Back when state-of-the-art communications technology was a xerox copier or a really affordable long-distance landline plan, my friends and I would joke about (Book of) “Kells Syndrome”: The longer a letter or voice-machine message or writing project sat unanswered, the more daunting crafting a “worthy” response became, to the point where only an impossible level of detail and craftsmanship seemed adequate. (The original Book of Kells doesn’t seem to have been finished, either.) Technology has improved mightily since then, but the Kells Syndrom remains, if you accept the arguments Melissa Dahl at NYMag describes as “The Alarming New Research on Perfectionism“:
…[P]erfectionism can be devastatingly destructive, leading to crippling anxiety or depression, and it may even be an overlooked risk factor for suicide, argues a new paper in Review of General Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association.
… We tend to see the Martha Stewarts and Steve Jobs and Tracy Flicks of the world as high-functioning, high-achieving people, even if they are a little intense, said lead author Gordon Flett, a psychologist at York University who has spent decades researching the potentially ruinous psychological impact of perfectionism… “[F]or many perfectionists, that “together” image is just an emotionally draining mask and underneath “they feel like imposters,” he said…
But the dangers of perfectionism, and particularly the link to suicide, have been overlooked at least partially because perfectionists are very skilled at hiding their pain. Admitting to suicidal thoughts or depression wouldn’t exactly fit in with the image they’re trying to project. Perfectionism might not only be driving suicidal impulses, it could also be simultaneously masking them.
Still, there’s a distinction between perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence, Greenspon said. Perfectionism is more than pushing yourself to do your best to achieve a goal; it’s a reflection of an inner self mired in anxiety. “Perfectionistic people typically believe that they can never be good enough, that mistakes are signs of personal flaws, and that the only route to acceptability as a person is to be perfect,” he said…
So… maybe this would be a good weekend to pick up that long-avoided project, do the best job you can within the constraints of time/temper/resources, and accept that sometimes half-arsed is better than never?
***********
Apart from such speculation, what’s on the agenda for the day?
ThresherK
Packing for moving. Moving the most stuff I and Spousal Unit ThresherK have ever contemplated.
For the first time I’m hiring someone to move stuff into their truck and unload it.
Wondering if someone has had a spare set of keys to basement, because there’s a lot of stuff down there nobody remembers dragging in.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
We who are chemicaly or alcohol dependent recognize that this is often part of our problem.
ETA: Typo.
Second edit: If you haven’t tried Noosa yogurt, you must. Nectar of the gods.
OzarkHillbilly
Every writer since the book of Exodus has dealt with this. You write something. Than you rewrite it. Than you edit it. As you edit it you realize this line and that line doesn’t quite ring true. So you rewrite them. Which throws the whole section in a different light and requires all of that to be rewritten. Once that has reached satisfaction it no longer fits in with the rest so now one has to decide whether or not to return to the original, or rewrite the parts around it. You decide to return to what was originally there but… How did you say it? So you put it aside and return to it a week later. And begin again.
It never does become quite what you want it to be and eventually you just give up and let it go out into the world, imperfect and incomplete. Kind of like a teenager.
Baud
I’m not a perfectionist to the point of being suicidal, but I can attest to its detrimental impact on one’s spirit.
raven
Advice? I’ve been wearing my hearing aid all day all week. I woke up a minute ago and was dizzy as hell. My eyes seemed to be jerking to my right. I sat back down for a minute a it passed but it was a bit freaky.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Or finish the dissertation and drive on.
Frankensteinbeck
Sorry, you mentioned the Book of Kells, and all I can think of is the animated movie Secret of Kells. Truly lovely.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t do this. I let the finished draft sit for about a month to collect ideas, get a beta reader or two to check if there are any glaring holes, and do a polishing run. By then, I’ve figured out what needs to be fixed, which is usually just adding tiny bits of foreshadowing or rephrasing a couple of sentences at important points to make sure that I’m not being too subtle and mysterious. And… that’s it, I’m done. I’m good. I appreciate my publisher putting me through the editing mill to make the book shine, but I’m already happy and don’t worry about it.
This makes me unusual among writers to the point of bizarre. Like you said, pretty much every other writer everywhere for all time edits and edits and edits. Maybe it’s because I plan my books so rigorously from the beginning?
Mustang Bobby
Neil Simon’s memoir is called Rewrites, living up to the adage that a play is never finished. (The corollary to that is summed up by A.R. Gurney: “Man has three needs in life: food, sex, and the need to re-write someone else’s play.)
I’ve been writing a novel for about twenty years now. It’s hit 1,300 pages in Courier 12 double space. I have no plans to publish it; it’s my refuge, my never-ending project. It’s purely for fun and I love the characters; they’re like family now, and when I make edits, it is because they tell me to.
Plays are another matter. When I’m done, I’m done. Then the directors and actors take over, but the play stands pretty much as written.
WereBear
@Baud: Yup.
Been working on it in earnest the last couple of years. We can’t give ourselves impossible goals. Now, there is science to prove ” That way lies madness.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck: A book??? HA! Damn you are good. I write short stories, and while I have been “published” it is mostly just for me. I can’t imagine doing a book. That would make me suicidal.
Frankensteinbeck
@OzarkHillbilly:
Four, and Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain sells like hotcakes to rave reviews. I am a happy man.
Baud
@WereBear:
I’ve faced a lot of negativity in my life, so I got into a mindset of believing I had to be better in some of way to get people to like and respect me. At some point, I realized I was better and people still didn’t like or respect me. So to hell with them. But old mindsets are hard to break out of.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Ones sense of balance begins in the inner ear where there is a chamber half full of liquid (the human bodies own level) and hairs around the sides of it. As the years go by little calcite rafts can build up around the edges. Sometimes they break loose and bumping against the hairs send multiple signals to the brain and confuse it causing dizziness. After a fall some years ago I had violent dizzy spells lasting 15-30 seconds for about a month and then they went away. Sometimes the rafts break off for no apparent reason.
Not sure the hearing aid had anything to do with it, tho it is possible. I would wait for repeats and see if they get worse or better.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Thx, I’m up and at it
WereBear
@Baud: Likewise. I had a mother who was temporarily driven insane by circumstance. (Without her own crazy pressures, she’s much better.) I grew up thinking that never making a mistake would free me from her wrath.
A breakthrough came in my teens, when I was verbally abused for cutting a cantaloupe stem-to-stem, instead of across the equator. And I realized that my mother was crazy, and some of these things she screamed about didn’t matter.
But I really had to buckle down when I started blogging. The piece couldn’t hang around until the shine caused people to close their eyes. The piece had to go out. And it turned out, I was getting my point across just fine.
satby
@WereBear: Last night you made your point to Gex so well many of the rest of us were moved by it too.
Raven
Try being the oldest son of a WW2 combat vet, football coach ,English teacher!
JPL
The NY Times has an article painting a picture of the FSU football team being a group of thugs that should have arrest records. link
It’s unfortunate that the NCAA only seems concerned about losing money.
WereBear
@satby: Awww. Thanks for letting me know.
Which is another thing about perfectionism and craft. Simply doing it, and then moving to the next thing, truly hones our skills. Constantly tweaking the one thing is not necessarily teaching us anything.
After seven years of blogging, my ease and skill has measurably increased. So now I have the ability, when sufficiently moved to communicate, to get an effective message out in “the little window.”
This makes me very happy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: My older brother was that “oldest son” and my father’s focus on him… damaged his self confidence cause nothing was ever quite good enough. As the “forgotten” second son I had other issues but I was allowed to go my own way and define and own my successes as well as my failures on my terms.
By the time little brother came along the old man had mellowed out and John is probably the sanest of us boys.
WereBear
@Raven: Dude! It’s a wonder you can move and talk.
satby
@Raven: Oldest daughter of a brilliant homicide detective here, and I feel ya. I suspect my old man’s perfectionism is what carried him off at 54. So think of yourself as a survivor, cause you certainly are!
Baud
@Raven:
That certainly explains your deep hatred of the military, football, and the English language.
Shakezula
@raven: I spent several years caring for a relative who had TIAs (often called a mini-stroke) on a regular basis.
Because of the eye movements combined with the other symptoms, my vote is: Go to an ER or Urgent Care provider. Please.
Even if you feel better now. Let us know how you’re doing.
JPL
@Shakezula: That’s what I think.
Hillary Rettig
Helping people overcome perfectionism, esp. in writing, is my professional specialty.
http://www.hillaryrettig.com/perfectionism/
http://www.hillaryrettig.com/solutions-to-perfectionism/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Prolific-Procrastination-Perfectionism-ebook/dp/B006J7BZ8E/
I’m leaving right now to table at the Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market, but would be happy to answer any questions any Juicer has on the topic, either here or via email.
Randy P
I’ve seen this advice in many forms, and I still can’t follow it: The purpose of a first draft is to be done. I know you’re supposed to turn off the editor part of your brain and just get to the end of the draft. But I don’t seem to be able to do it. So my “drafts” when they get done are usually the final or near-final product. Or never done at all.
My writing is mostly of a technical nature, for work, but there are several non-fiction book ideas I want to do, and even a couple of plays. The work stuff gets done when I’ve procrastinated long enough that I have no choice but to finish it. Nobody is putting that pressure on me for my own projects, so they’re just sitting around with the first 10 pages written.
raven
@Shakezula:
I’ll keep a close eye on it but no ER right now. Thanks.
JPL
@raven: Take care and if you have a chance read the NY Times article about FSU. The police are not doing any favors to the players, imo, because they just continue the negative behavior.
raven
@WereBear: Ha, he ran special services at Great Lakes during the summer when I was a kid. As such I was the bat boy on the GLNTS baseball team when I was about 7. He sent a newspaper picture of the team and pointed out I was on the wrong knee!
