I agree; that is a pretty good article.
I'm only getting to the front page (which spells Lucian Freud's name wrongly). Probably because I'm on my phone, will try again on a computer later. (Unless I am missing the latest post on Standpipe's blog.)
OK, I read it. Tbh I'm a bit sick of early forties men having crises because they're fathers and have responsible jobs and have just realised that they're really never going to be a professional footballer/rockstar. Get over yourselves.
It's quite well-written, but I'm with asilon in 4, tbh.
Tbh I'm a bit sick of early forties men having crises because they're fathers and have responsible jobs and have just realised that they're really never going to be a professional footballer/rockstar GQ readers.
Sort of related: about a year and a half ago, I was having coffee with a friend I was very close to early in grad school but have grown distant from and seldom see now, even though we live in the same city. We were catching up on this and that, she asked about married life. I was telling her how easy it is to get caught up in the coupleness of it all, and joked "We're even sending out Christmas cards this year! We're so bourgeois." To which she gravely responded, "Yeah, you really are, aren't you?" It cracks me up to this day to think about it. She wasn't trying to be insulting, it was more a moment of quite clearly seeing the way she thinks of/defines herself in opposition to me.
To which she gravely responded, "Yeah, you really are, aren't you? You're practically bottle-feeding."
She might not have actually said the last part out loud.
The subject of the article is evidently also Mitt Romney's cooler doppelgänger:
I asked him how he liked Portland.
"Excellent," he said, pointing the clothespin at me. "It confirms my theory."
"What theory?"
"Oh, that the coolest people live in the cities with the tallest trees. I think because big trees remind you how small you are."
re: 7
I have friends who do that sort of thing [defining themselves in opposition, etc.]. In my experience [he says, sarkily] their self-image is somewhat delusional.
In my experience [he says, sarkily] their self-image is somewhat delusional.
Yeah, that's why I was able to laugh at it rather than be offended. There's a reason she and I grew apart. (Well, dozens, but self-delusion is up there.)
There's something particularly self-deluding about defining yourself in opposition to the trappings of a certain lifestyle. "Oh, I'm not the kind of person who sends out Christmas cards. I have a Holiday post on my blog!"
Anchored Down in Anchorage is semi-on topic as well as otherwise blog relevant.
I have a Holiday post on my blog!
I have yet to do a Christmas letter, but I don't like to send cards with nothing more than our names written on them. I've taken to writing one or two short sentences on each card about something that has happened in the past year. I probably send about thirty to forty cards and I can't really think of that many different things to say without actual effort. To make it easier, I have a system. I get maybe a dozen snippets and group the cards into three groups (mom's side, dad's side, friends). There is very little communication between those groups, so I pick a snippet and write it on one card from each group. Then I get the next snippet and lay out the next three cards.
13: But, as it almost goes without saying, an extremely common pattern of self-image definition which I suspect everyone has indulged in to some extent or other. I certainly have.
I had one of these conversations with a college friend two years ago. He's the happily married philosophy professor with kids, I'm the single philosophy professor who is always gallivanting around the world. We complained to each other about things that had happened to us and went home much happier with our own situations.
15: Wow, that sounds like a lot of work. Make up a few stamps or something.
I thought about putting a code number for which snippet to include on the address label, but I'm afraid that will cause problems at the post office.
16: Well, yes, I suppose you would do that, but I never would.
22: Well, yes, I suppose you would say that, but I never would.
16: More seriously, who doesn't do that? And why shouldn't people do that?
Like the author in Ben's link, I'm a little unclear on my essential self, but I damn well know who I ain't.
I'm a little unclear on my essential self
Google your name and be done with it.
Does it contribute to their doppelgangerheit that I wanted to crawl into the article and punch both of them?
Your doppelganger and my doppelganger sitting by the fire.
25. As it happens, if I Google my name I get the web site for [politicalfootball] Ministries. I am definitely not that guy.
Well that's a bit of a surprise: the author of the article is way cuter than his doppleganger, who sports an "I'm famous enough that I'm going to get laid despite this revolting beard" beard.
28: My googlganger is in a very similar field and seems a bit more prominent due to teaching it at a community college. He also lives in a somewhat more interesting place. The incremental me.
25: When I Google my name the first page is mostly taken up by a murderer and the second by a mediocre artist.
1. Musclebound black guy with guitar.
2. British landscape photographer.
3. Canadian hockey arena.
Musclebound black British landscape photographer with a guitar it appears.
I think I saw what you did there. ... or maybe I mis-clicked.
Googling my name for the first time in a while has led to the discovery that a picture I took in China of a coal barge is now prominently displayed on the Wikipedia page for Coal Power in the People's Republic of China. The color was retouched by someone named Dave606 and now it looks much better.
The internet is wondrous.
34: No, I noticed it the same time you did and fixed it.
I'm an executive vice president of a reasonably large bank or a law school professor or a British chemist.
I'm on America's Most Wanted, and I've been a fugitive for 30 years. Maybe that is me? I do have all these feeling of guilt that I can't explain.
1. Country singer
2. Retired football player with Denver Broncos
3. Scottish politician
4. Baseball player
5. Local sports journo in north east England
6. Jobbing movie/TV actor/director
That's just the first page...
I've known a handful of guys like the doppelganger. If you can get past the envy, one thing you'll notice is that that's actually the only thing they can be, since they're perpetually unable to get their shit together. Some of them, if you catch them in a dark moment, will admit to feeling a bit shit about it, too.
There's a reason we drift toward attachment, I think, as we get older-- attachment to people, to work, to things. As death moves closer, we try our hardest to dig in. We pound in the stakes so that our tents don't blow away.
IMX not the case. I've been tossing and giving stuff and people away. It's all random chance, take the route you thought you should have and end up under the wheels of the BMW running the light.
I'm thankful for my uncommon surname. Most of the hits for my name are genealogical.
I haven't read the article yet. I expect I will find it interesting even though, honestly, the premise sounds silly.
I've been thinking about aging lately, because I've been thinking about how much effort I spend maintaining stasis*in my life. If I look at the last 8 years in many ways my life hasn't changed much at all, and in other ways I feel like I've made a lot of progress. Most of the time I think I've made the right choices, occasionally I wonder if I should have done something else (as everybody does).
My one thought this morning is that sometime in my mid-twenties I reached a point of comfort with being who I am. I didn't think of myself as finished but I accepted that the essential contours of my personality were pretty well fixed and that I was comfortable with that. Now, in my mid-thirties, I feel like I'm just getting to a point where I can know the results and consequences of that fact.
Again, mostly happy, and only occasionally do I think I'm nuts.
* (thread about diet incorporated by reference)
Someone with my name was incarcerated last year at the Westmoreland County Jail for Terroristic Threats With Intent To Terrorize Another. Some of the other mes are doing pretty well, though. I said hi to one of us on facebook at some point. I think he was less amused by the whole thing than I was. Also one of us is on law faculty at UT, if memory serves. Go, Most Successful Me!
A real success would make terroristic threats with intent to terrorize himself into all kinds of win.
