Why I don't have a New Year's resolution this year

The past three years, I've come up with unconventional New Year's resolutions that have proven to be very useful and have had a lasting positive impact on my life.

I actually did come up with one for 2011: to trust my instincts. I've observed that my instincts end up being correct about things they really have no right to be, even when people who are smarter than me ended up being wrong (e.g. this whole recession thing we've got going on), so I decided my resolution would be to blindly trust my instincts in all things until they're proven wrong, with the goal of learning where exactly the boundaries of my instincts lie. I was totally prepared to take risks even in serious areas of life like money, and totally prepared to make mistakes. My reasoning was that I haven't made my share of mistakes in life yet, so I may as well make them now.

Unfortunately, before I could even get my resolution blogged, life threw a wrench in my plans. I had to make a decision that would affect other people. All available evidence told me one thing. My instincts told me another thing. If I had followed my instincts and they'd ended up being wrong, my decision would have hurt someone else long term. I couldn't risk it, so I went with the evidence. I may never know if this decision ended up being right, and if I do get a chance to find out it may take a couple of years. If it ends up being wrong I'm definitely revisiting the instinct thing, but based on what I know at the moment I can't justify going around making decisions that affect other people based solely on some possibly-foolish New Year's resolution.

I could totally write it off and say "That was 2010, this is 2011!" and go barging ahead. I could totally make an amendment. "Trust your instincts...except when it affects someone else." But that would be contrary to the spirit of the original resolution. I wouldn't be doing what I originally intended, I'd just be putting on a show to keep up my resolution tradition.

I don't have anything else I could use as a resolution. They've always been the one thing I have to do, not some random bit of virtue that I should be doing anyway like losing 20 pounds, or an arbitrary denial of one of life's simple pleasures like eating less junk food. So I'm entering my 30s resolution-less. We'll see what happens.

When I get older I will be stronger

For years, people have been telling me that your 30s are way better than your 20s. Here are some things I can do at 30 that I couldn't do at 25.

- Ask clients for information and ask colleagues to do work-related things without feeling drama and angst about it.
- Coach students.
- Outright correct senior translators when necessary.
- Neutrally (not over-apologetic, not over-assertive) ask to take vacation time etc. to which I'm entitled.
- Outright but nondefensively admit the failings in my social skills in a way that way usually (85% of the time) comes across as either charming or disarming*
- Entitlement, the easiest 70% of the time that I need to do it.*
- Admit the limitations resulting from my less pleasant personality traits (phobias, introversion, shyness, general neuroses) rather than pushing through them trying to be a good girl and then melting down because I can't sustain it by brute force.
- Recognize when I'm starting to melt down and take a step back to regroup.
- Remember that I can walk away from nearly anything whenever I want, so go in without feeling angst about OMG what if I don't want to do this a year from now?
- Politely redirect relatives who are about to go off on unpleasant rants (maybe 60% of the time I need to do it)*
- Neutrally (non-apologetically but non-provocatively) and matter-of-factly tell parents that I've done something they wouldn't approve of.
- Do business with businesses on the terms I prefer, not what I think they want their terms to be, i.e. walk in and ask for what I need (or don't ask and just browse idly) rather than coming with fiction that I think they expect.*
- Look someone I have a crush on in the eye and talk to them. The words that come out are still stupid, but there's eye contact and talking.*
- Express uncertainty about the aspects of my statements that I'm uncertain about while still retaining the credibility of my overall statement (and, in fact, make my expression of uncertainty give the credibility to my overall statement.*
- Talk in a large group, and somehow get people to listen to me attentively as though what I'm saying is of interest. (possibly *)

*Items with an asterisk are things for which Eddie Izzard gets at least partial credit

I'm looking forward to seeing what I'll be able to add to this list on my 35th birthday.

Horoscopes

From The Star:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: This year, dealing with two different forces or situations helps you perfect the art of juggling. Use your creativity to create a middle ground. You also can allow opposite issues to just flow, deciding you don’t need to do anything. Your view has a uniqueness that is much in demand. If you are single, separate your personal and professional lives. Don’t let one take root in the other. Everyone will be happier that way — above all, you. If you are attached, the two of you need to respect your differences. Often, if you detach, you can see the validity of your sweetie’s ideas. Encourage differences. Life as a couple could be more exciting that way. Cancer has a way of testing your limits.

The only Cancer I know (to my knowledge) is my mother.

From The G&M:

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: What you say is important, but the way in which you say it will determine whether or not others take you seriously. Don’t make big claims that you may not be able to live up to. Be modest in your aims, and exceptional in your efforts.

Sounds like standard operating procedure.

***

This year's horoscopes are generally unremarkable. Last year's scared me, and I think the thing they were predicting ended up being the death of Transit City, which is going to have a strong negative impact on my daily life for decades to come.

What I got from my bullies

Before I get into the substance of this post, I want to make one thing clear: my bullies did not make me stronger. There are a number of (rather loud) people who want my narrative to go that way. If I mention my bullying, if I point out that I was constantly told "just ignore them" and that didn't work at all (unless you count the fact that after years of ignoring them I ended up in a different physical location so they were never in the same room as me), the happy ending contingent says "But ultimately it made you a stronger person, right?"

