Tag: unexamined life

Examining The Selfie

Examining The Selfie

No one ever sets out to take a bad selfie.*

Which isn’t to say that there are not a metaphorical crap ton of bad selfies clogging the tubes of the Internutz out there. Because there most certainly are. A lot. Of bad — really bad — selfies.

Think about that a minute. People don’t want to look bad. They will take a bad selfie, though. Usually it’s not because they mean to take a bad selfie, only that. . . Well. . . Stuff happens. And it’s usually stinky.

The strange thing is, rather than discretely dispose of a bad selfie, lots of folks will publish it on the Intranutz for everyone to look at.

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Yes, that is a snake and *sigh* yes that is my head within easy striking distance.

Even stranger? If you google something like bad selfie and great selfie, you’ll find plenty of the same pics on both lists.

Sometimes, the difference between a good selfie and a bad selfie is all in the perspective. If you’re the person in the selfie, it’s horrifying. If you’re someone else seeing the selfie from far away in space and time, it’s fantastic.

I suppose at this point, some of you are wondering why a blog dedicated to personal storytelling and memoiring is going on and on about selfies. If you’re not, you should be. Go on. Say you are. You are, aren’t you?

Yes, I thought so.

I’m going on and on about selfies because what is a memoir but a written example of the selfie. It’s a snapshot of a time in your life, taken by you and then shown to others. Excepting the fact that you’re not using a camera, it’s exactly the same thing.

Sort of.

In a way.

Approximately.

In a manner of– I think you get the point.

Getting To The Point

And, like a selfie, there’s something important to understand about getting metaphorically naked (See? Told you it was a metaphor.) in front of the mirror and then telling everyone who’ll listen about what you see.

Personal's not the same as important. People just think it is. -- Sir Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Just because it happens to you, that doesn’t mean it will be important or interesting to anyone else. It’s up to you to not only make that decision, but also make sure that when you trot out your prose version of a selfie, it’s something that people will want to read.

The best way to do that is to make sure that what you write isn’t focused only on the naked parts of yourself you’re exposing to the world, but also shows why other people should be interested in what you’re saying.

Take a look at the selfie I took of me yesterday. There is, as you might expect, a story that goes along with that picture. It’s a sad story, full of head shakes and wonders about how I could have made it to my current age, much less have been able to successfully breed and rear three children.

In The Beginning. . . 

The story starts with my middle son — a recent college graduate — going upstairs and then shrieking, followed by a lot of cursing. None of which really made me look up from my work.

I told you. . . I reared three children — three boys — so I’ve heard a lot of shrieking and cursing and large thumps and loud bangs in the last decade plus. There’s not much that really bothers me any more.

“Holy crap, Dad! There’s a huge snake up here!” is definitely one of those things that will bother me.

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The snake: In Happier Times
Examine Yourself In The Mirror

Examine Yourself In The Mirror

I’m almost positive I meant that whole getting used to being naked in public thing as a metaphor, but. . . Oh, well. Guess I’ll know better next time. Or at least remember what I was talking about from one post to the next.

So. Where were we?

Ah, right.

Getting Naked In Public

I don’t mean that I actually want you to get naked in public. (Ah-HA! It was a metaphor. I knew it.) What I meant was that, if you’re going to become adept at memoiring your life, you’re going to have to get used to the idea that you’ll be talking about parts of your life — often some of the darkest or most embarrassing — that most sane people would do almost anything to keep secret.

You, on the other hand, are going to go looking for just such an incident, peering back into the depths of your mind and look yourself straight in the eye, take that embarrassing incident, huff on it a bit, 347c684c2ca94889ae1e324dda03a12bpolish it with your sleeve and then start showing it to anyone who will stop long enough to read. Those lucky readers will get to learn all about the time when you were six and you tried to tiptoe into your parents’ bedroom on Christmas Eve and accidentally saw the (to you) lifesize T-Rex skeleton you wanted more than anything else in the world glowing in the dark, especially the teeth with the glowy thing. And you screamed and screamed until your parents woke up, came to calm you down and say all the right things. But then kept laughing at you about it for the next forty-five years.*

And, in some cases, it’s going to involve sex. I’m sure (engaging sarcasm filters) none of you have ever had an embarrassing incident revolving around sex or love or unrequited love (disengaging sarcasm filter), but there could be some amongst your friends who might relate.

