I just started reading
Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon, a collection of essays about parents and
children trying to love each other across different “horizontal identities,”
i.e. non-inherited identities. (Being gay or, in most cases, disabled is a
horizontal identity. Whereas being, say, Japanese or male or female would be a
vertical identity.) Already this book is making my brain explode in the best
ways, and I suspect it’s going to be on my Best Of list for 2017.
That is, if I finish it by 2017—it’s 700 pages long not counting the 200 pages of end notes.
I’m still working on two other books that I hoped I could count toward my 2016
tally, but I’m writing this on December 30 and that doesn’t look likely.
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| Seven hundred pages of ways you can fail as a parent. Yet surprisingly enjoyable. |
Every year I nerd out compiling my best-of list, because
didn’t you know this was a culture blog? (I bet you thought it was a
Cheryl’s-life blog. I can’t imagine where you got that idea.) Right now I’m
really feeling how little I read, saw and wrote in 2016. But if I have a
resolution for 2017, it’s to take a
StrengthsFinder
approach to life.
I didn’t read StrengthsFinder
either.
I jumped straight to the quiz at the back to find out my
strengths. Patience wasn’t one of them, haha.
Anyway, the thesis of the whole process is that you should
work with others and yourself based on what your respective strengths are, not
your deficits.
For example, don’t think “Cheryl is really whiny in the
morning.” Think “Cheryl really kicks into gear around 10 am. Let’s schedule a
meeting with her at that time.”
(On a related note, my dad and AK conspired to get me a
latte maker for Christmas, which I think is going to change my life at least as
much as any positive attitude. I mean, coffee is my positive attitude. Someone put that on a T-shirt, please.)
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| Thanks a latte. |
Don’t think “You mentally ill hog, why do you keep eating every carbohydrate in sight?” Think “Now that you’re sort of getting a hang of this parenting
thing, your food fails are fewer and farther between.”
As I told my therapist, I think I grew up with the popular
narrative of hitting bottom, then making a change. So I’m always trying to
shame myself into doing various things better. Eating better. Exercising more.
Working harder at work. Writing more. Sending my work out more.
But shame isn’t very motivating, although it is
somewhat motivating. A coworker once
asked my former boss what her fundraising goal should be. My boss said “How
about you-avoid-getting-fired dollars?” Not very motivating. If people knew
how (sincere)
compliments make me bloom like a happy little toadstool, they’d
give me so many!
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| Is that too much to ask? |
So I’ll say it to myself:
Cheryl, you’re doing alright! You just had seven days of back-to-back
socializing and travel—of course
you’re
tired and grouchy. That doesn’t make you ungrateful for your family and friends
and travel opportunities. It makes you human, and a person who needs solo time
with a laptop to refuel. Take this day, rest up, and worry about cleaning the
house tomorrow. That is not a fail.
Okay, thanks for bearing with me through that bit of
self-talk. Now onto my short list of favorites for 2016, chosen as always not
because they are necessarily “the best,” but because they moved me.
Top three books I read in 2016:
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| I've had a small Colson Whitehead crush since 2003. |
Top seven things I watched on screens in 2016:
- Search Party,
Season 1 (TBS): Starts out as a send-up of self-obsessed Millennials, but the
characters’ self-centered behavior makes more and more sense as the plot
thickens. No spoilers here, but thematically the ending reminds me of The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.
- Nocturnal Animals:
Queer Eye for the Toxically Masculine Straight Guy.
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| Tom Ford shows how trying to be a cowboy destroys everyone. |
- Zootopia: Takes
full advantage of the animated form to show animals in their natural and
not-so-natural habitats as bunny-cop Judy hops through giant rhino worlds and
tiny hamster worlds. Also kind of an allegory about the CIA starting the crack
epidemic. Quietly radical, lots of fun.
- Orange is the New Black, Season 4 (Netflix): All the amazing character development of the
previous seasons with less of Piper’s panty-ring nonsense. As with real life
tragedies, the people caught in this season’s controversy are hapless,
well-meaning and flawed. The institutions and those at the top are the
guiltiest, and they get away with everything.
- High Maintenance,
Season 1 (HBO): Short stories whose only connection is a weed dealer making his
rounds. This is the kind of show I’d normally like in theory and then lose
interest in, but it was actually really, ahem, addictive. Funny and human and
expertly executed.
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| Maintenance men. |
- Arrival: I was one
of about three people who liked Interstellar,
but I liked Arrival more—it has
similar afterlife-as-fourth-dimension themes and a lot less self-indulgent excess.
Sci fi doesn’t have to be all danger, warfare and “science-lite” exposition. It
can be about connection, love and language.
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