No, it didn't. It seriously fucked me up. It made me (and I still am) skittish, paranoid, and defensive, entirely unable to predict how people would react and what was expected in real-life social situations. I'm about 10 years behind in my people skills and had to work hella hard to catch up that far. I still get cringey and hidey when I hear people whispering and giggling in a cube near mine, even though I know intellectually that it's just my co-workers talking about their weekends. I still look at the floor and avoid eye contact when I see cool teenagers.

But, that said, there have been a few odd positive outcomes:

1. I don't expect people to like or respect me. If someone doesn't want to be my friend or doesn't invite me to the thing, it doesn't hurt my feelings at all. That's to be expected. And if someone does want to be my friend or does invite me to the thing, that's a pleasant surprise. One of the things that really surprised me about cop behaviour at the G20 is that they were so sensitive to the most minor of slights, as though it actually hurt their feelings. That sort of thing would never bother me, because I consider it baseline. When people over whom I have authority (insofar as I have any authority) respect what authority I have, it's always a bit of a pleasant surprise. When stores that are cooler than me give me good customer service (which they always do), it makes my day. If they didn't, it would be an everyday annoyance, on par with missing the subway and having to wait another 4 minutes.

2. My self-concept is unattractive. When paint and spackle and engineering and technology can make me look attractive (which it often can), it always feels like a bit of an added bonus. When I look in the mirror and dislike what I see, that's SOP. I know a few people whose self-concept is attractive, and it's always a massive blow when they gain a few pounds or get hair sprouting where no hair should ever sprout. Such things will never cause me to lose self-esteem, because I'm used to being ugly.

3. I love being alone. All I ever wanted from my bullies was for them to leave me alone. And, in fact, one of the things I was bullied for was being alone at any given time, whether it was on the playground at recess or at home on a Friday night. So now that, as an adult, I can be alone on a daily basis and without social censure, I rejoice in it. It feels like a little victory. Some of the elders in my life find it difficult to leave the house and get depressed about being alone all day. I doubt I would ever get depressed in that sort of situation - on the contrary, I find it peaceful and very nearly liberating.

4. I don't fall for charming. We've all read Gift of Fear or otherwise heard about charming people who turn out to be scam artists or sociopaths. After years of seeing my peers turn up the charm for parents/teachers/cool kids and then turn around and bully me, I don't fall for that. Oh, I use it! I completely take advantage of other people's fake charming as a social lubricant. But I don't fall for it. I don't trust it, so it can't trick me.

Things my parents did right

In some past blog posts, and possibly some future ones that I have festering, I've written about things my parents did wrong. I write about these not for the express purpose of dissing my parents, but rather a) because they're the best examples that I have readily available, or b) because it explains something about the way I think or act. I write best using examples that are very immediate to me, and this is what I've got.

But for the moment, I thought I'd counterbalance this by sharing some of the things my parents did right.

- They taught me to read and count and do arithmetic at a very early age. I was started reading at 2 and could count to 100 at 3.

- Even though there was no precedent in either of their families for people having their own rooms, they made sure each of us could have our own room.

- They took me to the library whenever I wanted and let me check out any books I wanted in whatever quantities the library would permit.

- They let me experiment with the computer as soon as I could reach the keyboard. I was trying to write programs from a book at the age of 5 or play my father's computer games at 8, and they just...let me.

- When I had computer problems, my father would walk me through troubleshooting rather than fixing it himself, so it quickly became second nature.

- They let me cook experimentally whenever I wanted, and my mother did enough of the cleanup that I wouldn't be discouraged from trying to learn to cook by the cleanup burden.

- I was allowed to go for bike rides on my own at the age of 10. I wasn't brave enough to wander far, but it gave me a bit of a sense of independence and some time alone to think.

- They often (although not as often as they should have) simply called my bluff when I wanted to try something ridiculous. I wanted to eat an apple when I was a baby without any teeth, so my mother handed me an apple to see what would happen. When my 6-year-old self decided she wanted to learn calculus (because that's what my mother taught), I was given an introductory calculus textbook.

- They gave us comprehensive books dealing with puberty, including a full range of sex ed information. Although our family reads from the library, they bought these books in a bookstore and gave us each our own copies to keep in our respective rooms, so we could look at them privately without anyone knowing and get factual information without having to worry about awkwardness or embarrassment. This caused me to develop my own standards for intimacy and protection without the influence of anyone else's opinion - standards that still serve me well to this day.

- They did a pretty decent job of butting out of my educational decisions as I progressed through high school and into university and allowing me to manage it as an adult.

- As I approach 30, I find they're finally respecting my adulthood. My finances are good, so they don't comment on the price of my shoes. If they discovered I wasn't sleeping alone, they'd (superfically, at least) treat it like none of their business. If I say I need a sleep-in or an hour on the internet or a glass of wine, they take me at my word rather than trying to arbitrarily ration or convince or coerce me otherwise.

Resentment

My father emailed me a piece of language-related humour that I first heard half a lifetime ago, when I first started studying the language in question. My thought upon receiving this: "Does he seriously think I've never heard that before?"

That brought back a memory. I was a preschooler and had just been introduced to the concept of jokes. Like for the first time ever. Like at the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" level. So I'm gleefully telling basic, childish jokes to my parents (in my capacity as a child who had been introduced to the concept of joke-telling that very day), and my father says to me "Do you seriously think I've never heard these before?"

