Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Carpe Diem Deferred

Had my eye on an overseas fall yoga retreat but decided not to go. Felt like I received many signs including one from an acquaintance who said his 98-year-old friend was traveling to Ireland. In light of the cost, an overseas retreat would have definitely been a carpe diem move but maybe this particular retreat wasn't meant to be.

As Neal Pollack tweeted each time the Dodgers lost to the Cardinals, I haz a sad.

One of my aunts, who has a severe case of peripheral artery disease, is not doing well and, in the end, I wouldn't have felt right cavorting in Europe. Although my cousin Chiquita is in charge and capable, I know that she needs support...

In general, my timing has just been really off this year. Found out that The Moth had been in town a few days after the fact. Don't know if I would have dropped $50 dollars for the ticket though.

My interest in books of late has definitely been podcast-inspired. Just finished Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots and The Guinea Pig DiariesMy Life as an Experiment.

Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox was worth the read but very serious so it was nice to follow up her book with A.J. Jacobs' fun book. My fave chapters were My Outsourced Life and I Think You're Fat which is about radical honesty.

Once again, I feel the thrill of inappropriate candor. And I feel something else, too. The paradoxical joy of being free from choice. I had no choice but to tell the truth. I didn't have to rack my brain figuring out how to hedge it, spin it, massage it. (48)

Jacobs realizes that his relationships are able to handle more honesty than he thought they could.

In the chapter What Would George Washington Do?, I like what Jacobs says about passive-aggressiveness:

But the Rules encourage passive aggression. And I have to say, passive aggression gets a bad rap nowadays. It may not be appropriate in all occasions, but it's a lot better than aggression aggression. (135)

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