Today I did something I hate doing – I asked someone for a favour. I needed some data for a research project, and I asked someone at Columbia to help me retrieve the newest year’s data, which I do not have since I retrieved the data a couple of years ago as a student at Columbia. I hated it. First, I walked round and round, chewing up my fingernails and mentally skimming the list of old classmates, junior PhD students, faculty, tossing each name out one by one, and cycling through the list again. I forced myself to pick a name, because I really did need the data. And then I tortured myself for the next few minutes, going over all the reasons why this person was going to be annoyed/cheesed off/not want to be my friend anymore because I was just using them as a means to an end. Then, I moved on to justifying to myself that this was not such a terrible thing to ask, because I have helped this person out in many ways over the course of our many years together surviving the PhD, and never asked anything in return. Then I went back to torturing myself with the possibility that this person would not like me anymore. I couldn’t deal with it anymore so I sat down and rapped out the email as though someone were choking the words out of my throat.
I don’t really profess to understand what it is that’s going on. This is not new stuff. I have always hated asking for help, for a favour. Conversely, I love doing favours. I jump and run to spread them around as soon as the words leave someone else’s mouth, and then sit back and feel virtuous, Lady Bountiful, doling out charitable acts, never asking for anything in return, feeling good about the fact that these people are all in my debt. Oh, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I won’t deny that little shadows of these thoughts exist in my subconscious. S has always insisted to me that this insistence on only giving help while not asking for any in return is unhealthy, that it rapidly makes other people feel uncomfortable, and that it is hardly virtue but instead just a big old hang-up.
Anyway, I’ve gone and done it now. Is it going to be easier the next time?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Day three
Today’s small bite: start a blog, and post up my observations about my small bites each day. Why? Why do I want to offer up my most private thoughts to…whoever it is that’s out there reading them? First, it gives me a place to document and organize my thoughts. Second, I (hope I) will feel a greater sense to commitment to my project by creating something tangible around it. Third, who knows? – maybe people who are interested will come along, read it and give me some useful tips, or laugh at me – both of which I could use right now.
This is not my first attempt at starting a blog. I started one a few years ago, about free things to do in New York City. I posted twice that weekend, got busy again the following week and forgot all about it. Then I watched the movie “Julie and Julia”, where Amy Adams (sorry, I know that’s not the right name, but it is the only ones that comes to mind) blogs her way through the Julia Child cookbook to a glamorous career, fame and a Hollywood movie contract; and from then on have felt resistance to the idea of ever starting a blog. There was something gimmicky about it in that movie, and in my mind ever since. Everybody is doing it now. There is even a name for it – “stunt non-fiction” - it has become a genre! Go live in an ashram for a year, and blog about it, and so on and so forth. I am too cool to jump onto this particular bandwagon, that’s me.
And then a strange thought presented itself: a big chunk of things I am afraid to do because only a few people do them - apply to the NSF for a CAREER grant, for example; or throw away a job that pays an insane amount of money, gives me tremendous flexibility and is intellectually rewarding, because I don’t feel like it is making enough of a difference (god alone knows what I mean by that). Another big chunk of things I don’t want to do because too many people do them – like start a blog. This leaves me with – not that much. Exactly the reason why I started this project, except that I wasn’t thinking about it precisely this way. And remember yesterday’s lesson: doing something stupid is better than thinking something brilliant.
So hello, world.
This is not my first attempt at starting a blog. I started one a few years ago, about free things to do in New York City. I posted twice that weekend, got busy again the following week and forgot all about it. Then I watched the movie “Julie and Julia”, where Amy Adams (sorry, I know that’s not the right name, but it is the only ones that comes to mind) blogs her way through the Julia Child cookbook to a glamorous career, fame and a Hollywood movie contract; and from then on have felt resistance to the idea of ever starting a blog. There was something gimmicky about it in that movie, and in my mind ever since. Everybody is doing it now. There is even a name for it – “stunt non-fiction” - it has become a genre! Go live in an ashram for a year, and blog about it, and so on and so forth. I am too cool to jump onto this particular bandwagon, that’s me.
