Looking for upbeat news from Poland in the New Year?

Here’s the headline today from the leading (liberal) Gazeta Wyborcza. The first paragraph (in bold) reads (in Polish, translation my own):

Warsaw – symbol of freedom and the promised land of free market in books and films of the new generation is changing into a hell of loneliness and unemployment. The city’s icon is no longer the Palace of Culture, but instead, the palace of capitalism.

Do I really want to identify with this? Call it my homeland? Maybe I should have been a product of…maybe Estonia? Let me read up on it:

TALLINN – Freedom House, a U.S.-based NGO that monitors freedom and democracy around the world, wrote in its latest annual survey that Estonia ranks among countries that provide maximum political rights and civil liberties to their citizens.

Jump ship now while the going’s good. Nina from Estonia. Sounds okay, doesn't it?

Birthday brunch

Is it blog-indulgent to invite people over to celebrate your blogg-iversary? No no, not at all. It is, after all, only an excuse. Just like blogging is an excuse to step back from your daily life and put forth something more spontaneous and even at times oddball-ish about yourself for the world to read.

I was greatly indulged this morning-afternoon. Of the original A B C & F blogging crowd, only one slipped off the planet into a sickroom and could not make it. My family patiently tolerated the event and we ate and drank -- they all think it was to the birthday of Ocean. But really it was to all our blogs in the New Year. May they shine. May they make us and the world about which we write just a little happier, wiser, saner.

P.S. I burned batch no. 1 of the bacon. I always burn crostini bread for dinners and bacon for brunch. It has become a pattern and Althouse refers to this curiosity in her blog. Let me say this: it will be a sad day when I do not burn the crostini or the bacon. It will mean that the company or I have become so boring that I keep track of baking minutes instead of our conversation.

Could it be that we are on the second day of January and I’m still posting about resolutions?

…It’s just that I received an email from a reader – someone whom I respect significantly (ergo a writer, because as I said earlier in the blog, few people give me goosebumps in the way that writers do) – who wrote that one New Year’s resolution he’s considering is not googling himself so much (there was a reason, but it would identify the person and so I’ll not state it here – but it was a funny reason, leading me to believe he was being somewhat waggish).

Why do I mention this? Well of course, it lead me right away to google myself – something that I haven’t remembered to do for a while. Since the better part of my legal career has been in the world of clinical legal education, I need not ever worry that I’ll bring up endless legal references. My down-and-out clients – mostly parents who allegedly abused or neglected their children – would not be writing about me nor I about them.

What I did bring up were obscure references to Ocean as well as notes and comments I made on the blogs of others. Comment, people, google brings up the comments function (occasionally)!

So it’s back to placing the post-it in front of my nose with a slight modification: I must remember not to write impulsive emails and post disgruntled comments on people’s blogs. Both will come back to haunt me.

Happy Birthday, dear Ocean…

A year ago today someone tapped me on the shoulder, as I sat reading my first small cache of blogs and said – you should write one… Someone else said sure, other side of the ocean sounds exactly you. Ocean was born.

Why is it that our blogs come to have their own personalities? Aren’t Ocean and NLC one and the same? (Hint: no, not entirely.)

Regardless, I want to say thank you, in a big way, for giving me the honor of your attention (sounds so stiff, but it is meant with such sincerity). And for writing to me. And for linking to me – in good ways and in colorful *other* ways.

I am deliriously happy to have had this chance to blog non-stop for an entire 365 days. It’s been a dream (sometimes a nightmare). Thank you, thank you for indulging me in this wild hobby. And a note toward the future: I’m hoping that with practice, things will grow and prosper (rather than shrink and deteriorate) here at Ocean. Not in the numbers it attracts, but in what it offers to those who do click on. Keep checking, and let me know when things rub you the right or wrong way.

Post-resolution questions

If practically every source tells me that the vast majority of NYEve resolutions are about eating well, drinking less and exercising more (noble but boring, all of it), why was the gym so empty this afternoon?

If it’s because people were nursing hangovers on NYDay and therefore couldn’t be peeled off the living room couch enough to make it to the gym, doesn’t that suggest that they’d already broken with a resolution to maintain healthier habits?

