to the “my five year old could do that” theory of art.
“You just don’t understand, ” I’d say channeling my best look of genuine sorrow and perplexity for this obviously misguided intellectual imbecile, “This, this,” I’d stress pointing to the vast painting “is reality, an utter expression of feeling, it’s more real than any realistic painting; it’s the depths below the material.”
(Above: Jackson Pollock's Lavendar Mist, 1950. Not casacade of raw
emotion materialized paint, but a very deliberate, thought out
painting.)
I’d sweep into a dramatic ending, with triumphal look of pity that said, “I am sorry you’re a shallow materialistic sheep that cares more about Britney Spears than politics or the environment or philosophy or world poverty or literature or art or, or, or anything of any true meaning in this world.”
Whipping my head back to the painting, I'd continue working my hardest at thinking deep thoughts and trying not to fidget while awaiting my epiphany about the meaning of life.
Well, you see, my analysis was very wrong. Very, very, very wrong.
My self righteous Pollock fantasies were brutally crushed during a rather grueling class my last semester at Berkeley, taught by one of CAL’s most famous art historians. I was in love with this woman; her lectures sent me on a rocket trip through the artistic solar system.
Anyways, she asks some question about a Pollock painting and I shoot my arm up high in the air, trying my darnedest not to wave it madly and literally bit-ting my tongue to prevent,
“OOOHHHH ME ME ME ME ME ME! PICK ME!!! OVER HERE!! MEEE!” from avalanching out of my mouth.
She looked severely around the room, as she generally did, pierced her eyes on me and with a deep, slow and menacing voice said, “Please, Allese”.
I spouted off some answer about unbounded emotion and feeling and passion and reality that left me sputtering in my own words, keenly aware that now some 100 students and, like my hero professor was staring back at me with wide eyes.
“Uh…. and, and and, yeah, so yeah. Right. So, yeah thus, that’s well that’summ that’s umm it.”
My face flushed in heat and I could see students staring incredulously at me and mentally comparing me to that Miss America contestant that answered,
Human rights became the centerpiece of the Academy Awards last night, as Slumdog
Millionaire and Milk stole the stage, collecting the majority of the golden men.
Where Milk speaks to the struggles of the gay and lesbian community for basic civil liberties, Slumdog shook the American psyche into reality with their high levels of liberty, justice and privilege by depicting the brutal poverty of Mumbai plagued by classism and sexism.
By honoring cinematic achievements deeply invested in widening the scope of the American socio-cultural psyche, the 2009 Academy Awards emphasized the importance of film as an artistic, subversive, and above all, highly politically medium.
Never has their been a more important time. Slumdog well puts America’s alarming unemployment rates, recession and failing economy into perspective. Similarly, the extreme bigotry and intolerance brought out by the passage of Proposition 8 in California, makes a film like Milk and the words of Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn more important than ever.
My next career will build on my values, passions, and general life goals. Subsequently, I am dedicating the next month or so to identifying and grounding myself in these and then carving out a plan of action. This foundation will allow me to make intentional career decisions that are clearly congruent with who I am, the skills I hope to develop and what I hope achieve both short and long term.
At the moment, I am talking to as many ambitious, grounded, successful, passionate, and insightful individuals as possible. I throw around my career, educational, and general life happiness goals, learn about there own, and lap up as much wisdom and advice as possible.
Yesterday, I met with my friend Michelle, an extraordinarily disciplined and insightful woman, who is in her late thirties and has built tremendously successful career. I admire her work ethic, the way she honors her routines, and her sense of perspective and depth about the world around her. Every time I meet with her, I leave motivated, inspired and filled with new ideas. Now, that’s what you want from good friendship!
After our lunch, I came up with this list of features that are essential to what I want out of my career.
The newest chick flick on the block, He’s Just Not That Into You brims with over exaggerated, unrealistic, unflattering portrayals of women. As if to make sure not one negative female stereotype was missed, the film has whopping five leading ladies who all represent some female neurosis that men fear more than the black plague. Please welcome:
Jenine (Jennifer Connelly)- The paranoid, control-freak wife who has no interest in sex. Need I say more?
Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin)- The really dumb chick that never takes a hint. And calls you every hour on the hour. (That such a loveable actress cannot make this painfully annoying character endearing, says mountains about this film… watching her is like hearing nails on a chalk board, over and over and over and over again)
Beth (Jennifer Aniston)- The girlfriend absolutely obsessed with getting the ring.
Mary (Drew Barrymore)- the lovely young lady so hopelessly out of touch with reality she genuinely believes trolling Myspace for dates is a good idea. NOTE: Trolling Myspace is never, ever a good idea.
Anna (Scarlett Johanson)- The temptress. She meets a married man and becomes certain that the stars are in there favor. Positive he will leave his wife to live happily ever after with her, she pursues, flirts, and strips causing Mr. married to question marriage. And cheat on his wife.
Essentially, the film sends the message that all women are obsessive compulsive creatures who’s lives completely revolve around the following: securing a long term relationship, securing a ring, securing a baby, oh and, securing a secret GPS system in your significant others you-know-what.
