Lucky Bastard: John Scalzi Edition

I have a not-so-secret affinity for John Scalzi, author of science fiction, procurer of sinister black velvet paintings, and a source of much amusement on the internet.

Firstly, we share a birthday, and we used to freelance for the same newspaper. Secondly, I enjoy the hell out of his books and his company, in person and online. And thirdly, he moved from SoCal to Southwest Ohio, while I did the reverse. Frankly, Ohio got the better end of that trade. California just got me and about fifty of writers-to-be-named later.

Also: cats.

Relevant to interests around these parts, he's doing 30 days of gratitude for the month of November. From his always-entertaining blog:

I’m a lucky bastard, and sometimes it annoys me when people don’t acknowledge that fact. ... What is luck? At the end of the day, it’s the good things that happen to you that you simply don’t or can’t control. Stepping away from a curb the second before a car you didn’t see barrels right over where you just were. Finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk. Stepping into a restaurant for a bite to eat and seeing an old friend you lost contact with years ago just before she steps out the door.

He goes on to lay out all the tiny occurrences that had to line up just so in order for him to have the (admittedly pretty awesome) life he has now. The chain of happenstance that led his first novel, Old Man's War, getting published is pretty crazy. But even more jaw-dropping is the unlikely sequence of chance moments that ended with him meeting his wife, Krissy. There a bonus link to the first song they danced to (spoilers: awww!).

I often reflect on how damn lucky I have been. The child of an unwed teenage mother, raised in violence and poverty, a high school dropout from the sweaty backside of the rust belt. And here I stand, a happily married, college graduate, pursuing my career of choice in a city I used to think was a pipe dream. Sure, I worked hard. But I have also been incredibly fucking lucky. And one doesn't take anything away from the other.

Putting in the work is noble and needed. It allows us to hold our heads up and sleep soundly at night. But luck plays a part in all our lives, and it's good to step back, look at how unlikely it all is, and say. "Wow. I'm really grateful things turned out this way." When you look at it that way, we're all lucky bastards.

The Thanksgiving Advent Calendar, Day 3: Luck [Whatever]

All Saints. All Souls.

Death may seem like a strange topic for a light little better-living blog, but yesterday was Dia de los Muertos, as well as All Saints' Day, and today is All Souls' Day. And if there are two things I'm drawn to, it's rituals and seasonal observances. (Guess who was raised Catholic. Yeah, you can take the girl out of the Church, etc. etc.)

[Check out This Side of Typical's Dia de los Muertos post. Beautiful. Just like the altars she builds every year.]

Today I reflect on those souls that I love and miss, and give thanks for their time in my life.

This is my grandmother, Helen. 

Her daughter, my aunt Mary Lou.

And Twyla, the best mother-in-law a girl could ask for.

More than anyone else, three women are responsible for helping me shape my life into something I could be proud of. They're all gone now, but every good act, every charitable thought, every small kindness that I do is a direct extension of their care for me. I am their legacy, and damn proud of it.

On Asking For Favors

So as some of you may have heard, the Songwriter has a new solo album, Secular Jukebox, coming out this summer.

Speaking of the record, you can listen and comment here, 

or sample and buy your very own copy from Amazon, iTunes, or CD Baby. 

It is an amazing album. And every purchase helps keep the kitties in food. 

Don't buy it because I said so. Buy it because my cats are cute. 

Or, you know, because you love good music. That's nice too.

It won't make us rich, but we try to break even so we can keep making more art. It's like a little cottage industry, really. He writes, plays and records the thing. We both pitch in to do promo work. And then he plays the gigs and hawks the record there, too. Here in the House of DIY, we do it all. And what we can't do, we have to ask for as a favor.

Now, I'm not so awesome at asking for help. This is because I secretly believe I am a missing X-Man whose mutant superpower is being able to do every single solitary thing that crosses my path and do it perfectly or nearly so, without a smidgen of help from anyone ever. I help them, you see, not the other way around.

This belief has not been so beneficial to me, as you might imagine.

So I have had to try and teach myself to ask for favors, and I've come up with some internal guidelines that might be useful to other folks, possibly those afflicted with similar X-Men style delusions.

1. Be relaxed and cultivate an atmosphere where it is okay for your friend to say no. Better to get a 'no' and stay friends and move on than to get a 'yes' that colors your relationship with resentment and obligation.
2. When someone does say yes, experience and express sincere gratitude. This is good for both of you.
3. Never ask somebody to do for free what they do for a living unless its a very good cause, it also benefits them in some way, or they owe you one.

You've probably noticed that these are all about drawing boundaries. There's a reason for that. Boundaries help. I'm not saying boundaries are always awesome and made of ice cream and butterscotch and should never be challenged. But they should always be clear, so if you are going to break them, you have a pretty strong idea why. They make everybody more secure and more comfortable. Good fences, good neighbors, etc. And good friends and neighbors are the kind that might be willing to do you a favor.

Gratitude, courtesy of Louis CK

That thing I was talking about, how we live in unprecedented prosperity and don't appreciate it?