Makes You Want To Hide In A Tiny Space

Those things that make most people want to curl up and hide until the heat death of the universe just in case someone actually knew what you did last summer? You’re going to be digging around in the dustier bits of your brain, searching for those exact things so you can use them as the basis for a good memoir.

This is what I mean by getting used to being naked in public. Nothing to do with clothing at all.

Did you know that being naked in public is one of the most pervasive fears amongst American adults? (It’s not No. 1. Snakes are No. 1 for some reason.) However, being naked in public is a profound fear of most American adults. I think this is because being naked removes any sort of protection between you and the world.Judging

The world can see you for exactly who you are. It can see your flaws and it can see your imperfections and it’s judging you. Or at least you think it is.

There is a difference, though, between nude and naked. At least there is in my own personal dictionary. Nude means you have no clothing on. There’s nothing salacious about it, nothing provocative. (As an example, dig into Discovery Channel’s misnamed Naked and Afraid “reality” show. It should be Nude and Afraid, but I’m guessing naked sounds better.) You simply are nude.

Naked, on the other hand, means that you are wearing no clothes and you might as well be transparent for all the good it does you to try and hide your secrets. Your personality and your thoughts all are on display for anyone who wants to look. If you’re like most people, you’ll do just about anything to avoid being naked if you can help it.

The Right Attitude

The difference is all in the attitude. If you’re going to be nude, you simply have to believe it’s no big deal. You might have something you want to show the world, something similar to what they have but different enough that it might make for a good story. Naked is being featured on an hour-long TMZ special and finding out the sleazebags have seeded your bathroom and bedroom with hidden cameras.

file_101560_0_Baby_MirrorWe didn’t start out afraid to be naked, you know. How many of you have ever had the joyous experience of trying to chase down a gleefully naked child sprinting for anywhere but where their clothing is? If you’ve been near a child, you’ve also been near a naked child. That’s just the way it is.

As we grow up, though, we begin to accumulate secrets. . . We begin to notice we’re different from other people and, because we’re human, assume that means we’re worse off than everyone else. . . We begin to wonder what’s wrong with us. . . And we begin to make a conscious effort to never let anyone (except under very special circumstances) see us naked and certainly not with the overhead lights on.

Wishing I Were A Nicer Person

At this point, a nicer person would suggest that he only is resized_depression-meme-generator-still-battling-depression-from-looking-at-self-naked-in-mirror-cdc88esuggesting you get metaphorically nude to begin your excursion into memoir. I  am not that nicer person.

If you want to succeed as a memoirist, you’re going to need to get naked. And what’s more, you’re going to need a spotlight pointed right at the dodgier bits of yourself. And you’re going to do it without feeling badly about yourself or even getting (eyes right) depressed over the whole thing.

Until next time, friends, when we’ll be discussing just what the heck I’ve been babbling about for the previous near-thousand words and what it has to do with writing. Promise.

And that’s the naked truth. (Come on, did you really think I’d be able to make it through this sort of post and not make that kind of pun?)

 

*While this is an oddly specific example of an embarrassing incident, the management would like to assure you it was completely made up and does not represent the real experiences of any actual person living, dead, or witting at a typewriter right this minute.

Examining The Ingredients

Examining The Ingredients

Laws are like sausages; it’s better not to see either being made.*

By which, of course, we mean that there are some things that we simply must enjoy and not worry about how they came to be. And there are some things that we cannot enjoy if we know how they are made.cookbook

All of which has very little to do with what we’re talking about today, but I like the aphorism and it does imply something about ingredients and that, friends, is why we’re gathered here today.

In our last post, I talked about how I’d recently competed in and finished the BattleFrog obstacle race series 8k run in Charlotte, NC. I gave you a brief overview of what it was like competing in the mud, as well as the horrible exertions I had to endure to make it across the finish line on my own two feet. As opposed to the relatively small, but statistically significant, number of people who had to be driven over the finish lines on the back ends of the medic trucks.