20. Use symbols that are not numbers or latin letters.
As a forced exercise and especially as a forced exercise for a non-pseudonymous article, traveling to meet the other guy seems like playing dress-up or something. But many people have a circle of friends with the same lifestyle, same ambitions. Better to recognize a rut and try some change than to be complacent.
Making new types of acquaintances is IMO worthwhile, and may not happen organically with the time budget of someone raising small kids.
My main google namesake is a playwright and director who also lives in NYC. I used to get calls intended for him about once a month.
More on topic, I did have the "what was the point at which your life went careening off the rails?" conversation with a friend yesterday. I always enjoy that one. (1997 for me!)
4: I think this is right. It's interesting that the dreams he has of what he'd have accomplished without having kids largely seems like being 25 for a whole decade.
48. I think my answer would have to be, "What rails?"
49: When I was 25, it was a very good year.
Every google result is about me (at least until you get to faux link trolling aggregator sites). I think I might be the only person in the world with my name.
39, you were both playing outfield for Arizona and pitching for San Diego for several years.
52: Me too. My last name is also pretty rare, having been changed from a German name upon ancestors' arrival in he U.S. There do seem to be a few people with my last name in Australia, including someone who had a website called "[Blumelastname]'s Diaper Page" about adult diaper fetishes.
51: I stayed up listening to Live. When I was 25.
54- My name is the same origin, but changed from Russian (although I have German on my mother's side.) I guess our last names sort of sound the same, too- maybe they had some standard suggestions for how to Anglicize eastern European names.
39, you were both playing outfield for Arizona and pitching for San Diego for several years.
Yeah, that was hard. I needed a private F-16 to get from one field to another. Unfortunately I didn't have one, so my life went off the rails...
I have myfirstnamemylastname at gmail, and I get amazing subscriptions to mailing lists, receipts from purchases, credit check results, etc., for my doppelgangers. I know when they buy houses, Toyotas, and ammunition. I know when they have babies. I know when all the middle school plays and soccer games happen in one Arkansas town (tried pretty hard to unsubscribe from that one, to no end). I got an email one time: "Myfirstname, are you ok? Thought you would call last night." I emailed back my usual response that they have the wrong email address for the person they are trying to reach. Got an immediate response: "Is this a joke?"
Basically, people with myfirstname and mylastname are the very worst at knowing what their own email addresses are. This makes me a little paranoid that maybe I'm terrible at it too and other people are getting all my mail, and maybe I *am* interested in Arizona real estate?
My first name was one of the most popular in the 1970s, and then plummeted.
Now the guy who has my name who also studied physics is writing some kind of libertarian newspaper column.
"what was the point at which your life went careening off the rails?"
Somewhere around 2000 or 2001 is when I went from planning to do something useful with my life to whatever nonsense I waste all my time on these days. And then there was 2003, when I started spending approximately 65% of my waking life reading blogs.
I did have an email address at MIT where a kid 3 years behind me must have told his family/GF that he was going to use that address without knowing I already had it, so his freshman year I got stuff from his mom and from his GF including one about how he never responds to her emails.
@61
from his GF including one about how he never responds to her emails.
A romantic comedy waiting to happen.
Vaguely on-topic, I have a slightly elevated respect for my Facebook privacy settings: someone living in a previous apartment just got in touch with me to let me know some of my mail was still coming there. He asked if I had a Facebook account at all, since he hadn't found a trace of its existence.
@48
I guess the answer depends on what is meant by "went off the rails."
My plan to acquire superpowers and set up in a secret underground base in an inactive volcano in Antarctica never quite worked out. I'm not sure I could identify the specific year when the opportunity was lost though.
64.last: Why give up? Maybe the Mineshaft can collectively build an underground Antarctic lair. We can be timeshare supervillains.
It's hard to launch our hordes of ekranoplan-borne implacable ninja-assassins from Antarctica.
Maybe we could just build an Unfogged retirement home, somewhere nice? Quiet, with a nice lawn we could order people off of.
Agreeing that the GQ article was well-written and better than it sounds but in the end little more than a middle-aged mid-life-crisis retrospective, which is hardly groundbreaking, but I also found it interesting how much one's "self who can do more" is such a matter of perspective. That full-time professional writer dreams about being a bohemian musician, but I'll bet a lot of people, like myself, would feel pretty damn fulfilled to be making a living as a full-time professional writer. And now that I've read about that Puchner guy a bit, I could probably connect myself to him with not too many degrees of separation, because we worked at the same writers' conference just four years apart - although him as a featured speaker versus me behind the snack bar.
Despite that, though, I'm not having wistful longings for the path not taken. Teaching isn't for me, which is apparently how Puchner spends a lot of his time. And unless you're incredibly good or lucky or hard-working, writing is such poorly-paid, unreliable work that I don't regret not trying too hard at it. It would be nice to craft fictional opuses and make a living in my living room and see my name in bookstores, but that dream isn't worth the high likelihood of living in a rathole of an apartment and subsisting on off-brand Ramen noodles. I could write more in my free time, you never know, and I actually am doing a bit these days, but I can appreciate what I have quite well, thanks.
Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm Puchner's age, though.
And as for people sharing my name, that's not a worry I'll ever have, unless sharing abbreviated or outright pseudonymous versions of the name counts, in which case John Cole (my middle name and the part of my last name before the hyphen) is easy enough to find.
Now that I actually google myself, I'm a bit annoyed at how un-substantive it is. I seem to remember that three years ago, about 8 of the top 10 links were, directly or indirectly, to things I'd written for publication. Now? One thing I wrote for publication, one thing I wrote on Google Groups, one thing about a costume contest I won last year, and then there's Facebook, Google+, and link aggregation bots. I'm not surprised by this, but I don't like it.
Maybe Probably by the time you get to retire global warming will have made lawns in Antarctica a realistic proposition.
including someone who had a website called "[Blumelastname]'s Diaper Page" about adult diaper fetishes.
Okay that makes the [My Real Name] twitter person seem less annoying by comparison.
I just searched for my name and, apparently, not only do I have a minimal web presence the two or three other people with my name are also relatively low-profile.
Out of paranoia I once used one of those "check your web presence" services (it was free).
I was pleased to see that mine is basically nothing but links to papers & talks, as well as a few threads on myfieldofscience-related message boards.
So no one googling me will find out about the Antarctica-super powers plan...
Eric Puchner's real regret is probably just not being named Eric Puncher.
Is "full-time professional writer" an apt description of someone who's a professor? I'm honestly asking; certainly I'll still think of myself as a full-time physicist when I start my faculty job. But somehow "professional writer" brings to mind something different than faculty.
He should rewrite the article when his kids are late teenagers.
It sounds like maybe he did spend a decade being 25 (eg his description of the 9 years between meeting his wife and getting married).
73: Probably not. I guess I should proofread my blog comments more carefully. Given that he's written a novel or two, though, and at least some of his teaching work looks like it resulted from his writing work rather than the other way around, I thought he looked like a professional writer of some kind.