Of course, I didn't reply to my father's email that way. I just disregarded it for a time, and then replied with a bit of internet humour that vaguely intersects with his interests once I thought of one.

Then I realized that my father was my age when I was born, which means he was older than I am now on that day when I first learned to tell jokes.

Which means that he should damn well have developed the people skills not to reply to a joke that way!!!

It's not the fact that he shot down my childish jokes that's making me resentful, it's the fact that this (or, more accurately, the cumulative effect of a lifetime of this in my home life) led me to believe that's the normal way to respond to things. Which severely hindered my social life, as you might imagine!

I was into my 20s before I began developing the skills to approach social interactions with anything other than "Neener, neener, look how much smarter than you I am!" As you've probably noticed, those skills are still far from perfect. And they haven't become a habit yet. I have to make a deliberate, mindful effort to employ them, all the while fighting to supress the lifetime of instinct and habit that are still telling me to go for the neener neener.

Which is exactly what ended up happening when I made an ass of myself in front of Eddie. Giddy with endorphins and fangirl joy, I walked up to the greatest inspiration of my life, looked him in the eye, and neenered.

What should have been a joyful memory I can lie back and wallow in is now a humiliating memory that rears up and slaps me in the face at random times. My first (only?) chance to speak with my true, positive role model was ruined because of the influence of this negative role model I was unwillingly saddled with in my formative years.

And he doesn't even get the slap in the face of "Do you seriously think I've never heard that before?" because I want to be a better person than that.

Although I don't have it in me to be enough of a better person not to write this blog post.

And the tragic irony of it all is if I didn't have this resentment about being mis-socialized simmering in my brain, with this spectre of humiliation at making an ass of myself lurking around ready to rear up and slap me when I least expect it, I'd probably have the mental energy to write something that would make everyone - and Eddie too - notice and appreciate how smart I am.

Entitlement update

I can't quite seem to muster up a proper blog entry today, so I thought I'd update you on how my Entitlement is going. (If you're just tuning in, here's what I mean by Entitlement with a capital E in the context of this blog, and here's why it's so important.)

The most interesting thing is the extent to which being aware of Entitlement - what it is, why it's important, how it helps, being able to recognize it in others - makes it easier to do. I'd say in this case knowing is about 80% of the battle. My Entitlement behaviour increased sharply the moment I realized this was a thing I needed to start doing. It's quite surprising. Usually changing my own behaviour is an epic struggle against my very nature, and changing my own thought patterns is completely outside my control. But with Entitlement, just reading an explanation with examples that I was able to independently relate to real-life examples of behaviours and characteristics I admire in others was enough to make me...just start doing it, to a certain extent. I think I owe Malcolm Gladwell huge.

As an added bonus, the concept of Entitlement came into my life around the same time as I started facing some increased responsibilities at work. So I'm in a situation where I have to act with Entitlement, because otherwise stuff isn't going to get done. This has made me less deferential and more casual in my dealings with external people, which, oddly, gets better results.

One weird thing is whenever I try to explain the concept of Entitlement to someone verbally, they always confuse it with the generic - and this despite the fact that I always start my explanation with "not entitlement in the normal general sense of the word, but it's rather this very specific concept meaning..." I did manage to explain to my boss what I was doing by describing it as an attempt to be more pro-active because I'm naturally disinclined to be pro-active, and that was effective and has helped smooth out any rough edges resulting from the fact that I'm doing what should be basic social skills on an experimental basis. I think that's how I'm going to explain it to other people in the future if it becomes necessary.

I also just realized something awesome. In my awful making-an-ass-of-myself-in-front-of-Eddie moment (for which I'm still kicking myself), I was looking him in the eye and talking to him!! Yes, I was talking stupidly, doing far worse than someone my age should be able to do, reflecting poorly on our whole group and perhaps our whole city, but eye contact and reasonably articulate speech! I was literally incapable of that 18 months ago. I could not have maintained (and perhaps not even made) eye contact, and I would have been showing anxiety rather than fangirl giddiness. But now, not only have I done eye contact and talking, but I'm 100% certain I could do it again and better (even if not yet objectively well) in the future, even though I'm now carrying this having-made-an-ass-of-myself baggage. And it wouldn't be a massive effort. There would be nerves, of course, but the eye contact and talking would just be part of the natural way things turn out. Take THAT, middle-school bullies!

Of course, it's not going perfectly. I still fail to show Entitlement an average of twice a day - it's still extremely easy to just not do it in areas of life that are invisible to others. (If I don't email that client about that one thing, people at work will notice. If I don't make an appointment for a beauty treatment, it's inconsequential.) I'm still getting stupidly nervous about stupid things at stupid times. I'm still not 100% sure of the doctor situation. (I could handle it if I had some genuine illness, but I'm not there yet for something as elective and emotionally loaded as sterilization.) But, so far, my baseline for Entitlement behaviour seems to have very easily risen significantly higher. We'll see what happens next.

First days of school

First day of kindergarten. I'm scared and nervous. I don't know objectively what my parents did or did not do, but I felt like no one had every told me this was coming. So I want to bring Smurfy, my very favourite toy Smurf and best friend in the world, with me. My mother tells me "If you bring Smurfy, everyone will know you have a Smurf." I think this is a good thing. After all, he's a good Smurf and I'm proud of him!

