Vacation Reruns--Part 1

The better part of today was spent traveling.  Before leaving on this trip, I decided not to write new posts while I'm away.  I am staying with family that I don't get to see enough, and want to concentrate on visiting.  I have asked my husband--who is among my most faithful readers--to select five previous posts that he feels are worth running again.  I have no idea what criteria he used, but here is his selection for today.  

Thursday, February 11, 2010


Thtuck! (and Unthtuck)

Remember Ralphie's friend Flick in the movie A Christmas Story? He was "triple-dog-dared" to put his tongue on an icy flagpole in the schoolyard, and eventually needed the fire department to free him. My blog title attempts to spell his plaintive cry, pronunciation compromised by the situation.

I have been struck (not stuck) recently by the multiplicity of book titles coming tmy attention which feature the word "stuck." Recently published examples include these:

Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On by Anneli S. Rufus (2008); Stuck! Break Out of Your Emotional Prison and Get on With Your Life by John Volkmar (2006); Why We Stay Stuck by Tom Joseph (2007); the especially intriguing If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path by Charlotte Sophia Kasl (2005); and the stripped-down Stuck! by Terry Walling (2008) and Stuck by Elisabeth Rose (2009).


Others approach the subject more from the fire department perspective, focusing on "unstuck," as in: Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression by James S. Gordon (2009); Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer's Block by Jane Anne Staw (2004); Getting Unstuck by Don Kerson (2008); Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck by Vinita Hampton Wright (2009); Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns & Encountering Naked Reality [With Earbuds] by Pema Chodron (2009) (a "Preloaded Digital Audio Player"); Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: Restoring Work-Life Balance by Sharon Teitelbaum (2005), and also apparently concerned with remaining intact in the process, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity by Susan O'Doherty (2007).


I have already read or am reading a few of these works. I probably won't be able to resist several others. Pooh Gets Stuck (Isabel Gaines, 1999) remains one of my favorite children's books (despite one Amazon reviewer's insistence that it is really about constipation, and not metaphysically). You might say I'm stuck on "stuck" and "unstuck."


But why do so many of us want to read and write about being stuck? Is this moment in our cultural history particularly characterized by the sense of being mired? The book titles imply the experience of having broken down on the way to some destination, like the Isuzu Trooper that either was or wasn't "stuck in the mud"--I could never remember which, though the phrase "stuck" in my head. But where is it we are trying to go?


Other images come to mind, from Flick and his icy pole to pinned entomological specimens--though now that I think about it, I believe (and hope) that insects are dead before being mounted. But the core of the stuckness with which we are so concerned appears to be the inability to move. This especially interests me, since the first thing I think of in response to that observation comes from my training in meditation--the advice to "Be here now," to sit (literally) with whatever is, without struggling. And yet Buddhists and mindfulness meditators are also speaking and writing in the language of "stuck."


For whatever it's worth, I am very recently engaged in a process that feels like getting unstuck. I am moving into new places and ways of being. I may not know where I'm going; may, in fact, not be going anywhere. But I am breaking free of some old inertia. And movement is at the core of what distinguishes the living from the unliving. I am no longer quite so "thtuck!"  

Putting Off Fun

It has dawned on me lately that one of the most important things I have gotten in the habit of postponing is fun.  And how smart is that?

I have spent some difficult years raising challenging children, trying to function in a “blended” family that feels a lot like living in a Cuisinart, and coping with a credibility-defying series of crises at work and at home.  I have dealt with it by channeling my Super-self, and by hunkering down as if I were under siege. 

My fun diet over this period was like the emergency subsistence food allowance set up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine food stamps allotments and poverty levels.  Meant to keep one alive, in the short run—not to nurture health or supply the energy long-run for enduring, let alone improving, one’s circumstances.

My husband has been complaining about this deprivation for years.  And I have been complaining that he isn’t helping me fill the sandbags!

But I am beginning to see that my soul, and my marriage, have been starved by my stoicism.  I am running out of steam, and nerve, and humor to continue slogging through the bogs of everyday troubles. 

What kind of nut puts off having fun?  Where did I learn that taking my eyes off the prize for an evening, or a weekend, was something I couldn’t afford to do, was too risky to consider?  What kind of example is this for my children?  And what feats might I have managed with a tad more smiling, and some spirit-feeding enjoyment under my Wonder Woman belt?