And then a strange thought presented itself: a big chunk of things I am afraid to do because only a few people do them - apply to the NSF for a CAREER grant, for example; or throw away a job that pays an insane amount of money, gives me tremendous flexibility and is intellectually rewarding, because I don’t feel like it is making enough of a difference (god alone knows what I mean by that). Another big chunk of things I don’t want to do because too many people do them – like start a blog. This leaves me with – not that much. Exactly the reason why I started this project, except that I wasn’t thinking about it precisely this way. And remember yesterday’s lesson: doing something stupid is better than thinking something brilliant.
So hello, world.
Day two
I felt strangely exhilarated the next morning. When S, who was shuffling our Netflix queue, told me he had added "Salma's sexy belly-dance video" to our queue, along with some Rajnikant movie from the 1980s that I am sure he can recite from memory, I opened my mouth to protest, but checked myself. I smiled instead, and said "Okay!". He blinked at me uncomprehendingly. This was obviously not the response he had been expecting, and the one thing you can always count on me to do is take the bait. I did a little jig. This acting out-of-character is more fun than I thought!
The same strange energy lasted till the office. I breezed into the elevator, and surprised the woman in the elevator by chirping "Excellent!" in response to the Hi, How are you?. She stared at me a moment, and then asked, half-frowning, “Did I hear you say…excellent?”. Oh no, I thought. She’s found me out. It sounded completely fake. For many years after I moved to this country, I did not realize that the “How are you” question was rhetorical, and have never mastered the “Fine, thanks. And you?” that seems to slip out so smoothly from most people, almost as if it were a single word. I would actually think, and respond by describing my present state of mind as accurately as possible in one phrase. “Not bad”, “Tired”, “Waiting for the summer”. When I was slinking about as a senior-year PhD student and was accosted by the question from professors who I was trapped with in the elevator, I defaulted to the weather, falling back on “cold”, “wet”, “hot” since that was the only truthful thing I could say other than “Want to rip up my dissertation and jump out of my cubicle window, only I cant because my cubicle doesn’t have a window”. As a result, I have always dreaded the question, felt it to be a constant assault on my thoughts, an annoying convention that forces me to interrupt my current reverie and describe my progress in this world, in twenty seconds, to a virtual stranger. So my “Excellent!” was unique, not only because it was pat but also because it was upbeat, something I rarely am.
I confirmed to the lady in the elevator that I had indeed said “excellent”, and she settled back into her corner and watched me suspiciously for the rest of the ride. A few minutes later, I walked into Caroline sorting mail in the mailroom and surprised myself by chirping “Excellent!” again in my most exuberant voice (much easier, the second time). I realized almost as soon as I said it that the lady from the elevator had been standing behind Caroline and chatting with her. She stared at me again, and as I beat a hasty retreat down the stairs from the mailroom I heard her say to Caroline – “Well, its good to have cheerful people around, I guess!” I laughed at the irony all the way from the 11th floor down to the 5th.
The strange buzz of energy continued. I dashed madly about my office, spring-cleaned every single cabinet, cleared out every item in my multiple inboxes, swept up food crumbs from the carpet, and updated the quote on my door, all in about half-hour before collapsing on my chair. Not good, Divya. This is looking suspiciously like over-the-top enthusiasm at the beginning, which will no doubt fizzle out before long and leave me all jaded and turned off in no time.
As expected, by the time four o’ clock came around, I was feeling the resistance. I did not want to leave my office right now and walk across Washington Park to YouthBuild, my One Thing for the day. I had some momentum with the manuscript I was editing, I was almost done with it, I didn’t want to break it. If I kept going now, I could finish it before taking the 5:58 train out. If I left now and came back half an hour later, there would not be enough time for me to come back and get anything done with that block of time. Besides, this whole idea was idiotic anyway.
I went. A few days ago, while walking back alone after buying a sandwich from one of the shops on Halsey Street, I walked past a set of glass doors. Two black kids – high school kids, possibly, were standing inside, talking loudly and laughing. I stopped and stared for a couple of seconds before one of them saw me. The sign on top said “YouthBuild”, and I was instantly interested. An afterschool tutoring place, maybe? So close to work. I wouldn’t have to commute extra, it would be a way to get involved with something in Newark other than coming into work everyday and taking the 5:58 train back out to New York Penn. But something made me keep walking, even though I wanted to go in and find out what they did and if I could get involved in any way. What if they laughed at me? Told me no help was required? That it wasn’t even what I thought or hoped it might be? Sounds ridiculous to me as I write it, but that is exactly what made me keep walking on at that moment.