When I google my name the first result is a highly publicized minor crime/scandal I was involved in. It sucks.
68: What struck me is that he isn't really thinking about a path not taken. He's wanting to recapture feeling like a guy who could do anything (but as his doppelganger shows, probably won't.) I totally get that, but that's really not the same.
(Mine all are about imagining my life if I'd stayed in the hard sciences. Probably like now, but cursing at the lab instead of the gods.)
Certainly professional poet = faculty. So although the first thing I think of when I hear "professional writer" isn't faculty, it may be the second or third thing I think of. See this slate article for some discussion of the cultural split between writer = faculty vs. writer = person who makes money selling books.
75: Yeah, I think it actually does make sense to call him a full-time professional writer. He's a writer and he teaches primarily about writing. It would be different for, say, faculty hired on the basis of research who also published a short story or two. But for him it seems right.
58: This is infuriating. I have first initial last name as my gmail address and constantly get email, even important email, from people who can't remember their own address. Occasionally it's amusing, like when I got an informal job offer from the department of homeland security. But mostly it's just annoying, when I'm getting people's car tuneup bills.
76: President Taft, if you are who I think you are, the particular offense you committed is well on its way to becoming a délit de cavalerie, at least among people whose opinions you would ever care about. I'll grant that it probably makes job interviews awkward, but other than that...
74: Once in a while I slip "I write for a living" with plenty of hedging into a conversation. I don't, exactly, but I don't fully not either, and I like the idea that it is a tiny bit true.
Wait, I thought we were being charged to comment here. They pay you? That changes everything . . .
76: Pants aren't perfect and sometimes they burst at the worst moment. I wouldn't worry about it.
Hanging around the academic blog-world makes me sort of wistful about academia. I'm not actually sure why, all of you people make looking for work sound like a nightmare, I didn't like teaching (although high school math probably doesn't translate well to college), I completely fail to be the sort of self-motivated person that could get through grad school in any plausibly non-destructive manner, and I'm not even clear on what I think I'd have wanted to to study if I'd gone to grad school. Still, I like academics as people.
Lawyering's not bad, I'm decent at it, my current job pays the mortgage and isn't all that soul-killing. But it's not up there with issuing threats from my lair in a volcano, certainly.
There's some choices I could have made circa 2000 - 2003 which if I'd made them, I'd almost certainly have still been in academia. But I didn't know that at the time, and fuck it. A lot of my friends who stayed in are bloody miserable.
I do sort of regret leaving Scotland, because it becomes increasingly hard to go back, and ultimately, I'd rather live there (or somewhere else in Europe) than here. But there's still time for that.
All of the 'being in a band' stuff I had out of my system by about age 18 (seriously) and since then it's only ever been a hobby.
Despite all the dire warnings, likely loss of soul, etc., I'd still like to give big lottery payoff winning me a try.
Googling my name gets you pages and pages of usenet posts in various parenting newsgroups from roughly 2000-2005. Plus the occasional reference to a middle-aged am-drammer (not me) and finally I dug up an Australian physiotherapist.
87 - I was having a serious internal debate with myself the other day about whether if I won the lottery (which I don't play), I would move or do up this house just how I'd like it. Anyway, I found a couple of fancier houses nearby, still within short walking distance of the swimming pool, and even closer to my kids' schools, so I would probably move, I decided.
If you win a big enough lottery, you can buy your own pool.
I dug up an Australian physiotherapist
Named Lucy?
If I win the lottery, I'd not only move, I'd give serious thought about moving to an entirely different country.
Then you can put up a sign saying "Welcome to our ool" and when people say you've missed a letter you can tell them there is no 'p' in your pool and please keep it that way.
Moving to Singapore doesn't always make financial sense, ttaM.
Of course, you could still pee in the pool. It's your pool and joke signs aren't legally binding contracts.
85: Bailing from the academic career path was the smartest thing I could possibly have done for my sanity. I'd still love to teach and was pretty good at it, but I'm not jumping through all those hoops and dealing with the giant piles of bullshit required.
87, 89: I recently bought a lottery ticket for the first time (the jackpot grew so large that it briefly became a better-than-even-money bet, so I could rationalize it as being not really gambling--just a really high risk investment).
As I contemplated my future adjustment to life in the leisure class, I determined that I would become a major donor to Democratic candidates. As I played the scenario out in my mind, I realized I could give enough over a few election cycles to become a plausible candidate for ambassador to a reasonably pleasant but diplomatically unimportant country. This thought process quickly led me to consider the explosive potential of my unfogged comments in my Senate confirmation hearings, and to wonder whether they could be expunged.
Then the light changed, and the car behind me honked its horn, and the whole episode came to an end.
There is someone with my exact (kind of odd) name, who is a nurse in the Burnt Over District. There is someone else with a (perhaps more odd) variation of my first name + same last name who owns vegan raw food restaurants.
I thought the article was surprisingly good, and I was prepared to dislike it (for Asilon/Chris Rock "want a medal for what you're supposed to do" reasons).
The interesting thing, I thought, is that what he actually misses most is not "freedom" in some abstract sense but friendship, that is, being in a community of peers instead of just an isolated family unit. The network of friends and people prepared to be friends is what allows Doppleganger band guy to live his lifestyle -- he says it's a different kind of wealth, an he's right. And then the author realizes that even when h was young and "free" he wasn't able to form the kinds of friendships and social networks he'd need to sustain the "free" lifestyle. There's an argument that the death of adult friendships and social networks by means of dyadic pairing is the core middle aged anxiety; at least, it's something that doesn get talked about enough.
48 was a bit glib, but I do regret that I never tried to do anything creative for a living. I would have failed, but I think it would have been a worthwhile failure, a nice failure to look back on.
being in a community of peers instead of just an isolated family unit.
This is some of what bugs me about the article, the imaginary/arbitrary impenetrable dualities.
That and the mystical having-a-baby-changes-everything stuff, but that probably goes without saying.
100: Mr. Smearcase's Blue Period.
Or, put differently, the author doesnt care particularly about being a creative person manqué. In fact, he's in a fairly creative profession. What he'd like are a large set of adult friends who are relaxed and easy to talk to, and with whom he can hang out.
101.last: Well it certainly changes everything for the baby.
|| United Airlines just sent me a special offer for a flight from CLE to Erie, PA. What is that? Like an hour drive? |>
103: And to piss in the backyard.
105 An hour and a half. And that's when it's not snowing.
52: All the hits for me are me. I have a very distant cousin whose first name differs by one letter, but his internet presence is much less prominent. Otherwise (and esp. if you include my middle name) I am the only one of me in the world so far.
There was a guy at our party on Sunday who really could have been my doppelganger. I think he was somewhat younger and slightly less stout, but otherwise it was an uncanny resemblance. I didn't find out exactly who he was though.
Sigh. Alone in the crowd.
101: It's not that having a baby changes everything, but it does eat your leisure time. A big part of what I'm doing here in the comment section is that marking out time to socialize other than in a family context is really hard (more so if you're ambivalent about leaving your cave like I am), and this is a space to socialize with adults that I can steal from my employers rather than from my family.
