I Miss Fiction

I was reading scholarly article after lengthy dissertation after weighty thesis after abstract paper and then I paused and I realized something...

I miss sinking into a good book. Into a world, where yes, you are using your brain, but you aren't so painfully aware of it. Where you care about the characters and thus learn truths about the world through human interaction rather than carefully crafted theorizing in the abstract realm. Where the story is paramount, but not all there is to find, either. With lessons subtle, or as running threads, rather than the main idea. Real life, rather than a list of historical events; even if not all the particular events in the story happened in real life, they are nonetheless true in a certain way, because they resonate with what you know and how you think about the world.

I like my classes, I like learning how to think in academia, but it's been much too long since I read a good fictional novel. I have to find something soon- maybe I'll head over to the library next week...

Bibelot & other words; No I don't spend too much time online?

Dictionary.com's word of the day is bibelot! You heard it here first! (Well, probably.) Now go look up anfractuously. Just because you know defenestration and antidisestablishmentarianism doesn't mean you have to pretend you know them all.

In other news, I am having way too much fun on Twitter. But I have lots of reading for class...and I need to shop for textbooks online. So perhaps I should get off Twitter, off this blog, perhaps even- gasp- off the computer entirely! A girl can dream, can't she?

After the recent report saying that kids these days (I say that like I'm old or something) spend more hours using media than there are actually hours in the day (waking hours anyway) then perhaps I should be more careful. One could metaphorically say it like this:

[Twitter/ Facebook/ blogs/ insert preferred social media of choice] is a drug. You start saying you'll only use it a little bit and then suddenly you find yourself saying, I can quit whenever I want. Only you don't. And slowly it consumes your normal life, until your social life is semi-dependent on it and you just can't stop...

Scary stuff, eh? But that won't stop anyone from continuing, will it Let alone me and I said it! I make excuses of why I need it. We all do. But sometimes I have to wonder- how would my life be different if all this stuff didn't exist? Or if I had never gotten started using it?

A Mouse's Schedule

A mentsch tracht und der Eibeshter lacht. Man plans and God laughs. An apt expression for what happened to me this morning. Not that I can spell in German or Yiddish or whatever language that is. (My friend, E, used to say it a lot.) Or, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley," if you prefer. (I always liked that Robert Burns poem- can do part of it by heart in fact.)

So what's the laughing and the mice got to do with my first day of classes this semester? My schedule- my busy plan- it was full. But I liked it and was excited for all of my classes. And then I walk up to the door of the first one and get told I'm in the wrong section, I should be in a later class, which conflicts with my next class and basically half my plan just fell apart in a rude awakening.

So I told myself, "Get used to disappointment." (Ooh, Princess Bride, I am full of quotes today!) Better than anger or denial or whatever, acceptance is best, right? And I am sure it's for the best ultimately- my schedule was too hard before.

Now I think I'll go eat lunch and make an even better schedule this evening. One setback does not a disaster make. A schedule with any other class can be as sweet. Happiness is where you look for it. I'll have a great semester regardless, I hope.