intellectual properties

the social network

we went to see The Social Network yesterday and i was impressed with the film. impressed mostly because i routinely get bored and my mind wanders during films – particularly with ones that have plots full of holes (e.g. Avatar) or long extended chase/explosion scenes (e.g. Inception). the story loses me and i start thinking about the things i don’t like about the film instead of actually watching the film. with The Social Network i was pretty much engaged 100%, although the beginning did catch my mind wandering briefly with half fondness for college days / half stomach turning memories of frat/sorority culture.

true, i was primed to love this film because i’ve been living my life very openly online for almost 10 years now (feb 2001!), and while for many people Facebook was their first experience with social networking, for me and many other longtime bloggers/internet personalities it was just a progression forward in a way that most people mostly like. i have my issues with the Facebook, as anyone with a brain should, but you have to admit it’s genius, and so seeing the history played out with a well-written and well-acted script that debated intellectual property, not to mention a pretty kick-ass Trent Reznor soundtrack, i was riveted. (and yes, I KNOW IT IS NOT THE TRUE/WHOLE STORY.)

this movie also swelled huge love for my hacker friends who may have struggled with being sidelined underdogs for many years and are now getting the respect they deserve both socially and financially.

quibbles about inaccuracies/miscontructions and rants about accused misogyny/sexism aside (i agree with Sorkin: life in general is sexist by nature, co-ed collegiate experience in particular. depicting reality doesn’t make a filmmaker sexist), i disagree with those who think it makes Zuckerberg look bad. or, i guess, worse than he actually is. in fact, i admire anything Machiavellian that might have been going on there, considering the players and the game, and thought the ending reconciled his character. (see also: interesting New Yorker piece/interview with Zuckerberg)

however, back to the accused sexism, i’ll admit i’m getting a little tired of the scenario where the male lead who has all the influence and power through the whole film makes his pivotal plot decisions because he’s affected by love for a woman/family. recently: inception, surrogates, social network.  this seems to be the only place in films where women have actual impact on changing the course of the world: being the love interest and/or mother of the children.  *yawn*.

side note: was more than a little surprised when watching the credits that the Winklevoss twins were not actually a pair of twins, but one well-cast Armie Hammer, real life trust-fund heir to the Armand Hammer fortune (making the “i’m 6’5″, 220 and there’s two of me” joke in the movie even funnier). read how.

acknowledging the lack thereof

a little less death

there’s a lot i should / could / would say about my own life right now to counterbalance all the photos of myself, which makes me seem really vain, or like i spend a lot of time taking/getting photos taken  of myself (….) and not any time doing much else.  but i am doing much else. so much, in fact, i’m exhausted.  well, if i wrote it all down:

get up. later than most people who have jobs.
drink coffee, read emails.
put on bike clothes.
ride bike to work (4.2 miles/23 minutes, flat terrain.)
change from bike clothes to work clothes (from pile i have stashed under my desk.  i wonder if my coworkers have noticed my wardrobe is now 3 outfits?)
eat something (usu organic fat free plain yogurt and raw fruit)
work. on stuff.
drink more coffee.
eat something (usually salad but sometimes indian or thai)
work on stuff (usually proposal documents and spreadsheets).
change from work clothes back to bike clothes.
ride bike to gym (3.5 miles)
change from bike clothes to gym clothes.
gym (usually weight lifting for about an hour, steam/shower etc for 20 mins or so)
change from gym clothes back into bike clothes.
ride bike home from gym (1.5 miles, 9 mins) or go somewhere to eat (usu ethiopian or something involving vegetables, beans, and salad)
change into home clothes.
weekdays: watch tv/movies/internet.
weekends: all kinds of exhausting shit that involved a lot of standing/moving/dancing/dressing/undressing for hours and hours.
go to sleep.
repeat.

it might not seem like a lot to some of you, who get up at 6am (9 on the weekends!) have toddlers and 1-hour commutes and mortgages and whatnot, but it’s a lot for me, apparently, because did i mention i’m exhausted?  seriously.  naps are being taken. and yes i eat enough and sure, maybe i should knock off the caffeine for a while and i am still dealing with this damned chronic pain issue which takes more out of me than i can even believe, actually. that’s not the point here.

instead of writing more about all that because, while i am exhausted, i’m also aware that most of it – except for those weekendy parts that produce photos – is very boring, which is why only the fun parts are being posted. no one blogs about the tedium of life anymore. that’s so 2002. you must be TOPICAL. and i am not of mind to be a topical blogger. politics? fashion? art? music? i don’t have it in me to journalistically focus on anything. i’m just not interested in being a topical blogger.

anyway, ok, well, in fact, some people do blog about “life”, subjectively, without topical focus. and do it well, and those are actually my favorite things to read online. like ramona. or this guy, and i’m sorry to be such a fangirl and repeatedly implore you to read somewhere else but i think his writing often borders on PERFECTION, which will be more clear to you if you click through and read this right now.

so maybe part of me is not writing much because i am reading all of these other great personal bloggers and i know i am nowhere near up to par. maybe if i tried? who knows. but for some reason i don’t even want to try. i think i’m kind of over it.

