Considerations of a Mad Woman
Dear Friends,
I have discovered a problem in composing this blog. My life is not very interesting. I do not have a fascinating job. Working in Interlibrary Loan is neither glamorous nor hard. It does afford a certain perspective and insight into human nature and habits but so does any public service job. Work one long enough and you discover that "the public" is often unreasonable, lazy and remarkably narrow minded- not in the political/social sense but in the "why don't you drop everything to serve me and only me?" sense. That being said most of the people I come into contact with are generally nice people in a state of extreme exhaustion and/or panic. Such is academic life.
My life, of course, does have its own highs and lows but they are either too personal to share so publicly or too narrow in their own scope to be more than a show of how dull many of my pre-occupations are. An obit for Warren Sherwood, oooOOOOoooh! or denied by NARA, baawwwhhh!
You could argue that such "modesty" is only another form of hiding but I am unwilling to display my emotional "boobage" to an unmoderated list. Just. no.
Instead I will treat you to considerations and musings. Not nearly as exciting as boobage but it's more likely that you'll still respect me in the morning.
My considerations of late...
Upon being requested to consider what the obstacles are in my life and in myself that prevent me from being or doing quite as much or as well as I would want to do or be, I have been considering passivity, fear, aggression and passion, their definitions and relationships to each other. Let's take passivity to begin. Almost immediately upon being asked this question the answer "passivity" came to mind. I'm a very passive person. I cloak my passivity in "reasonableness", "prudence" and " moderation" when often it is not any of these things but is a fear of engagement, of being present, of being wrong or of risk-taking and the result is that I have no experience with totally devoting or abandoning myself to anything. I always have a little bit left out, left over, left behind- just in case. And now I don't have any idea how *not* to do that and THAT JUST WILL NOT DO!
Because of this tendency I have long assumed that I am not a passionate person, that I lacked that particular gear. But what is my definition of passion? Do I actually lack strong emotions? I think of passion as being an emotion that overwhelms and drowns you. That results in problems. Is loud. Causes a single-minded insatiable urge. Harms or alarms others with its aggressive nature. So there's a relationship there in my mind between passion and aggression. But is aggression inherent in passion? Can the two be distilled apart? I've already admitted a certain problem with too much passivity so is the way to passion to be found via activity? Activity doesn't seem right because random, frenetic activity can be as non-engaged as passivity. So, maybe via engagement is a better term? Engagement definitely does not have aggression inherent in it.
hmmmm.........
I have discovered a problem in composing this blog. My life is not very interesting. I do not have a fascinating job. Working in Interlibrary Loan is neither glamorous nor hard. It does afford a certain perspective and insight into human nature and habits but so does any public service job. Work one long enough and you discover that "the public" is often unreasonable, lazy and remarkably narrow minded- not in the political/social sense but in the "why don't you drop everything to serve me and only me?" sense. That being said most of the people I come into contact with are generally nice people in a state of extreme exhaustion and/or panic. Such is academic life.
My life, of course, does have its own highs and lows but they are either too personal to share so publicly or too narrow in their own scope to be more than a show of how dull many of my pre-occupations are. An obit for Warren Sherwood, oooOOOOoooh! or denied by NARA, baawwwhhh!
You could argue that such "modesty" is only another form of hiding but I am unwilling to display my emotional "boobage" to an unmoderated list. Just. no.
Instead I will treat you to considerations and musings. Not nearly as exciting as boobage but it's more likely that you'll still respect me in the morning.
My considerations of late...
Upon being requested to consider what the obstacles are in my life and in myself that prevent me from being or doing quite as much or as well as I would want to do or be, I have been considering passivity, fear, aggression and passion, their definitions and relationships to each other. Let's take passivity to begin. Almost immediately upon being asked this question the answer "passivity" came to mind. I'm a very passive person. I cloak my passivity in "reasonableness", "prudence" and " moderation" when often it is not any of these things but is a fear of engagement, of being present, of being wrong or of risk-taking and the result is that I have no experience with totally devoting or abandoning myself to anything. I always have a little bit left out, left over, left behind- just in case. And now I don't have any idea how *not* to do that and THAT JUST WILL NOT DO!
Because of this tendency I have long assumed that I am not a passionate person, that I lacked that particular gear. But what is my definition of passion? Do I actually lack strong emotions? I think of passion as being an emotion that overwhelms and drowns you. That results in problems. Is loud. Causes a single-minded insatiable urge. Harms or alarms others with its aggressive nature. So there's a relationship there in my mind between passion and aggression. But is aggression inherent in passion? Can the two be distilled apart? I've already admitted a certain problem with too much passivity so is the way to passion to be found via activity? Activity doesn't seem right because random, frenetic activity can be as non-engaged as passivity. So, maybe via engagement is a better term? Engagement definitely does not have aggression inherent in it.
hmmmm.........