I left my office reluctantly and started walking. I gathered momentum somewhere along the way, and was soon crossing the park in great enthusiasm, enchanted by my own sense of initiative. Once on Halsey Street I stopped at the sight of many closed shutters, and had to backtrack a few steps to find the “YouthBuild” sign on top of one of them. Closed. Served me right. Lesson for today: Don’t hesitate. Don’t let thinking get in the way of doing. Most of your thoughts are half-assed, anyway. Doing something stupid is better than thinking something brilliant.
I wandered back through Washington Park, deflated, irritated, shaking my head. My grand project was going to go into default on Day 2. I dallied outside the Business school building, not wanting to go in. On a whim, I walked into the building right next door: the Newark Public Library. Now, I have always known about its existence and “made a mental note” to go in there and get a card, oh, about a thousand times. Today, I finally did, out of desperation because I wanted to do something. I was pleasantly surprised. No, actually, make that pleasantly shocked. The library was beautiful inside – soaring ceilings, marble columns, long glass windows, murals on the walls, and quiet. The books were actually shelved in some sensible order and the first two books I thought of I was able to find in five minutes.
Libraries and bookstores are my refuge. I walk into one, inhale the musty smell of old paper (in a library) or the clean, sharp smell of new books (in a store) and instantly take deeper breaths and am happy to just sit still and enjoy the feeling of all these books around me. I had been working in Newark for a year, hating every minute. And here it was, a library, in the next building. I felt ridiculous for not coming in here sooner. Of course, the reason being I had not expected the city of Newark- shabby, shady, left behind, the “armpit of America”, to have any room inside it for something so fanciful as a gorgeous building devoted entirely to books. Reinforcement of the day’s lesson: most of my thoughts are half-assed.
The same strange energy lasted till the office. I breezed into the elevator, and surprised the woman in the elevator by chirping "Excellent!" in response to the Hi, How are you?. She stared at me a moment, and then asked, half-frowning, “Did I hear you say…excellent?”. Oh no, I thought. She’s found me out. It sounded completely fake. For many years after I moved to this country, I did not realize that the “How are you” question was rhetorical, and have never mastered the “Fine, thanks. And you?” that seems to slip out so smoothly from most people, almost as if it were a single word. I would actually think, and respond by describing my present state of mind as accurately as possible in one phrase. “Not bad”, “Tired”, “Waiting for the summer”. When I was slinking about as a senior-year PhD student and was accosted by the question from professors who I was trapped with in the elevator, I defaulted to the weather, falling back on “cold”, “wet”, “hot” since that was the only truthful thing I could say other than “Want to rip up my dissertation and jump out of my cubicle window, only I cant because my cubicle doesn’t have a window”. As a result, I have always dreaded the question, felt it to be a constant assault on my thoughts, an annoying convention that forces me to interrupt my current reverie and describe my progress in this world, in twenty seconds, to a virtual stranger. So my “Excellent!” was unique, not only because it was pat but also because it was upbeat, something I rarely am.
I confirmed to the lady in the elevator that I had indeed said “excellent”, and she settled back into her corner and watched me suspiciously for the rest of the ride. A few minutes later, I walked into Caroline sorting mail in the mailroom and surprised myself by chirping “Excellent!” again in my most exuberant voice (much easier, the second time). I realized almost as soon as I said it that the lady from the elevator had been standing behind Caroline and chatting with her. She stared at me again, and as I beat a hasty retreat down the stairs from the mailroom I heard her say to Caroline – “Well, its good to have cheerful people around, I guess!” I laughed at the irony all the way from the 11th floor down to the 5th.
The strange buzz of energy continued. I dashed madly about my office, spring-cleaned every single cabinet, cleared out every item in my multiple inboxes, swept up food crumbs from the carpet, and updated the quote on my door, all in about half-hour before collapsing on my chair. Not good, Divya. This is looking suspiciously like over-the-top enthusiasm at the beginning, which will no doubt fizzle out before long and leave me all jaded and turned off in no time.