2001-2010: how far have i come?

today is my 9 year blogiversary. first actual post here.

a blogger-friend of mine recently wrote that while she doesn’t expect people to reach the standard linear milestones (college–>job–>marriage–>grad school–>children–>mortgage, etc), she does expect people to continually improve themselves, and that what you are doing at 35 should be a progression from what you were doing at 25, or even 30.  or, if maybe not totally progressive or linear career-wise, at least life-wise, the key being change, learning and growth.

i agree that the arbitrary benchmarks are foolish, but keeping track of things that can be put on your resume aren’t necessarily super important to everyone either. my quality of life is way higher, even if it’s the same life and there aren’t a lot of measurable differences. shouldn’t i be happy about that?

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QOTD

IMG_0550, originally uploaded by _Reagan_.

another reason i blog. if i didn’t say things about myself, i’d feel no room to say anything about anything.

also, on the flip side, if you believe you are perfect, then by logic you must believe everything else is perfect too.

QOTD

“I want to plumb the depths of the concrete to a secret place where the literal bleeds metaphors.”

–BHJ, on his “process”

i love his blog because his mind wanders and makes connections where there were none like mine does, only he is way better at writing about it.

the best is yet to come

i know, i know, a million things to write and note about our trip, but honestly there is so much that it’s taking some time to form it all in my mind. the sidenotes, the details, the overarching themes. i am organizing them in my brain, but they don’t want to come out just yet.  i’m also making a scrapbook, and jay’s making photobooks, and these processes affect the writing, and so there’s a lot to be done.  the problem, for me, with blogging large amounts of autobiographical content is that there are no deadlines (obvi, i wrote my BM08 post almost 12 months after the event), but i’m going to give myself one: by next monday morning, i need to have my posts written and my momentos organized.

i should have taken time to write notes while we were traveling, and i did from Amsterdam to Berlin.  but then it felt like i was doing this, and constantly taking notes in my head about what i would write instead of actually DOING the things, and that i wasn’t really “unplugging” if i kept drafting blog posts in my head. and so i stopped.  this would be disasterous for autobiographical reasons it weren’t for the photos we took, which help me remember the order of operations, and i’m sure there are things that i have already forgotten.

i also read 3 excellent books in the past 6 weeks and am on the 4th, and these are causing all kinds of interference with wanting to write autobiographical things.  the books! they are so thought-provoking.  i want to write about them instead.

so this is not just a “i’m blogging but i’m not” post, here is a thought, on which i ruminated much while travelling:

these days i am more and more greatly appreciating and admiring and taking inspiration from the people in my life who are living unconventional lives, whether “successful” or not.  when we were in our 20s, this was sort of expected – after college you joined the Peace Corps or volunteered in some 3rd world country, or traveled around the world, or tried being an artist/musician, or worked at starting your own company (if you are dot.commer, maybe you got lucky), but for a large percentage of people, after a few years of trying to wrangle the world into your dreams, many got married, settled down, bought houses, had children, and secured “regular” jobs. not that there’s anything wrong with that; for many, those few years were enough and settling down WAS their dream, and i fully support that, but i’d be lying if i said it was inspirational to me personally. so moving into our mid-30s, with many of my friends now approaching or passing 40, those people in my life who are still forging their own paths, struggling to maintain their business and not sell their souls to pay the bills (especially true for artists, musicians, and photogs), i am finding great comfort in them, despite their repeated exasperations over the difficulties, the stress, the waves of success and defeat.

i find myself currently realizing how “middle path” i am these days, and wondering if this is just my rather taoist nature, if maybe this is my true self and i am not who i thought i was, or if i have fears i am not addressing preventing me from actualizing my potential. these friends and colleagues, especially the strong women in my life (because no matter how much equality we have gained, we are still not equal), remind me that taking chances and pushing lines is really important, and that the adage about regretting more the things in life you didn’t do than the things you did is a truth.  i get annoyed by people who look at my life and tell me i’ve got it made and so i should “be happy with what i’ve got” when i start to complain/ruminate on who else i could be, what else i could be doing.  no, i’m sorry: i am happy, but i will not “just be happy”. this is my life.  i want more.

