Weekend Reading: The Heavy Things Edition

There has been a lot of death and suffering in the my Twitter feed lately. Perhaps I need a break. Maybe next week, I will look for only lighter things to share, but for this week, I have mostly heavy things. I am sorry, but the world is heavy these days.

Roxane Gay wrote about Cecil the Lion and Samuel DuBose, and the pain of the difference in our reaction to these two deaths.

Tressie McMillan Cottom's personal story of being arrested as part of a minor traffic stop is,,, I don't know what to say here. Wonderful seems inappropriate given the subject matter. Compelling? Important. Whatever, go read it. Personally, I read just about anything she posts, so I read her second piece at the Atlantic about Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, too. This one is about the stories not told in that book, and it is definitely worth your time.

Sally Kohn's piece about reading the book as a white woman- and why we should read it, even though it will be hard- is also worth your time. I confess to feeling a little bit of optimism upon finding a piece like this in a publication like Elle.

Elle, incidentally, also published a powerful piece by Ashley Ford about not reporting a sexual assault.

I also read an old post from Patrick Blanchfield about... boy, about a lot. The title is Sandy Hook, "White on White Crime" and How Privilege Kills and that is probably as good a summary as any I can come up with. It was was written after the report from the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate released its report about the Sandy Hook shootings. It covers a lot of ground, and I found it very, very disturbing, not least of all because if I'm honest with myself, I cannot be completely sure I would have responded to the challenge of raising a child like Adam Lanza better than Nancy Lanza did. I cannot be sure I would not have used- no, misused- my privilege just as she did. That is a really disturbing thing to think about.

I give her the benefit of the doubt, and think she believed she was doing what was best for a child she loved and wanted to protect. And she did some really, really wrong things, and was able to avoid the help other, more impartial people thought her child needed because she had the money and social standing to do so. 

I can be sure that I wouldn't have provided access to guns, so I guess there's that.

Anyway, go read that post, but be prepared for it to hurt a little.

Hey, let's talk about happier things! Like how the lack of women in tech is NOT a pipeline problem. And how we shouldn't be training women to fit in to the "alpha male" culture at work, but trying to change the culture to be more inclusive of everyone. And hey, why are all the people who consider it their job to think about the shape of the future white men?

OK, here's some actual good news: Merck and WHO ran a trial of an Ebola vaccine in West Africa, and the results were very, very encouraging. I hope that further studies bear this finding out.

And this isn't good news or bad news, it is just interesting: a dot map of every job in the US, color-coded by industry segment.

In "I like to make money" news, I gave the Run Better Meetings seminar, and it went well. I've decided to make the recording available for purchase via GumRoad. Details here.

I also finalized the formatting for Unspotted and uploaded the final files. Let the countdown to release day (August 12!) begin. You, of course, can get a jumpstart on that by pre-ordering.

Let's end on a genuinely fun note: my husband tried his hand at making a crappy thing to stop a child from whining, and was successful. Behold, the crappy pom-poms!

Also, how cool is this drawing?

Ariel the Chemist drawn for me by: Emily Sasaki (@sassysassaki on instagram & http://t.co/RtAVLaCdmz) #realtimechem pic.twitter.com/2HmNRXwpm6

— Debbie Mitchell (@heydebigale) July 30, 2015

Wisdom Practice

I love to read, so it is probably not surprising that I keep buying books in search of wisdom.

I am not aging as gracefully as I thought I would. I am too short-tempered and not patient enough. I am overwhelmed by the horribleness in our world sometimes. I get caught up in other people's ideas of success and question my own choices. I get anxious. And so on.

I go looking for books to help me do better, and be the person I want to be. Most recently, I bought The Gifts of Imperfection,by Brene Brown. It was a pretty good book, and I don't regret reading it.

At some point in the book, when it was talking about engaging in a purposeful practice of some sort, I realized that I already have as much wisdom as I need.

I just need to practice it.

One of my kids enjoying life.

When I talk to people about getting better at using their time, I emphasize that there really is no "one cool trick" that will make it easy. It is about looking honestly at what you're doing now, thinking about how you could do better, doing the work to make it happen, and then keeping with it until the new way becomes your habit.  It isn't a quick fix, and it isn't necessarily easy, but it is effective.

And that's what I need to do with the aspects of my life that send me looking for wisdom.

I enjoy reading books about building a better, happier life, so I will probably keep reading them every now and then. But I don't need to read any more books. I've already read enough to know what I need to do to feel better. I need to get my yoga practice established again. I need to get my exercise routines going again. I need to remind myself of both my incredible good fortune and my resilience. I need to pick one thing and make it better. I need to count to four when I'm angry. (OK, that last one came from Daniel Tiger, but hey, take your wisdom where you find it.)

In short, I need to practice the wisdom I already have.

