It’s an acquired skill. (As with any specialized task, certain key tools make all the difference. Here - good headphones, a hooded sweatshirt.) There are certain destination points that it’s nice to acknowledge, or that you might miss out on, like snacks and “important” safety announcements. On the whole though, most would agree sleep is way more fun.
I was thinking this is kinda a funny metaphor for stuff. Even when I’m traveling with friends, I’d really rather not chitchat on the plane. It’s almost more painful, ya know? Leave me be in my cocoon of semi-sentient misery. Talking makes me aware of the unhappy plight I’m stuck in for the next __ hours. I forget what I wanted this to be a metaphor for. Alas.
A weird bonus is the fact that it’s easier for me to sleep when I’m sick, so getting sick while traveling sometimes enables me to zonk out before we leave the runway. Blissful dreamworld until it’s time for peanuts.
Oh yes! A metaphor for unintentionally sleeping to your destination, and missing the travel part of it. I guess it all depends on your goals. Want to live life to its dryball scraping static stale fullest? Don’t sleep on your plane. :P Want quality ’stead of quantity? Slip on those noise canceling headphone and let the yakkers yak. (Sidenote: yak = throw up = talk incessantly. Interesting).
I love people who can write. Rather, I love reading stuff written by people who can write.
(Thanks to Karen for the tip-off).
Ladies and gents - JK Rowling on the importance of failure and imagination (as empathy).
Only flaw in her speech? The location. Duh.
http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html
May 3rd: How’d it get to be May already, and so littl
*blink*
…yeah, um.. now May’s almost over. A mini heat wave, beach time, bay to breakers, and cherries. So much for draft blog posts.
Gear up for summer, people! It’s coming up fast…don’t let it sneak up sidewise. (Like a wave, when you’re holding a boogie board and turned around talking to friends and not paying attention and SMACK down you go. Although really, that’s kind of fun too.)
Today is really hot. By really hot, I mean 100+ degrees Fahrenheit/38ish Centigrade. I’ve decided not to go to Big Dance, despite a pretty steady streak of attending (when in town) over the past, hm…8 years.
For the blissfully un-subcultured, Big Dance is an all-night social dance … dance, held in a gym at Stanford, helmed by Richard Powers. Lots of undergrads, grads, and alums floating around, lots of live bands, local dance group performances, and as the night goes on, ridiculously fun contradances (think paint-by-numbers square dancing). It’s the spring analog to a series of quarterly dance events, the fall and winter ones being the Ragtime and Viennese Balls.
Swing and waltz being of some interest to me, I attended Big Dance starting in 2001. I only managed allnighters from sophomore year, though, due to some sad insecurity freshman year. (I didn’t want to be one of those hard core weird dance freaks, you see.)
If you make it through the night (’til sunrise!), through the evil Lullaby Gauntlet of sloooow waltzes at about 4am, then your name goes down in the annals of Big Dance record keeping. Multiply by three, and you earn yourself a Triple Crown (tshirt.)
I’ve been in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2007. I actually made it through the night in 2002, 2005, and 2007. In 2003 and 2006, I was out of the country. In 2001 and 2004, I didn’t make it all night. So I’ve just barely gotten a Triple Crown myself.
Like I said though, I’m not going tonight.
The heat is one factor. Another is the fact that I have archery practice at 8:30am, followed by Bay to Breakers on Sunday. I’ve done the finish dancing - take a nap- go spend 8 hours shooting arrows - thing, in 2007, and my ankles really didn’t appreciate it.
Some may recall the circumstances for me NOT lasting the full night in 2004. That year, I stayed until about 5am, (sunrise is at 6:30 ish), then grabbed Jen, hopped in a car, and drove 4+ hours to Yosemite. We woke some friends up at a hotel, and headed straight for a hike up Nevada Falls. Grumpiest hike ever. Everyone there was inexplicably stupid and inconsiderate. No clue why. You could argue that under those circumstances, some archery and a 7 mile walk with regular er, refreshments, should be no problem.
You’d be right. The real reason seems to be that I just don’t care to go this year.
Maybe I feel old and disconnected from the community - like I’ve outgrown it, or it’s outgrown me. Perhaps we’re no longer mutually relevant. At this point, it’s obvious that I won’t get really good at dance unless I put a lot of time into it, and well…I’m too picky to want to be mediocre all the time, and too discerning to be happy doing the same 3 moves over and over with various iterations of undergrad. My posse is wearing thin, and it’s awkward to make small talk catching up with people I never see otherwise. I’d rather just dance…
So maybe really, I’m not going because I don’t want to be disappointed. Wonder how often I do that with real stuff. :)