Southern Beale
I have a cold/flu. Cue the ebola jokes.
Southern Beale
@Randy P:
Turning off the internal editor is the hardest part about writing fiction for me. That’s why I like to take part in things like NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. If you’re trying to get 50,000 words down in one month, you CAN’T edit as you go, You just can’t.
Everybody’s different. For some people, starting with a tight outline helps them stay focused and they can write a first draft without going back and doing rewrites. For others who are more loose, you need to go back and re-read what you wrote last week. That can be dangerous because the temptation is to rewrite, so you need discipline on that side.
It’s all about discipline. Discipline up front in an outline/story boards or discipline on the back ends to just leave the manuscript alone until you have the bones of the work down.
I say this not having written any fiction in about 6 months.
Ultraviolet Thunder
My writing is easy. I just get the bare facts down on ‘paper’ then a professional editor renders it readable. I go back and recommend correcting the factual errors that editing introduces and we go around like that for a while until it goes to press.
I’m a little perfectionistic about the subject of the writing; electronic circuits. But that’s a different dimension of crazy that I inhabit with tech nerds.
ETA; as you can see grammar and punctuation are not my responsibility. Freedom!
Shakezula
I forget who told me this, but someone whose opinion I respect (just not enough to remember their name) explained that perfectionists:
1. Have a poor sense of time.
2. Are some of the worst procrastinators. (See 1, but also underlying conviction they’re going to fuck up.)
3. Set unrealistic goals for themselves. (See 1 again.)
4. Can be very indecisive (sometimes seen as pickiness).
5. Tend to finish projects late or abandon them.
Basically, you have a personality that combines the good twin who wants to do everything just right, and the evil twin who wants to fuck things up. (I’m not talking about multiple personality disorder, just creating a rotten analogy for your Saturday morning pleasure.)
What they don’t consistently do is present as a perfectionist. So you can have someone who looks a mess (ahem) and isn’t successful (yep) but has (suffers from?) a perfectionist personality.
I have also worked for a perfectionist and that sucked ass, even after the above explanation of the hazards (symptoms?) of perfectionism.
I think he was responsible for more people quitting than the drunk guy, the guy who was petty and vengeful and very reluctant to let people have time off and the woman who tried to stop subordinates from associating with each other in and outside of the office. (Why did I put up with Mr. Perfectionist? His behavior was annoying but not, to me, beyond the pale.)
But the message to me from that was, be very careful in how I deal with other people, especially people who might be reluctant to tell me I’m being a moron, because that shit is upsetting.
Also, I should stay away from management positions.
bemused
@Raven:
I know a couple of people who suffered vertigo which was due to the crystal problem OH mentioned. One was driving when suddenly hit with vertigo, scared the heck out of her. Turned out there is testing that pinpoints the crystal issue and very simple exercises to do that resolve the problem.
Botsplainer
My solution to these things is to ignore it and pretend that I never got it.
Botsplainer
@Mustang Bobby:
I’d had an idea for a book about 25 years ago and frequently plotted it in my head. I really regretted not putting it to pen about 6 years ago when a writer turned my entire plot into a three book series. I never thought beyond the plot of the first, but it was like the guy was living in my head. The series is Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham, a Brisbane columnist.
Shakezula
@Randy P: Yeah. This.
I have an editor at work, but that person is seriously overworked and we’re expected to turn in things as close to perfect as possible. Plus, who likes being rewritten?
But, part of my weekend will include work stuff because I usually must have Mr. Deadline jumping up and down on my head before I am sufficiently motivated.
I am going to try NaNo AGAIN this year, but I’m going to mute or delete any sort of SM input related to writing and stay away from the NaNo website.
janeform
@raven: You may have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). It can be treated in 15 minutes in a doctor’s office with a simple maneuver. I work on a study with a neurologist who specializes in dizziness, which involves interviewing ER docs about their knowledge of how to diagnose and treat BPPV. He’s found that ER docs very often don’t know how to diagnose it and therefore order unnecessary tests. The correct diagnostic test is the Dix-Hallpike test, which brings on the characteristic eye movements associated with BPPV. Physicians have to know how to differentiate eye movements that result from the test in order make a correct diagnosis. If it happens again, you may want to ask your primary care doc or go to a neurologist. Or, if you go to the ER, tell them to look it up. I’m not a physician, but just happen to know about this (maybe just enough to be dangerous, so take it with a large grain of salt).
MomSense
I’m not sure if I am truly a perfectionist or just the product of being raised by two generations of perfectionists (all in the same house micro managing). Good times.
I made an intentional effort not to burden my kids with the same ridiculous expectations to try and give them some space to figure out for themselves what they want and for the most part it seems to be working and they seem to be doing what they are passionate about.
It wasn’t easy to reject all the parenting advice and all the criticism I got from family members, but now they are sort of shaking their heads and wondering how the hell it could possibly be that I don’t nag and guilt and discipline yet somehow my kids seem to be doing good things.
I screwed up a ton of other things–mostly staying in a bad relationship far too long but I sort of see that as one of the ways the perfectionist expectations I received can set you up. The thing that sort of spared my kids the worst of it was that he was gone so much for work. Thank goodness he was always away.
Perfectionism alters your perception of yourself so you focus on the one little thing that you didn’t do just right–and give yourself no credit for the overwhelming number of things that you did well that would be confidence building. I really don’t think I came into the world with that burden built in. I think I was carefully taught.
gene108
That is so super true.
I still struggle with perfectionistic impulses, even though I’ve been working on the notion “perfectionism does not make you perfect” for 11+ years now.
Perfectionism is a really easy way to make yourself feel like shit about your life.
zoot
Conservatives Make Clean Things Dirty
raven
@janeform: wow, this is all good stuff
eta From Mayo:
“When to see a doctor
Generally, see your doctor if you experience any unexplained dizziness or vertigo that recurs periodically for more than one week.”
Schlemazel
@raven:
I get that when my sinuses are acting up, are you having any nasal congestion? The fluid builds up in the inner ear and thought off the little sensors that tell your brain you are balanced.
big ole hound
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m writing a bio of me for my pleasure and have found that the initial version usually rings the truest of an event and how I lived it. Any editing seemed to diminish it’s impact. I now know two things; My memory is better than I feared and I can’t spell. May a voice program ? Anyone?
Janeform
@raven: Glad to be of help. Another option is to call Bill Frist and see if he can provide you with an over-Internet diagnosis.
WereBear
The lure of perfectionism is the illusion of control.
If we just get every detail just so, think of every possible difficulty and head it off, leave absolutely no room for error or dysfunction…
some random thing can still come out of nowhere and smash it all to hell.
Perfectionists deny that. They would rather tell themselves that one day they will master this, do it all right, CONTROL EVERYTHING.
But that is a ridiculously unattainable goal. I keep tabs on myself by noticing when my anxiety levels are rising and I start to feel panicky. I ask myself what impossible task I am setting that is creating those feelings.
When I track it down I take it off my list. Now, sure, there will be fallout from recognizing that the thing is impossible, and sometimes quite a lot of other things have to happen instead of that one impossible thing, but this will result in stuff actually getting done instead of me burning myself up like a gasoline candle trying to do something that cannot be done.
WereBear
@raven: And I can’t help but think it might be related to the hearing aids. You are vibrating stuff that hasn’t been vibrated in a long time, both in your ear, and in your head.
raven
Oh no,I just tried to buy two raffle tickets for Cole’s frat and put in 20! Help!!!
MomSense
Since there seem to be a bunch of writers on this thread, I wonder if you have an opinion on the reading homework that is being given at so many schools. Every year the teachers require the kids to read 20 – 30 minutes a night and then the parents have to sign off on this and record the name of the book, etc.
Every year I tell the teacher that we will not be participating in this. if I ever noticed that my child wasn’t reading I would pick out a great book and read it to him until he was inspired and picked up the next book on his own. My kids are readers. I’m a reader. There is always lots of reading going on. When I did participate in this 20 minute proof of reading mess, I noticed that we all read less because it turned reading into a chore. I think this reading as chore practice is a big mistake and it seems to be in all the schools.
Barbara
@raven: This is why doctors have answering services and also why they take turns being on call. They know their patients sometimes have troubling symptoms when the office is not open.
We are not doctors, we are commentators. Call your doctor!
Someone will call you back. It may or may not be your personal physician but it will be a physician. Describe your symptoms and then follow their advice.
A few weeks ago I was at a dinner party with the daughter of a gastroenterologist. All during her childhood, every evening family event was interrupted by someone who wanted to complain about the colonoscopy prep and beg off of finishing it. Really, if people can call their doctors to complain the prep tastes revolting without shame, you can make a call about your dizziness!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
There are no accidents! You are a good, generous man.
JPL
@raven: uhoh emailing Cole won’t help since he doesn’t read his email. You might try emailing Anne and see if she has a way to contact him.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Frankensteinbeck:
That contradicts Robert Heinlein’s 3rd rule of writing “You must not rewrite except to editorial order.”
I get hung up on Rule 1: “You must write.” And usually don’t make it through Rule 2 “You must finish what you write.”
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: I can’t really hack $200.
Barbara
I’ll add that a friend of mine is married to a family practitioner, and I’ve seen him take calls. He walks into another room for a few minutes. It’s no big deal to him, not any different than any other call, really. Certainly has to be less irritating than a telemarketing call.
WereBear
@MomSense: Stupid Calvinist thinking.
They turn everything into a chore because they think that without some authority standing over people we would all turn into bags of protoplasm with no will to act.
When in fact biology is all about the organism doing things for its survival solely because it is pleasurable. What they should be doing is coming up with ways to make reading pleasurable.
