Tag Archives: Monday Musings

Loving the Middle

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I recently read a book that had been on my Amazon wishlist for some time. I stumbled across a copy at my parents’ house and asked my mom if I could borrow it, to which she replied yes, but in a tone that implied she wondered why I would want to. (In other words, she hadn’t liked the book that much.)

As I made my way into the book, I found myself really into it! I was invested in the characters and intrigued by the plot. It was unique and the characters seemed like people I might encounter in real life at some point. I talked to my mom on the phone and expressed that I was surprised she hadn’t enjoyed the book more.

But then I got to the end, and I understood. It wasn’t that it was bad. I can’t even pinpoint exactly what I didn’t love about the ending. But the book in sum total was not as enjoyable to me as the middle.

And I thought, what a metaphor for life.

I often find that I’m living in anticipation of the next thing. I’m planning for a trip, or wondering what my career might look like, or thinking about what’s for dinner next Tuesday. None of that is bad: I wouldn’t be who I am if I weren’t a planner, and Andy and I wouldn’t eat such good meals if I didn’t think about them in advance. But by letting myself be preoccupied with what’s coming, maybe I miss some of what’s happening. By constantly looking to the end, maybe I miss the enjoyment of the middle.

So I’m taking my experience with the book to heart. I can love the middle, and it doesn’t matter what the end looks like. If I get to the end and it’s not that great, it doesn’t cheapen my experience of joy in the middle.

Just live in the middle, and love it.

The Couple that Codes Together…

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I’ve blathered on here several times about learning to code. I first attended a Rails Girls workshop back in the fall and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. And then in the new year, I set some goals for myself and vowed to work on learning for its own sake. Well, somewhat to my own surprise, my experience with coding has taken on a life of its own! At the end of January, the Rails Girls workshop expanded into a monthly meetup, which I’ve been attending. I’ll admit, my entrance into the world of programmers has been  eased dramatically by the fact that I am married to a full-time developer who knows a lot of people. (Thus, by proxy, I know a lot of people, too.) So even at the first meetup, I had a small cadre of people I knew who made it much less intimidating to walk into the room. For each meetup, we have a homework assignment to prepare and then often a presentation on a related topic before we share our solutions to the homework.

I’ve been surprised by the reaction of “lay” people (read: non-developers) when they find out that I am learning to code. I guess by being around so many smart programmers I’ve become inoculated to the foreignness that many people associate with computers. Plus, I’ve realized that I’ve picked up more than I knew from just asking Andy about what he worked on each day and from overhearing him practice conference talks. AND, I think I also retained some fundamentals from my two computer science classes in college. So every time someone new finds out that I’m learning Ruby, they’re astonished and impressed and it sort of makes me feel like a bad ass.

Honestly, I am definitely far from an awesome programmer at this point. As Andy would say, even experienced developers always have things they can learn, and I have even more than that. I’m still sort of learning how to even learn, if that makes any sense. I have access to the documentation of the Ruby language, and even that doesn’t always make sense to me. But as I hoped, learning to code has given Andy and me a great outlet for spending time together. He thrives on teaching me things and is even prouder of me than I am of myself when I catch on to something. I sometimes feel a bit like I am cheating because by the time I share my homework at the Rails Girls meetup I have already had help refining it (or maybe even approaching it in the first place)!

The homework assignments for Rails Girls have been escalating in difficulty and becoming more and more like real-world problems a developer-by-trade might actually face. This past Saturday, Andy and I began tackling the most recent assignment: an open-ended task of creating a to-do list in Ruby, which will eventually be translated into a Rails app (meaning something that can actually be on the internet!).

Working on this one project alone has introduced me to numerous topics, which was exciting! Until now, I’ve just been writing Ruby code to run in my command line, but with this project I started interacting with RSpec (a testing framework useful for Test Driven Development), using git to start pushing my work to GitHub (sort of social networking for code), and reading up on a lot of new Ruby concepts. Whew! By myself this would have been totally overwhelming, and I have unending respect for the people who can take a book or a website and learn on their own. But together with Andy, it was a blast! I think my next challenge will be getting over bumps in the road without turning to him for a hint or explanation, but I’ll either get there in time or I won’t. And if I never get there, I’ve still learned a lot and achieved a long-standing goal of having a shared hobby with my husband!

If you’re interested in seeing what Ruby looks like, or exploring code for the first time, TryRuby.org is a fun resource. It allows you to type simple commands right in the web browser and see them run immediately. And if you’re feeling a little more adventurous, I learned a lot from Learn Ruby the Hard Way and from solving Project Euler problems using Ruby.

When You Wear Your Grandmother’s Pearls

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When I wear my favorite shoes on a Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better.
Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

I have my grandmother’s pearls.

