Processes and Policies Aren't Totally Bad

Normally, when I think about processes, I’m thinking about writing processes. I’m seeking to bring greater awareness of a non-linear exploratory set of writing practices to my students, or I’m thinking about process compared to product. 

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about processes in terms of policy. Sometimes the limitations of policies seem aggravating at best and designed to prevent meaningful work. We have to present this for a discussion no one wants to have in order to eventually have a vote few have enough information to meaningfully make. The policy establishes a limiting process that seems designed to steer a system but no one is actually in control. Or no one admits to being in control.

Taking ownership of decisions becomes unnecessary as policies are deemed to be responsible for situations. And the outcome is likely to be stagnation. I’ve spent too long reading about bureaucracies and feeling incredibly frustrated by them.

I see a lot of problems with policies and processes set out by them. I’ve been critical of this aspect of how various groups and  institutions work for a long time. 

But recently, I’ve come to appreciate policies that set forth processes. Sometimes, it’s good to have widely understood ways of doing something, to have agreed-upon or at least explained priorities and ways of approaching decisions. I guess sometimes it is good to see the upside to things that are perpetually annoying.

Habits and Small Adventures

One of my goals for the year is to actually do new things, to take the small adventures, to say yes. In January, I accepted a karaoke invitation. I had a great time. I didn’t sing. 

No need to set the bar too high.  

This weekend, I went to a small, quirky local museum that I’ve heard about many times but have never checked out for myself. It was hard to figure out where to park and what entrance to use. Were we supposed to sign up for the guided tour? Questions abounded, but it was fun and engaging, and it was different.

All too often, I find myself doing the same things. Going somewhere familiar so much easier: no wrong turns, no questions about where things are to be found or about what the experience will be will be like. 

Think of how much time is wasted at an unfamiliar grocery store trying to find a familiar product. Sure, there’s an app for that, but I don't need an app if I’m at my usual store. Following a habit saves time and energy. That can be very, very good. It can even be essential.

What I tend to do, though, is find myself falling into habits when I don’t need to, when I should be exploring. This year, I’m trying to trick myself. I’m trying to harness the power of habits, the time and energy-saving potential, in the service of a paradoxical new habit of breaking out of habits and just doing the new things that come up as possibilities but that I would typically not actually do. 

This weekend’s particular adventure won’t become a regular event, but I’m hopeful that doing new things will.

Dispatch 1 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

In this character-driven absurd bureaucratic romp mystery set in an alternative, popcorn and pepper obsessed world in which the North won the first Civil War but fragmentation triumphed and the United States of Disunion was born, we follow an intrepid journalist and a loyal inventor as they uncover part of the truth about the potential murder of the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s three top leaders.  With the exception of accurate historical references, any relation to actual persons or news is purely accidental and illustrates that old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

The Scene

Down the Little View Road, just outside Little View, Kentucky, an emergency crew poked at the wreckage at the scene of the crash. Popcorn. The charred bodies had been removed. As they moved about the scene, they crunched occasional popped corn kernels underfoot.  

The first victim 

Just a few hours earlier, Klair Plunkett  had dragged himself out of bed to face yet another day as  the Honorable Secretary of Gaming for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. If you had told him before the take-over that he would hate his new job, he would have laughed in your face and felt distinctly superior. He would have thought you were jealous of him for landing on the right side of a coup. He would have told you that he deserved his happiness. Regular people--even some mayors--thought it was glamorous, being in Cass’s crew. Thought he had all the power and had it easy. But it had taken him years of hard work-- drudge work. In other words, flattery. Now he was poised for prominence and success at last. People would have to flatter him for a change. 

That should be starting at home, he felt, but his wife had made it clear that, fond of him though she was, she was still not impressed by him, coup or no coup. She wasn’t picking up his dirty laundry or hopping out of bed in the morning to fix him breakfast as his grandmother had done for his grandfather. Those were the good old days, whatever anyone said, he thought wistfully. Of course, as his wife was only too happy to point out, his grandfather had spent his days out in the fields and needed a big breakfast. A small bowl of grits was really enough for a politician, especially one who was only in charge of games. He was lucky that his wife left him to fix his own breakfast, he thought ruefully. If she had done it, the serving would doubtless have been smaller, not to mention salted and buttered less liberally. 

Nothing was working out as well as he had hoped. His wife seemed not to notice that he was now important. The media called him one of the Tres Amigos, which was something, but on his gloomier days, he was disappointed to be merely one of three, and the other two weren’t his friends. They were fools.

Brinkman, The Secretary of Energy, seemed to have no plans.  the Secretary of Alcohol and Tobacco, was obsessed with minutiae regarding bourbon and had no vision. With people like that in charge, no wonder nothing ever improved. As Secretary of Gaming, Plunkett had ideas and plans for implementation. He would modernize the Commonwealth’s approach to gaming, work to allow Commonwealthers to play again. Throughout the Commonwealth, not just at Bubbleland. The hypocrisy of the rules that deemed Bubbleland exempt from the usual prohibitions simply because it was surrounded on three sides by the Ohio River and on the third side by  Tennessee was absurd. The mayor of Bubbleland benefited tremendously from this arrangement, but Plunkett felt sure that he would find powerful allies in the mayors from other areas of the commonwealth. Plunkett would straighten things out.