mistakes i know i am making

i’ve been lazy again this week and riding the bus instead of biking to work. the upside is that i get offline reading done in the 20-minutes each way that i otherwise don’t find/make time to do. i finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and reading dave eggers on the bus every morning put me in a thoughtful and contemplative but good mood. now i’m reading The Informers, and reading Bret Easton Ellis on the bus in the morning does not so much put me in a good mood.

anyway, i know i am going to europe for the first time TOMORROW and so should write something maybe about that today also, but before i forget, in the appendix/addenda to AHWOSG, written later after the first publication, called Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, Eggers discusses the inevitable position that non-fictional, autobiographical writers get into, which is that, because we do not live solitary lives, we write about OTHER PEOPLE. and those other people may not like what you wrote about them, or the circumstance, or how you remember it, EVEN IF IT’S TRUE. or, maybe, i should say, ESPECIALLY IF IT’S TRUE. which i can understand, you know, from their perspective. your “dirty laundry” being published for the world to read. it might sting. it might put a huge brick-heavy damper on relationships. and this is something i’ve been faced with recently, what with my whole huge extended family joining The Facebook and realizing that i’ve been writing about my life here for, oh, 8 years now, and even though i try not to say too much about other people and personal things, i have done so, sometimes without really remembering and suddenly these ghosts from the past pop up and people are angry, disappointed, hurt. so just after a recent bout of this, i was reading the very end of the addenda of the book, and Eggers wrote something that made me feel, not…justified, but encouraged? to continue to be open and share. he says (more than once in the prelude and appendix, actually):

“We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself….

…Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one’s past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way – not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I’ve-seen/lessons-I’ve-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.”

and i agree. so while i do deeply respect and recognize personal boundaries and have taken great care over the years to not represent anyone but myself (and honestly the family-related post that recently upset someone i didn’t even realize was publicly published – BLOGGER FAUX PAS), i also do not believe in covering up, hiding the parts that aren’t pretty. because i too believe that it does not make you less yourself, less valuable, to show your flaws. those with flawless facades are difficult to believe. they are hard to connect to. possibly this is why there is so much Schadenfreude in our human nature: because in the mistake we see others make, we see ourselves. and so sometimes i admit, when i hit that “publish” button, i know it might be a mistake, but the feedback (even if negative), the connectivity, always makes up for it.

(semi-related note that i couldn’t work into the text above: sometimes even people you don’t know get really offended by you writing about your own life. dooce.com, blogger of epic flaw-revealing proportions, has started publishing her hate mail and monetizing it. SUCH a good idea. haters suck.)

peace offering

(this note was originally posted on facebook, as it was regarding a specific facebook-related incident, but relates to things i write here too.)

yesterday, i offended some people that i love.

so for anyone who might have been offended by the “don’t be an idiot” remark about the healthcare debate yesterday, i apologize for my word choice. my comment should have only been only in support of the bill and not a derogatory comment on those opposing it. i am all for strong opinions, freely held. i don’t ever want to be seen as polarizing or offensive. i want to be seen as informative. and i know you can’t please everyone, but sometimes you have to remember who might read what you write if you’re gonna post it publicly.

i’m not surprised that some people were upset. i have all kinds of friends from all walks of life here, and i know some of us disagree on a great many things. there are a lot of my friends and family who write things that offend ME here too, but i don’t defriend them or get angry. i just don’t respond when they write things that offend me. i just let it go. i try to remember we’re coming from different places and mentalities, and that reading things they say that i disagree with only makes me know them better and remind myself that there are other ways of looking at the world.

i definitely don’t always think i’m right, and i have changed my mind on a lot of things because of great debates with friends and family, and it’s one of the reason i love being connected to people online and off. we learn from eachother. you can’t know eachother better or learn anything or change any minds if you just close yourself off to the hard debates, cross you arms and walk away with a “we’ll never agree, i’m not listening to you anymore” and only keep friends who agree with you. if it’s too hard for people to do that, to keep the connection but ignore the parts you don’t like, i guess i understand.

and finally, no matter who’s ever right or wrong, if someone else’s experience of a conversation with me is that i’m judgmental, confrontational and condescending, i need to do something about it. i’m truly sorry that some people got hurt or offended, but if nothing else at least this has been valuable because it’s caused me to have some moments of self reflection and i’ve been questioning and re-evaluating the ways in which i’ve been communicating online. every now and again, in all my years of blogging etc, this happens, and i have to recalibrate.

thank you.

A.H.W.O.S.G.