First day of middle school. I have to take the bus. Some of the older boys at the bus stop are really big and scary and testosterony (although I don't yet know that word). The kids from the other elementary school are somehow more worldly (although I don't yet know that word) and bring into our grade a whole new set of unspoken rules. I manage to break most of them the first day, before I was even aware that they were there.

First day of high school. I'm wearing blue because a magazine quiz told me that's what colour I am, not yet having any idea how to select flattering clothes. I'm wearing make-up! Concealer under my eyes, a bit of powder because it seemed like the thing to do, mascara on my lashes, white eyeshadow under my brows, and lipstick. It was actually more attractive than it sounds. I'm back to walking to school and feel very independent doing so, but I have to walk alone because none of my friends are along my route. A couple of bigger, older boys are walking in front of me but more slowly than I am, and I agonize over whether I should pass them on the sidewalk. It seems vaguely uppity (although I don't yet know that word) to pass people who are supposed to be bigger and stronger and more athletic than me, and I'm worried I'll get bullied for it. I get to the school and there's no one around that I know. My supposed best friend isn't there because the first day of school fell on Rosh Hashanah that year. Little do I know that she's decided she doesn't want to be my friend any more. She, and the rest of the circle, are going to abandon me, and the girls who are her new friends (I don't even know how she made new friends with that group so quickly) are going to be mean to me. I will spend the next 2.5 years literally friendless.

First day of university at my alma mater. I'm in 2nd year when I move into student housing the first time, and am mistaken for a frosh and told to go to a frosh orientation event. I realize early on that it's for frosh and sneak out under the guise of going to the bathroom, thinking that they're somehow enforcing attendance. There's pizza in the caf and it looks and smells so very tempting, but if I go there and buy it they'll see me. So, thinking that somehow they even care, I sneak out the other way and go back to my room, where my very first meal living on my own is a cup of instant noodles eaten in my bedroom.

Today. I woke up in the same apartment I've lived in for 3 years, put on a flattering outfit I've worn to work dozens of times before, and went to the same job I've had for 7 years. There I saw the same people and did the same work as the day before and the week before and the year before. The rules and expectations are the same, and if for some reason they aren't I can ask outright what they are. Life stays the same. No major changes. Pas de rentrée.

I love adulthood!

Current annoyances

1. My G1 licence (which I only have for ID) expired a while back, so today I went to Service Ontario at College Park to renew it. I was a good girl and arrived nice and early at 8:30. I was given a ticket with a number in the 50s. By 10:30, the numbers had only made it as far as 25. I had to be at work at 11, so I had to leave. All that getting up early and waiting in line for nothing! I've never before in my life been in a situation where two hours of waiting in line time wasn't enough to get a simple errand like that done! So now to add insult to injury, I'm going to have to take another day off, wake up early, and spend literally half the day waiting in line.

This is particularly annoying because for years I have been writing to provincial politicians encouraging them to create an ID card that has the same ID value as a driver's licence, but does not entitle the bearer to drive. I'm sure there are blog posts on this subject somewhere within the archives. They already have the resources to screen people and photograph people and issue this ID, and they could even make money off it because initially at least they could totally get away with charging the same fee as for a G1. This would solve the ID problem for people who are medically unable to drive, make the line move faster because they wouldn't have to conduct knowledge and eye tests of all G1 applicants, and facilitate the process of getting seniors to stop driving when the time comes (it's a lot easier to get Grandma to give up driving if she no longer has a driver's licence, and it's a lot easier to get her to let her driver's licence lapse if she doesn't need it to open a fricking bank account).

Few things in life annoy me more than when I've solved a problem and communicated the solution to the people who can make it happen, but still have to be inconvenienced because they won't make it happen and I can't do it unilaterally.

2. I recently started subscribing to Discovery Health because they have a morning exercise show. It's called All-Star Workout, and it's really quite good. Good variety, suitable intensity, easy to follow - totally worth the extra $2.79 a month on my cable bill. But now it looks like they're discontinuing that show come September, which means that there are NO English-language non-yoga exercise shows on in the morning on any of the channels Rogers provides. (Yoga is fantastic, but I put on weight if I do only yoga.)

What happened? There used to be a number of different ones to choose from, and now there are none. Surely I'm not the only one who finds this the most convenient way to exercise. You can do it in the privacy of your own home, it doesn't cost anything (other than cable fees, which most people are paying anyway), it provides far more variety than you'd get from DVDs and more innovation than you could come up with yourself.

So now, in addition to simply motivating myself to exercise, I have to come up with how to exercise. My entire adult life, I've just turned on the TV and done what it tells me, and it's worked well. But now I have to make my own plan, figure out whether to get DVDs or a Wii or what, and this for something that I absolutely detest doing. Exercise is the least favourite of all my chores!

In the US, they have a TV channel called FitTV that shows exercise programs all day every day. We should have that here! It would be beneficial to public health! We're always hearing about how people are too sedentary and need to exercise more, so why not make it as easy as humanly possible? You turn on the TV any time of the day or night, and someone is there to guide you through your workout. What could be easier? We could even just use the US TV channel, just have our cable companies carry it. They do carry some TV channels from other countries directly, and surely FitTV would be more beneficial to Canadian society than, say, Spike.

