Isn't It Romantic?

Alan Jacobs is a good thinker. In this post he's describing the decline of baseball's enjoyment as the game becomes much more efficient and business like. This is Moneyball, pure and simple. Jacobs isn't demanding that Major League Baseball go backward, and he doesn't use this word, but I bet he'd be okay with a lot less business and a return to romance.

I was reminded of this New York Times piece by Tim Wu, "The Tyranny Of Convenience" in which he questions the notion that convenience is even a good thing. I like that he uses the word tyranny in that title. Again, we sacrifice romance for convenience, profit, and efficiency. In the process, more often than we might like to admit, we lose.

Romance? Really? That's what we're after?

I know, I know. It sounds hokey, but consider for a moment the best things in our lives and they will all have to do with romance and romantic notions. All our higher order ideals are romantic, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality. Jacobs is admitting that players, owners, and the league itself are all within their rights to want more money, but there's nothing romantic about that idea. Wu understands the desire and need for convenience, but the romantic idea it would free us from drudgery and lead to utopia is belied by the convenience of email, texting, and Slack. No romance there and certainly no utopia.

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a writer. Not a teacher who writes or an anything else that also rights, but a writer. There might not be money in it and the process will be inconvenient as hell for my family. But I'll tell you one thing: it's romantic as all get out and I'm in love with that.

Nothing

Woke up this morning tired out of my mind. That's not entirely unusual by Thursday and with me waking at 4:40 in order to enjoy writing time. Still, this morning, the condition was more acute than usual. Rather than slow down, I felt myself revving up trying to go faster. I made lists in my head about what had to be done and major changes I needed to make right away. The whole thing left me feeling frantic even as I tried to concentrate on writing one word at a time, one line after the another, through my three pages. I was almost shaking by the time I came up from the basement office and gave the cats some food.

What I need, I told the cats, is to just do nothing.

It wasn't the cry of my laziness. I was giving myself a difficult task to complete. Set aside ten minutes, or better, half an hour, and do nothing. Sit. Stare out the window. Don't even try to meditate. Just do nothing. Be a tree. Be a speck of dust. Be nothing and do nothing. It sounded restful but challenging and thus unlikely.

First rinsed out my mug, packed a lunch, wrote a note to my wife, used the bathroom, got dressed for school. So much to get done before 6:50 when I leave the house. I greeted my wife and kids as they came downstairs. I said hello to the dog as she wagged her way down the stairs, over to me for a rub and scratch, and then into the den for a nap.

Be like the dog, I thought.

At 6:38 I went into the living room and sat on the couch. I pulled a blanket around me. I checked my watch to be sure I had time remaining before I needed to leave. And then I did nothing.

For four minutes.

I couldn't take it any longer than that. My mind kept going to all the things I need to do. I considered writing this piece. I wondered if meditation would be better or if maybe I was attempting a form of meditation here. I worried about the time and whether or not I should go into work right away and attend to things. Would that be more restful? I whirled and whirled until I threw the blanket aside and got off the couch to go do something.

Two things about this:

Whatever I did instead of nothing was so inconsequential that six hours later I can't recall it. The busyness I feel has little to do with importance. It's just that I can't sit still and look out the window.

I need to try again. There's something in this. I need to learn how to be bored and still.

At a meeting the other day we were asked to describe our happy place. I realize today what that place would be: a comfortable spot on a river that is going by. I swear I could watch that all day. And I really need to.

John Lennon knew what he was talking about:

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

FOBU: Fear Of Being Unwelcome

I get this feeling when I see someone I know in a store, when I'm out on a run, or in the school parking lot while I'm picking up the kids. It goes like this:

1. I hope I'm remembering their name right. (I'm so bad at names it feels like a medical condition.)
2. What will I say?
3. Should I just avoid them?
4. They don't want to see me.

If I do stop and talk with them, I'm left wondering, are they really happy to see me or desperately waiting for me to go away?

I'm not trained in psychology, but lack of authority never slowed me down, so I call the condition FOBU, the Fear Of Being Unwelcome. Its chief characteristic is a fear, often overwhelming, that people would rather not see the afflicted individual. FOBUs assume they are undesirable and unworthy of notice. FOBUs live primarily within their own heads and spend inordinate energy attempting to discern what others think of them. These largely negative assumptions reflect the FOBUs lack of faith in themselves. Paradoxically, FOBUs are often talented, creative, and seemingly confident people.