Fascists.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m going to the apple festival in Elijah, GA with family. I figure we’ll see at least six confederate flags but that might be a low count.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, in Star Trek, the goal of the Borg was to be perfect.
Just a thought tossed in there for mulling and discussion.
Mustang Bobby
@Botsplainer: Go ahead and write it anyway just for the fun of it.
I’ve also learned that there are diversions that can help my writing. Back in 2001 when I hit a wall with the magnum opus, I put it aside. This was over Christmas when my parents were down visiting me in Miami. We drove down to the Everglades on Christmas Eve to go birdwatching. While on the drive down I suddenly had a brainwave for a play involving the main character in the novel. By the time we got to the motel in Flamingo I had the first scene planned out. I set up my laptop and by the time we went to dinner, I had that scene written. By New Year’s Act I was done. The rest of the story is that I finished the play in record time and it premiered off-Broadway in January 2008.
I went back to the novel the week after I finished the play.
Villago Delenda Est
@Janeform: This technique works best if you’re in a vegetative state, but someone wants to pretend that you’re not, and Dr. Frist will offer his expert opinion without ever examining you in person that there is no reason in the entire universe why you should not be dancing the Charleston right now.
MomSense
@WereBear:
Thank you! This has been driving me crazy. Locally, I seem to be the only one who hates this required reading policy.
The handout that came home from the school used words like “expected” and “should”. I was tempted to respond with a letter about joy and fun but I don’t think it would have helped.
ThresherK
@Southern Beale: I’ve been dragging something around for 12 days and finally went to mydoctor. Now 3 days into the antibiotics. And that’s while wearing a fairly HD dust _ pollen breathing mask during the cleaning & packing, so I’ve been hearing ebola jokes for a week.
Hildebrand
When working on my dissertation, a faculty colleague offered some very basic advice: ‘A good dissertation is a done dissertation.’
Yep.
raven
@big ole hound: I think it’s the hearing aid.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale: I had it last week.
I’m still here.
I expect a bunch of lunatic Rethuglicans (but I’m repeating myself) to insist that I be arrested and exported back to West Africa which I’ve never visited to save the Koch Brothers from their just fate of catching my cold and dying from it.
Mustang Bobby
@Hildebrand: Mine said, “DIB: Done Is Beautiful.”
JPL
@raven: My son orders online from a local farmer and thought he ordered 2 dozen eggs. When I went to pick up his order for him there were 20 dozen. We were able to correct the order.
good luck
Villago Delenda Est
@Shakezula:
“I’m very proud of you, Lawrence!”
“You homo!”
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear: That could be part of it. When I got my VA hearing aids, I was briefed that it would take a while to adjust to hearing so many things you were missing before, and had previously learned to tune out before your hearing loss set in. Now they’re back, front and center, and you have to learn again how to tune out things you not only don’t want to hear but don’t need to hear.
Josie
I just posted this to what I now realize is a dead thread below. I am reposting it because I could use some encouragement and positive thinking. Panic is starting to seep into the crevices. Help.
.
tbone
Brewing! Rye ipa.
skerry
@raven: Cole is posting on twitter. Maybe try him there
WereBear
@Josie: Wow! You are right!
You will fly.
skerry
@Josie: Best wishes to you in this new chapter of your life. Change is scary for most of us, but it sounds like you thought this through and have good reasons. (hugs)
Barbara
@MomSense: What I didn’t like were the dystopian/action/sci-fi books my kid had to read in JHS — I don’t remember their titles (and I donated them to the library used sale), one was about smallpox and middle-eastern terrorists (is there any other kind?), the other was about adoptees traveling back in time and had tasers figuring prominently. Obviously chosen to appeal to boys in the warped thinking of whatever administrator selected them, because of the research on boys being “reluctant readers,” and don’t all boys like stories with lots of shooting and explosions?
Thankfully in HS, it’s real literature all the way. As for the prescribed 20-30 minute reading sessions, I always fudged. Didn’t think it was worth any “discussion” with the teachers, but then again, as a special needs mom, I am always “discussing” something with the teachers, and have to choose my fights.
JPL
@Josie: Fly and enjoy being close to family.
MomSense
@Josie:
First, I think it is fantastic that you are doing something so bold. People who jump off a cliff and want to fly wear a parachute. So maybe think of your friends, even the online jackal variety, and family as your parachute. Even if the landing turns out to be rough, you will have friends and family to comfort you. You love your kids and they are a tremendous source of joy for you so this sounds like a really good change for you.
Birthmarker
I have a wonderful close friend who is a perfectionist, and I see some degrees of it in my own family. I find it leads to some pretty passive aggressive behavior, which can be somewhat unpleasant and hard to deal with for those close to you.
I would just say if one has deep anxiety from it, professional help is probably well worth it.
MomSense
@Barbara:
Oh we had these horrible books in 1st grade that were approved because they were written for children at a particular reading level and contained all the words they “needed to know” to be at first grade reading level. Every day the kids had to take one home. My son and his best friend used to giggle about their strategy for dealing with this BS by taking the exact same book home every single day for the whole year. They totally got the absurdity of this exercise.
Meanwhile IRL they made awesome forts after school and would sit inside their forts with snacks and books and read.
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
I work with refugees but none of my students are from West Africa. One is from East Africa but he’s been in the U.S. for at least a year.
#NoEbola
Baud
Inspiring thread. Y’all good people.
raven
@skerry: thx
Gex
Ah yes. Perfectionism. It’s a curse that I received from having a Chinese father who was the epitome of the Asian parent stereotype. A 3.74 GPA (back when 4 was the max) got me grounded until the next report card.
That certainly has not helped me. But then neither has a mother who clearly had issues about me not being very feminine and obsessed over my weight problems (which looking back were not really a problem) and teasing me about behaviors that gave away my sexuality.
I really had enough to work on in therapy before Kate died. But I do find that the perfectionism drive is really damaging. I’m definitely feeling the effects of letting it paralyze my development as a programmer as we get integrated into this new company and I feel inadequate and fear for my job.
Wish I started working on these things longer ago.
Amir Khalid
There’s one move I dread seeing this year. The Hobbit part three. I have to go, I saw the first two. But the second one went on and on and on — I nodded off a couple of times — and I’m kind of worried that The Battle of the Five Armies might be the Movie That Feels Like Three Days.
This time of year is a sucky one for movies, with the summer blockbuster season over (it was pretty food this year, I’ll give it that) and the fall prestige season not yet started. The Equalizer was fun if you didn’t mind that it was just another lame vigilante fantasy. If all else fails, I might go see the Dracula movie. I just hope the British-made Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing biopics get here.
Frankensteinbeck
@Barbara:
These don’t sound like those books, but… ‘real literature’ is full of dystopian sci-fi. Off the top of my head, the Classics include Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World.
danielx
Odd. Perfectionism, or the lack thereof, is much on my mind this morning in connection with….wallpaper and drywall. Allotted a week to paint the master bedroom and master bath, the latter of which is partially open to the bedroom, kind of a curtain wall deal so that only the bathtub is visible from the rest of the bedroom. The bath area was wallpapered and we decided to strip it – always the best way, right? So rent a wallpaper steamer, etc…and nothing worked well, not the steamer, not the fabric softener and water solution, not wallpaper stripper concentrate. Started this project last Monday, BTW, and there is still not drop fucking one of paint on the walls anywhere.
Since the wallpaper was in the bathroom area and hence subject to a lot of moisture, the wallpaper was evidently put up with special glue that won’t separate with the usual measures, possibly a large bucket of epoxy. No matter what, there are a lot of areas where pulling off the wallpaper pulled off the drywall paper, etc. (Pro tip, kids – don’t wallpaper a bathroom. Ever.) Anyway, those walls are gouged to hell (ruined, in other words), and will require a hell of a lot of skimcoating and sanding before they can be painted. I am a perfectionist, at least in some things, like having the walls not look like they have leprosy. However….if I want to get this project done before Halloween, perfection is not on the agenda. Yet another pro tip – if you strip wallpaper and want the walls to look perfect, hang new drywall because even under the best of circumstances it ain’t gonna look new. So – to get to the segue part, my agenda is sanding drywall mud and hoping for the best.
Memo to me: pick up more drywall screen, 180 grit sandpaper, and breathing masks this morning. And beer. Leinenkugel Oktoberfest is available at the moment…
Edit: @Gex: Always bear this in the back of your mind; sometimes good enough is good enough.
WereBear
Since we are brainstorming here, I’m throwing out a “wisdom of crowds” question.
My site went down (hard!) because my traffic keeps increasing. I figured it out without the help of my hosting company, whose slothy behinds I have fired. The new company seems much more professional, and I should be back up this weekend.
Now I’ve incurred a big cost jump: I’ve doubled my security costs and more than doubled my hosting costs. It’s possible I can learn the site upgrades I see I need to do myself… but it might be more cost effective to hire a pro, which is another expense.
Wonderful people have been donating for a couple of years now to help me keep the site afloat. I expected a lot of people to give a little, but what I get is a relatively few (compared to my growing stats) marvelous people giving in high proportions.
I’ve been trying to make money with Mr WayofCats’ herbal cat toys and writing a cat care book on Kindle and doing various things to bring in ad revenue. Which is not easy, because the highest payers are the companies I don’t recommend. Of course.
So now I’m considering a Membership Plan. I currently post three times a week. What if some of those posts go behind a paywall of $10 a year? I’m still contributing to the cause of Kitty Enjoyment, my goal, but members get full access to the whole site, while free-riders (the problem in any Utopian system) get only some of the posts.
And $10 a year is very little to ask. Ya’ll’s thoughts?