Slice of life

Summer, 10 years ago. My bedroom was right under the roof. My fast food shift started early in the morning and ended early in the afternoon. I'd come home, tired from being on my feet all day, smelling of grease, just in time for the afternoon thunderstorm. (Convective weather was like clockwork that year.) I'd change out of my smelly clothes, lie down on top of my comforter and wrap it around me like a cocoon, and let the sound of the rain beating down on the roof lull me to sleep. Somehow, these conditions made for the most interesting dreams.

I work a regular schedule now, at a computer, in an office, sitting down. I make more in a day now than I did in a week then, and my life is way easier and less stressful. I wouldn't go back then for anything. But, on rainy days like today, I miss my afternoon naps.

Wherein I accidentally figure out why I'm a pessimist

Reading this unrelated article, the following passage caught my eye.

One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Lyubomirsky has a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. “Trips aren’t all perfect,” she notes, “but we remember them as perfect.”

My first thought was "Oh, so THAT's why people like travelling." Because my brain works the opposite way. I remember every single annoyance. The largest-looming memories of my childhood summers are fighting off carsickness and my sister, yearning for a moment alone in a quiet air-conditioned room with a book. This is why to this day I hate travelling and there are few things I'd rather do on a summer weekend then have some quality time alone with a book.

Then I realized that's it's more than just memories of travelling. In all my memories, the negative emotions stay on as strong as ever, but the positive emotions fade.

I can best explain this with a recent memory. When we saw Eddie the first time, I came home with three concurrent emotions: giddy endorphin rush, the "OMG, he's real!" feeling I got when he first walked on stage, and wanting to kick myself for making such an ass of myself at stage door.

The endorphin rush faded like endorphins do, and never came back as part of the memories. I remember the fact that it happened, of course. I remember what it felt like. But when I go into the memory, the endorphin rush isn't there. Even the next day telling people about it, I didn't feel even a fraction of the endorphin rush when I summoned up the memory.

The "OMG, he's real" feeling was present in the memories at first. It would totally reach into my belly with it's claws and grab my guts and twist them (in an entirely good way). Now, three months later, it's faded to a quiet little smile. I remember having that feeling, I remember what it felt like, but it's no longer an inherent part of the memory. Three months from now, I probably won't even be able to summon it up. (Which is unfortunate - it was an entirely new feeling and I rather like it).

But the feeling of wanting to kick myself for making an ass of myself hasn't gone away or even weakened. Even now when I think of it, I still wince physically and viscerally, and would slap my own face if I wasn't too chickenshit. I've already convinced myself quite logically that my idiocy was inconsequential (with a tremendous assist from someone on a fan site who proudly described doing something far stupider than I'd ever dream of), but the negative emotion is there just as strong as ever.

And I think all my memories work this way. I remember the fact that I felt gleefully independent when I started living alone, but I feel the constant lurking fear of the things that would crawl out of walls in my crappy student housing. I remember that my sister got married last year, but I feel the anger and frustration and humiliation and helplessness of my uncle (bizarrely) giving me a hard time for not being married myself in the one moment where I couldn't escape because the ceremony was right about to start any minute. I remember that I played that one playground game many many times and enjoyed it, but I feel the helpless terror of the one time I got injured and had to go to the ER and didn't understand what was going on, to the extent that I'm flashing back just typing this non-descriptive sentence. Positive emotions fade until I can just remember the fact that I felt the positive emotions, negative emotions stay on as an inherent part of the memory that comes back every time I remember it.

So if most people's brains are wired the opposite, so bad emotions fade and good emotions stay as described in the quote above, that would explain why so many people are so bizarrely optimistic. And, accordingly, why I am so inherently pessimistic.

The next mystery: why does my brain do this differently?

Writing to my 13-year-old self

There's a "write a letter to your 13-year-old self" trend going around the blogosphere. I recently wrote a letter to my 18-year-old self. One of the things I said was:

Read Harry Potter. Read the complete works of Miss Manners. Read the In Death series. Read Introvert Advantage. Read Malcolm Gladwell. Watch Eddie Izzard's comedy and every interview he's ever done. These will all not only entertain you, but help you navigate the world better.

But almost none of these things existed when I was 13! Harry Potter was still five years away. Miss Manners existed. In Death was two years away. The neuroscience underlying Introvert Advantage hadn't even been discovered yet. Malcolm Gladwell wasn't writing his Malcolm Gladwellish stuff yet. Eddie had only just done Live at the Ambassadors, and on top of all that the Web was only just in its infancy. The things my 13-year-old self needed to self-actualize had not yet been created!

Even if they had existed, I wouldn't necessarily have been able to access them. Not just because of the logistical difficulties of accessing information in 1993, but because of the logistical difficulties of being 13! Miss Manners, Introvert Advantage, and Malcolm Gladwell I could easily check out of the library (although Miss Manners would have gotten comments from any family members and bullying from any peers who saw me reading it.) In Death I might not have been allowed because of the sex, and Harry Potter I might not have been allowed because it's too easy (my parents never censored my reading for mature content, although my 13-year-old self never tried to read anything as hot as In Death, but I'd at the very least get a talking-to if I was reading anything my father considered too easy). But Eddie? Transvestite comedian who says fuck a lot? Could never have gotten away with it. Eddie inspires me, makes me brave (insofar as I am brave), and is single-handedly responsible for at least 50% of the people skills I've developed since I first encountered his work, but my parents would have taken the video away and tried to have A Talk with me and supervised me annoyingly closely if I had ever brought that home to watch.