As expected, by the time four o’ clock came around, I was feeling the resistance. I did not want to leave my office right now and walk across Washington Park to YouthBuild, my One Thing for the day. I had some momentum with the manuscript I was editing, I was almost done with it, I didn’t want to break it. If I kept going now, I could finish it before taking the 5:58 train out. If I left now and came back half an hour later, there would not be enough time for me to come back and get anything done with that block of time. Besides, this whole idea was idiotic anyway.
I went. A few days ago, while walking back alone after buying a sandwich from one of the shops on Halsey Street, I walked past a set of glass doors. Two black kids – high school kids, possibly, were standing inside, talking loudly and laughing. I stopped and stared for a couple of seconds before one of them saw me. The sign on top said “YouthBuild”, and I was instantly interested. An afterschool tutoring place, maybe? So close to work. I wouldn’t have to commute extra, it would be a way to get involved with something in Newark other than coming into work everyday and taking the 5:58 train back out to New York Penn. But something made me keep walking, even though I wanted to go in and find out what they did and if I could get involved in any way. What if they laughed at me? Told me no help was required? That it wasn’t even what I thought or hoped it might be? Sounds ridiculous to me as I write it, but that is exactly what made me keep walking on at that moment.
I left my office reluctantly and started walking. I gathered momentum somewhere along the way, and was soon crossing the park in great enthusiasm, enchanted by my own sense of initiative. Once on Halsey Street I stopped at the sight of many closed shutters, and had to backtrack a few steps to find the “YouthBuild” sign on top of one of them. Closed. Served me right. Lesson for today: Don’t hesitate. Don’t let thinking get in the way of doing. Most of your thoughts are half-assed, anyway. Doing something stupid is better than thinking something brilliant.
I wandered back through Washington Park, deflated, irritated, shaking my head. My grand project was going to go into default on Day 2. I dallied outside the Business school building, not wanting to go in. On a whim, I walked into the building right next door: the Newark Public Library. Now, I have always known about its existence and “made a mental note” to go in there and get a card, oh, about a thousand times. Today, I finally did, out of desperation because I wanted to do something. I was pleasantly surprised. No, actually, make that pleasantly shocked. The library was beautiful inside – soaring ceilings, marble columns, long glass windows, murals on the walls, and quiet. The books were actually shelved in some sensible order and the first two books I thought of I was able to find in five minutes.
Libraries and bookstores are my refuge. I walk into one, inhale the musty smell of old paper (in a library) or the clean, sharp smell of new books (in a store) and instantly take deeper breaths and am happy to just sit still and enjoy the feeling of all these books around me. I had been working in Newark for a year, hating every minute. And here it was, a library, in the next building. I felt ridiculous for not coming in here sooner. Of course, the reason being I had not expected the city of Newark- shabby, shady, left behind, the “armpit of America”, to have any room inside it for something so fanciful as a gorgeous building devoted entirely to books. Reinforcement of the day’s lesson: most of my thoughts are half-assed.
Day one
This morning I decided to take my black laptop to the library instead of my silver one. What this means is that I decided – for the first time in years (decades?) to spend a day (a weekday! a sacred Wednesday!) doing something else other than work. Why this morning, suddenly? I don’t know. I was reading an article in TimeOut NY about people who were transforming their lives mid-career. It sent me back briefly to my photo collection, tens of thousands of photographs lying untouched and unsorted in the hard disk of my almost-forgotten black Mac, retired from all serious duties after years of faithful services rendered. I skimmed a few albums aimlessly, mentally classifying, going “hmmm”, stopping for a few seconds to peer closer at some picture. But none of this is new. I have read plenty of articles before, jumped up and down with some new idea, some new thought, inspiration perhaps, for a few minutes or even an hour, and then succumbed once more to the cozy, familiar lull of work. I have too many things to do. I need to edit the manuscript for AOS, finish the response letters to both referees, write the letter to the editor, ship it off, circulate the actuaries manuscript for comments, review George and Isani’s data collection till date, try to code a few annual reports myself to speed up the process, finish updating my lecture notes for the fall, post them up on Blackboard, get it out of the way, get it out of the way, so that – so that, yes, I can do more of the same.