Socializing, I've got old friends who I keep up with erratically and unreliably, some family/couple friends, but largely, for social interaction with non-family, it's online stuff, mostly here. I'm not good at extended networks of people like the doppelganger guy, but I could see if I were a little closer to being that sort of person (a) being wistful about not having that kind of friend network, and (b) thinking that marriage and family was the reason I didn't have it.
97: The Secret Life of Knecht Mitty.
I have a whole game plan for infiltrating the highest reaches of society when I win the lottery. Donations to the big local arts orgs; board directorships; getting in on big deals because you know the right people -- etc. etc. Hadn't thought about being an ambassador, but given some of the people who get those (famously, the local Republican Party hack, who wasn't even that rich, who got a George W. Bush, first term, ambassadorship to Tuvalu or Tonga or someplace like that.)
A lot of negatives in this thread about people looking back on the possibilities of their youth...surely one of the most understandably human things to do. It's not like this was an article about how he left his wife and kids for a 21 year old. And I liked how thoughtful it was about the alternative...there was definitely some gentle undertone about the price paid by his 'doppleganger'
If you can get past the envy, one thing you'll notice is that that's actually the only thing they can be, since they're perpetually unable to get their shit together.
no need for hippie bashing...if they have their life together enough to make other people envious, that's not too bad.
(I think I've mentioned this before, but my birth name was John-Smith-level common; one of me was on the cover of Time in a weird childcustody battle in around 1990. Since marital hyphenation, it's just me.)
103 -- Right. Send him an invite, with a list of approved pseuds that are still available.
112: There's probably more than one woman who has to constantly tell people, "No, I've never been trapped in a well."
It's not that having a baby changes everything, but it does eat your leisure time.
Well I mean of course it does change everything but there's a half-sighed "you'll just never know..." version of this that drives me mad.
Having a baby means you have to cover all the wells on your property and that takes time.
Anyhow, to the OP: I'm friends with more people like the doppelganger than the author, probably. Or at least, with a lot of bohemian people who live marginal existences. No telling at this point how many of them will straighten up and fly right later on, of course.
Come to that, I have one foot in both worlds in some ways. I certainly haven't managed my career very well. I could probably find a place to crash for a few nights virtually anywhere in the CONUS bigger than Minot through the anarchist/radical/anarcho-punk scene(s). Not with "friends" per se, but definitely with companer@s.
Chucking all the trappings of middle-class stability that I've accumulated does appeal to me, but for right now I guess I'm keeping my nose to the grindstone. I need to figure out a way to travel more though. I have a bohemian friend in a long-distance relationship that works based on each partner spending 12 hours on the Greyhound every month. Hardly seems worth it to me, but they are both very slightly built people, so presumably the seats are a bit more comfortable and easier to sleep in.
O ended up with his name (thread merge!) because of my googling of his other possible name (first and middle). Old Name is a famous American naval hero who was known to have uttered something about what he would not like to see happen to his ship. Reading about him of course brought up another O, his best friend and also naval hero, who made use of that uttered something whilst being mean to CanadoBritishians. *At the same time* CA was looking up family names, including one with an R about whom the French wrote a song. His (far better, smarter) best friend was also named O.
In FDR's house last summer, I saw that he had engravings of both those naval heroes hanging side by side on his wall, so I took that as a good sign.
I do think there's an interesting question about why work, parenthood and coupling off are felt as incompatible with adult sociability, especially adult male sociability. IME this is very much a real thing, but I'm not sure why. It also seems like anxiety about this issue is the theme of almost every popular comedy directed at straight guys in the past 10 years.*
*the gays, including married gay working parents, seem to maintain sociability differently, or at least not be so anxious about losing it.
I have a bohemian friend in a long-distance relationship that works based on each partner spending 12 hours on the Greyhound every month.
Have you tried sitting them down and having a talk about Megabus?
including one with an R about whom the French wrote a song
Men speak differently in the company of their wives and kids than they do away from them, more so than women?
I really hope that at some point in his life naval hero O used the line "[X] is my middle name!" for the appropriate value of X.
I do think there's an interesting question about why work, parenthood and coupling off are felt as incompatible with adult sociability, especially adult male sociability.
The most common answer I've seen is that people are just spending more time at work than they did thirty years ago (particular as the two-income household has become the norm). I don't know if that's the only or the most important reason, but it seems plausible.
And I agree, it's an interesting question.
<waves hand at Return Of The Secaucus Seven as an interesting older movie about the problems of maintaining sociability>
Especially skinny people fold up for easy overhead storage.
I'm the only person with my first name - last name combo. Not surprising since everyone with that surname is related to me. It's the Irish language version of a not particularly common surname. Some of my family use the English version; there are plenty of unrelated people with it also and there seems to be one with my first name. It looks like the husband's surname which she has adopted.
My life went off the rails sometime in 2006-07 and I only began to right it over the course of 2009. At this point, however, I'm more on track than at any other point in my adult life. Hoorah for non-irreperable damage!
Just to continue that last thought. I arrived at Return Of The Secaucus Seven thinking that one of the other important changes in the last thirty years is that more people go to college. I wonder if college creates an environment in which people make lots of friends that they will eventually move away from -- creating a sense of a strong dichotomy between "young w/ social group" and "adult w/ diminishing social group." One of the interesting dynamics of RotS7 is the tension between the people who had left and coming back for the reunion and the person who's just stayed in the home town.
Just thinking out loud.
120: I don't think Megabus goes to one pole of the relationship axis. Plus, it's not dependable.
121: I suppose I am the only one who is amused by the progression:
Pravachol -- heart disease -- nitroglycerine -- Ravachol
Not surprising since everyone with that surname is related to me.
Mrs y has that situation too. We once went with the close family to a restaurant in Dublin, to find that the remoter half were there too at another table. So that was the global population under one roof, apart from three people in America.
It's pretty easy to fall into a life where non-work time is divided, in descending order of priority, between parenthood, coupledom, and friendship. Maybe one would divide the latter between couple friends and single friends, in that order. And find that there really isn't even enough time to meet the needs of category 2, much less 3a and 3b.
119.last Present company excluded, I assure you, and I have all sorts of angst about that. But I didn't have the friends and social scene I thought I should pre-kid and so it's no surprise that I don't know. In the early months of Mara, I stupidly dropped an interesting new friend and I've felt too guilty to apologize and try to pick her back up. She was my best bet, though, for someone interesting and smart rather than just pleasant.
I'm not finding anyone else with my name in the first few pages of google results, though maybe someone who added her husband's name to mine/ours upon marriage and many, many people who have my first-last as their middle-last. But my name is also an object and that starts overwhelming the results pretty quickly.
Two nice pieces of fiction about midlife are Maupassant's Bel-Ami and Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad. Maybe Lord Jim fits too.
See this slate article for some discussion of the cultural split between writer = faculty vs. writer = person who makes money selling books.
Ugh. Creepily snobbish self-congratulation coming from a guy who apparently writes humorous zombie books. Columbia must be so proud.