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
I had very mixed feelings about Hobbit 2, I Don’t Remember This Part. When Jackson merely heavily embellished actual events Tolkien wrote, or shoehorned them into this book, they were fun. Gandalf in the Necromancer’s fortress and dumping gold on Smaug come to mind. When he just made things up, like the romantic subplot he added the only significant female character for, it was dull as dirt.
In the end, I settled for being pissed that he reversed the message of the book: That bravery and violence are at best necessary for dealing with bad things, and true goodness is to be found in pacifists who prefer a good meal and poetry. Notably, in the book Bilbo kills a spider (just an animal) and that’s it. He is not a warrior, and Tolkien specifically praises him for it as the only sensible person in the book.
WereBear
Not to mention Frankenstein (the start of science fiction, I am told) and then something like The Road.
As always, some really good science fiction makes its way out of the ghetto… and doesn’t get called science fiction any more.
But I believe the complaint was that these were not thoughtful books… and were chosen to appeal to only certain students.
Mike J
@Frankensteinbeck: How about Delillo’s White Noise or Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Both great literature, neither really sci-fi.
WereBear
@Mike J: But yes they are. They are science fiction.
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
Frankenstein is one strange book. Just how strange a book it is, is one of my favorite topics. While I loved Shelly’s subtle message that Doc Frank rejects and hates his monster who has exactly the same personality he does, did that really require the Monster to lengthily review Paradise Lost?
Gex
@Josie: I just did that myself when Kate died and I had to make major decisions for myself.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I think I’m having so much trouble leaning this place because, for the first time ever, I made a place for myself that was really me and felt like home.
I hope you get that feel from your new home.
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: Even before science fiction was invented, Mary Shelley had to give her ideas an Art Gloss so she could be taken seriously.
That’s how prescient she was.
Violet
@WereBear: How about offering “Cat Consultation” for a price. You can Skype/Facetime with clients. Actually see the cats in question. Offer behavioral suggestions. Maybe food issues, calm owners’ frazzled nerves. Members get first Skype session free or at a discount or four per year or something.
Just making parts of the website available may or may not be attractive if it’s articles. Maybe members get access to a message board? Get to email you three times/month with questions? Need value-added. Do you know why people visit you?
WereBear
Thank you, Violet. As always, you ask wonderful questions.
They visit to solve cat problems. And yes, Mr WereBear thinks I should Skype consult, which I will be working on. And perhaps that will bring in enough revenue to make up for the new expenses.
Violet
@WereBear: Is there someone who is a Cat Whisperer out there? Even if there is, there is always room for one more–just look at how many dog behavioral styles there are. You can build your business and brand that way. I bet there’s a ton of demand.
Hildebrand
@Josie: Good luck with the move! A great and important adventure.
Ruckus
I’ve come up with the antidote. It’s called perfect enough. When you create something(especially then), repair something, doesn’t matter what it is, you create a goal up front. The car has to run, the idea has to get across. Then you do that. You’ve reached your goal so you can stop, let it go, move on. I learned this as a young person polishing plastic molds. Spent 3 months with another fellow doing the same thing 10 hrs a day. Polishing a 400 lb piece of steel to be flat, smooth, and what is known as optically correct. Thing is with every step(and there are lots of steps, working with less course tools, ending with several steps of diamond compound), you can go too far. And you get orange peel, which looks exactly like what it sounds like. You then have to go back 2 steps and start over. The lesson is – Never go too far, when it’s done, it’s done, it’s Perfect Enough. Lets you be that perfectionist, without all the drama and stress.
Corner Stone
@Josie: Looking forward to seeing you around!
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
It was her husband that did that, apparently. He insisted on editing to make her book meaningful. Note that he’s almost forgotten and she’s the Great Writer, and his pretentiousness is the bad part of the book.
She really was a great writer. I can’t stress it enough. Dracula was dull, but Frankenstein is powerful (when it’s not drifting off into Paradise Lost land), the characters are vivid and real, and there are brilliant subtleties woven into it.
WereBear
@Violet: Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t email me with lovely heartfelt thanks; because I solved a cat problem, because my advice deepened an existing relationship, because I encouraged them to get a new cat who is a wonderful companion.
Which is why I’m so reluctant to restrict my advice.
I need to repackage it in easy ways people can afford to buy. Perhaps the book that started it all, waiting for a polish, is the answer. I got sick of agents saying who-the-heck-are-you and why-should-anyone-listen-to-you. I took to the web to see if anyone liked my cat advice.
And they do. They obviously DO.
Speaking of perfectionism, this cat book doesn’t have to be the Dianetics of cat advice. I just need to get it out there, and let it do some good, and write another one! I can certainly settle for being a bestselling author. :)
Thanks, Violet. You are always such a help. And while we are on the subject of other people draining your Lifeforce, how are you feeling?
? Martin
I’ve always been a perfectionist, and it is draining. I’ll do something and be told that it’s wonderful but all I can see are the the things I got wrong or didn’t get to. When I was a kid I’d rarely finish things and it was my grandfather that managed to help me get through that as he was similarly perfectionistic. He taught me to treat each project as I would each iteration of a given project. So I could be content with a draft/prototype knowing that it was just a work in progress and the next iteration would be better, but I struggled to commit a version to being final. He helped me see that each project, even in its final version was just a stepping stone for me to the next project I took on. It works most of the time, but the more stressed I am, the less well it works – so its easy to fall into that anxiety spiral. Just getting out of one at work, as it happens.
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s a top Ten book for me. And I love that insight!
WereBear
@Ruckus: Damn, that is a great metaphor. It’s true… too much fuss can ruin a watercolor, too.
Mike J
@WereBear: There’s not really any science in Handmaid’s Tale. There’s an alternate reality where something that didn’t happen in our world happened, but that makes it fiction, not science fiction.
I would say the same about the Airborn Toxic Event in WN, but there are bits that are more sci-fi.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Too bad. You could have started your own religion (Wayofcatology?) and really made some coin.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Sounds like we had the same parents. Glad you were able to unlearn it. It is a freeing thing, isn’t it?
Amir Khalid
test
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
They have something similar here, 150 minutes a week. In my case I’m kind of ok with it. My son can be very literal sometimes, and feels comforted knowing what he can expect. This way he can map out what he needs and when. He always reads more minutes than required but it’s in pursuit of a party at year’s end.
There are many, many things I am quite unhappy with the school district about, but I don’t mind this item.
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
What, that Doctor and Monster have the same personality? Oh, yeah. Reread and look for it. They’re both self-absorbed, caring only about their own problems. They condemn to the point of violent rejection anything that isn’t exactly what they wanted. They’re obsessed with reproduction and their own legacies. Neither one will consider the other’s viewpoint for five seconds. They both will cast aside their scruples and do the immoral if that’s what it takes to get their way. As God made Man in his own image, so the Doctor made the Monster – and in both cases, disapproved of their own traits. It’s subtle and clever as Hell. I SO totally admire it.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Too bad. You could have started your own religion (called, I don’t know, Wayofcatology) and really made some coin.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Too bad. You could have started your own religion and really made some coin.
WereBear
@Mike J: I think you are missing the point of speculative fiction… Handmaid’s Tale is a wildly different world than the one we live in.
Fiction is “what if I married my high school crush?” Science fiction is “what if that high school crush was a Martian?”
I think Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian future, qualifies as much as Brave New World.
BTW, while someone took the cite out of Wikipedia (and may all your wives leave you, you Confederate idiot) Margaret Atwood got the idea while she was a visiting artist on a US Deep South college campus.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid:
In a thread full of perfectionists you’re going to throw down a surprise test when they haven’t had a chance to study?!
Monster!
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: You are so right, Amir! Cult religions, that’s where the money is.
Debbie
@Josie:
My mom went through the same “adventure” after my dad died at 44 back in the 70s (the tale of her getting credit cards switched over to her is its own saga — bills started coming addressed to a Mr. Evelyn, and they started soliciting my 8-year-old brother for his own account). There was good and bad, but it all made her better and stronger. Go into it knowing you CAN do it!
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: The insight I spoke of was the Classical baggage her husband made her put in it… I hadn’t known that.
You have actually increased my admiration of her. Good work!
Shakezula
@MomSense: Huh? What happened to assigning certain books and then asking questions based on the assigned reading?
The system you describe would seem to encourage cheating by all parties. Plus, it assumes that all parents have time to watch their kids read. Would that it were so, but it ain’t.
But I don’t know, I’ve never had a problem reading. I personally wouldn’t notice if I was being timed, unless you tried to take the book away at the end of the 30 minutes.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
We did have the same school even if not the same parents.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: My son is very literal about such assignments, and found it stressful until we convinced the teachers to be clear that 30 minutes average was fine. So he could read through several chapters in a book and we’d then mark off how many days he covered. That made things massively easier for him. He’d normally read twice as much was expected, but it was the expectation that he do it today that caused the stress.
Corner Stone
@Shakezula:
Here they have to take a test over the book while at school to get credit for it. And I don’t watch mine read, he goes to his room and comes out when he’s ready. He’s very meticulous about correctly recording the time, where some nights it will be “34 minutes”.
I’m sure some fudge it to get by, but that’s not really the point of it, IMO.
GregB
I think this post needs to be rewritten for clarity and grammar.
Corner Stone
I’ve never made any claims to being a perfectionist, and that seems to have worked ok for me.
Shakezula
Crap, forgot to add – Fun books for readers and writers and also fans of alternate history/dystopian/science fiction: Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series.
PurpleGirl
@Josie: You’ll be fine. You made a bunch of decisions — wanting to be closer to your children, deciding to move closer to them, going and finding a new place, selling/letting go of your current residence, packing and letting go of stuff. You got through all of that. Now, tomorrow you’re implementing the final stage. You made it through all of the other steps and you’ll get through this step too.
