It's a Jumble

On doing great work:  "The real trick to producing great work isn't to find ways to eliminate the edgy, nervous feeling that you might be swimming out of your depth. Instead, it’s to remember that everyone else is feeling it, too. We’re all in deep water. Which is fine: it’s by far the most exciting place to be." -- from "Nobody Knows What the Hell They Are Doing" by Oliver Burkeman at 99U From writer Theodora Goss’s twitter feed**: “I have rewritten this paragraph at least five times. Which is why wordcount is irrelevant, if they’re the wrong words.” “Authors telling other people how to be authors is like parents telling other people how to be parents. Because all kids are the same.” *Note: I don't know how to use Twitter. I don't know how to cite (?) it appropriately? I just sometimes use the Web to eavesdrop on other people's tweets. A lovely essay on a video game and the Asian-American experience      . . . beca...

On turning 40 and things I've seen and read: Fate/Zero, A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Magicians. Ways to make yourself melancholy during these gorgeous autumn days.  It’s two months before I turn 40. But I’ve been mourning the end of my thirties for the last year. 40 is when you have to recognize, finally, that there are doors you’ve passed which will never open to you; there are paths which are forever blocked. “ Way leads on to way,” as the poet said , and you will never find your way back to that turning point in the golden wood. Of course, I’ve been realizing this throughout my thirties. It’s just that the finality of that number, “40”—the thudding close of a decade—has a new hardness that drives the point home. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is failure, and of how it is not something talked about in our world. All our cultural narratives are of success. We tell our children that they can do anything, as long as they work hard enough and believ...

A children’s book review: " Petunia, the Girl Who Was NOT a Princess "   by M.R. Nelson My suggested age range: for kids 3 and up Disclosure: I received this book as an electronic advance review copy from the author. Nelson and I have followed each other on social media for some years now, and I consider her a friend. The Petunia of this charming children’s book is not a “princessy” girl. She doesn’t like frilly dresses and pretend princess parties. She would rather climb trees and play ball and build towers with blocks. She feels lonely in a neighborhood where are all the other little girls dress like princesses and seem to prefer more stereotypically “feminine” past times. In the end, Petunia learns a lesson about acceptance. But it’s not the lesson you might expect. Petunia doesn't have to learn to accept herself. She accepts herself and her tomboyish ways just fine. What she learns, when a new princess moves in next door, is an acceptance ...