Further to 131, the time demands of parenthood have increased pretty substantially. I have spent much more time on my children's schooling (for example) than my parents spent on mine, and I think the results of this are almost completely negative all around. More time play date ferrying, when they were younger. And on and on.
It was harder to maintain friendships in the national capital of Transient Workaholism, and easier much now; even though we knew basically no one when we moved here 3 years ago, we're part of a couple of different groups of friends that do stuff together fairly regularly.
More time play date ferrying, when they were younger.
I've never fully understood the rise of this phenomenon. Do kids not play with the neighbors' kids anymore?
133 Is the Maupassant the basis of the movie with George Sanders and Angela Lansbury?
I wondered about the article -- is it more about wondering about what would have happened if he had made different choices in life. or more about wondering what it would be like to be a completely different person? I think he pretends it's the first option, but it's really more the second.
118: who made use of that uttered something whilst being mean to CanadoBritishians
Ha! You know have your reason to go to Erie! On June 23rd for a mere $100 or $150 you can hear a Crosby, Stills & Nash concert on the beach there which is raising funds for next year's celebration of the bicentennial of said meanness* (unless I'm *really* missing something). Dude never really got to enjoy the fruits of his meanness: had an ongoing feud with one of the captains in the battle, had a duel with a Marine commander on another of his ships at the famous Burr-Hamilton Weehawken dueling spot, and dead six years after the battle from Yellow Fever.
*An ancestor of mine participated in the meanness as an infantryman assigned to one of the lesser vessels.
112: A relative of mine married your name-doppelganger from that magazine cover, and I saw him at a family event a few weeks ago. Not sure if she was there or not.
Literally the magazine-cover woman, or just another woman of the same name?
Literally the magazine-cover woman, the one who was involved in the custody battle.
137 -- There are a bunch of things at work here, including the unwillingness to let kids be unsupervised, but I think our day care situation is a big part of it. In the days of SAHM's, packs of kids roamed the neighborhood, building relationships organically. Nowadays, the kids make their first friends at daycare -- which might be segregated based on religion, parental employment, parenting philosophy -- and is almost certainly a drive away (except for places like NYC where it's normal not to drive). Not drawing from a block, but from a 2 mile radius.
Further to 131, the time demands of parenthood have increased pretty substantially. I have spent much more time on my children's schooling (for example) than my parents spent on mine, and I think the results of this are almost completely negative all around. More time play date ferrying, when they were younger. And on and on.
love to hear you expand on this...about to have a kid myself and wondering how to avoid this. Also, why do you think the results were negative?
135: Columbia must be so proud.
The "tell" in that article: It's for people whose genitals still work, dammit.
Columbia did not come off looking very well in the recent Obama Barnard speech brouhaha either, which a small contingent of Auto-Admit-ish assholes seemed to have trouble coping with.
about to have a kid myself
!! Had you mentioned this here before? Congratulations.
Like Apo, one of the people who share my name is a British landscape photographer. Another is a director of musical theater in Dallas.
According to the census website, I am one of 100 in the US. One of my daughters (M) shares her name with three others, the other (S) with just one. I'm not sure how much to trust the census, though, because it seems improbable to me that the latter name (with our family name) should be less common than Adalberto, Bao, Chadwick, Easter, Fairy, Hee, Jesusita, Kum, Ludivina, Myrtis, Nubia, Ok, Phung, Refugia, Sixta, Ta, Vashti, Willodean, Xuan, Yuk, and Zulma, or that there are as many named Bong.
145 -- !!
PGD, I'm feeling a little out of touch with your situation! Send me an email.
I don't see how it can be avoided: the system wants you to be involved, and the culture totally backs this up. You won't have to look hard to find the parent of a son whose life has been made pretty miserable by the emphasis on homework for homework's sake. (No, it doesn't matter if you can show you know how to do the equation with the first three problems, you must do all 27 of them. Now!).
I see this more with sons, but don't doubt there's plenty of problems with this for girls as well.
PGD, I don't think you've mentioned that before. Congratulations.
99 and 119 are spot-on, I think. And what Thorn said here--In the early months of Mara, I stupidly dropped an interesting new friend and I've felt too guilty to apologize and try to pick her back up--gets at a key part of this: it's very easy for friendships to decay "naturally" (in the sense that time alone does it, especially when combined with guilt over having let that happen), but, aside from school or, to a much lesser extent, work, there just isn't a symmetric mechanism to provide you with new friendship opportunities. You really have to seek them out, and that's hard; social scripts don't exist for it, not nearly as much.
I felt like, for the first few months I was in both HD & SF, I had an excuse to impose upon people in the sense of basically saying, "want to be friends?"; once I've been somewhere awhile, though, I feel like I lose that excuse, and it becomes much harder (not that it was ever easy).
What Halford says about relationshipped gay folks (men, yes?) maintaining sociability easier, or at least with less anxiety, is worth thinking about. Why is that, do you think? Simply the result of tighter communities to begin with, the necessity of finding 'families of choice'? A lesser salience of monogamy as an absolute and nonnegotiable value? The fact that the social scripts for dating are easier to repurpose for "friending"? Apologies if I'm saying clueless or insensitive things, there. At one point I know I was hoping that gay relationship norms would become mainstream and save us poor straights; alas, it now looks like things are going the other direction, or at least I see folks are complaining about that being the case.
Congrats, PGD. Who gets naming rights?
(No, it doesn't matter if you can show you know how to do the equation with the first three problems, you must do all 27 of them. Now!)
I'm a little torn, here. On the one hand, this kind of emphasis on mindless repetition seems a recipe for misery and alienation. On the other hand, I had a 7th grade math teacher who apparently agreed, and told me privately that I didn't have to do all the homework if I looked it over and could solve the stuff. And a year of that really fucked me up--I mean, unreliable narratives and all that, but it really does seem like that experience was huge in terms of heightening that poisonous combination of "I'm special, I can do anything" with "work is for suckers, who needs it?" that now has me in my 30s with no work history, no obvious prospects of finding a job, and a deep well of self-loathing.
If I were to try to reconcile these conflicting impulses, I suppose I'd say that it's important for kids to develop work habits that include, yes, doing unpleasant work for the sake of doing the job, but that the larger project should be something the kid personally is engaged in, rather than imposed from the outside. I feel that in an age of computing, a lot of what gets taught in algebra in particular is an absurd waste of time, and so must many kids who're forced to learn it--and that very feeling is probably death to real learning.
I think that dyadic/parental withdrawal is a pretty big problem, and gets even more severe if the couple breaks up. My solution for adult friendships is to set up a system where the default is interaction, like co-housing. If staying part of a community is the priority (and I mostly think it should be), then it should be the default and withdrawing should take effort. The system most people are in, where withdrawal is the default and connection takes effort leads to insufficient adult friends, especially for men.
To this end, I look at the duplex and triplex listings every day, and fantasize about which friends I could move in to the other apartments. I will tempt them with the combination bike shed and chicken coop that I design during all my spare moments.