Keeping Time

Essentially, I took that one memory and made a short memoir or personal essay from it, focusing not on any one thing, but, rather, on the memory as a whole. I took the event and created my memoir as essentially a timeline of smaller events. This happened and then that happened and then that happened.

While this can be an effective manner in which to relate a memory and turn it into a

fsm_symbol_by_exbibyte-d64ga5y
Symbol of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Because, that’s why.

memoir, it’s not necessarily the best. As I mentioned previously, to successfully sell your memoirs, you’re going to need to find a way of taking an intensely personal experience and making it into something that you can relate to a wider audience.

Sure, your mom, dad or cousin might buy a memoir that’s only focused on you, and has no applicability to anyone other than you. . . Though I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be making many sales beyond those three people. Even if the cousin is a conjoined twin, I still say they’re going to share a copy rather than purchase two. That’s aside from the point, though.

Moving On

To create a story that’s relatable to a wider audience, I find it’s necessary to take part of the event and focus on the more meaning rather more than on the actual thing that happened.

For instance, I casually remarked that I’d done this obstacle race because a year previously my wife had run the race while also saying with absolute certainty that I was not in good enough shape to finish it with her.

Sense of Direction

That bit, right there. . . That can be the basis for any number of different takes on the actual event, as filtered through the eyes of a married man. I could focus on the bit about being a man and hating to have my athletic prowess questioned (even if my most difficult exercise is walking the dog [well, strolling with the dog while he sniffs and waters every three feet]). I could focus on the depth of stupidity to which I will gleefully excavate myself when I think I need to show I am . . . a man! Both of these could easily support comedic retellings of up to 1,500 words. Easily.https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/esther_perel_the_secret_to_desire_in_a_long_term_relationship.html

Or, I could go in a more serious direction, and talk about the distance that grows between long-married couples, lamenting the breakdown in communications which can lead to resentments and anger. This decision also could benefit from  bringing in outside sources, such as books I’ve read about how to invigorate a long-time relationship, or how to deal with anger. Maybe even include a clip from the Esther Perel TED talk that’s created quite a high level of interest among those who study relationships and love.

The reason I made mention of those two (possibly three) directions is because I think that they could lead to the most viewers or readers to the memoir. While not everyone might be in the mood to read about the Saturday where someone they didn’t know went out and did some sort of exercise thing or other. . . Almost everyone can identify with doing something stupid just to prove a point that probably wasn’t even being made by someone else and was all in their head. Although, oddly, I think I might identify a bit too closely with that, looking back on some of the things I’ve done.

I also think that most people in a relationship could identify with or want to see how someone else handled discovering a growing chasm between themselves and a partner. It can be quite shocking, especially if it comes from something so seemingly innocuous as running an an obstacle course race. The feeling of suddenly discovering what you thought was solid ground is actually loosely aggregated silicon grains sliding across a sharply declining slope is both recognizable and frightening at the same time.

Next Time On. . . 

We’ll move to the related subject of getting comfortable being naked in public.

Yes. Really. It is related. Promise. Well. . . You’ll just have to come back next time and see, won’t you?

 

Fun Notes

*This aphorism often is attributed to Prince Otto von Bismark, though a more likely origin is from John Godfrey Saxe. FSM, I love stuff like this. Seriously. I know this makes me more of a geek than most are comfortable admitting, but this stuff is fascinating. Simply fascinating.

Examining The Painful Life

Examining The Painful Life

I. . . am in pain.

Scratch that. I need a better opening. I need something more dramatic. Something to convey the stygian depths to which my spirit has sunk thanks to the difficult, nigh-unthinkable amount of work, effort, pain and sweat I expended merely a few days ago, effort that left me staggering with weariness and wincing in agony with nearly even the slightest movement. Something like that. Ah-ha!

I am in . . . a lot of pain.

And I did it all for you, my friends. All for you. I can’t believe you made me do this. I mean, seriously. It’s no joke this whole pain thing.

I hurt.

Though, perhaps I should back up and explain just a bit before I continue with the rant and the lesson within the rant.