(See, that sounded like I'm trained in psychology, right? Straight out of the feaking DSM.)

I have spent time with four different FOBU folks this week. Each has not exactly shocked me with their confessions or demonstrations of FOBU, but I'm still surprised when anyone expresses this condition to me. It's like that Robert Burns poem: "Gin a FOBU meet a FOBU, comin thro' the rye" or something like that. Whatever it is, there is nothing quite like FOBU meeting FOBU. It leaves me wondering what the hell...?

There should be a point to all this, but I feel unqualified to say what it is. I'm just glad to have met these FOBUs and their FOBUness. None of them were unwelcome to me. Just the opposite. I'm so glad to have heard from them. It's as if I walked up to myself and was happy to see me comin thro' the rye.

Not Squash & Pear Soup

The recipe is in the box. Pull the card. Get out the cast iron dutch oven that isn't really a dutch oven but that's what we call it. Put it on the stove, turn the heat to medium, and throw in some olive oil. Grab an onion and chop it coarsely. Add that to the pan. Next up, the squash and the pears. Plenty of pears in the bag on the counter. The squash is easy, it's pre-chopped in the fridge. Open the door, pull it out, peel off the plastic, and, what's this? Why is it white and mushy? We were supposed to have this soup three nights ago. Stand over the open package of rotten squash and wonder what's next.

The onions are sizzling. Stir them in the oil. Lower the heat. There were carrots in the fridge. Lots of them. They're still good, right? Grab the computer, type "carrot pear soup," and hit enter. Click on the first result. At this point there's no good in being choosy. Those onions are cooking. A pound and a half of carrots. Go to the fridge, pull out the bag, dump the carrots on the counter. They're okay. Good in fact. Grab the peeler. Peel those carrots fast, chop off the ends, roughly dice them. Try not to cut off any fingers.

One by one, add the chopped carrots to the not quite dutch oven to bring down the temperature and maybe save that poor onion. It doesn't matter how many carrot peels are all over the floor and counter. They can be cleaned later. Peel, trim, chop, and get them into the pot. Grab the bag of pears. They haven't gone bad. Hell, they're not even very ripe. This soup is going to need some extra broth or stock, whatever we have. Peel, core, chop, and get them into the pot. The recipe says two pears, but what do they know. Make it four. Maybe five. It's tough to count at this speed. Still have all ten fingers. No blood.

The recipe calls for four and a half cups of broth. Those carrot peels all over the floor and counter would have been good for making broth, but that ship has sailed. There's no broth in the fridge. Got to be a couple cartons in the pantry. Go get them. Open the pantry, search on the shelf where the broth is. Then search the other shelves. Search them again. Of course there's broth. There's always broth in the pantry. Keep looking.

Go to the computer. Type "replacement for vegetable broth." Swear at the suggestion "use beef or chicken broth." Swear now. It's okay. Go to the cupboard and pull down the measuring cup. Fill it with two cups of water. Dump that in the not dutch oven. Fill it again and dump it. Get half a cup more and pour that in. Now, make half-ass stock.

Pull down the kosher salt and add generously. Pick up the pepper mill and grind it sixteen times. Think it over and then grind eight more. Stand at the spice cupboard and work through the alphabet of spices. Allspice but not basil, coriander, ginger, dill, and ground mustard. Pinches and shakes. Why not garlic powder? Sure, give it a good shake. Give it another. Stir whatever it is in the pot. Admire the yellow color of the not-broth. The orange carrots that aren't squash. The browned onions. The under-ripe pears in great number.

Bring this to a boil. Inhale. Not bad. Almost smells like soup. It might even not smell like a mistake. This thing that was supposed to be one thing is something else now. What exactly isn't clear yet. Answers will have to wait. For now it's enough to have made something with all that squash rotting in the garbage and all the plans from early this week in there too.

The recipe was in the box. The directions were clear. Turns out that some important ingredients were missing. These things happen. Often. What happens next is important. Something has to be done. And there's no one else to decide what that might be. Give it a shot. See what happens. Just do something.

These are the things I tell myself.