Tonight I am going to a Broadway show, albeit in New Orleans.  And to dinner.  I plan to drink, moderately, and to be merry.  And I plan to get used to this kind of  happening.    

Solitaire--More Than You Probably Wanted to Know

1:30 a.m.  Two days after my daughter's wedding.  My father gets up to use the partially painted bathroom, tries to steady himself on the stepladder I've neglected to remove, and crashes through the glass divider next to the toilet.  My mother summons me to the scene.  His arm is streaming blood.  "I just need a band-aid," pronounces the man who has performed hundreds of appendectomies, though none recently.  


Four hours and nineteen stitches later, we return from the emergency room to find my mother losing at solitaire.  She was concerned for my father, but almost as distressed at her unusual bad luck with Klondike.  On a hunch, I counted the cards.  Fifty-one.  She had been, literally "not playing with a full deck."  For Christmas that year, I gave her a shiny new pack of Bicycle playing cards.  And some other nice stuff, too, of course.


The very same father, in the hay days of his small town medical practice, would periodically slump into depression, signaled by days spent in his bathrobe at the kitchen table, playing solitaire.  Minus the bathrobe and the kitchen table, I took this habit to college with me.  When cramming for exams, last-minute paper-writing, and quasi-virginal sex weren't keeping me up, the wee hours were for solitaire.  Hunched over the cards on my dorm room floor, I would play until my back ached and my eyes were bleary.  


With the digitalization of everything came computer solitaire.  I, too, was seduced by the come-on of the cascading cards, the audio of applause so rare in my regular hours.  And I caved, too, under the onslaught of ever-new versions of this daddy-of-all-time-wasters.  Still hunched, but now over a laptop screen, I have played until my back ached, my eyes were bleary, and I began to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.


Computer solitaire has become the dirty little secret of millions of us, especially in the workplace.  One Mahjong solitaire program I've seen has a built-in "Boss Key" that 

[h]elp you quick hide the game when your boss coming in. Press the Space, the game will disappear from your screen, and press Space again, it can turn up.  

Such a feature might have helped Edward Greenwood IX, famously fired in 2006 from his job as a state lobbyist for the city of New York by Mayor Bloomberg, who caught Greenwood playing solitaire "on city time."   No notice, no severance pay, and the end of six years of cushy public employment at a non-Bloomberg salary of $27,000.  For playing solitaire.  In point of fact, Greenwood was not at his desk, or even in the office when his offense was detected, but away on city business.  Bloomberg Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse's post on the Greenwood affair prompted these comments:

Goesh said...

Hmmm - one would think some less harsh disciplinary action would be in order first, like a written reprimand and warning, possibly a day or two suspended without pay. What's next, doodlers? I wonder what his employee evaluations were like? I got a crisp $20 says he was doing satisfactory work. This won't garnish him many votes from government workers, that's for sure.

Freeman Hunt said...

That's pretty harsh. If we fired all the employees who we ever saw playing solitaire, I think we'd be left with only the warehouse staff because they don't have desks and computers. 

Clearly, if we're starting to jeopardize employment here, it's time to talk about addiction--something we seem to be addicted to talking about anyway, what with the sex addictions, shopping addictions, exercise addictions, etc.  And rest assured, this one hasn't escaped the attention of addictionologists.  The conversation has even trickled down to the Nickelodeon set, who have spawned a handy-dandy, if misspelled,  little quiz we can take, to assess our problem.  Or we can check the following, from a solitaire game site  :

Here's a shortlist of solitaire addiction signs you can use to make sure you or someone you love isn't becoming a solitaire addict:

• Getting an excited or "rushing" feeling when playing Solitaire
• Feeling guilty about playing Solitaire but continuing to play
• Not being in control of the amount of time spent on playing solitaire
• Lying about the amount of time you spend playing solitaire, thinking about solitaire, or even dreaming about the game
• Playing solitaire to deal with feelings of sadness or anxiety
• Becoming angry when your "real life" interrupts your solitaire time

There are also a handful of physical signs that solitaire addiction could be present. These include the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, dry bleary eyes from staring at the computer screen, recurring headaches and back pain, trouble eating, and ignoring personal hygiene.