No wonder I can't think of anything useful to tell my 13-year-old self!

So...

Dear 13-year-old self:

One day, you will get on a subway in Toronto (I know, it sounds big and scary, but you're just like those grownup women you envied on the Tube in London!) and see Big Bully sitting in the train. Fortunately, you'll look fantastic! Your hair isn't oily (Google up hairdressers specializing in long hair once you move to Toronto. Don't worry, the verb "google" will be meaningful by then.), your skin looks smooth (They're soon going to invent something called Touche Eclat. Get some as soon as you can afford it.), your outfit is flattering and grown up, you're wearing funky shoes by your favourite designer (You have a favourite shoe designer, by the way, which you chose entirely out of personal taste and completely without the influence of fashion magazines.) and just wait until I tell you what your bra size is! You also happen to be engaged in witty conversation with a very attractive man. In French. (French will give you your career. Learn your prepositions even when they're stupid!) Sure, he's gay (which isn't a problem, BTW. You'd do best to just not express any opinion on sexual orientation before the 21st century.) and you're talking about work, but Big Bully doesn't know that! It's not like she speaks French! You won't even cast a casual glance in Big Bully's direction, instead staying engrossed in your conversation with the attractive man. Then you'll get off at your stop (one of the better neighbourhoods in Toronto - BTW, you earn more dollars than you thought you ever would, although inflation makes that less impressive than it sounds) and go home to your beautiful apartment, never to see Big Bully again.

Don't worry, you'll be in love for real to. You'll be kissed and, crazy as it sounds, even have sex in ways that are far better than you've imagined yet. (Look up the word "cunnilingus" in the glossary of that book Mom gave you about your changing body.) You'll have friends too, real friends to whom you can admit you like Star Trek! But that one moment on the subway will be the only time you ever see any of your bullies. They are irrelevant to your life now. And all they know about you is that one glimpse Big Bully got of you on the train - a witty conversation in French with an attractive man, while looking fantastic.

I can't tell you anything to make it better right now, but I can tell you it will get better. The adult world isn't like what you're going through at all, and you can navigate it just fine without being able to navigate the 13-year-old world. Never mind what any of the grownups around you say: the adult world is WAY easier.

Wherein I finally figure out how to use my Signature Strength

Translation most often falls close to the end of the project cycle. After all, there's no point in paying a translator to translate the first draft if it's all just going to get rewritten again later. However, this often ends up putting the crunch on us. I've been in a number of situations recently where someone before me in the project cycle gave an over-optimistic estimate of how long their part would take them, so I got the text later than I should have. Because printers' deadlines and pre-announced released dates are immovable, that means I have to absorb the lost time and I often end up turning out work that I'm not exactly proud of, because there simply isn't time to do work I am proud of and the client would rather have suboptimal English than delay the release date. However, this makes me very frustrated with the person whose overestimation of their own abilities shortened my translation time, and if I had a say in the matter it would be enough to make me not want to work with them again.

I thought of this when I read Clay Shirky's Rant About Women:

And it looks to me like women in general, and the women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, are often lousy at those kinds of behaviors, even when the situation calls for it. They aren’t just bad at behaving like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.

One thing I've been doing in my own life, primarily out of distaste for the self-aggrandizing jerks and pompous blowhards I've encountered, is I always try to represent my level of confidence and certainty accurately. I try to give safe deadline estimates, not optimistic ones. When I know I can do the thousand words in an hour I say so, but if I'm not sure if I can I say it will take three hours. (Q: WTF's with the wide range? A: I can work much faster when I'm already familiar with the text type and the subject matter.) If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I try very hard not to make declarative statements unless I'm actually certain. I do that in real life too, and I've found that it's given me credibility over time. When I do make a declarative statement, people tend to listen.

Recently we had a client request a very large, important text for an impossibly tight deadline. After some discussion and negotiation, we came to the conclusion that we could deliver it on time by dividing it up among the entire team, but we couldn't guarantee our normal quality level. Normally, if a text is divided up among several translators, another translator who didn't work on it rereads the whole thing and makes sure it's internally consistent. There simply wasn't time for that to happen. But it was so important and the deadline was so imperative that the client agreed to this, and made time in their own schedule to come into work early to reread it and do quality control themselves. Once it was all done, we ended up getting a very happy email from the client, because the text we delivered was of high quality and needed very little revision at all. Which wasn't completely surprising - we do do high quality work - but we couldn't realistically guarantee the quality if no one does a reread. So we give a realistic estimate, exceed it somewhat, and the client is happy. On the other hand, the people before me in the project cycles overestimate their abilities, and it annoys people downstream and is detrimental to the quality of the entire project.

A long time ago, I took the VIA Signature Strengths quiz and found that my top signature strength is modesty and humility. But you're supposed to use your signature strengths, and I couldn't tell how you actually use modesty and humility.

Turns out this is how. And it only took me five years to figure it out.

This is harder than I thought

The loss of this little dog, who isn't even mine, is really kicking my ass. I've been trying to figure out why (I've known dogs who have died before, I've known people who have died too) and I think it's because a) it was unexpected, b) this is the first bereavement I've had as an adult, and c) I don't actually have any claim to this dog.