I'm not going to find "one cool trick" that makes this easy. It doesn't work like that. I know that, just as I know- from experience- how much better I feel when I have a strong "wisdom practice." I've been there before, and I can get there again. It is time to stop making excuses for why I'm not doing the things I know make my life better and start working on my wisdom practice. I'll let you know how it goes.

Book Review: My First Plane Trip

My kids both flew before they were old enough to really understand that this was anything more momentous that the other random outings we took them on, and we've flown enough with them over the years to have (luckily) avoided any travel worries from them.

So, we're not really the target audience for My First Plane Trip, a short picture book by Kim Jenkins. Still, I like to try to help authors out when I can, so I agreed to take a review copy. And then proceeded to get really busy, so it has been over a month and I'm only now posting the review.

I read the book and Pumpkin (who is eight) read the book. I think Petunia (who will be six in a few months) might be more in the target age range for the book, but she was basically a walking meltdown tonight due to an unfortunate incident at camp with some sunscreen and her eye, so I didn't think it was worth asking her opinion. All of her opinions tonight degenerated rather quickly into tears.

The book is a straight-forward explanation of the things a child is likely to see and experience when taking a trip on an airplane. There is also a list of "People You Might Meet" and a glossary, which I think may have been Pumpkin's favorite parts.

Both Pumpkin and I rated this book as "fine." We both thought it did a solid job of explaining the air travel process to a child who wasn't familiar with it. The book is illustrated with photos, which might be a nice feature in terms of helping kids recognize what they're seeing on the day of the trip. Some of the pictures are clearly stock photos, but there was only one case where that bothered me: the photo illustrating baggage loading shows bundled freight being loaded. 

There is some humor provided by funny cat photos and the incongruous appearance of a porcupine. This humor worked better for me than it did for Pumpkin- she took it  too literally and said "no one would travel with a porcupine!" (I decided not to explain to her that was sort of the point of the use of the porcupine.) I think this is a case where a younger child who is in a less literal humor stage would enjoy the humor more than Pumpkin did. Pumpkin is solidly in the scatological humor phase, so probably would only have laughed if the porcupine had farted.

I had one other content concern: there was a page about the airport stores, which might be a bad thing if you were hoping to avoid shopping in the stores during your time in the airport. We usually buy an overpriced snack in one of the airport stores to take the edge of waiting, but I know some parents try to avoid them.

I had a PDF version, so I can't comment on the ebook layout, but the text was well-edited, age appropriate, and easy to read. 

All in all, I think the ebook version of this book would be a good investment if you have a child under the age of six or so who is about to take their first airplane ride. I'm not sure I think the cost of the print version would be justified for most kids, but if I had a child who was fearful of the new experience, I'd give it a try.

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I occasionally accept a review copy of a book to review. My review policy is explained on my page about book reviews. A PDF version of the book in this post was sent to me by the author.

Weekend Reading: The Aw Heck I Don't Have a Theme Edition

Thank you all for your kind comments on my last post. Pumpkin still hasn't settled on a mantra, but she's also stopped asking me to stay in her room while she falls asleep, so perhaps this particular bout of bedtime worrying is passing.

As for me... I'm feeling better, too. I made an effort to go to bed on time for a the last couple of nights, and I also finished a couple of big projects (the slides for the Run Better Meetings seminar and the final revisions and formatting for Unspotted), so I have a nice feeling of accomplishment.

I've been doing some thinking, and I suspect my difficulty right now is coming from the fact that I am uncertain whether my main "anchor" client will renew my contract next year. My other sources of income are growing, but slowly, and if my anchor contract goes away, I will need to either replace it or find a full time job within a few months. I really don't want to have to find a fulltime job, so I'm probably feeling some extra pressure to make the things I'm doing when I'm not working on my anchor contract pay off.

This is rational... but also irrational. A guarantee of 6 months of the current work situation is frankly more than I usually had when I had a fulltime job. Remember, I worked in biotech, and have had the experience of being surprised by layoffs more than once.

So I'm reminding myself of that, which is helping. I'm also going to budget some time in next month to try to brainstorm some ways to increase my revenue. As with any start-up, more revenue means more runway before I run out of money.

Enough about me. This is a links post! Here's what I have this week:

The Atlantic is running a "book club" about Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book. Tressie McMillan Cottom starts it off really, really well. This may be the best thing I've read yet about the book. (Which I still haven't read... like I said last week, I'm slow to get to things.)

Roxane Gay wrote a heartbreaking piece about Sandra Bland and her reaction to what happened to her.

Jamelle Bouie and Black Girl Dangerous have really important pieces about Sandra Bland's death, too.

Thomas Sugrue wrote a reminder that the South is not the only place with a problem with racism in this country.

Ann Friedman looks at the MTV show White People and the Twitter spat between Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj, and has some suggestions for how Taylor could go one better than the solid apology she issued (which is, frankly, already one better than most white people in her situation would have done).

This week saw the story of another Black single mother arrested after a presumably well-meaning person called the police upon seeing her children unattended. Here is a really thoughtful post from Beyond Baby Mamas about what people should do if they see Black children unattended.