I am amazed at myself. Not at the fact that this morning I walked up and down almost feverishly for an hour – unable to decide between getting work out of the way and making a portfolio that I would need in order to get into the Photo II class at the International Center for Photography, my mind frozen, unable to move, like Harry Potter and Voldemort both in perfect equilibrium in mid-air because their wands are caught in perfect attraction – or repulsion. I finally made the switch – I took out my silver laptop and replaced it with the black one – surreptitiously – I didn’t want S noticing and asking questions that I would inevitably snap at. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk out of the door. S was on a conference call, and I gestured to him. He hit the “mute” button – which he often does – and asked me what’s up. I told him. His face lit up in a goofy smile and he clapped. I wrinkled my face sheepishly. He rubbed my back in a gesture of reassurance. “You worked last weekend, so tell yourself you’ve earned it” he said. I shook my head. “Last weekend was because I didn’t get enough done last week.” I shook my head. Sometimes my logic is too self-defeating, even for me.
As I walk to the library, I experienced the strangest sensations. My stomach did strange twists, as if I were walking to an interview or waiting in a classroom five minutes before the start of a job talk, when the PhD students first start filing in timidly and hang about near the back row. I feel like a fraud, walking in with that file of purposeful students, post-docs and alums who march into the library every day, swiping my card, looking up at the TV screen on the upper right to see if there was a nice quote on there today. No quotes for me today, I haven’t earned them. Athena in Eugene Savage’s mural looked at me with a displeased twist of her lips. Of course she would, she is trying to protect those who sacrifice, stumble and aspire towards knowledge and light from the competing forces of laziness and ignorance.
I went upstairs and found a place in the big room, and felt even worse. All the usual suspects were there, lined up in their usual spots, the guy with the bushy white eyebrows with big stacks of books on the US Senate towering all around him, sitting inside his little fortress of books. My little bald guy of indeterminate ethnicity (Hispanic? Indian?) in the same olive-green T-shirt he’s worn for the last six years, typing away at the Word document that never seems to get done, and the distinguished-looking man in his khakis, loafers and half-sleeved shirt reading books on the Jews in Turkey. All of them, bent over their laptops, focused, industrious, making their lives amount to something. I bolted from my chair and ran downstairs to get a cup of hot water and make myself some Stress Relief Yogi Tea.
Twenty minutes later, I gathered my bearings enough to stop tearing at my nails and staring blankly at the computer screen. I cheated a little bit: I started by googling "how to make a photo portfolio". The first hit was an article out of luminous-landscape.com. Good. That meant it wouldn't be a 5-step wiki entry that read "Select your 25 best pictures. Arrange them in order. Write a narrative. Print them. Your portfolio is ready!".
I tried convincing myself that what I read surprised me, but some corner of my mind was saying, no, not really. Alain Briot wrote, "Most photographers find the idea of making a portfolio pretentious and intimidating." exactly, the very same words I had used to myself. Pretentious, Divya. But hey: I was not going to worry about the consequences. I had permission to be pretentious for one day. For sure, nobody else would care. And today, I wouldn't either.
The next 4 hours went by surprisingly fast. Once I got down to it, the job was just as mentally absorbing as editing a manuscript or running regressions in Stata, because my stomach set up an almost record howl about half-past twelve. More importantly, I acknowledged certain things to myself that I will write down here, for fear that they will vanish unnoticed into the ether, like all the rest of my best intentions. The big reason I haven't sat down and done this before: as long as I'm just skimming through hoards of unsorted pictures, making “mental notes" to do this and that, there is the vague glimmer of a smashing portfolio, the possibility. But once I sit down and come up with the greatest hits, it is what it is. What if I don't really have that many truly great pictures, what if it doesn't really add up to that much? So many hours, hundreds of hours spent taking pictures, nursing some secret hopes of .....something, someday.
Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happened. As soon as I sat back against my chair, at the end of the burst of concentration, as soon as I stopped doing and instead started thinking about what I just did, the doubts flooded in. Just two albums. Just two really spectacular albums after five years of shooting. The outcome of my grand experiment today. Lucky me, I don't have to think about it.