I grew up in the South with non-Southern parents, but a lot of Southern girl mannerisms made their way into my psyche regardless, and when I was in high school I decided I needed a strand of pearls. I didn’t get them for high school graduation as I had hoped, but one of the last times I visited my grandmother in college, she told us each we could begin picking things of hers that we wanted. And in what I had always thought of as her treasure trove of jewelry, we found a hopelessly tangled strand of pearls, and I laid claim to them. Southern pearls from my Yankee grandmother.

My mom took them and had a jeweler untangle and re-string them, but for whatever reason, my grandmother was adamant that I not have them before my college graduation. She made it to my wedding but not my commencement a month later, and it felt like a great ceremony when I got to put on her pearls that morning.

I was unfortunately never very close to my grandmother, who also happens to be my namesake. She lived in Connecticut and I in Mississippi, and there’s only so much of a childhood you can share that way. I always liked her, but she wasn’t a part of my daily life as so many of my friends’ grandmothers were. I was always sort of jealous of that. But I have my grandmother’s pearls, and that feels monumental to me. I think of her when I wear them, the things I never knew about her. Now that I’m an adult, I think I would have gotten to know her better. I would have enjoyed asking questions about her life and her experiences. She was a pretty cool lady, from what I gather. But instead I have her pearls.

I bought a t-shirt that has irregular cream-colored polka dots on it, and one day I felt inspired to wear my pearls with it. I had on jeans and flip flops and my grandmother’s pearls, and my coworker expressed that she should wear her pearls more often. You should, too. Because when you wear your grandmother’s pearls on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better.

The Vast Mystery of the Human Brain

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It’s crazy what my brain decides to hold onto. For example, when I play the *NSync Pandora station, I can sing every word along with every song, including being on time for random bridges, refrains, and key changes. As another example, at one cleaning checkup YEARS ago, my dental hygienist told me that I needed to focus on brushing the teeth on the top right of my mouth because since I’m right-handed I didn’t have as good an angle on them. And without fail, EVERY night when I’m brushing my teeth, that admonishment runs through my mind.

While it’s a myth that we only use 10% of our brains, it still sometimes amazes me to think about what my brain could do if I could somehow re-appropriate those sections that are tied up with song lyrics and tooth-brushing instructions. I wish I knew what it was about those particular things that made them “stick,” especially as I’m trying to make learning for fun more a part of my lifestyle.

Walt Whitman wrote, “(I am large, I contain multitudes.),” and I think of that often when I ponder what all my brain holds. Since I keep being able to memorize trivia, remember book titles and my bank account number, and learn Spanish vocabulary, it feels like perhaps it has infinite capacity. Or are things being constantly replaced: when I add something new, is something older and less useful bumped out? If so, why are the Brittney Spears lyrics still there?

I read an article in The Economist about some scientists who are trying to get funding to embark on a project to map the human brain, similar to the human genome project. I wonder what they will find in the rabbit hole that is the vast mystery of the human brain…

In Which I am Not Cultured

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I have a confession to make: I like my movies and TV utterly vanilla.

va·nil·la (/vəˈnilə/)
Adjective: having no special or extra features, ordinary

Just about every time I’ve watched a movie or show that was quirky or artsy, I found myself not into at best, confused, or, at worst, uncomfortable. Movies that mess with your head, that blur lines of reality, just leave me feeling frustrated (I’m thinking of Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I hate, hate, hate feeling like I don’t know what’s going on or who is who.

No, movies and TV for me are the ultimate form of escapism, even more so than books. I like to tune in and turn my brain off (unless I’m watching Jeopardy!). I like a plot that moves forward in a mostly linear fashion. I like to suffer and celebrate vicariously. I like to judge people much more freely than I would ever allow myself to in real life. I especially like a little romance, and I like it when the underdog inexplicably wins at the last second. I don’t need to believe it could actually happen in real life in order to enjoy it happening in the movie. In fact, that’s the whole point! It’s not real, and I don’t particularly care if it comes across so.

As I’ve written before, I am no longer ashamed to admit that I’m a fan of Nicholas Sparks. In fact, it was going to see his most recent book-into-movie phenomenon yesterday that made me realize how much I appreciate a good ole vanilla movie. I had read the book of Safe Haven but as is common with me couldn’t quiiite remember the ending, so I was on pins and needles as it all played out. I did more than tear up as the inevitable conclusion came to be: if I had been in the privacy of my own home, let’s just say I probably would have been bawling. I felt deeply satisfied as I left the theater still sniffling. That’s all I ask of a movie.

I know many people disagree with me; a lot of people hate this kind of movie, and as a self-proclaimed intellectual a part of me wishes I could. Up to now I’ve sort of loved to hate them, if you know what I mean. But I think I’m just going to own it. I like cheesy movies, I like tearjerkers, and I like a nicely wrapped up ending. So sue me. ;-)

What’s your favorite kind of movie? Do you have a guilty pleasure genre (or maybe one that’s not so guilty for you anymore)?