So is Weiner, you could start a new trend. Congrats and condolences on your social life.
Congrads, PGD! With the success of these Mantel books, my idea of giving the first name "Cromwell" but using the nickname "L.P."--for Lord Protector, of course--doesn't seem so silly anymore...
I mean, unless you're Irish, or plan on visiting Ireland at any point.
about to have a kid myself and wondering how to avoid this
Woo-hoo! With the woman that I met when you guys came to Sacramento? Congratulations!
So is Weiner
Damn. Maybe I can still beat Becks.
Instead of homework you could just make them stare at marshmallows.
Remember, as a parent always ask yourself, "What would the self who can do more's parents do?"
WWTSWCDMPD. You'll need a large wrist band.
Instead of homework you could just make them stare at marshmallows.
Especially if you name them Bong.
If staying part of a community is the priority (and I mostly think it should be), then it should be the default and withdrawing should take effort. The system most people are in, where withdrawal is the default and connection takes effort leads to insufficient adult friends
Definitely true.
155 -- i agree that developing good work habits is important. I don't agree that it should be the primary point of every subject for every semester.
My son's old school district had a rule that homework couldn't be more than 15 percent of the grade. Presumably for the benefit of kids with a bad home life -- and our world has plenty of these -- but also useful for procrastinators. But the teachers totally subverted it, by giving work to be done at home, but not called homework, that counted for another 30 or 40 percent.
Columbia did not come off looking very well in the recent Obama Barnard speech brouhaha either, which a small contingent of Auto-Admit-ish assholes seemed to have trouble coping with.
What happened?
Megan's 156 is totally right and totally awesome.
Thanks everybody! With respect to naming rights, I will now admit to being the dead president in the naming thread who was seeking input on the name 'Magnus' (my great-grandfather's name). Should just have come out there.
Woo-hoo! With the woman that I met when you guys came to Sacramento? Congratulations!
No, another woman...I broke up with the woman you met. My fault, not hers, I just wasn't quite ready. FYI, my current partner grew up in Davis, so my son will have native Californian blood.
167: Just an online spat in which the Barnard-Columbia relationship was explored a bit in terms of prestige, admittance rates and the like.
You're having a baby without having cleared the mother with Megan? It's allowed, I guess, but there are forms to be completed.
Pepper Spray is also still available.
another vote for Megan's 156, I have often wished to have enough money to set up a big housing block for all the cool people I know.
My current neighborhood does allow for a lot of urban interaction, but it feels a little suburban socially...neighbors invited us to a party the other day and the conversation was rather judgemental of other neighbors. Made me want to hurry up and put up those curtains.
The NRA really doesn't care if it was around in the founders' time or not. If it hurts, they'll fight to keep it legal.
171: that's why I was angling for the Sacramento-area-native exemption.
neighbors invited us to a party the other day and the conversation was rather judgemental of other neighbors. Made me want to hurry up and put up those curtains.
That's one solution; the other is just to invent completely new sex acts.
...neighbors invited us to a party the other day and the conversation was rather judgemental of other neighbors.
I get along well with about 1/2 of my neighbors. I figure that's pretty close to win. Even some of them that annoy me are nice enough most of the time.
...she knew the ninety-seven ways of making love that the Hindus are supposed to set much store by - though mind you, it is all nonsense, for the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed.
156: In theory, this sounds great, but I know, in practice, my reaction to this kind of environment would be to withdraw completely, go to crazy lengths to avoid running into people, and hide.
I am so happy with the amount of interaction on our block and in the larger neighborhood, and I do love that. I didn't mean to imply that I'm a hermit any more than I was before I had a child, but I'm missing having close friends I can talk to in person about things I find interesting and meaningful.
I'm fine for doing things -- garden club is tonight and tomorrow I may (make myself) go to knitting and this weekend we'll be at the big queer day at the zoo after two events with my family, plus the almost-friend I made was through the regular potluck we were attending until undersupervised kids hit Mara in the head and we'd had enough -- but I don't feel like I have time to just relax and be and stuff like that. That's not entirely true and will get less so once some of the stress we've been under lightens a little and I start spending evenings in the back gardens of parent friends two blocks away, but it gets lonely sometimes and like probably a lot of people, I wish I had an unfogged-equivalent in offline life.
155 -- And, obviously, I only know you from these pages, but isn't it yet more likely that if that teacher had made you do work that you and he both knew was mindless, you'd have resented it? You're obviously a smart and perceptive guy, and if in your life you haven't come across something that ignites in you a truly passionate fire, well, that's probably not because you weren't forced to be a knowing drudge in middle school.
People are who they are, and while some socialization is both proper and necessary, one size doesn't fit all, or even most.
in practice, my reaction to this kind of environment would be to withdraw completely, go to crazy lengths to avoid running into people, and hide.
I was talking the other day with a friend of my roommate's and that guy's brother. Both are into intentional communities, and the brother is looking to start one soon. I am intentional-community curious, but I was turned off during the conversation when they both insisted that it was very important for members to be all up in each others' business. (I forget the exact issue, but they basically thought it was not just fine but necessary for community members to police each others' beliefs about certain political or spiritual matters.) I wanted to argue that there could be lots of different models for creating living arrangements that promote community, but I actually don't know anything about this in practice so I just shut up. Still, I can daydream about some kind of co-housing arrangement that lets me be antisocial a good part of the time, right?
Still, I can daydream about some kind of co-housing arrangement that lets me be antisocial a good part of the time, right?
Some of the best marriages I know, etc.
I dunno, Charley - I share your skepticism about current homework customs, but I really think we're helped my kids - especially my son - by being as involved in homework as we are.
But hell yeah, there's a lot of it; and a lot of it is unnecessary.
they basically thought it was not just fine but necessary for community members to police each others' beliefs about certain political or spiritual matters
do you seriously think an intentional community could or should permit any member to vote Republican? That seems crazy.
Well, I did live in co-ops, and am close with a couple local co-ops, and frankly, I couldn't live in a co-op again. I can't handle the joint decision making any more, nor the piles of stuff that accumulates. (Because people get excited to bring home a potentially useful thing, and then it never gets incorporated or it outlives its use but no one has the authority to get rid of it, and the piles grow.) So I couldn't be in an intentional community that was already established and people had equal say.
But I would absolutely love to live with a pre-selected family (or two) and share a lot of effort and time and food.
The unfogged commune, complete with chicken coops and sex grottoes. Now all we need is that winning lottery ticket.
188: My co-op at MIT, while being generally sort of lefty-granolaish, while I was there included four or five members of the Campus Crusade for Christ, and separately two of the officers of the MIT Pro-Life organization. (I failed to endear myself to the president of the pro-lifers when I pointed out to her that the little pumpkins she was selling as a Halloween-themed fundraiser were, perhaps, symbolically inappropriate, given the whole cut-them-open-and-scoop-out-the-seeds aspect.)
But they were all perfectly workable housemates.
It's a hardy person who can take advantage of an Antarctic sex grotto.