My previous bereavement was nearly 10 years ago (which is a hella long time to go without bereavement!), when my grandfather passed away. (I know some people aren't going to like that I'm comparing a dog and a grandfather, but this is the emotional frame of reference I have available.) He spent the better part of a year dying, so by the time it actually happened we were ready. We'd grieved months ago. In comparison, it only took a day or two for the little dog to start acting not entirely well, go to the vet, get diagnosed, and get put down. Even though he was nearly 15, I wasn't expecting this.

When my grandfather passed away, I was still a teenager and had only just moved out of my parents' house. While intellectually I felt like I should be fulfilling an adult role, functionally I wasn't yet expected to. It was okay to just go hide in my room for a while. If I did anything to help out, the grownups saw that as a bonus. But here I can't go hide in my room and leave the condolences and the business of everyday life to the grownups. I have to hold my own, pull my weight on my team at work, plus keep food in the fridge and get my taxes done, and on top of all this do right by the dog's human.

And that's the other problem. He's not my dog, he's someone else's dog. When my grandfather died, he was my grandfather. Yes, he a husband and a father to other members of my family, but our grandparent-grandchild relationship was perfectly valid, so I was perfectly entitled to grieve however I needed to. But this little dog is not mine, so the grief belongs to his human. I have to be supportive of his human. I can't give the impression that I think the decision to have him put down was incorrect (and intellectually I don't think it was incorrect - intellectually I know we're bearing the pain so this poor little doggie doesn't have to - but emotionally I'm still sobbing "But he's just a little dog! He barked and wagged and ran and played and never hurt anyone!"). You can skip out on obligations because your grandfather just died, but you can't skip out on obligations because a dog you've never even lived with just died.

So it's not just the grief, it's that I don't feel like I'm allowed to have this grief, and that I'm supposed to be strong for the person who is allowed to have this grief.

Programming note

Know what's fun? A gigantic urgent project that will take an extra five person-days per team member due for Friday sans faute, and this in a week that started out with the entire team having only two hours free collectively.

So blogging will be light to non-existent for the better part of this week.

On tap:

- Do Slavic languages' treatment of verbs of motion affect urban planning in those countries?
- What George Smitherman and his supporters need to do to win my vote.
- The argument for steadfastly clinging to your most ridiculous standards for romantic partners.
- O Canada: a translational analysis and a conspiracy theory

Meanwhile, enjoy Eddie (au masculin today) torturing his translators as he demonstrates his thesis that Rome fell because Latin is hard:

In the great tradition of blogging about why I haven't been blogging

One of the boilers in one of the hot water tanks in my building is broken, so hot water has been sporadic these past few days (and I'm just not fit for human consumption without a hot shower in the morning). Property management was very responsive (I sent a WTF email right after I got out of the shower, and by the time I got home in the evening there was signage explaining the problem and with an ETA for fixing it), but it doesn't negate the crankiness caused by unreliable hot water.

The zipper on the beautiful new cover for my beautiful new duvet completely broke, rendering it useless only one week after I bought it, so I have to go back to the store and convince them to do something for me about that even though linens are (understandably) non-returnable. I will be blogging about the customer service I receive, either way.

In the process of dumping my coffee grounds in the garbage like I've done every day for the past decade, I somehow managed to throw the whole filter basket in the garbage (rather than just inverting it and dumping the filter). Without noticing or realizing I did it. And I threw the garbage bag down the chute. And didn't notice until the next morning when I went to make coffee and the filter basket just wasn't there. So now I have to replace my coffee maker. Anyone know where I can get a small (4ish cup) coffee maker with a timer?

I just found out that RRSP deadline is March 1. I thought it was March 31. I'm scheduled to diversify this year, so now I have to educate myself and set up a whole new RRSP within just a couple of weeks.

The writers are consistently under-estimating how long it will take them to finish the texts. The printer deadline is inflexible. Guess who has to do frantic, panicked overtime? I can't produce work that I can be proud of under these conditions, but it's more important to the client to have something suboptimal by deadline than something perfect after deadline. So I braindump as fast as I can type, turning around an hour's worth of work in 10 minutes, and come out of it sounding like a total n00b who hasn't yet mastered when to depart from the source text. In print and readily googleable. I am SO glad my name isn't on it!

I spilled pickle brine all over my kitchen floor yesterday. Now my floor needs hardcore scrubbing.

Plus I hate all my clothes, the rate at which new wrinkles are appearing on my face is faster than the rate at which I can adapt to and gracefully accept them, and my fridge smells and I don't know why.

And Mercury isn't even in retrograde!

A depressing post to start off February

The year is some point in the 90s. The place is my parents' house. The doorbell rings. For some reason, I answer. An impossibly tiny little boy is standing there, his mother a safe distance behind him. He looks up at me with terrified eyes and asks (in a voice that's almost incomprehensible for it's frightened shyness and childish lisp) if he can go into our backyard to retrieve his ball.

Remember how scared I was when I had to ring next door's doorbell and ask them the same thing, I tell him of course he can, and next time he doesn't have to ask, he can just go get it. I then inform my parents that Mr. & Mrs. Next Door's grandkids hereby officially have permission to retrieve a ball from our backyard whenever necessary. Since homeowners aren't actually the big scary monsters that small children with lost balls imagine they are, my parents shrug and continue about their lives.

I just learned that a couple of years ago, that boy, who had since grown into a teenager, died of a sudden and unexpected medical complication. The information I have suggests he was in no pain and just quietly passed in his sleep, but his life was cut short far too soon.