If the gym was empty (oh so empty) because the roads were covered with ripples of ice (pretty, in a grim-reaper sort of way) because of daylong sleet squalls, shouldn’t Borders be equally deserted? [It was not.]

Where is day one of the visualization program I said I’d indulge for 30 days in order to “embrace the new me” (see yesterday’s post on Optimum Performance and my resolution to write more)?

Here, from just this minute. I am at my computer. I am seriously writing. Pages and pages.

Self-portrait (is this going to be a daily thing for 30 days? What a dumb project...), in a Van Gogh (meaning ear-focused) sort of way. What do you expect, I'm holding the camera, I have limited angle options. 

A Happy Happy New Year to all Ocean readers!

My sister writes that Poles have taken to fireworks with great vim and vigor, so that Warsaw is one explosion of noise on December 31st.

And what happens in Madison? Fireworks! Only, they hit the skies two hours before midnight. A true commitment to celebrating along with those who are one time zone away from the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, or a deference to the sleepy eyes of children?

And what did I do to celebrate (in addition to standing in the middle of Pinckney, clicking away in a light little winter dress and a billowing but inadequately-warm scarf)? I ate well. Of course. So predictable.

Welcome, a New Year, a fresh perspective. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot…

Yes! I have an acquaintance that everyone would agree should be forgot. But why is this song so sad? It played at home minutes ago and one could only think: funeral time!

Looking forward with zip and enthusiasm to 2005, shouldn’t we pick something more up-tempo for a NYEve ballad? Hey Ya! – someone here just suggested it as a replacement. I’m in agreement. Bring out the strobe lights and the champagne! I wanna see y’all on y’all baddest behavior! [In other words, to translate for the older set: Hell with New Year’s Resolutions, they suck!]

Okay, just a thought.

I guess the fat lady hasn’t sung yet…

…because the topic of resolutions appears to be not quite ready for the refuse pile.

First, I’m getting email “lack of progress” reports from certain writers over at Professor Barnhardt’s Journal. That’s what I call getting punched in the noggin: I struggle to articulate something reasonable, something possible, something worthwhile to set as a 2005 target, and I get a little reminder that my goals are likely to go the way of the toilet paper – flushed in the weeks immediately following January 1st. Resolutions are made to be broken.

And leave it to academics to point out yet another problem with this whole resolution mess. Over at U of Minnesota, a psych prof notes:

But research shows that six weeks after people make their New Year's resolutions, 80 percent have either broken them or couldn't remember what they were.
Write down your resolution at the top of a sheet of paper--in big, bold letters!

Oh my God, this is written directly to me, isn’t it? You deliberately forget every small and large task that lies before you: write it down already!

Others tell me that’s not enough. Forget writing things down. The reason we break our resolutions is that we do not recondition our brains to think in new ways! An optimum performance expert says this:

“People don’t understand how their brain functions and therefore renege on their resolutions 99% of the time within very short order. Using will power is absolutely the worst way to achieve your new goals because it is controlled by your conscious mind, which is only responsible for one sixth of your abilities.

You mean I don’t need will power?? So what is it that I have to do (remember – I just want to write more; I don’t want to lose weight, drink less, make new friends, I just want to write!)?? Our performance guru has this advice:

It takes about 30 days of everyday mental training to re-train the brain if you want long lasting and permanent weight loss or if you want to earn more money. By doing a few simple visualization exercises seeing yourself at your perfect weight or career, you start to recondition your internal image and you begin to erase the old image. The more you do this the faster you’ll see results...

Another simple technique you can use is a written positive affirmation declaring,“I now weigh xxxx. My body fat is xxxxx. I feel and look great and I am at my ideal and perfect weight now."

I’m into trying new things. Let me give it a whirl. Beginning tomorrow, I will post pictures of me writing with declarative sentences to this effect “I am now writing excessively. I am at my ideal writing performance level now. At this very minute, I have more pages of text than I can possibly deal with. My works are flooding the shelves of every literate person on both sides of the ocean...”

But let me not get ahead of myself. That is tomorrow’s post.Today I am just a slovenly, still-in-my-pajamas law prof with a stack of unread exams, spending too much time at the computer, producing worthless dribble.