Yeah. I'm not the only one who's noticed.

Louie CK on Conan: Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

Love and props to the Songwriter for sending me this!

Core Principles: Gratitude, Self-Worth, Pleasure, & Generosity

Some more thoughts on what I mean when I talk about "good" and maybe a stab at the core principles of what I'm yammering on about.

On the face of it, I can see how this whole endeavor might look like rampant materialism. Everything you've been perfectly happy with up until now is shit, I seem to be saying. You must immediately discard it all to make way for "good" shit.

Maybe you chalk this up to the object lust of a poor kid longing for the better, more expensive things that life has largely denied her. It could seem like I'm using the same tactics (fear of inadequacy, manufactured dissatisfaction) that Madison Avenue has already honed and deployed to great effect.

This isn't true. Well, I do still suffer from the poor kid thing, but I'm working on that.

I'm advocating a way of being, not of buying.

Anyway, I thought I would lay out what I actually believe about all this stuff, some core principles, if you will.

Use The Good Soap is all about:

1. Gratitude. We live in a time of unprecedented abundance. I am not kidding. Un-fucking-precendented. Someday, historians will prove that the average high school girl in 2011 owned more dresses than Cleopatra. And while this isn't always a universal good, the truth is that most of us have a whole hell of a lot, relative to most of humankind throughout most of history. We are the lucky ones. It does us good to stop and reflect on that. It can put a little bit of shine back into our lives.


2. Self-Worth. Oh, guilt. Where would Western Judeo-Christian civilization be without your self-hating embrace? More generous and kind, maybe? More at peace, perhaps? Nah. Surely not. But, lemme ask you: Why don't we think more critically about the way we approach ur lives and the stuff we surround ourselves with? Because many of us (fellow recovering Catholics, I'm looking at you) have been reared and socialized to feel guilty when we think of our own needs, guilty when we ask for what we want, guilty when we want to steer our lives in a direction contrary to those around us. Guilt is a feeling of being unclean and unworthy. Self-worth and joy are its opposites and its antidotes.


3. Pleasure. If the guilt industrial complex has cornered the market on self-loathing, it has ordered a hit on pleasure. Pleasure is forbidden, which can make everything sweeter, from the taste of hot fudge as you lick it off your lips to the sensation of warm sand against your skin (or someone else's!). But pleasure is more than just being "bad." Pleasure is important, in all kinds of ways and for a plethora of reasons. It reconnects us to our own bodies and helps us be fully present in the moment. An expanded definition of pleasure and its enthusiastic embrace is something I'm gonna talk about a lot.


4. Generosity. Growing up in violence and poverty put a chip on my shoulder and sent me out into the world with a heightened sense of my own difference. No matter how nice people were to me, I found it hard to shake the feeling that I had my nose pressed against the glass of life's better restaurants, and that everyone else had it easier, not to mention was having more fun. When I started practicing generosity, mainly of the emotional/spiritual kind, everything changed. The imaginary window that separated me just dissolved and not only did I get to eat the food and enjoy the company, I got to invite other people to join the fun.

Yeah, I think these are the big ones.

New Year's, Pt. 1: The Eve

There's a big sort of overview, "What's-it-all-about-Alfie" post coming in January. But for now, let's just deal with what we've got right in front of us.

Sometimes, you have to make your own fun. And sometimes, you can piggy-back on a socially-accepted holiday observed by billions around the world. Path of least resistance, says I.

New Year's Eve is traditionally a time for looking back, taking stock, blah, blah, blah. But just because it's a cliche doesn't automatically mean it's a lousy idea.

So. 2010. Not a year I will recall with much fondness, I gotta say. But, since gratitude matters, let's start with the good.

Some highlights:

• Took my first meeting with a movie producer for something I'd written.
• Went to Disneyland with one of my best friends.
• Saw more great movies than in any other year of my life. Read some awesome books, too.
• Did NOT die starving in the streets, my corpse to be devoured by wolves. Or more regionally, coyotes.

The lowlights:

• Lost my job.
• Did NOT find a new job.
• Did NOT move to a bigger apt., or buy a car, or do any of the things I said I would before losing said job.

Um. Actually that's not so bad. I felt pretty negative when I started this post. But when I tried to spell it out and quantify my misery, I came up mostly empty, just really variations on the job theme.

Why? Because gratitude overrides misery. And the more I think about the good things I had, the more stuff occurs to me; a virtuous circle (seriously, I just remembered two of my friends had gorgeous babies this year, and another got a much-sought-after pregnancy. Awesome!). Just the act of thinking about what I'm grateful for pushes the negative stuff right into the bin. I'm serious, try it if you don't believe me.

Yeah, I lost my job. But so did a lot of other people. And I'm lucky. A year into unemployment, and we still have a roof over our heads, our health, and each other. We still live in a place where the sun shines almost every day. We're not in debt, my parents are still doing all right. Seriously, what am I bitching about?

So it's New Year's Eve, 2010. Look back. What are you bitching about? What are you grateful for?