A year ago, in a fit of manly bravado, (my wife signed up to do the race and completed it with some friends of hers. When I inquired as to whether I could come along with her that

BattleFrog | Race Obstacles Google Chrome, Today at 12.03.16
Six of twenty-six sadistic obstacles

day and cheer her on, she didn’t hear the cheer her on part and thought I was volunteering to come participate with her. To which she replied, quite quickly and without any
forethought, “But you’re not in good enough shape.” Which lead me inevitably to the website where I signed up two days after she crossed the finish line) I signed up to compete in the Battlefrog Obstacle Race Series.

The Charlotte version of the event graced me with the opportunity to cover 8 kilometers (about five miles) of running, interspersed with 22 different obstacles. Each and every single one of them designed by sadistic former U.S. Navy SEALS with a taste for torture.

Each obstacle was designed to test (read damage with intent to humiliate) every part of your body. Not only did we have to climb walls, we had to climb walls that were leaning

BF 60 degree wall
I was not nearly so buff. Nor so shirtless.

back over us at a 60-degree angle. Like so. No, this was not easy. Had I stopped to think
about it, I’d probably never have agreed to do this.

But when my inner caveMAN rears his head, there’s not much thinking involved.

Out of 1,219 people participating in the race, I finished 895th. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty darn good. I was hoping to finish, but wasn’t all that certain I would. Feeling pretty good about beating out the other 224 people in the event. Even better, I finished 30th in my age group. Out of 51, so that’s almost the top half.

I finished in under two hours and only gained approximately 3.2 pounds of mud ingested into various bodily orifices. (Friends, I’ve got mud in cracks I didn’t even know whereBF medal places that I had cracks.) After I crossed the finish line and gloried in the sensation of the heavy medal being lowered around my head, I staggered off to the festival grounds, desperately in search of food.

It was right around then that I really wished I’d thought to actually eat something before heading out to the race four hours before. Skipping breakfast before an endurance workout. . . Not a good idea. Still, I survived.

Which meant I could live to the next couple of days, to experience the torture of overworked muscles trying to let me know just how much they appreciated me not training for the silly event. Those piercing screams heard and reported through most of south Charlotte on Sunday? Yeah, sorry about that.

So, I hear you thinking, that’s all well and good. But why did he blame us for his pain? It’s simple. I blame you for my pain because a) I’m kind of whiny that way and don’t like to take responsibility for doing the spectacularly stupid things that keep happening in my life so frequently and b) to make a point about your unexamined life.

Last time out, I talked about how you can look at experiences through different lenses and come up with different stories. I also promised that I would talk about how you’d know which memories would make for good stories.

To my mind, the best way to have a good story that you will want to write about and others will want to read is to actually go out there in the real world and live a story. That’s right. . . When they tell you to write what you know, that’s actually sound advice up to a point. The important point is for you to get out there and have the sorts of experiences that not everyone will be able to attempt. Do the things that not everyone can do.

Then come back and think about what you’ve done. If you’re like me, that thinking part following one of these adventures often takes place in either a hospital emergency room or the guest suite at the local constabulary. You’ve got to think about what makes your story unique. What makes your story something that others will be able to connect with, even if they’ve not ever had the experience you just did.

Sort of like I just did above.

Next time, I’d like to take another look at the Battlefrog race and see if we can break it down a bit more to look at what — exactly — makes for the important pieces of a story.

Take care, friends.

 

All Greek To Me

All Greek To Me

Η ανεξέταστη ζωή δεν αξίζει να ζει. – Σωκράτης

The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates

The above quote is attributed, as you can probably guess, to the philosopher Socrates. To me, the idea behind his words is that we should all look deeply into our lives and try to determine if we are doing that which makes our lives better. Are we enriching our lives?

Are we living? Are we existing?

And, in this age of social media, are we busy telling anyone about that life?

The idea behind this blog is to work together to understand the best way to produce essays (or tell stories, if you prefer) about your life. I want to work together to craft highly personal stories that still reach out and offer meaning and insight to others reading our words.

Even personal stories aren’t all about me. Or you, for that matter.

So, what do you say? Get to it?

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The goat? Not a simulation. That, my friends, is a real goat.