P.S. on resolutions: not amusing enough for you?

If my resolution (see post below) left you disappointed, let me tell you, there are many more out there on the Net that you can peruse and reflect about. I’ll leave you with a few choice samples from lounge.bust.com, where a number of commenters have resolved the following:

From jilliec:
- Devote more time to playing my fucking guitar.
- Smoke more pot.

From spunkychick:
- replace the 'blech' items in wardrobe with new funky fun items

From rebookie:
- Have sex again

From dusty:
- stop slacking with housecleaning, work, paying bills, hair care answering emails and basically anything in my life that involves responsibility.

From mandolyn:
- cut down on the alcohol and drug-consumption.

From isotopia:
- stop picking at my skin

From tyger:
- stop pulling the hair out of my knees and knuckles as stress relief

From nanuk:
- Finish grad school applications

From pinkpoodle:
- Moisturize more

From Venetia:
- Publish three things in refereed journals.
- Go to Italy (or else Poland, but probably Italy)

[I was with her until the last one. Definitely she should go with Poland. Italy is everyone’s choice. Poland is for the lovers, the intellectuals, the truly forward-looking.]

Resolutions for the New Year: the final post on this topic

The house is quiet. Everyone is out doing things that for one reason or another I do not want to join in on. It is VERY quiet. Eerie almost. Very very quiet. In the still of this silence, I can write down the resolution that will have to do for this blog, for the coming year:

I resolve to write more, rather than less, in 2005.

That’s it. Nothing more.

A post on my longstanding attachments to letter writing

Forget about blogs, emails and the entire technological revolution. I love letters. I want to go back to letters. I admire them and the people who write them well. Some of my favorite books are compilations of letters. I refuse to throw out the recent New Yorker because it has the letter exchange between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. I love it. Completely totally.

On the strength of that, I went to Borders today and looked again at their (meager) collections of correspondence. People are private about their letters -- not much is made available for publication. But in my search through the anthologies I came across something almost as enticing: A Chance Meeting – Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854 – 1967. W.E.B. Du Bois and Charlie Chaplin. Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell. Gertrude Stein and William James. Etc. Private history (a term coined by Mark Twain). You can’t ever conclude anything on the basis of the scant information that we are presented with, but still, it can give you pause: a chance meeting and we have a changed person. That it then has an impact on her (his) art or writing goes without saying. The Mystery is absolute though, because the reader can never fully understand how different things may have been without that little pod of influence.

Just a fragment from “A Chance Meeting:”

In years later, Gertrude Stein used to tell the story that one beautiful spring day, after she had been to the opera every night for a week and was tired, she had to take an exam in Professor James’s class, and she found that she “just could not.” Writing in the third person, she described herself sitting there: “Dear Professor James, she wrote at the top of her paper. I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today, and left.” He wrote her a card saying that he perfectly well understood and, according to her, gave her the highest mark in the class. That she actually passed with a B seems to have been solidly obscured in her mind by her preference for her own version of the events – one that illustrated the deep sympathy between Gertrude Stein and William James.

Ann says yes to cell phones on planes, I say take them to the bathroom and stay there

On second thought, why should you have the privilege of the limited washroom facilities? Ann claims that the plane is a noisy public place and that if you are in need of quiet, buy and iPod!

No no no, do not force me to dangle white strings from my ears, I do not want an iPod. But I also do not want to listen to Gidget discuss her shopping trip with Aurelia for two hours right as we are flying over Buffalo.

People who use cells in public do so loudly and without attention to the other. It has become such a nuisance that trains on the East Coast, in Europe and in Japan (and the world over for all I know) have created quiet cars. Seats there fill faster than in the “regular” cars. I wonder why.

We are generally a noisy people. It is said that Americans stand out abroad and I can see that: we boom and bang our way through most chatter. But if the rest of the world is to be trapped with us in tight spaces, can’t it at least request of us that we shut the little hell-toy up for a few hours? Let’s get email on the planes up and running. Yes, yes, I’m all for that. But please, keep that little cell jingle on silence mode while in the air.