Congratulations on doing all of that, you’ll be fine.
ETA: {{{HUGS}}}
Snarkworth
I recall learning that Navajo weavers always include a small flaw in each blanket or rug. They have a spiritual reason for doing this, but it always struck me as wise on any level. A bit of imperfection can be a good thing.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
I’ve spent most of my life building things, mostly in metal but I’ve also remodeled an entire house. At some point every project, no matter what it is has to be “done” and you have to move on or you are stuck in that no man’s land of anxiety, fear, self loathing and depression. Maybe not in the deepest, darkest regions but that’s where you end up. And it isn’t fun, entertaining or in any way useful.
Now I used to work long, long ago with an older gentleman who was a perfectionist but knew the limits of what needed to be accomplished, so his work got done in good time. But in his hobby, carving plaster dolls, he would allow only perfection. I’ve been to museums around the world, seen the work of masters and he was every bit as good. He used his hobby to get his perfectionist needs out of the way, he focused on it. It didn’t matter that people only rarely saw the work, it was really for him. Mustang Bobby has his book, Larry had his 2 foot high plaster dolls.
Jay C
@Frankensteinbeck:
Maybe: but Mary Shelley’s husband is scarcely a obscure or forgotten character….
Though I agree with you about (the original) “Dracula”. I’ve always thought that the book betrays (and not in a good way) Stoker’s background in the theater. Stripped of the journal-and-letters format, “Dracula” has always seemed to me to have been constructed as a stage property (and, though Stoker probably didn’t clearly foresee it, cinema as well). Although supposedly, the first staging of “Dracula”, written by Stoker himself, was a flop, and the property wasn’t re-adapted til well after the author’s death.
danielx
@Snarkworth:
Supposedly the same thing with Persian rugs – one wrong thread, because only god is perfect.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jay C:
But while your average guy on the street has heard of Frankenstein, the only thing of her husband’s most people know is a few words of Ozymandius. He’s a big man in classical poetry scholars, who would not deign to touch a book written for fun like Frankenstein, but she’s a whoooooole lot more famous than he is – with good reason.
WereBear
@Jay C: There’s also the (some say thinly) veiled wrestling with the author’s homosexuality going on.
I have this urge I’m told is evil but I cannot eradicate it! My image of marriage is soul-deadening and false yet I must reach for it because of relentless social conditioning! This mysterious male figure has incredible power over me!
And so forth.
Ruckus
@danielx:
This goes off on a completely different tact….
How can god be perfect, if he made us?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Healthier attitude is do they pay or even expect perfection? The answer is “no” (sure, your control freak boss talks about, but he wouldn’t know perfection if it bit him on the ass and even if it did, he would refuse to admit it)
raven
GO DAWGS!!!
MomSense
@Ruckus:
It really is liberating. I figured out soon after having my first child that I was sort of re-parenting myself because if they went out to play, so could I. If I encouraged my son to try something new or appreciated something he created–well I could do that for myself, too.
The way I made peace with all of the perfectionist parenting was finally understanding that they were especially demanding or disappointed when I exhibited the same “flaws” that they hated about themselves. They feared that it would cause me pain like it had caused them.
Violet
@WereBear:
Had to step away for a bit. You may miss this but thought I’d follow up.
Don’t restrict your advice. Still do “advice columns” or articles or that kind of thing. But people have specific questions and follow up questions that they can’t get answers to from a website. Offer a 15 minute consultation via Skype or phone for members. Maybe those who sign up during the first go-round get one of those included with the membership. That way people can SHOW you their cat’s favorite toy or cushion or cat tree and you can say, “Move it by the window! He’ll love it!” Personalized cat consultation is a serious value-added service for your business. It’s a logical next step. You can even practice with some friends or some people here or family members or whatever to get a sense of where you should sit, backdrops, do you need a better microphone, etc.
First of all, don’t discount how much money people have and will spend on their pets. A $25 membership gets you X,Y,Z (maybe include one of Mr. WayofCats’ toys as one of those things–they get the free sample, buy more). One of the things it gets you is a consult. If they like/need that, they can buy more. Discounted price for members of course.
As for the book, DEFINITELY write it and sell it as an e-book from your website. People do that all the time in other fields. It’s not that hard–I know people here can help you find a good way to do it. If it’s a hit then it could transition to another style of book, maybe with a publisher.
Don’t sell yourself short. Charge what you’re worth. You are building a business. It takes money but it’s growing. That’s a GOOD THING!
Mike J
@Ruckus:
Different tack. As in what sailboats do to go upwind. When you change tacks you head off at 90° to your current course. Yours is a fairly common eggcorn though.
I only bring it up as the wind is 9 gusting 15 and I’m heading out the door to hop on a boat.
shortstop
Violet!!! Really happy to see you here. Hope you are feeling better.
Snarkworth
@Mike J: Perfectionist!
Violet
@shortstop: Thank you. I am feeling better. As I said earlier in the week, I’m not the best I’ve ever been but I’m okay. I have a support team in place and I’m okay. Last week was pretty tough and kind of felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me. I could not see a way forward. The choices I have are still not great but they are not as dire as my brain thought they were last week. Working on stuff. Good stuff can come from challenges, so I’m focusing on that.
WereBear
@Violet: If I ever get a corporation, I will hire you as Vice President of Brainstorming.
You are one of the most helpful people in the world when it comes to refinement of approach.
And, truly, so many wonderful Cat Appreciators have stepped up with generous gifts that I don’t have to worry for the next bit of the future. In line with the theme of Anne Laurie’s post, I shouldn’t worry about crafting a Perfect Machine at this point.
I should implement Cat Advice Counseling.
I should get my first real book (previously was more of a manual) out there.
I can do that. I feel so much better.
pluky
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Amen. One of the things I liked immediately, and best, about drinking at first was relief from feeling any need to live up to the expectations of others. Perfection is both a mask presented to others, and club with which to bludgeon the self.
Ruckus
@Mike J:
Thanks!
Enjoy!
And I should know that as I used to own a very nice 30ft sailboat. Or more appropriately – A floating fiberglass vacuum into which money is sucked.
ETA My spelling/grammar/definition skills are one of those things that I decided didn’t need perfection. I did this because I suck at them. Over the years I’ve tried to improve myself but it seems there is no saving me in these areas.
pluky
@Raven:
Ever read or watch “The Great Santini?” You’re not alone!
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Maybe it wasn’t being “gay”, as it was being “female” in a brutally misogynistic culture.
gelfling545
@MomSense: It is in most schools because an astounding number of parents are not readers themselves. It is not ideal by any means but can at least offer some exposure to kids in homes where reading materials are non-existent. Actually, a connection of our family grew up being dragged from school to school, state to state, on his mother’s whim (& sometimes 1 step ahead of child protection) never learned to read on more that a basically functional level. Doing these assignments with his daughter actually helped him find the impetus to expand his own horizons as it dawned on him that there could be pleasure in reading.
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: Of course you are right, literature is full of dystopian sci-fi. The books the JHS picked out were awful in ways any book in any genre could be: one-dimensional characters, wooden dialogue, characters that are the worst sort of stereotypes… And as I said before, lots of things blowing up, lots of people getting whacked, not in the service of any bigger message or theme, just because the writer was obviously writing for tween and teenaged boys and laboring under the belief that action! is what boys like. So I wasn’t as clear as I should have been.
On another note, everyone writing here about how their kids like to read, or they loved to read when they are kids, should remember that not all kids are like that. Teachers and schools have to find ways to reach everyone, and so-called reluctant readers are a big issue for them. The research shows that reading for pleasure is key in developing reading comprehension, vocabulary, etc. That’s where those ‘read for half an hour’ assignments come from, and that’s why there is often little or no follow-up on what is read independently. They’re trying it make it as low-pressure as possible.
Violet
@WereBear: Good! So glad I could help. I really think these two comments by you are important to point out:
You are speaking from a place of fear, imho. You are afraid if you restrict your advice people won’t come to your site. You’re afraid if you charge too much people won’t buy it or will go away. I don’t think either of those is true.
Keep offering the advice you do and add ways for people to get personalized advice. Add, not restrict. Eventually you may reshape what you offer for free but right now there’s no need. People know and trust you. And they can get your personalized help. Bonus!
As for the second one, people can afford all sorts of things for their pets. Don’t sell them short. Don’t sell yourself short. People spend tons of money on their pets. If they want help with their cats they’ll buy 20 books. Make yours one of them.
WereBear
@The Thin Black Duke: Good point!
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Thank you.
WereBear
@Violet: Bless you!
This is not the first time your wise advice has helped me steer through uncharted waters. And I hope it will not be the last :)
Josie
Thanks to everyone who posted your wonderful support for me. It feels great to hear your thoughts and experiences. My brother has arrived to help me with the move and we just went to the hardware store for last minute stuff. I am so lucky to have family and friends (local and internet) to help me get this done. Thanks again.
Ruckus
@Violet:
Very nice.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Because I am a bad person, I would probably claim that my kid was reading War and Peace or a similarly lengthy novel and just put that down every day. Might be something to keep in mind if you ever run into a teacher who’s a hardass about it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Barbara:
Yes, the genre that I disapprove of is ‘shitty writing’.
Snarki, child of Loki
You know what’s worse than being a perfectionist?
Being married to one.
raven
“And it is all Dawgs in the first half in Colombia”!!!!
Mnemosyne
Also, on topic to the thread, I am definitely one of those perfectionists who gets so tied up in the “what ifs” that it turns into procrastination and inability to do anything. Combine it with ADHD (which means that I’m pretty much wired to make dumb mistakes) and it gets very paralyzing.