I am amazed at myself. Not at the fact that this morning I walked up and down almost feverishly for an hour – unable to decide between getting work out of the way and making a portfolio that I would need in order to get into the Photo II class at the International Center for Photography, my mind frozen, unable to move, like Harry Potter and Voldemort both in perfect equilibrium in mid-air because their wands are caught in perfect attraction – or repulsion. I finally made the switch – I took out my silver laptop and replaced it with the black one – surreptitiously – I didn’t want S noticing and asking questions that I would inevitably snap at. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk out of the door. S was on a conference call, and I gestured to him. He hit the “mute” button – which he often does – and asked me what’s up. I told him. His face lit up in a goofy smile and he clapped. I wrinkled my face sheepishly. He rubbed my back in a gesture of reassurance. “You worked last weekend, so tell yourself you’ve earned it” he said. I shook my head. “Last weekend was because I didn’t get enough done last week.” I shook my head. Sometimes my logic is too self-defeating, even for me.
As I walk to the library, I experienced the strangest sensations. My stomach did strange twists, as if I were walking to an interview or waiting in a classroom five minutes before the start of a job talk, when the PhD students first start filing in timidly and hang about near the back row. I feel like a fraud, walking in with that file of purposeful students, post-docs and alums who march into the library every day, swiping my card, looking up at the TV screen on the upper right to see if there was a nice quote on there today. No quotes for me today, I haven’t earned them. Athena in Eugene Savage’s mural looked at me with a displeased twist of her lips. Of course she would, she is trying to protect those who sacrifice, stumble and aspire towards knowledge and light from the competing forces of laziness and ignorance.
I went upstairs and found a place in the big room, and felt even worse. All the usual suspects were there, lined up in their usual spots, the guy with the bushy white eyebrows with big stacks of books on the US Senate towering all around him, sitting inside his little fortress of books. My little bald guy of indeterminate ethnicity (Hispanic? Indian?) in the same olive-green T-shirt he’s worn for the last six years, typing away at the Word document that never seems to get done, and the distinguished-looking man in his khakis, loafers and half-sleeved shirt reading books on the Jews in Turkey. All of them, bent over their laptops, focused, industrious, making their lives amount to something. I bolted from my chair and ran downstairs to get a cup of hot water and make myself some Stress Relief Yogi Tea.
Twenty minutes later, I gathered my bearings enough to stop tearing at my nails and staring blankly at the computer screen. I cheated a little bit: I started by googling "how to make a photo portfolio". The first hit was an article out of luminous-landscape.com. Good. That meant it wouldn't be a 5-step wiki entry that read "Select your 25 best pictures. Arrange them in order. Write a narrative. Print them. Your portfolio is ready!".
I tried convincing myself that what I read surprised me, but some corner of my mind was saying, no, not really. Alain Briot wrote, "Most photographers find the idea of making a portfolio pretentious and intimidating." exactly, the very same words I had used to myself. Pretentious, Divya. But hey: I was not going to worry about the consequences. I had permission to be pretentious for one day. For sure, nobody else would care. And today, I wouldn't either.
The next 4 hours went by surprisingly fast. Once I got down to it, the job was just as mentally absorbing as editing a manuscript or running regressions in Stata, because my stomach set up an almost record howl about half-past twelve. More importantly, I acknowledged certain things to myself that I will write down here, for fear that they will vanish unnoticed into the ether, like all the rest of my best intentions. The big reason I haven't sat down and done this before: as long as I'm just skimming through hoards of unsorted pictures, making “mental notes" to do this and that, there is the vague glimmer of a smashing portfolio, the possibility. But once I sit down and come up with the greatest hits, it is what it is. What if I don't really have that many truly great pictures, what if it doesn't really add up to that much? So many hours, hundreds of hours spent taking pictures, nursing some secret hopes of .....something, someday.
Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happened. As soon as I sat back against my chair, at the end of the burst of concentration, as soon as I stopped doing and instead started thinking about what I just did, the doubts flooded in. Just two albums. Just two really spectacular albums after five years of shooting. The outcome of my grand experiment today. Lucky me, I don't have to think about it.
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