I don't think people really need or want full-on intentional communities or co-ops. Just good friends that are also neighbors or near neighbors would suffice. "Intentional community" in the narrow sense that you intentionally live near, and are closely involved with, their friends, I guess.
Off topic but lately Crooked Timber seems to be moving towards an "All libertarians wanking about Hayek all the time" format.
I recommend that said activity be banned in any hypothetical Unfogged commune.
187 -- A little of that goes a long way. At least our schools aren't as bad as those in New Jersey:
We learned more from a 3 minute record baby, than we ever learned in school
Oh, and congratulations PGD. Go with Magnus.
I think a shared aspect of living space is necessary. A shared backyard is what makes interaction the default. A good neighbor still requires a reason to connect.
Still, I can daydream about some kind of co-housing arrangement that lets me be antisocial a good part of the time, right?
It's a shame that most monasteries/convents don't have sex grottoes.
Congratulations, PGD. Good luck.
I'm interested in all the adulthood-means-different-styles-of-friendship stuff. I've always thought of myself as fairly antisocial. There was a period when I went out of my way to get out and do stuff and meet people, and I didn't always dislike it, but I wasn't doing it mainly because I particularly enjoyed it, I just was doing it because I was unhappy with my love life. That's not a problem now, though, and I'm pretty sure I had started feeling better about myself even before getting together with my girlfriend. So, these days, I see friends other than her about once a week or less, and frankly I'm fine with that. The thing is, barring college when your friends are actually on the same hall as you, I've always been more like that than not.
And yet, compared to a lot of people I know, I'm a social butterfly. One particularly outgoing co-worker compares me favorably to several others. Some friends of mine complain about their social lives a lot more than I do. (Although in those cases it's their love lives at issue, so it's a bit apples and orange.)
192
It's a hardy person who can take advantage of an Antarctic sex grotto.
Hey Charlie -- and anyone else who wants to contact me -- an 'anon' email address is linked above. (Anon but it contains enough info that now Homeland Security can cannot me to all these seditious Unfogged posts).
I have an extra boy's name we won't be needing.
these days, I see friends other than her about once a week or less . . . And yet, compared to a lot of people I know, I'm a social butterfly.
Indeed.
Compared to myself, for example, seeing friends once a week does sound like a social butterfly.
It's a shame that most monasteries/convents don't have sex grottoes.
A friend of mine spent some time at a maybe Trappist monastery somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and reported that there seemed to be many attractive young monks who would go horseback riding in pairs for the day; he said they seemed more touchy and more relaxed than you would expect if they had been taking the celibacy thing seriously. My friend spent some time after this experience considering converting to Catholicism.
"All libertarians wanking about Hayek all the time" format. .... I recommend that said activity be banned in any hypothetical Unfogged commune.
I would think this would already be covered by the "NMM to X" rule; Hayek's been dead for two decades.
True fact: I have a picture of Hayek on my refrigerator; neither my roommate nor I wank in the kitchen.
neither my roommate nor I wank in the kitchen
Are you sure?
Wank-in refrigerators are totally cool!
I have a picture of Hayek on my refrigerator
Why? Was he notably decorative?
Are you sure?
To a reasonable degree of certainty, and if you don't count some of our more outlandish, rye-fueled conversations.
My image of Hayek is the guy from the Hayek Keynes video, but when you google image Hayek you get one picture of Friedrich followed by dozens of bikini clad Selmas.
Maybe it's the Friedrich August Hayek version of this.
Still, I can daydream about some kind of co-housing arrangement that lets me be antisocial a good part of the time, right?
+1. Up with asocialism.
Congrats, PGD.
Halford, that's a plausible theory about the author, except that it doesn't ring true for a lot of the creative academic types that I know. Not that I don't believe that having a toddler increases isolation, but that at least in my experience, there's an awful lot of adult friendships compatible with the presence of small children. (At least from my perspective. Perhaps the parents have one ear distracted, always.)
The ideal is when only a few of the adults have small children, though, I find. You (I) want the kids to be well outnumbered by adults.
7: I learned recently that William S. Burroughs was in the habit of meticulously keeping a Christmas card list.
215: Did he ever send out cards to the list?
but that at least in my experience, there's an awful lot of adult friendships compatible with the presence of small children
Absolutely, but I really do think that there's a big issue generally where friendships (or, maybe, the idea of friendships being important) suffer from dyadic pairing generally and children in particular. That's certainly been the experience of a lot of people I've observed; it also seems like a pretty common cultural trope, especially for men.
And on the issue of toddler-compatible adult friendships specifically [cue personal grievance, get world's smallest violin playing, let me whine about my life int the form of social generalizations] there really is a huge gender difference. Women who have just had kids look forward to making new women friends with kids -- in fact, it's one of those life moments where women tend to look for new friendships. The same is IME not true at all for men. That is, men might get new friends with kids as part of being a couple, but that's a peripheral couple based thing, there is no independent expectation whatsoever of male friendship based on joint parenthood.
As a single Dad, this totally fucks me over; the moms want to have a bunch of female bonding over their kids but have no interest in hanging out in the Mom's group with some dude, the Dads are fine with being one-half of a child centered couple but have no idea what to do with a single dude who has a kid (and thus isn't free and single) but doesn't fit into dyadic couple world either.
I have an extra boy's name we won't be needing.
Wait, what?
Oh, dude, that sucks. I hadn't thought of that -- my new friends are both looking for friends (new faculty cohorting) and female (so the husbands get dragged along.)
You'd be welcome at our playgroup, especially if you were willing to use the toddlers as kettlebells. But that dynamic is awful.
Find some SAHDads? Even ones in a couple? They might be empathetic with being shut out of the moms' group.
Oh, I have some Dad friends. Things are fine. I just get periodically grouchy about the dynamics.
Also not sure why I keep capitalizing "Dad."
Halford, if you can find a group with an population of intelligent single moms, you'll have as much social life as you can handle. Maybe not the kind you were seeking, but... trust me on this.
halford, i recommend moving to Shaker Heights, OH in the next 6 mos. or so, because shit is gonna be off. the. hook.
(Really!)
Also, congrats, PGD! I am totally pro-Magnus now that I know it was your gdad's name. (That sort of name needs to be come by honestly, I feel.)
I feel as though I've heard of single dad groups, but I have no idea how you'd find some. I know I've heard radio pieces interviewing dads who talk about the problem you describe, Halford, and they enthuse about the dad groups they've become involved with. They sound like a bunch of mommies, for heaven's sake. (Teasing.)
Congratulations, PGD.
Yes -- congratulations PGD! Is the birth imminent, or actually in progress?
(Going medieval tonight, rather than Presidential.)
I love that Julianna is commenting. All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well. I need that sometimes.
Halford, I think there's something somewhat similar in what we've gone through in having an instant preschooler with two moms. Neither Lee nor I quite fit in the mom or dad half of hetero couple groups and it's too easy for me to feel awkward, I guess. I'm sure it's much harder for dads, but not getting in from the ground up means being automatically suspect in some ways, I've found.
218- What, does that sound like I locked up a kid in the basement or something? We're having our last kid, had a boys and girls named picked, found out it's a girl.