Weirdly, the one area where I’ve been able to decide that “good enough” is good enough is in flossing. Yes, dental flossing. I decided that if I could just shove a piece of floss in between each tooth every night, that was fine, and I didn’t have to worry anymore about following the exact instructions. And I haven’t had a single cavity since.
Jewish Steel
Perfectionism deep sixed a few guitar students of mine over the years. More powerful than my abilities to help them psychologise their way around it. You must be blithe about the notes but strict about the rhythm when it comes to live performance. Perfect and music just don’t go together, fundamentally.
WereBear
I must remember to tell that to Mr WereBear the Guitarist.
raven
Vince Dooley called upon the words of the Roman poet Horace: “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would lain dormant.”
Nastybrutishntall
@Josie: ha! I just made a very similar decision yesterday. Have been living with someone in a place Im not crazy about instead of where I wanted to be because my current town is pleasant and convenient and affordable. But I’m far away from my kids, have no friends, and my joy has drained outta me. Told my GF she was wonderful but this wasn’t working, and I’m looking for a place in a town close to my kids that has no housing but lots of friends and pleasures and beauty. Happiness can be an inconvenient impulse. But I’m finally ditching “should” and have decided I’m the one going into my own grave eventually and will have to live with my own choices there forever and a day. So I’m getting out of a convenient, bland hell scape of indifference and pushing into the unknown I wish to struggle in. So good luck, an congratulations!
Jacel
@Ruckus: Good point. I find it useful to keep the actual needed end result in mind, and not get hung up on HOW to get there. If there’s a problem with the computer you’re using, don’t keep beating on fixing the whole buggy system — do the job by hand if it can be finished that way.
In college I reached a point of feeling immobilized by perfectionism tied to imposter fears. One day I came across a quote by G. K. Chesterton: “If something’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly.” That triggered me laughing for ten solid minutes and feeling vastly relieved afterwards.
CaseyL
I have worked for perfectionists: the kind that turn your draft into a bloodbath, turning commas into semi-colons and semi-colons into commas; the kind that stay at the office long into the night to redo the work everyone else did during the day “correcting” minor format issues… they also micromanage, believe that annual reviews are all about fault-finding, and generally make lousy bosses.
I am not a perfectionist, but working for them has turned me into a paranoid who is terrified of making mistakes.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
My kid is actually reading The Odyssey right now. His older brother read a few chapters to him and now he is reading it by himself. I do think it will take a long time to finish.
A big treat for me was that over the summer he read Frankensteinbeck’s book to me! Honestly that was a really nice experience we shared. He was still young enough so that he wasn’t self conscious about sort of acting out the characters.
Nastybrutishntall
Oh, and the GFIm parting with is such a perfectionist she needs an SSRI and a high dose of clonopin to function. Every utensil and household decoration must be chosen by her or will not be allowed in the house. This does not help my own anxiety and perfectionistic tendencies I have in my artmaking. She got a great heart. But I realized there was no room for me in the house…
WereBear
@Nastybrutishntall: A new home is one thing. A new heart-home is another.
Go with the Divine.
Josie
@Nastybrutishntall: Good for you. I am not looking forward to the physical demands of the long day of moving tomorrow, but I am looking forward to seeing my kids more often and to my new house in my new neighborhood and my wonderful new big yard. It is an energizing experience.
Nastybrutishntall
Funny. In a thread about perfectionism, my iPhone won’t let me edit comments. Click the edit button, and it pushes me onto the homepage. Oh the sweet, delectable irony.
Jewish Steel
@WereBear: The music we hear the most, recorded music, is perfect . Every time you hear it. I think this raises people’s expectations of themselves to unrealistic levels.
raven
I’m a perfectionist. I tried to by two tickets to Cole’s frat raffle this morning and, instead, bought 20. I can’t hack $200 but neither Cole or Anna have answered my emails to see if there is anything I can do. Now I got three packages from the VA with batteries and filters for my hearing aids. I cut into the first package and cut right through the application and return envelope!
cckids
@Corner Stone:
My kids were/are both voracious readers who weren’t allowed much TV. They both only had the “20-minute requirement” in 1st & 2nd grade, & they’d be writing down 1.5 hours, 2 hours, etc. When questioned by the teacher, I told her that making them STOP reading has always been my challenge.
Also on this subject; every school librarian I’ve ever talked to hates, hates, HATES this little exercise. Also the Accelerated Reader system where kids get points for every book they read/test on. The kids who are already good readers fly through things & rack up points (its all public) and prizes, the kids who are struggling feel more like failures than ever. Not. Cool.
cckids
@Snarkworth:
I was taught the same about Hindu weavers, that to insist on perfection was to compare yourself to a god (& therefore piss them off).
As a weaver myself, I always thought that whoever came up with that belief probably made a small mistake & didn’t want to own up to it. IOW, a perfectionist. “I totally meant to do that, otherwise the gods would be angry”. I have a sister like that :)
Nastybrutishntall
Ok, so I’ve got to put this out there to the writers. I have a lit fic novel I finished 3 years ago. Have a family friend who is the scion of a famous dead writer who was getting my book to an agent pal. Loved the book. My MFA writer pal loved the book. But then agent had a horrible family tragedy, which my family friend helped him through. In the midst of all that my book got sidelined, then quietly abandoned. I tried sending out queries to random agents and putting my manuscript into anyone’s hands who had any possible connection to literature or publishing, no matter how tenuous, but to no avail. No one had time to read it. And so it sits in my laptop like a starving child in a basement, forelorn and withering away and I’ve run out of ideas how to save it. (And just to establish bona fides, I’ve won cash and first prize for my short fiction, so I’m pretty sure the novel is worth at least a cursory glance by a publisher…)
WereBear
@Nastybrutishntall: Have you considered self-publishing? Doing so on the likes of Kindle or Barnes & Noble or even tagged PDF does not cost you anything.
And that is a way of building an audience.
WaterGirl
@raven: I nearly ended up with 10 raffle tickets yesterday when I was trying to purchase only 1, so it’s not just you!
I’m sure Cole will fix that for you – I don’t do twitter, but maybe there’s someone here who follows Cole and would be willing to give him a twitter heads up?
raven
@WaterGirl: I tried that too but it’s good to hear you had a similar issue.
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, this is your best thread ever. I thought that the minute I read what you posted, I think that’s even more true now that I have read through all the comments and see the conversation your post engendered.
Well done!
WaterGirl
@raven: It’s the way they set up the form – it doesn’t take away the existing zero when you start to type. I was so glad to have caught it before I pressed the final button without noticing.
Like you, i would have been screwed with 10 times more tickets than I could afford.
Corner Stone
@cckids: Yes, it’s the AR system here as well. I get your point about the public nature of it, but for my specific child, it drives him to compete and “beat” the other kids. I think he secretly enjoys reading more than he puts on, but the desire to make the year end party for finishing 17 of 22 TX Bluebonnet Books had him reading and doing book reports over the summer. The first year they started this here so many parents complained about the time it took to complete the requirement that the school canceled it as a grade component. It’s a kind of crab bucket educational system we have here.
But when he found out there was a party where you could miss a day of school AND throw water balloons at teachers in the park he finished about 15 books in two months.
So, there’s something positive that can be taken from it in some cases.
I myself am a vacuum reader, and will ingest books and material on a rolling basis as work status allows.
raven
@WaterGirl: Yea, Cole’s a good dude, he’s not trying to rip anyone.
Corner Stone
@cckids:
And, I also think he’d read more each night on average but some nights his mom comes over and he doesn’t want to lose too much time away from her.
So he’d rather get the min requirement to stay on pace and stop. It’s a balance of a lot of complex issues, I guess.
ETA, he’s mapped out exactly where he needs to be on a weekly and monthly basis to make this year’s party. It’s almost like a project plan or an attorney planning his/her schedule to hit a certain number of hours billed by X so he can take a vacation for a week and still get his bonus.
jeffreyw
upgrade hell, a cookie would make it better
raven
Just beat their asses! Go Dawgs!!!!!!
WaterGirl
@raven: Yep. Cole will fix it – the only question is how long it takes to get his attention. :-)
Mnemosyne
Apropos of nothing, I HATE HATE HATE when one of the screening questions to get an interview is, How much are you currently making? It’s a seriously assholish way to screen out people who you think make “too much” for the position you’re looking for.
Corner Stone
@? Martin:
I have a meeting each year with my son’s teachers and tell them very explicitly to be clear on their expectations with my son. Because when he’s unsure, and I’m not sure what they’re looking for, it makes him very frustrated and I then have to talk myself down from attack mode. Because they’re mostly all doing the very best they can. They’re just hosed in some cases. It’s a no win for them a lot of the times and they can’t make it better at their level.
So I just try to be open and honest about what we’re doing at home and what I need from them to make sure we’re all doing what we can.
I’ve had very mixed outcomes in this effort. One year I had a teacher tell me, “Yeah, well I didn’t write the questions.” when I asked for some clarity on what was required. This year, in the first three weeks there were an average of two typos/errors/mistakes a night in the copied sheets of homework.
As I said, I’m not a perfectionist but if you’re grading a child on their accuracy you shouldn’t be firing arty at their position each night.
Baud
Apparently, the author of the next post is a perfectionist too.
raven
@Baud: As soon as Georgia pulls of this totally unsuspected ass whipping of Mizzou we’ll get “oh, I’m sorry, I forgot”! Go Dawgs!!!
Corner Stone
Speaking of perfection, just got back from a league basketball game, it’s gently pouring down rain outside and I have every light/TV/electronic device off except the three laptops I’m working on.
Hmmm, ok, maybe not perfection but like I said, I’m not a stickler for it.
