All posts in Books

I’m dreaming of balance. Actually that’s not true, I’ve dreamt about work every night this week, but I’m thinking a lot about balance. How much I need it. What it might look like. Where to find it.

But I think that next to last sentence there is key. I’m so far away from being balanced in my life (right now, possibly always) that I’m having trouble even envisioning what things would look like if they were ideal.

So I’m re-re-re-reading Take Time for your Life and, as usual, becoming riduclously sidetracked with some pointless technicality (trying to get an image link to work), which defeats everything I’m reading about and thinking about and trying to make better.

Even though this book is about 10 years old, and sort of pre-dates the whole crazy from iphone/twitter/distraction thing that is a thing, I think it’s still so relevant to everything. At least to me.

Between this book (and maybe the 4 other books in a similar vein that are on my nightstand) and listening to the best of the Back to Work podcasts, I’m kinda getting it through my brain that there is no lifehack to save you. There is scarcity of time, and the only thing you really get to choose is what is important to you in any given minute.

i’m glad to notice that personal blogging is undead, or reviving, or somethinging – even if just among my small circle of friends.  there is no going back to the blog days we all remember (probably too) fondly.  but there is always space to keep moving forward.

last night, my husband and i got drunk nicely tipsy and played songs to either other back and forth and it was so nice and lovely and one of those memories i’ll carry close for always. god is music. life is good.

“I went back into my bedroom and knelt at my bed the way I did when I was a kid. I folded my hands and pressed the top knuckle joints of my thumbs hard into my forehead. Dear God. I don’t know what I want or who I am. Apparently you do. Um…that’s great. Never mind. You have a terrible reputation here. You should know that. Oh, but I guess you do know that. Save me now. Or when it’s convenient. We could run away together. This is stupid. What am I doing? I guess this is a prayer. I feel like an idiot, but I guess you knew that already, too. My sister said that god is music. Goodbye, Amen. I lay in my bed and waited for that thick, sweet feeling to wash over me, for that unreal semi-conscious state where the story begins and takes on a life of its own and all you have to do is close your eyes and give in and let go and go and go and go.”
— Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness

(you should read this book.  maybe you’ll find it overwrought or pointless, but it has some really beautiful sentences.)

I’m alternately re-reading 2 books – A Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami in the bath (paperback, ok to get wet), and Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut in the bed (kindle on ipod, not so ok to get wet).

I realize this probably comes off as me being a pretentious douche, so I’ll admit to the previous book I read being City of Ember, the popular YA fiction hah.

But anyways, my whole fucking point was that Murakami and Vonnegut aren’t celebrated writers of the modern age for nothing. It seems like they write paragraphs that are novels within themselves and sentences that capture my entire life in some romantic quote about a parking lot that used to be an ocean or something.

and I’m glad I’m reading again.