Don’t Care for Agatha Christie? Read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Anyway

In this brief and not entirely spoiler-free book review of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (Does anyone care, at this point, about spoilers for a very famous and widely read book published in 1926?), I share my fraught relationship with the most famous mystery writer ever. And I tell you to read one of her best for a particularly engaging look at Poirot.

Christie is not my favorite Golden Age mystery writer. I first became obsessed with mysteries, as I remember it, when I was assigned to read “The Blue Carbuncle” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” around eighth grade. I then went to the local library and checked out mystery after mystery. That’s when I discovered Dorothy Sayers and read all of her mysteries. I moved on to Agatha Christie and quickly became frustrated by Christie’s heavy-handed manipulation. The inconsistent quality of her many novels caused me to take a long hiatus from Christie, which ended when, a few years ago, I happened upon someone’s list of her best mysteries. 

The fact is, I was looking for an excuse to explore the Christie cannon beyond Murder on the Orient Express and a few ill-remembered encounters with Miss Marple and Poirot. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd will be on almost every Christie fan’s list of favorites. As well it should be. The amusing narrator Hastings is replaced in this novel by Dr. Shepperd, physician and friend of the murder victim. Somehow in this book, Christie’s tendency towards manipulation and over-the-top plot twists delights rather than annoys.

Why? Dr. Shepperd is one of the great narrators. This isn’t Ishmael of Moby Dick, for good and for ill, but Dr. Shepperd’s perspective on Poirot is engaging enough to make the book worth the read. At one point, I found myself wishing for more mysteries narrated by Dr. Shepperd, a series, to match the series narrated by Hastings.

Getting to know Poirot through Dr. Shepperd’s eyes is not to be missed. His sister Caroline reminded me of the sisters in Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle. I’d read a book about her, though I’m not sure I’d like Dr. Shepperd to narrate it. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd features village life and a superb version of the alibi fun that is part of the genre. 

If you don’t want to worry about how many minutes it takes to walk from A to B, and A to C, and B to C and back, or if it annoys you to think about the ramifications of a table that was moved a few inches, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is not for you. 

If you object absolutely to Christie’s trademark plotting and manipulation, this is not for you.

But it is for everyone else.

When Personal Growth Looks Like not Doing Something

I didn’t do something today. It felt personally significant to not do this thing, far more significant than it would have felt to do it. 

Stripping away the tedious details, the process of not doing went something like this:

1. Notice Deadline

I noticed a deadline on my calendar this morning: Today is the last day to submit a project for an upcoming conference. 

2. Reflect

I do not want to go to this conference but thought I should do it anyway. Perhaps something interesting or useful would come of it. 

3. Do (part of) the Thing

I put together a proposal. 

4. Do (more of) the Thing

I filled out an entire online form. 

5. Do Nothing

I did not hit the “submit” button. 

I had some trepidation about this decision. But the fact is that I was only considering this opportunity because I thought that others expected it, or something very like it, from me. 

It has taken me years to be able to not accept this opportunity, to turn my back on this potential achievement that has no appeal to me. I came this close--I even looked up my office phone number, which i can never remember, to enter on the proposal form. 

I escaped, and I didn’t even notice how narrow and significant the escape was until hours later, when my internal calendar alert--more persistent than any electronic device--pinged again, reminding me of the midnight deadline, now mere hours away. 

Saying “no” to something in a culture of achievement is harder than saying “yes” and just doing the work. For me today, that is the point.

Books and Beverages: My Favorite Absurd and Impossible Book Review Concept (1/???)

This is one of my current top three favorite blog ideas: Books and Beverages

This (nonexistent) blog features beverage-centric book reviews. Each review characterizes each book as a drink and gives a pairing recommendation. 

Example 1:

Pride and Prejudice = Prosecco

Jane Austin did the work for me on this one, writing of Pride and Prejudice: “The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling.” 

Elizabeth Bennet’s wit reflects Austin’s and shapes the book: “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well“ (chapter 24). And yet this is a marriage plot novel, and Elizabeth manages to find and marry someone she both loves and thinks well of, unlikely as that may be. 

Read it with a cup of Earl Grey in a fine China teacup, preferably with a floral pattern including pink and yellow. 

Example 2:

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl = green smoothie with kale, wheat grass, and turmeric 

This autobiography written by Linda Brent with editor Lydia Marie Child is good for you, edifying, and will as would be expected leave a bitter taste in your mouth:  “Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke” (chapter 5).

Read it with a glass of dry tannic red wine, with an edge, not too sweet, to drown your sorrows.

I Don’t Have a Personal Brand

I think the reason that I have too many blog ideas is that my personal brand is far from developed. 