Ruckus
@cckids:
I was such a voracious reader when young that my city library’s young section ran out of interesting books. I would take out the max 6 books at a time. The adult section books, you know things a young person should not be thinking about, could not be checked out without an adult card which of course they wouldn’t give me. So mom went with me. I learned a few choice new words that day, and got my adult card. I think I was 9 or 10. I found exactly one book with anything approaching adult behavior in it. Talked about condoms. Well I have to tell you I was scarred for at most 2 seconds, and then got over it.
Corner Stone
@Jewish Steel:
Man, those are words to live by. I’m not a musician of any sort, professional or otherwise but I like to spank my funky bass when I can. It’s the rhythm that matters in life. The specific notes can be sometimes excellent or sometimes off, but keeping the rhythm is the thing.
WereBear
@Ruckus: Yep, my dad used his card to get me history and biography and the like from the Adult Section when I was eight or so.
Did me good!
Another Holocene Human
No shit, also, I wouldn’t confuse the personas of demanding, highly successful professionals as perfectionism at all. If anything, as the top dogs in the organization they’re remarkably un-self-critical, screaming at subordinates and making their lives hell.
Perfectionists are driven by the constant criticism and the fear of abuse that dominated their childhoods. The worse the abuse and the weaker the love or affirmation, the more depression, anxiety and the dark pit loom. They were trained to become invisible and avoid all attention by never having anything out of place but this is impossible so ironically it can lead to a smart student who fails, a disgusting hoarder house with dirty things everywhere, and failed relationships as the perfectionist can’t forgive little foibles in their intimate partner (or children). Because they can’t forgive it in themselves.
It’s one of those strategies children come up with to survive that breaks down in adolescence.
We need children’s rights. Children should not be legally treated as the slaves of their parents. With the end of truancy laws and the rise of home schooling, the American child as slave is back. We DO have an interest in other people’s children because they grow up.
And when they’re too big to control — and angry — and have a warped perspective on life — and are living in a warped reality from the past — look out!
Why do you think the US had more serial killers than any other country? Mobility + child abuse. Child abuse is a factory for murder.
srv
@Ruckus: Same here, K-12 school, two libraries. HS librarian wouldn’t let me check books out. Next morning, classmate walks in and says “Your mom is in the library with the principal and she’s yelling at them.”
Got my card.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
That it is. I take it when I get that question that they will try to low ball you on pay and it’s probably a crappy place to work anyway. So I tell them it’s not relevant to getting paid a proper salary for the work I’d be doing for them. This of course can limit the number of interviews that you get, but it does tell them you don’t play games. I always try to pull it around to what my qualifications/experiences are, because I’m willing to accept the salary/benefits they offer so there is no need for other discussion.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone:
School teaches a number of the wrong lessons. If a kid has any sort of learning disorder, this goes from annoying to possibly catastrophic.
I have high-functioning (depends who you ask–fa fa!) autism and it took me over a decade to realize how badly school (and that definitely included college and grad school) had fucked with my notions about life and human relationships.
Let’s just take the whole rank and curve bs. In the real world if you’re building an organization, you need really smart people who can take something and go with it. In school, these people are your rivals and their success means you failed. That jealousy and fear isn’t just jealousy and fear, it’s very real status anxiety (one of the most toxic feelings there is). But again, if you’re trying to be a leader, this is wrong wrong wrong. Somebody in your organization who is making it shine is uplifting everyone in that organization. The only time outside of school when this might be true is in lower level jobs where people are a) competing for a job in the first place, b) competing on the floor for that first promotion (especially if for a shitty manager, which they often are, rather than a manager who develops leadership talent). Otherwise you’re just tearing down the organization over a fear that’s borrowed, not real.
The Thin Black Duke
@Corner Stone: The bass is the heartbeat of the song.
Another Holocene Human
Imagine if there were a school that said, “This class is a success when everyone in this class succeeds” and encouraged the A students to tutor the remedial students?
Wouldn’t that be a lot more relevant to LIFE than trying to read another chapter in one of those shitty tertiary source history books you’ll just have to unlearn when you get to college and go to lectures with actual experts on Greek history or US history or whatever?
Think about it.
The only class I would really, really push to have kids go through as many units as early in life as possible would be math. It never changes and has knock-on effects on other types of learning (of course music instruction is necessary from the beginning and integrated throughout the schooling or math achievement will always be poor overall). And even then, it actually really helps kids to teach other kids math lessons to cement their learning. 50 worksheets won’t accomplish what trying to explain something to somebody else will.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Unfortunately, though, everyone does it now, so unless I want to forego looking for a new job entirely, I have to deal with it. It’s one of those shitty HR things.
It’s especially annoying because it would be a transfer within the Giant Evil Corporation, so the recruiter I talked to could just look it up herself, fer chrissakes.
StringOnAStick
@srv: When I was 9, a swimming accident nearly destroyed one eardrum, of course it was summer in a very hot climate where the local swimming pool was free but once my ear was messed up, that option was off the table. I spent the summer in the city library instead, and would ride my bike there 3 and 4 times a day, get my limit, go home and read them, then go back for more. Eventually the librarians wouldn’t even bother checking things out to me, they’d just wave as I walked out. Once I’d read everything on the kid’s science shelves it was time to have a look at the adult section; no one tried to stop me so I just dug in.
I still love and use libraries constantly, and it was my (future) husband’s love of the same that started my attraction to him (along with other things of course!). I cringe for the future every time libraries are derided as out of touch and unnecessary; libraries are necessary for a functioning democracy, and I suppose that’s why the budget cutter’s roving eyes tends to land there.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: That’s not really the problem. The problem is that they want to know everything about what you make, but keep you from learning what everyone else makes. They get all the power, you’re in the dark.
Mnemosyne
It’s funny to see the stories about “adult” library cards and “kid” library cards. I don’t think our local library had them (this was the 1980s) because I don’t think I was ever stopped from checking out any book I wanted to. Of course, at this point I was 10+ years old, so maybe that was the limit?
I am that horrible scourge of librarians everywhere — the patron who forgets to return books. There’s probably a warrant out for my arrest somewhere, though I don’t think I have any contraband left. It’s all been returned under cover of darkness.
(Seriously, my high school library held a school-wide amnesty for the return of books without fines. I was specifically told by the head librarian that it was so they could get all of their books back from me, but they had to extend it to the whole school to be fair.)
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear:
Technically, you have to engage in some sort of promotion. Even getting published you will end up having to promote yourself (generally, if you don’t get an advance, they don’t do the pub for you).
This can been really draining, stressful, and confusing for many writer-types. Even an extrovert can find it draining. You may need A Team.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m in a union position right now, so they can’t keep me too much in the dark since the union positions have specific pay ranges. If I don’t get the interview because I currently make too much, I know that the people in those positions are getting screwed, because technically the union position I’m currently in is supposed to be lower on the scale (pay-wise) than the one(s) I applied for.
Another Holocene Human
@Nastybrutishntall: Okay, now that I’ve read your OP, if it’s truly lit fic, good luck selling that on BN.com, pace Werebear.
Sounds like you need your very own agent. Maybe keep your baby on the HD for now and see if you’ve got some more short fiction in you that you can shop, along with your credentials, to an appropriate agent?
You’re going to make dozens of inquiries until you get ‘the one’. Then your worries aren’t over because once your agent gets you an editor to buy it the editor always wants to change things and that hurts.
eta: if you get one thing published and they like it, it’s easier to get that lit fic novel published … lit fic novels the supply exceeds the demand and there’s that matter of taste issue as well, for example the industry can be kind of racist, if the gatekeepers are WASPs and your lit fic has an Afro-Caribbean protagonist they may reclassify it in their heads as “urban lit” or special interest, however wrongly.
Also, sorry about your agent tragedy, something similar happened to my uncle, killed his book series even though they sold, no death in the family but some sort of publisher/editor/agent job-change/snit/blowup.
WereBear
Sistah! I swear there’s a WANTED poster on our local library with my name on it. I pay the fines! For heaven’s sake, I support the library.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: One more thing about unions for the plutocrats to hate.
BTW, the evil minions at GEC effed up by planting roots in CA first because, ya gotta love this, when they started building in Flori-duh, the big construction unions in CA told them they were going to use union labor in that right to work state OR ELSE.
And they did.
The end.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Sadly, everywhere I’ve ever lived the fines did NOT go to the library.
They went to some general fund.
So if you lost a book and paid for it, that fine went to some mayorial or county commissioners’ slush fund.
Lame.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
IIRC, the Parks employees out here are union, so they had to be unionized in Florida, too. I never worked at the park here, but I did work at Universal Studios for a summer in merchandise and was IATSE.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
Turn them the fuck in, asshole. I’ve been waiting like forevs to read that tome you have selfishly forgot about under the back seat of your car.
Respect! This isn’t about you.
Another Holocene Human
@cckids:
Good thing I didn’t give a shit about their ‘prizes’. Wasn’t this partially about selling a particular publisher’s “age appropriate” books? I went in that library and read whatever the f*ck I pleased, f*ck “chapter books” and all that smarmy shit. Or, jeez, the abridged edition. F*ck you, I’m not reading any abridged edition, do I look like a stupid little baby? Okay, okay, so reading Heinlein’s STRANGER in the “director’s cut” was a mistake, ugh. (But that was a cheat, as it was not originally published in that format.)
There’s a whole, huge market in dumbed down genre books with numbers on the side that certain publisher imprints make a mint off of. Money money money — money!
I read the Arthurian cycle when I was in 3rd grade. I didn’t understand it — but I’m not sorry.