And here is a really thoughtful post from Shannon Des Roches Rosa about how to talk to and about people with autism.

Here is a story about a cool app that a man with autism created to help his friends (or bystanders) help him when he is suffering from overload.

On how saying "it is my opinion" doesn't necessarily mean you are not wrong.

Amanda Marcotte on the mess at Reddit.

I have decided what I think about the bracelets described in this article, but I'm 99% sure Pumpkin would love them. I worry that they could be another very visible way in which kids can be mean to each other, but perhaps I shouldn't worry about that. After all, if one set of kids want to be mean to another set of kids, they will be- with or without the help of technology.

Parisienne Mais Presque doesn't post very often anymore, but her posts are usually really good. Here is one about language.

Maybe I should move to Switzerland. Except I know people who have lived in Switzerland, and I suspect I would find certain aspects of Swiss culture hard to accept with the grace I would require myself to show as a foreigner. So maybe I should try to make the US more like Switzerland. (The ability to set your desired work percentage is a feature I've always intended to offer any employees I hire if when my company is able to hire employees. I had something similar for part of the first year after Pumpkin was born and it was AWESOME.)

This column on wanting to help too much is really quite insightful.

Ann Friedman's disapproval matrix has been making the rounds again for some reason. My favorite part is the inclusion of toddlers in the "frenemies" section.

Speaking of kids... this list of 14 things you'll say to them over and over is pretty amusing.

So is this, which a friend sent to me on Twitter:

Happy weekend, everyone!

Living the Anxious Life

Pumpkin has been having a hard time falling asleep recently. She says that she gets bad thoughts in her head and can't get them out. This has happened before. I am sympathetic- I know exactly what she means, since I once laid awake working through the scenario of what I would do if someone crashed their car through my bedroom wall (it faces the street, but it is an extremely quiet and really rather straight street and there are several feet of bushes between the window and the street). Granted, I was pregnant at the time, but I can work myself into a worry about random things even when I'm not pregnant. It is a skill I have.

In one sense, I'm the perfect person to help Pumpkin figure out how to handle her anxiety problem. I've tried to teach her my tricks of short circuiting the weird, anxious loop in my brain. The best one, by far, is to have a mantra to recite silently. It helps nudge my stream of consciousness into a more relaxed place, where I can go to sleep.

Me being me, my mantra is from John Donne:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
(Meditation XVII)

Yeah, it isn't a super happy mantra, but I've used it since high school and it works for me.

So, Pumpkin is working on picking herself a mantra. In the meantime, I spend a fair amount of time on her floor, reading tweets in the dark while she falls asleep up in her loft bed. She finds this helpful. It is a good thing she doesn't know what's in my Twitter feed, or it would probably cease to be helpful.

In another sense, I'm a terrible person to teach Pumpkin how to tame her anxiety because at 43 years old, I haven't really learned how to tame my own.

I have always been the type to conform to expectations, and to pay attention to what the people around me need and want. I don't really feel bad about that. I don't think there is anything wrong with trying to be nice to other people, or sensitive to their feelings. But it does sometimes make it hard for me to really know what I want. And the instinct to always do the right thing, or the nice thing, can make it hard for me to relax and enjoy myself, especially now, when there is pretty much always something more virtuous I could be doing (for the kids, for my career, for my health, to take care of the house, to plan for our future, etc, etc, etc).

Even beyond that, there is just a feeling that I should be doing something more virtuous. Or, if I can push that feeling aside, the thought of something unpleasant or downright bad that could happen... Let's just say, I find it difficult to unwind.

This is probably one of the reasons I love to travel so much, because when I'm traveling, I for some reason get a free pass. Yes, I can have the ice cream! Yes, I can have another drink! Yes, I can just sit there and read! OK, only the first one is really true when I'm traveling with my kids, but I really like ice cream, so that's OK. Regardless, I do just relax more when I'm traveling. I have no idea why, because frankly, travel can be kind of stressful. But it is a different sort of stress that somehow causes me less anxiety.

I know, that makes no sense. I wish I understood it, too.

I also wish I could tap into that "free pass" feeling more when I'm at home. I live in an awesome place, I have an awesome life. I want to learn how to relax and enjoy it. Maybe I should try eating more ice cream. But maybe that would just make me gain weight, and then I'd be anxious about that.

Sometimes I think the solution is to exercise more (exercise makes me happy, and also it enables me to eat more ice cream)... but that requires me to do some other worthy thing less, and that triggers anxiety, too.

It is a bit of a conundrum.

If I can't tame my own anxiety, I'd at least like to teach my kids how to relax and enjoy life. Petunia seems to have it down, to be honest. She probably got that from her father. Pumpkin got my anxious genes, I guess, and I feel bad about that.

Yeah, I know. That's sort of ironic.

Share your anxiety taming tips- for you or your kids- in the comments!