229: Oh hey, congrats! To you and little Nevaeh!
Ooh, let's make it a puzzle. The four boys names we had (of which we've used 3 on actual kids) are:
1- One syllable
2- Four letters
3- Words in the dictionary
4- Names (first or last or nickname) of Democratic politicians, although possibly not the same spelling.
One of the four names violates #3 and arguably #4 depending how broadly/obscurely you define Democratic politician.
And apparently this thread has turned into the other thread.
The girl's name, by the way, only obeys #3.
#4 is pretty much pointless without some additional information.
Huey's kind of a stretch for 3.
"Gore" would work, but then you'd have named your kid after Gore Verbinski.
Clay Davis?
Huey = 2 syllables
4- Aside from the obscure one, nationally recognizable not dead politicians.
5- not in the top 100 names.
Obey is two syllables but I'm going to put it here because I like the mental image of you shouting for "Obey" in a park.
Huh, Bill and Will are much less popular than I thought, but I guess they're almost always William.
Does neb have some odd speech pattern where he pronounces all words as one syllable?
This is surprisingly hard and fun.*
Reed
Webb
*Just like something else.
Got one of them- Reed is the one we have not used and that I graciously offer to PGD.
Isn't Reed a super-popular name right now? I feel like I'm hearing it a lot.
Apparently not. I just know a bunch of weirdos.
#368 in 2011 but has been increasing in popularity, used to be around 500.
1- One syllable
2- Four letters
3- Words in the dictionary
4- Names (first or last or nickname) of Democratic politicians, although possibly not the same spelling.
From last names of current congressmen or governors:
Bass
Coal
Reed
Clay
Watt
Rush
Kind
Moor
You get more interesting names from the Republican politicians.
Hurt
Deal
Camp
Dent
Heck
Wolf
Mead
King
Long
Going to bed, but I'll be curious to see if anyone gets the other two (the one that's not a word doesn't really have enough clues.) They seem obvious to me but given the number people have come up with I guess there are a lot of possibilities.
Is "Holt" a word in the dictionary?
I knew "Nevaeh" was rising in the ranks but I'm pretty shocked to learn it was #25 in 2010.
I was turned off during the conversation when they both insisted that it was very important for members to be all up in each others' business.
It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into which we had brought ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two members without the whole society being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby. This species of nervous sympathy (though a pretty characteristic enough, sentimentally considered, and apparently betokening an actual bond of love among us) was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical operation, mortal tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us happened to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition that we were far less quarrelsome than the rest of the world, a great deal of time was necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears.
260: And that's not even counting the quasi-misspelling Neveah, which in some places is even more popular.
Congratulations to all pending babies and parents! How super exciting!
One of my Tennessee cousins skipped the whole backwards thing and just named his daughter Heaven. I have never met the kid, who is around a year old now, but my parents say she is already disturbingly fat. It is hard to tell from the photos on FB; she definitely looks like a big kid, but that's about all you can say. The parents took her for neurological testing recently because she hadn't started crawling yet, and according to my cousin's wife's proud report on FB, the doctor said the kid is "fine, just lazy!"
Knut is a good name. [Sniffles] For the best little bear ever. [Sobs]
Congratulations to all the expectant parents!
And a sympathetic sniffle for Flippanter.
When I saw 267 in the sidebar, my first thought was that ToS had returned.
Heaven is a weird name but less annoying than "oh hey it's Heaven backwards, guys!" Nevaeh. My new nickname is Hell. You have all been advised.
Gehenna would be a really pretty name.
||
My mother was supposed to have elective heart surgery today for a long-term condition. The timing was really frustrating, as it isn't urgent (although it does have to happen at some point) and right now is an extremely busy time of the year for me (I had to reshuffle some plans in a somewhat professionally harmful way to be able to be here). Now the surgery is off, because my mother has been in the hospital since Sunday with incapacitating back pain. After two days where the nurses thought she was drug-seeking (yeah, no) and I thought maybe internalized tension was making her back seize up, it turns out she has a rare, tropical version of a spinal infection that generally afflicts children (diskitis), and which will require weeks of IV antibiotics and possibly spinal fusion surgery (and thus weeks of bed-rest). So now I can't even feel put out by the electiveness of her surgery, and she'll still have to have that surgery after this whole ordeal is done, and the recuperation from this condition sounds worse than recuperation from heart surgery, somehow, and I have just as many other unmissable obligations as I did before. And I feel super guilty for having wondered about internalized tension, of course.
Adulthood is a shitty roller-coaster sometimes.
|>
Holy smokes, that's a lot of medical problems. Sorry to hear all that, Gerry.
Jenny, for short. (It's Jehannam in the Koran, IIRC.)
Other good infernal names: Antenora.
Hope she and you feel better soon.
Adulthood is a shitty roller-coaster sometimes.
Yes. Does your mother have anybody to look after her during the bed rest, or does that fall on you as well?
And I feel super guilty for having wondered about internalized tension, of course.
Don't feel guilty about this. (Easier said than done, I know. "Oh okay, I'll just stop, thanks!")
Does your mother have anybody to look after her during the bed rest, or does that fall on you as well?
My aunt is around, and she has lots of friends who are eager to help/meddle, but my parents are divorced and per my wikipedia page I'm an only child, so I assume the bulk will fall on me. I'm hoping to hire a home health aide (something that had already been discussed in the context of recuperation from the surgery), but I'll have to do that over her objections, as she doesn't want a stranger in her house. I should probably figure it out while she's still on tons of oxycodone.
It's Jehannam in the Koran, IIRC
Or Johanna in Blonde on Blonde. Antenora is good one, like Anathema Device - people won't get it.
but I'll have to do that over her objections
Assuming you're in regular work, you'll have to. You can't leave her on her own in bed for ten hours at a time. What a bugger.
I wouldn't trust wikipedia that much. Look around for a brother or sister. Maybe one got left at a truck stop when you were on a family vacation and he's now grown.
It's Jehannam in the Koran, IIRC
You do indeed RC. Or as it is called there elsewhere and more evocatively, al-Nār "The Fire."
They call me "The Fire."
On the other hand, she's pretty funny while super high.
"It's important to think about hills."
"They're really into orange dots here at [the hospital]."
And I feel super guilty for having wondered about internalized tension, of course.
Seconding Blume, that you shouldn't feel guilty. As one of the Californians here, I'll point out that emotional conflicts do manifest in the body and no matter the source, need treatment.
Kid walks into the room to see his mother (my mother's roommate): "he's shopping?!?!"
And I feel super guilty for having wondered about internalized tension, of course.
I can assure that I have had much worse thoughts in the past few months, weeks and days about several very needful family members. And not too much guilt. I know you mentioned being any only child, but not sure if you have a spouse/partner/trusted confidante because in my experience even if they aren't able to help directly you need someone deep inside your personal circle of trust with whom you can vent, engage in black humor, speculate uncharitably about motives and otherwise say things about the person and situation which would otherwise get you banned from polite society.