And TREASURE ISLAND is loads more fun than the ENTIRE run of TNG and DS9 “YA” chapter books (no, I don’t mean the trade paperbacks that sold for $3.99 now 6.99 or some bullshit, they also sucked for the most part but whatever, I mean the complete shit they marketed towards ages 11-14). I read them all when I worked at a library in high school. I read TREASURE ISLAND in grade school. It’s a real adventure like Golden Compass or Hobbit but without the crazy vocab challenge to test how fast you can flip through a dictionary every other word. Okay so Tolkein was a linguist, that kind of gives him a pass.
Jewish Steel
@Corner Stone: Word.
I do a thing with my students where I play the first 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5th – but with the wrong notes. Then I ask them how they recognized it, wrong notes and all? It’s the rhythm. It’s king.
Corner Stone
@WereBear:
Just turn the book in. That’s more of a support for the local library system than anything else. People count on getting access to material when the rotation comes round. They don’t check off who has paid what fines.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: There’s a little loophole. The “interns” from colleges overseas.
If you start to chat them up most of them are pretty pissed.
Not going to say what job site for your sake but I think you can guess the name of the big one.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: “Them’s that dies will be the lucky ones”!
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t think you know what you’re talking about on this one.
This isn’t about abridged BS nor about pushing a certain publisher. This reading list is an acclaimed group of thought provoking work that is on level for some and challenging that level for others.
The prizes are ancillary, but useful in the marketing of the whole dynamic to kids.
Corner Stone
@Jewish Steel:
Gay marry me!
Or, erm, maybe just give me discounted lessons?
Another Holocene Human
Teamsters have the bus driver contract. Somebody in that local should proffer charges and DFR their ass all the way to NLRB.
Lynx drivers have better pay/bennies and they have no right to strike or binding interest arbitration because they’re public.
I fear the bus drivers are either ex-public, so don’t know how to take stuff to Labor Dept, or they’re ex-Teamster and this is just the way things are. Or like so many Americans, ex-non-union-shop. It’s sad.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: Well, at least it’s not crap. They used to give out pencil toppers (remember those?) in elementary school and chapter books counted, and Scholastic, for one, was actually brought into the school to sell shit to us.
AFAIK, on higher grades the teachers came up with the summer reading list and it wasn’t mandatory.
I think that was changing behind me.
So tell me, is the whole pre-set curriculum plan and the prizes and awards and stuff NOT pre-packaged and sold by a publishing company?
If the teachers at school are coming up with books that only reach the top 10% of students then shame on them.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Heh, yeah.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
We used to be able to order books directly from Scholastic at school, but it didn’t have anything to do with reading competitions and we didn’t have to order specific titles.
My brother and I were very spoiled because our parents were really big on reading, so we could order anything we wanted from the catalog, and as many as we wanted. So other kids would be getting two or three books when they were delivered and we would have a huge stack.
ETA: My parents wouldn’t buy me a Monchhichi when they were all the rage at school, but I could have as many books as I could cram into my room.
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
If I undersatnd you question correctly, which is never a good bet, then no.
There is a list of TX Bluebonnet books that are part of the AR guide. Students read these books, which cover some pretty weighty freakin topics like murder, racial discrimination, child abuse, sexual abuse, etc, as well as some more light hearted fare. I read all the books on the list so I know what they’re requiring, and we can discuss them. My mom also takes the books after my son reads them and finishes them so we all can talk about deeper themes than what may be first evident.
The “prizes” are garbage, for the most part. The normal kind of thing you’d expect at a Chuck E Cheese turn in for tickets. But they also give out different colored dog tags for how many a child has finished and passed the AR on. And that seems to be like a status symbol for the children who are focused on this topic.
But, no, there’s no blatant commercialism involved, for the most part.
Gex
@Another Holocene Human: great comment
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
Listen. There’s just not much teachers can do in this regard. I see this/fight this all the time here. And we live in a middle-middle class ISD that used to have a bunch of NASA employed households in it (thanks Obama!).
But a significant chunk of parents here simply don’t have the time/drive/privilege to impact their child’s studies and education. And so when something comes down that causes any extra time suck or burden on them, they balk. Loudly and often. It sounds like whatever you want to call it, but it really is teaching to the lowest common denominator here. The people who can afford to pay University of Texas level tuition for their elementary school child to attend private school have done so. So it’s a mix of white collar working class and borderline working class poor that are fighting to get the best outcomes for their kids.
The fucking wingnuts are killing us all. Each year. Each and every fucking year.
The Dangerman
Good grief, Mississippi State, LESS cowbell.
raven
@efgoldman: HOW BOUT THEM DAWGS!!!!!
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
I guess they all have lives, unlike us lowly commenters. ;-p
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: They’re seeking the perfect mix of topic, headline and category tags.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
My Dad read Treasure Island to me and we kept staying up way past bedtime so we could keep reading. That is one helluva book! I read Treasure Island to my kids and the same thing happened. We stayed up way past bedtime because none of us wanted to stop the story.
Corner Stone
Through Atrios to Kthug, we see the austerians continuing their stupid fucking plotting to destroy the world. Or at least force a revolution.
Jewish Steel
@Corner Stone: Free lessons for all my husbands!
Jewish Steel
It’s how I teach composition and improvisation too. Just find your rhythm and lock into your scale pattern. Then start experimenting til it sounds right.
Corner Stone
In the immortal words of DMX:
Stop. Drop. Ohhh. Nooo. That’s how rough riders roll.
? Martin
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s not here. The entire middle school reading curriculum in my district is centered around books that are banned elsewhere. So they cover controversial/subversive topics and much of the curriculum is centered around discussing why they are considered controversial or subversive.
There’s two sides to curriculum plans – the outcomes and the implementation. A lot of what is getting wrapped up in Common Core and such is that everyone is ignoring the outcomes and focusing on the implementation and saying that the implementation is a measure of the goals of CC. Districts that can’t adapt their old curriculum to the new outcomes often turn to Scholastic or whoever and buy a curriculum, and that curriculum is usually shit. So the complaints about CC aren’t necessarily about CC but about the turmoil over the transition.
The teachers at my kids school said that implementing CC was pretty simple because they were basically doing CC all along, and it’s not even that they didn’t need to invest the time in implementing a new curriculum, but they had a better sense of what works, what doesn’t, where the pitfalls are etc. Other districts don’t and so the prepackaged curriculum is tempting. It may not be great, but its probably not a disaster either, and they can work from that into something that they own over time. So how much of it is imported and how much is home grown probably varies substantially. I don’t see a lot of stuff being imported into my kids schools, for example.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
I thought it was interesting that the Huntington is using a chunk of their endowment to do teacher training for Common Core for Pasadena USD and some of the surrounding districts.
It makes sense since arts training has been the object of budget cuts for years and years, so local teachers probably don’t have a lot of ways to implement the new humanities requirements.
ETA: I think that the idea of having a Common Core for whole country is a good idea, but tying it to high-stakes testing is going to be disastrous.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
That’s why I work for a very small business in blue collar craft type work. Results matter, almost nothing else does. That and I don’t have to wear “fancy” clothes, tee shirt, pants and shoes and I’m good to go.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne
As long as the goal is to make sure that minimal standards of what to teach are available, which is what I understand Common Core to be, I’d agree wholeheartedly. The problem comes when everyone is tested and money tied in any way to the results. Because as we know, not everyone is the same and not everyone requires the same level/type of teaching to get to the end of the road. We have on this thread many who were/are readers and who had if nothing else the ability to do well in school. Many, many other kids don’t have those opportunities and all the testing in the world won’t change that.
I often wonder if zero sum thinking is normal human thought or just our American way as it creates/exacerbates so many of our basic problems.
WaterGirl
@? Martin: OT, but I am wondering how your big presentation went recently? The one where you were going to suggest a different approach to teaching, if I recall correctly.
? Martin
@WaterGirl: Well, it went sort of okay. I should say, this is a process, and the first few meetings went very well, but everyone decided that I didn’t quite have enough together to probably sell this all the way through, and my pitch wasn’t quite right for some audiences, so I didn’t bring it up at the later meetings. It’s still moving forward, and I have recruited some key supporters and gotten some good suggestions on others to bring in, but I have more work to do. And that’s totally fine by me. Nobody said this stuff would be easy.
Thank you for asking.
WaterGirl
@? Martin: Maybe not a home run, but it sure sounds like good progress to me!
In the end, you may end up with more success because more people are involved . The more people that are invested in the outcome, the likelier it is that you’ll get there. My tendency is to want to come in with everything tied in a neat little bow, but then there’s no opportunity for others to buy into it. I’ve concluded that no one likes the neat little package tied in a neat little bow, not until they have asked for it.
Your mileage may vary.
Birthmarker
@Corner Stone: Accelerated Reader is something I am familiar with. After we first started it, two elementary teachers in one day stopped me in the hall and told me that their comprehension scores on the regular textbook reading tests were the highest they had ever been, and it was usually the worst scoring sections in the kids’ tests. AA may not be for every student,and what is, but it changed our school for the good. It forces kids to read for detail. You buy the books separately from the tests, though the publishers will sell the books by set based on the AA test disks. AA doesn’t sell books. Also, this all precedes the Bush admin. AA was around for years before the Bush era.
CanadaGoose
@WereBear: STEM TO STEM??? You’re a fucking barbarian!!
nastybrutishntall
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, I’m with you on self-publishing lit fic. It’s necessary to have a way for people to figure out that they want to read your stuff if the self-evidence of genre is absent; that’s what agents and publishers and promotion are supposed to do. Get it into the hands of critics, etc.
I’m just always in a fish or cut bate debate wrt making more stuff vs. figuring out a way to sell it. I have a dayjob, so I haven’t hustled like it may be necessary, though I’m beginning to notice an obvious absence of readers. I just feel if I can get it in front of the right person, it will be self-evident the thing needs to see the light of day. How, though, is a frikkin mystery.
Thanks for the advice, though. And confirming what I’d been thinking.