betcha haven't thought of me as a live and let live kind of chick, huh?
What bees?
One year ago: Diane laps up praise in class.
Two years ago: Some thoughts on Memorial Day. I wonder what that script I began working on was.
Three years ago: Darin and Diane take a whirlwind trip up north and play RoboRally.
Today's news question:What did the House of Representatives do yesterday that affected China, a Communist nation? Why haven't they done the same thing to that other famous Communist nation, Cuba?
Bonus question: (for those who watched Law and Order last night) What did a Chilean appeals court do to General Augusto Pinochet recently?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
There was a question recently on the journals mailing list about responding to advice readers give you: do you say anything? Can you object to someone giving you advice? Should you?
Of course, did I answer that question on the list? I did not. But I did think about it. Thank you for providing an interesting question, Al.
I haven't gotten a lot of advice about what I should do as a result of things I've written in the journal. A little bit about the baby, perhaps. I did get lots of advice about what I should do (or not do) when I decided to do the liquid diet. I ignored a lot of it. I wasn't angry at anyone for sending me the mail, and I was happy that they thought of enough of me to send it. I felt that ignoring it was best for me at that time, however. It seemed to me that most of the advice had to do with the letter writer and not with what I was doing.
My general feeling about advice is that it says more about the giver than the receiver. And I look at my life and say, What lessons have I learned that are worth imparting to someone else? I haven't run across anything I think is an absolute. I can only give the most general advice.
For example, if someone asked me about dating, I'd have to think over my own dating history. I dated guys who were all wrong for me. Mostly I didn't know how to say, "This is wrong for me, you're not treating me very well," because I was so desperate for affection, even if it came entwined with indifference or even disdain. When I did sit down and analyze what I wanted--a serious relationship with a guy I could talk to, who would be as supportive of me as I had been of the guys I had dated--the next guy who asked me out was Darin.
It would be wrong for me to say with absolute certainty that the second you know who you want, you'll meet him, wouldn't you agree? So I wouldn't give that advice. I might say it's important to know what you want and to stick to it. But I can't even say with any certainty that if you compromise on what you want you'll be unhappy, the way I was. I don't have much experience with relationships like that.
(How do you get your husband to do a lot of the baby care? I dunno. As far as I'm concerned, they have to come that way.)
You probably shouldn't ask me for advice on how to find a job. I went to Stanford University, where I hung out with the computer geeks. I met Marq and went to work for his boyfriend Johnny in the Computer Science Department. Marq got a job at Apple Computer and, when I graduated, he gave my resume to his manager, who called me in for a series of interviews and hired me three weeks later.
That doesn't really qualify as a "job hunt."
I could boil my experience down to "Work at something you're interested in, even if you're not making a lot of money (my student jobs in computer science departments), get to know people, be ready when the call comes." As Woody Allen says, "80% of success is showing up." But I'm not sure any of this is really helpful. Especially if you just want to pay the rent this month, let alone find a career.
I do know a little about writing--though not, I fully admit, how to make money off of it--but even then I am, shall we say, timid about offering advice. I don't know what to say about style--everyone has their own, methinks, and I can't tell you how to write like me or like stee or like Stephen King for that matter. I might be able to tell you what's wrong with your story, but then again I might not--remember, no one's paid me for my story analysis skills yet.
I believe you have to write if you want to keep writing. That even when it's hard you have to write. But this time, instead of my feeling a bit ridiculous about giving the advice, I have been told I should just shut the hell up. Because my life is easier than most people's--due to the graciousness of my husband, I can pursue my writing career without having to earn an income--any advice I may give on the subject "You have to work at it" is often discounted.
You know, because what would I know about working at it?
So when I hear people complain that they just can't write, despite having the time to do x, y, or z, I think: That is what they want; they enjoy the frustration they are feeling. The frustration makes them feel better about feeling powerless--it gives them a good excuse for why they haven't done any of the things they've professed to wanting to do. (I may not give advice, but I can still be judgemental.) I will say nothing. Instead, I will go and write for fifteen minutes, because that is all I have while Sophia sleeps.
In the end, I probably don't know any better than anyone else. And no one wants to get advice--they want you to make everything all better, or they want you to shut the hell up because they're going to do what they're going to do anyhow. And really, I'd rather not waste my time.
Not, of course, that there isn't someone I'm going to be telling what to do for years to come, until such time as she can make the big decisions on her own. I hope that when Sophia comes to me and asks for my advice on what to do--should she go to college, should she study philosophy or go pre-law, should she marry this guy who's nice and all but is he the one... that I will be able to separate what would have been right for me from what I think might be right for her.
Anyhow. She's the only one. Everyone else...you're safe. I won't be volunteering any advice. I think it's better to find out what the other person really wants to do and work out with him or her the course of action, even if it's blindingly obvious to me what they should do. Because it's just not my life.
Forum: What advice do you hate getting? Or enjoy giving? Or just tell me off about my own bad advice giving habits.
Forum: What's changed since you were a kid?
I went to yoga again today. (Yay team!) I had to park on the street this time, because the parking spaces out in back were full up, something they haven't been on Monday evenings.
As I pulled Sophia's car seat out of the car, a man in the shop nearest my car peered out the door. I wondered if he'd ever seen a woman with a baby before. Or maybe it was the SUV. Naaah, this was LA, he'd seen SUVs.
I walked into the yoga studio, swinging the car seat merrily (okay, not so merrily, she's a heavy chica these days!), and found the place crawling with people.
"Are the bees still out there?" one of them asked me.
"What bees?" I said.
There was a swarm--someone described it as a veritable cloud--of bees that had been making its way down Ventura Boulevard. Everyone had ducked for cover.
I looked down at Sophia and imagined her being swarmed by bees. I imagined my own reaction to facing a swarm of bees. I was pretty sure I wouldn't drop the car seat and run, and an image of Darin explaining to a little girl how her mother had valiantly died fighting bees sprang to mind.
"I can never leave this place," I said.
(The bees were gone by the end of class.)
The answer to Tuesday's question: A disciplinary committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court recommended that most famous Bar member Bill Clinton be disbarred "because of his 'serious misconduct' in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case." The misconduct in question was his false testimony regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the Paula Jones case.
According to the New York Times, the President will defend himself and possibly appeal if he is disbarred, but not until he leaves office. He said, "The only reason I agreed even to appeal it is that my lawyers looked at all the precedents and they said there's no way in the world, if they just treat you like everybody else has been treated, that this is even close to that kind of case."
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com