So how can I share with you this amazing sunny/windy fall day we're having?
I've somehow internalized the idea that it's not enough to just have experiences -- I have to record them and impart them. But when I try to press the little violet between the pages of a book, it's never quite the same as in life...
Why? Why not just be and do?
I'm tempted to trace it to my Mormon upbringing (given that that's my blogging theme), but I think it comes more from my non-religious outlook: any experience that I can't preserve will one day be lost (see why I don't like death). Either that or it's my ingrained Protestant work ethic. Must... make... myself... useful... at... all... times...
All of this real-life that's been going on since I've been here in New Jersey -- it's really cutting into my blogging. I have a backlog of about ten things I'm planning to post about! I can't believe I still haven't gotten around to recounting the Mormon Fundamentalist (polygamist) church service I attended when I was in Utah! Not to mention a bunch of other more mundane things that have been happening lately (my trip to Boston this past weekend, the dinner I went to last night where the hostess showed us Albert Einstein's desk that he had brought with him to Princeton from Berlin). But the problem is that it takes me a few hours to write a careful post, and those are hours I could be spending on more real-life experiences!
Meanwhile I keep obsessing over my elaborate plans about how to get an amazing new job when I get back to Zürich, plus I'm at a fun part on my professional research project that I'm doing during this sabbatical. But this weather is making me want to blow off work and go on a walk through the woods, crackle some crispy fall leaves under my feet.
I want to work,
I want to play,
I need three times as many hours in every day!!!
The Adventures of a Friendly French-American ExMormon Atheist Mom Living in Switzerland!!!
5 comments:
It'll happen. Take your time. Enjoy your day!
it's not enough to just have experiences -- I have to record them and impart them.... I think it comes more from my non-religious outlook: any experience that I can't preserve will one day be lost
I have the same sense, but I feel it's a very spiritual approach to life: each meaningful moment has VAST meaning, and involves really cool ineffable communion with the great non-personal, non-sentient powers of the universe (not to be confused with Jehovah in any way, shape or form). Therefore I have a moral and spiritual obligation to experience certain things (esp. things involving really great days outdoors) as fully as possible, and then say something important (but ultimately inadequate, since the experience is ineffable) about it later.
it's a burden, you know?
Thanks Aerin!!!
I managed to get in some work and some fun -- though I would like to have gotten more in of both!
Hey Holly!!!
Yeah, that's basically the emotion I'm talking about. Though in my case, since I don't see it as communion with anything outside my own head, I feel like it's just lost completely (and wasted) if I can't find a way to impart it.
This burden would be less of a problem if I had a bit more artistic talent of some kind. ;^)
I hope you find the time soon to blog about the Fundamentalist Mormon church service.
As someone who is educated as an anthropologist and who had the opportunity to do specialized work in the anthropology of religion while I was working on my BA, that will be of special interest to me.
Not that I'm trying to rush you or anything. ;)
Elaine
Hey Elaine!!!
Glad to see there's some interest! :D
I keep thinking that I'm going to sit down and write an elaborate article about it, and the more elaborate I imagine it, the more I procrastinate it... ;^)
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