Resolutions for the New Year: surfing for ideas, continued

Still not satisfied with yesterday’s web-based suggestions, I am digging deeper into other people’s failed lives and unaccomplished goals from years past. Maybe in these heaps of botched effort I’ll find inspiration – or at least nuggets of wisdom on what to avoid for 2005.

When I need to find the weird, the obscure, the original weblog, I go to the cool, the wonderful, the prolific boingboing.net. After all, they were the source of the link to Shizzy’s Page, where a guy recounts how he developed an email correspondence with a lowly employee of Starbucks while pretending that he, the blogger, was the CEO. [A handful of Ocean readers thought the prank was mean beyond mean and they threatened to boycott Ocean if I posted a link to it, so I restrained myself. I agree that it’s mean beyond mean, juvenile, impish, vile even. To agree along with us, check it out for yourself, here.]

Boingboing did not disappoint. They offer a link to 43folders.com where a geek (Merlin Mann) recounts his implementation of principles articulated in the popular “Getting Things Done.” Yeah!

Reading just the last few entries floods me with the realization that things are slated for failure unless you keep your projects small and you get rid of ambitious and complicated to do lists. I am staring at my ambitious and complicated “to do” list as I type this. Dare I tear it up for the New Year? Wee hoo! Merlin writes [emphases are my own]:

I try to ensure that any action I identify as a next action can be finished, front to back, in less than 20 minutes time—preferably in fewer than 10 minutes. So, forexample, while “Write an article on GTD” is practically useless (that’s a project!).

[Furthermore:]

In a previous life as a producer and project manager for some good-sized web projects, I once approached my work with a completely baseless optimism and sense of possibility that I had absolutely no business feeling—let alone foisting off on others as way to guide big projects... Yikes. Simpler times.

The reality is that projects change, and projects break; that’s what they do. It’s their job. The smaller your project is, and the shorter the distance there is between “here” and “there,” the less likely you are to have to chuck it and start over for reasons you couldn’t possibly have foreseen when you were knitting up them fancy GANTT charts for Q3/2007.

Okay, resolve to resolve small things, and get rid of grand plans and unwarranted optimism. I'm getting warmer now to the day when I can actually resolve something! Stay tuned.

Resolutions for the New Year, continued

Sometime at the beginning of April, I wrote this teeny little post-it to myself: “I will think kind thoughts and not write slanderous emails” (or something to that effect). I dated it, signed it, and put it up in the corner of my computer screen in my office. It was an impulsive gesture, probably a step toward some desire for self-improvement, or, more likely, written after I had sent some impulsive email (SO me) that I knew would cost me my life, except that this penetrating piece of wisdom did not strike me until after I had already clicked “send.” It happens. Of course, the little post-it became part of the fabric of the place: I came to take it for granted. In fact, I sort of forgot all about it. It was like a fly on the wall that had left a permanent, yet quickly forgotten splotch. Others may have noticed it – I ceased to pay any attention to it.

This December, in my absence, the computer in the office was upgraded (I posted about this earlier). The techies actually took the little post-it and transferred it to the new computer. HOW AWFUL!! Now they know I am capable of thinking evil thoughts and writing horrid emails.

So, if resolutions in the middle of the year just lead you to make a fool of yourself, what good are resolutions set for January 1st?

Readers state their preferences

Thanks for the emails about *things that you like* in the blog. That polenta photo generated a number of kind comments. But the thing is, I cannot keep posting photos of What I Am Up To. They would be like this – me taking a self-portrait, sitting at the computer looking off-the-wall bizarre. Want proof? Here's one, taken in a self-indulgent moment ten seconds ago:

...that blue glow in the eye looks ominous...what *is* she posting?? 

Volunteerism, carried to new *heights*

Do you mean I could make a difference in helping people get from one place to another during this busy holiday travel period? Should I volunteer my services? Would I do a better job than experienced employees? The NYT reports that US Airways has faith in us, the off-the-street ready-to-jump-in volunteers! I’m ready. I’ll do my bit.

This post is in response to the NYT online news brief. Here it is, in full bloom:

US Airways Is Predicting a Smoother Weekend: US Airways said that with the help of volunteer employees, it expected a smooth weekend at its Philadelphia hub after a Christmas weekend of mishandled bags.