I've been having anxiety dreams again - last night that I wasn't doing a good enough job as the assistant night manager of a supermarket (my broom was too small and it took FOREVER to sweep an aisle); the night before I dreamed that I was late to a professional conference because I wasn't sure where and when it was, and I called my secretary and she was NOT helpful in unraveling my schedule, my fault for having such a messy office and not communicating well with my staff. (Also she had an major attitude problem, but that's her issue, not mine.) It's kind of interesting how feeling that "I'm not getting enough done this summer in real life" morphs into those two very different experiences during the night.
The Daily Spirit-Human had a good entry yesterday about focusing on the journey, not the goal. See http://blog.lib.umn.edu/carl1236/dailyspirit/. I'm so goal-oriented that that way of thinking seems mysterious and sort of slacker-like. In some ways I regret that 16 years of my life just floated by in my planning job; I had no plan or path, just got up and went to work every day. I think more, and focused, self-interrogation would have been helpful.
I've now finished two regions of the ten in the World Regional Geography text that I'm reading: Europe and Russia/environs. Depressing, really: between the trashed economies, the trashed environment, and the wars and human suffering, it's not an attractive picture of life for most beings on this planet. And it's just gonna get worse as we head toward "the Global South" (the new PC-appropriate term for the Third World).
Warning: gross oversimplification follows: Republicans are happily optimistic about the US ("morning in America, e.g.) and Democrats are darkly realistic. Republicans are cheerleaders (or ostriches perhaps); Democrats are mechanics. Partly this is a function of the Republican incumbency, but I think Republicans are less willing in general to admit that anything could be wrong in this great country, and Democrats are more introspective and self-questioning. If you don't agree, answer this: why is most of academe of the liberal persuasion?
Posted by otto0114 at July 12, 2004 08:49 AM