I didn't know him at all. My only interaction with him was that one time he rang our doorbell. But I am strongly, inexplicably, disproportionately grieving for that little boy who was scared to ask a stranger if he could get his ball back.

Edited to add: I've been trying to figure out why this saddens me so much, and I think I've worked it out. I identified with the little boy who rang our doorbell. The world was full of big, scary grownups who had unpredictable and unspoken rules. You were completely at their mercy and sometimes they might get mad at you even when your actions were completely innocent (like if your ball went in their yard). Even if they didn't actually get mad at you that often, it felt like they could at any point. The little boy did grow into a handsome and accomplished young man, but he died at an age when, for me at least, the grownup world was still big and scary and unpredictable. I'm mourning for the fact that that impossibly tiny little boy may never have gotten to enjoy the feeling of safety and security that comes with adulthood.

Wherein I find the obvious solution to procrastination problems that have been plaguing me for years

Two things I keep procrastinating:

1. Housework
2. Watching videos I've downloaded (yes, I'm one of those people who procrastinates fun things too. I typically game or use the internet while watching TV or a DVD, so I keep not watching downloaded videos because I can't multitask them.

I just found the solution: watch the videos while I'm doing the housework! I'm now watching an ITV documentary on the making of Spamalot while cleaning my kitchen. I can't believe it took me so long to think of this!

I love New Year's Day

It's nothing to do with a fresh start or anything optimistic like that. The reason I love New Year's Day is that there are no actual or implicit expectations. There's nothing specific that I should be doing (or that it's "sad" if I don't "get to" do), no family or religious connotations, not even the social idea that we should be having fun. Plus it's one of the more widely-practised statutory holidays, which means hardly anything is open and I'm perfectly justified in not getting any errands done. I can sleep late and stay home and do whatever I want without any guilt. More statutory holidays should be like this.

The Ugly Glasses Chronicles

I suppose, objectively speaking, I can't quite call them ugly. They were bold. They were rectangular. They were trendy, in both the positive and negative senses of the word. They were chosen by a friend whose objective fashion sense I (still do) trust implicitly, and any halfway competent person could fully justify them as a fashion choice. They were also a wise purchase. The day I tried them on was the last day that they were on sale for 50% off (bringing their price BELOW the limit covered by my insurance!!), and three separate Lenscrafters employees assured me that I could return them for a full refund (which I ended up doing), so I decided to give myself time to see if I'd grow into them.

But the more I wore them, the more they made me feel hideous.

Their rectangular shape emphasized the squareness of my jaw and the lines on my forehead (which I detest not because they're lines, but because they are exactly the same as my father's). The thicker frame completely boxed in and emphasized the dark skin around my eyes when I wasn't wearing makeup, making me hesitant to even run to the grocery store without full makeup. Wearing my hair up was no longer an option, which is problematic at hip-length. Red lipstick no longer worked (and what's the point of life if you can't enjoy red lipstick?) I felt butch. I felt like a laughingstock. I felt like a fashion victim. I felt 13 years old again. I cried myself to sleep. I avoided making eye contact with my reflection in mirrors. I couldn't imagine wearing them with a sexy dress. If I had run into a client with whom I've only corresponded by email, or someone from high school whom I haven't seen in 10 years, I would have been embarrassed to be seen in these glasses.

So I went back and got the glasses I'd had my eye on in the first place, the pair I was, despite my best efforts to be open-minded, daydreaming about wearing. The pair that I fully expected would cause my fashion-savvy friend to say "We can stop shopping right now, this is perfect!" (In reality, they were relegated to about 4th place.) They're less fashion-forward, but I feel like myself in them.

I felt better now. I could breathe. I could stop crying, knowing that glasses that made me happy were on their way. But it would still be 10 days until they could be made. During that time, I had to navigate the city, meet with clients and convince them of my competence, get beauty treatments from people who are cooler than me, buy things and return things, deal with relatives over xmas, and generally perform as a competent adult despite the fact that my every instinct wanted to vanish into shame and shoegazing like my 13-year-old self.

So I had to very quickly learn a new skill. I had to fake being confident in these humiliating glasses. I had to aggressively externalize my energy, pushing the green of my eyes beyond these thick plastic rectangles that were boxing me in, convincing the world that I'm a confident hipster and this look is totally on purpose and of course I can totally pull it off. It was exhausting, but it was effective. I think I managed to carry myself as though this were a deliberate fashion choice, and somehow I managed to develop an effective "quelling glare" (as Miss Manners puts it) on the way. And, in the process, I fulfilled one of my birthday horoscopes from last year.

Overall, it was very much a learning experience. I went in not trusting my fashion instincts because my previous pair of glasses (which I love) were counter to most of my fashion instincts at the time of purchase. But from wearing the ugly glasses and then going back to the ones my instincts first wanted me to wear, I learned a lot about which of my fashion instincts I should trust and where I should and shouldn't follow trends (which is something I consider an essential adult life skill, but I haven't yet perfected it for glasses as much as I have for clothes). The energy and body language skills I developed trying to appear confident in the ugly glasses will serve me well as I work on Entitlement. I've developed a much better sense of where I'm comfortably willing to spend money on glasses, and I've gotten better at working with opticians to find something that suits me. Lots learned, good life experience. All of which is very easy to say now that I'm not stuck with the ugly ones for a whole year.