I took great interest in this article, from Back In Skinny Jeans, one of my favorite blogs, that analyzed the overtly sexual cover of this year’s swimsuit issue. I second Steph’s critique; I can’t say I was overjoyed to see Bar Rafeali, a simply beautiful model, beginning to strip off her nearly transparent bikini to showcase her petunia.
While the the image highlights Rafeali’s stellar physique and features, the stripping steals the spotlight causing the cover to be less a portrait of female beauty and sensuality, and more of an explicit sexual statement. As the focus is bluntly on her sexual goods, and subsequently, less about her, Rafeali moves from autonomous subject (i.e. empowered sensual goddess) to subjugated object (i.e. body of good looking sexual parts). Her averted gaze only accentuates this, emphasizing her as passive and disempowered.
(I wrote the following earlier this week as part of a comedy writing workshop I am taking. We were asked to write a piece on a neurosis we had---- please leave thoughts or advise!!).
Nothing excites me more than a spanking new planner. It’s sections and graphs of thirty or thirty-one or twenty-eight days are like bright lights at the annual fair, booming with prospect and excitement.
Of course I am a reasonable, sensible, rational individual. I understand that creating a perfectly color coded spreadsheet of next weeks schedule, down to, well the minute, does not mean that it will necessarily happen. But it endows me with certain high, an extraordinary sense of ambition and purpose. Control.
Staring back at a well scheduled week, I loose myself as the blocks of colored hours marked “coffee”, “walk the dog”, “write in café”, “drinks with Nicole”, “grocery shopping”, “return emails”, “therapy” begin take life in my head and blend into some beautiful movie that I imagine myself as the fascinating leading lady of. I feel satisfied and excited. I sense that I have met my destiny head on, he gave me a wink, I gave him a smile, we shook hands and decided to work together. Magic. I know. I think so too.
So, I have developed what some may term a scheduling/planning/list making substance abuse problem.
I hadn’t seen her in years. The wonders of Facebook informed us that she and I were both in London and at the same time, I visiting my newly British in-laws, she, in her last year at RADA.
At a young age, Jill set her eyes on being an actress and pursued it to the umpteenth degree. To the envy aspiring starlets everywhere, she, at the time of our meeting, was on her third call back for Juliet at the Shakespeare Globe. I often wonder if Jill was primed from the get go, supremely talented, or just really god damn lucky. My inclination is that it’s was the talent part with a dash of the later two.
After a lunch reunion joined us right back to our teenage friendship, I asked her if she found RADA hard. It was after all the most competitive theater school in the world. Hard seems to be a logical fit. She frowned for a moment, before answering slowly.
“Well… some days are hard, but when you’re doing what you really love, it’s never hard, you want to do it everyday. Each day you have to confront yourself and that’s never easy, but I couldn’t be more happy doing anything else.”
Now this is not a profound answer. I would speculate that almost every individual that truly loves what they do could provide a similar one. But, it hit me like a ton of bricks, leaving a bruise that kept me thinking long after Jill and I kissed each other goodbye. Each time I caught it’s yellowy black presence out of the corner of my eye, I was reminded that I couldn’t remember the last time I had merely a week of consistent eagerness for the day. And c’mon folks, this past year, I graduated, got my first time full job, got engaged, planned a wedding and got married. And still not a week! Well, maybe my honeymoon… but I was in a glass cabin on white sand beach. Of course I was excited to wake up like every friggin’ morning… and for a variety of very legitimate reasons.
I am what you would call subconsciously sloppy. It’s not that dishes in the sink, last weeks Sunday Times spread sloppily cross the coffee table, or a weeks worth of outfits laid over the bedroom chair, doesn’t bother me, it’s that it just doesn’t occur to me. I can walk past a discarded stiletto in the hallway for weeks; that the shoe is out of place in the middle of the floor instead of happily home with it’s mate and fellow stilleto-y friends simply does not register in my brain. Somewhere along my windy road, I developed neatness blinders that efficiently blocked from view what most would consider, quite simply, a mess.
While for many people, the act of hanging your clothes up after changing, moving the coffee cup from the desk to the sink, rinsing, drying and re-shelving it would be pretty much subconscious, for me they are quite intense exertions of conscious effort. So, as I am rinsing and shelving, I am thinking quite hard about benefit I am reaping. Neatness for many, after all, equals peace of mind, the ability to be productive and, general sanity.
After practicing neatness long enough that I now find myself picking up and putting away as I chat on the phone, a subconscious pattern that when noticed by my conscious self subconsciously brought my jaw to the floor, I’ve come to realize the importance of being neat.
The Calmness Effect.
True story. Cleaning calms. Just like your mom always told you, or maybe it was just mine, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, cleaning out the cluttered drawer, shuts up an ever loud mouthed mind for like ten minutes and gives you an almost Zen like experience. Like the dish, floor or drawer, your mind comes away feeling cleansed.
The Control Effect.
Walking away from an ordered room will most likely provide one with a Napoleonic sense of control. You know where your stuff is located; have a better sense of what you do and don’t need (cleaning out the dresser/closet is bound to remind you of how many really great outfits you do have) and a clean room leaves one with a sense of empowerment.