Wheeewww!  I'm not addicted.  I never dream about solitaire, I eat regularly and with no difficulty, and I am not ignoring personal hygiene.   And thank goodness, I don't have anything remotely resembling a "workplace."


In defense of solitaire, a cause to which legions have risen in the wake of all the faint praise, some refer to it as a meditative activity.  Others claim beneficial effects including time-saving, since solitaire breaks are taken at one's desk, unlike coffee breaks which are often taken elsewhere, and lead to bathroom breaks; some kind of mystical mind-meld thing where higher order problems get solved while the brain is busied with low-level card manipulation; brain stimulation in playing of more complicated games, which can stave off Alzheimer's; and anxiety-reduction. 


Josh Levin's 2008 Slate Magazine piece (in their special edition on procrastination), entitled "Solitaire-y Confinement: Why we can't stop playing a computerized card game," is a useful compendium, part history, part analysis, part light-hearted examination. He makes the point that solitaire put-downs have become a throwaway barb because so many of us hide this part of our lives.  And he admits that he struggled to quit playing solitaire long enough to write the article.  He credits our common preoccupation with the advancement of computer familiarity and usage, and pacification in the modern office.


I have often wondered, in between games, what I might have gotten accomplished had half of the hours I've spent on these games, once dubbed "patience," and also referred to as "kabal," been spent more productively.  What might we as a society have achieved?  It boggles the mind.  Although, if I get to count those hours as meditation time, I'm already Buddha!  From a long, proud line of Buddhas.

Thtuck! (and Unthtuck)

Remember Ralphie's friend Flick in the movie A Christmas Story? He was "triple-dog-dared" to put his tongue on an icy flagpole in the schoolyard, and eventually needed the fire department to free him.  My blog title attempts to spell his plaintive cry, pronunciation compromised by the situation.


I have been struck (not stuck) recently by the multiplicity of book titles coming to my attention which feature the word "stuck." Recently published examples include these:


Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On by Anneli S. Rufus (2008); Stuck! Break Out of Your Emotional Prison and Get on With Your Life by John Volkmar (2006); Why We Stay Stuck by Tom Joseph (2007); the especially intriguing If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path by Charlotte Sophia Kasl (2005); and the stripped-down Stuck! by Terry Walling (2008) and Stuck by Elisabeth Rose (2009).


Others approach the subject more from the fire department perspective, focusing on "unstuck," as in:    Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression by James S. Gordon (2009); Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer's Block by Jane Anne Staw (2004); Getting Unstuck by Don Kerson (2008); Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck by Vinita Hampton Wright (2009);  Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns & Encountering Naked Reality [With Earbuds] by Pema Chodron (2009) (a "Preloaded Digital Audio Player"); Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: Restoring Work-Life Balance by Sharon Teitelbaum (2005), and also apparently concerned with remaining intact in the process, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity by Susan O'Doherty (2007).


I have already read or am reading a few of these works.  I probably won't be able to resist several others.  Pooh Gets Stuck (Isabel Gaines, 1999) remains one of my favorite children's books (despite one Amazon reviewer's insistence that it is really about constipation, and not metaphysically).  You might say I'm stuck on "stuck" and "unstuck."


But why do so many of us want to read and write about being stuck?  Is this moment in our cultural history particularly characterized by the sense of being mired?  The book titles imply the experience of having broken down on the way to some destination, like the Isuzu Trooper that either was or wasn't "stuck in the mud"--I could never remember which, though the phrase "stuck" in my head.  But where is it we are trying to go?


Other images come to mind, from Flick and his icy pole to pinned entomological specimens--though now that I think about it, I believe (and hope) that insects are dead before being mounted.  But the core of the stuckness with which we are so concerned appears to be the inability to move.  This especially interests me, since the first thing I think of in response to that observation comes from my training in meditation--the advice to "Be here now," to sit (literally) with whatever is, without struggling. And yet Buddhists and mindfulness meditators are also speaking and writing in the language of "stuck."


For whatever it's worth, I am very recently engaged in a process that feels like getting unstuck.  I am moving into new places and ways of being.  I may not know where I'm going; may, in fact, not be going anywhere.  But I am breaking free of some old inertia.  And movement is at the core of what distinguishes the living from the unliving.  I am no longer quite so "thtuck!"