Here is my current top five list of reasons that my personal brand is not a thing:

1. The very idea of developing a personal brand seems odd (I realize I’m dating myself here).

2. I have a traditional career of a sort that doesn’t necessarily involve or integrate with the personal brand concept. The aforesaid career takes all of my creative energy. 

3. I have young kids. The aforesaid kids take all of my creative energy. 

4. I fear more commitments, more restrictions on who I am and who I can be. Being a woman is confining enough. Being a mother is confining enough. Being an employee is confining enough. Being a household manager is confining enough. Being an adult, a wife, a teacher, a committee member on the infinite committees of the bureaucracy that is life is confining enough. Being a responsible person is The Worst. I don’t think being a self serving jerk would do the trick either, but if I decide to embrace that route, I’ll Tweet the journey.

5. I’m not a photographer. I’m pretty sure cultivating a personal brand requires professional photography. 

*My poor thumb typing (I’m composing on my phone) plus autocorrect has resulted in “confusing” and “condoning” rather than confining several times. The best result: “being a mother is confusing enough.” True. 

2/100 I’m not a blogger and this is my blog (part II)

Whenever I order a vegan meal at a restaurant or buy a huge cart of only vegan things at Trader Joe’s, someone asks if I’m vegan or just vegetarian. The answer is actually neither. I’m an omnivore who likes vegetables. And tofu. But that is neither here nor there. 

If people often see what I eat and think I must be at least a vegetarian, they discover what I’m interested in, and think I must be at least an occasional blogger. I’m not. Or at least I haven’t been. 

I could blog about far too many interests—I’ve considered everything from gin, curly hair, and mysteries to the English language, higher education, motherhood, and intercultural family life. What that wide range of disparate interests means, in practical terms with regard to a blog, is that I can’t actually blog about any one thing. 

My plan for this 100 post challenge is to explore some of the blog ideas I have entertained in the past. I’ll start with some meta posts and shift into actual experiments. One day I might write about a gin cocktail or a curly hair problem, another I’ll consider a word or idea from some area of my life. To potentially prevent sheer chaos and confusion, I’ll use the framework of exploration, making, and reflection. Along the way, I’ll reflect, and I’ll make changes. Maybe I’ll take up meme-production. It’s more likely than Twitter.

1/100 I’m not a blogger and this is my blog (part I)

I have surprised people many times by admitting that I do not have a blog. Over the years, as blogging has emerged, thrived, and developed, I have been asked: “Why don’t you have a blog!?” This is not a serious question, as I have learned by attempting to answer it. I do, as it happens, have a few lists of reasons why not to blog. 

The top of one of the lists is that I don’t have a personal brand. I have some lists about that too, but that’s for another day. What I do have is some self-knowledge. I know that I consistently come back to three things: I like to explore, I like to make, and I like to reflect.

1. Explore

I like to explore— to read widely, go to new places and bring new perspectives to favorite places, immerse myself in rabbit holes of research, and go on adventures medium and small. What of the larger adventures—wandering with no cellphone along a street thousands of miles from anyone I know thinking “I could get lost and disappear forever and no one would figure out what happened”? At this point in my life, with my best efforts, I can’t disappear for five minutes. My work email and my kids are always onto me. But I can develop my curiosity.

2. Make

I like to make—to bake, cook, doodle, arrange, build, art, and craft—sometimes in a straightforward way and others in a way particular to me and my life. I bake bread, for example, and cookies, and I build unrecognizable conceptual playgrounds out of my kids' toys. I doodle for three minutes while my students write.

3. Reflect

I like to reflect—through conversation, writing, and reading, as I look at a tree, a sunset, a painting. And as I consider the number of dishes produced by a simple meal and ask myself if it was worth it, given that no one wanted to actually eat the product of my efforts. In fact, on the back of my mind much of the time, I am asking whether it, whatever “it” is, is worth it. Somehow, even though the answer is often a resounding “probably not,” I am trapped into “it.” What does always feel worthwhile to me is to reflect, even when the result is disheartening. 

I realize this is all very not-suitable-for-branding, but as my grandmother often declared, giving the advice Polonius gives his son Laertes in Hamlet the weight of the scripture that many mistake it for, “To thine own self be true / And it must follow as the night the day / Thou canst not then be false to any man” (Act 1, scene 3).

So I’m not going to try to be brand-ready. Instead, I’m going to try out a range of ideas as I’m taking up the challenge of posting to this blog daily for 100 days. (Sort of. More on that later). This challenge came to me from my brother, Lucas McLaughlin, at http://lucasmclaughlin.com where he is in the midst of Artworking, a 100 day challenge of his own.

I asked for advice, as he’s several days ahead of me in the challenge, and with a far more developed personal brand. “Find your niche,” he said. 

I believe this advice to be excellent. The problem I’ve consistently run into is that I can’t find a niche.

Maybe I secretly don’t want one.

And maybe this blog can do some of the work of developing my space, a niche for myself that feels right.