Do I really have it together? Have I been hiding things?

From 2024: This draft got updated in 2020… and then probably didn’t get published because like, I wasn’t ok through all of the pandemic and a lot of people really weren’t ok, so it seemed like, kind of a tone-deaf post and then when it wasn’t tone-deaf politics were bringing me down (I assume Trump’s election is why it didn’t get posted originally).  Politics are still terrible, but… I mean, they do put things in perspective.     

Do I really have it together now?  I’m not as sure!  But I think I really did have it together back in 2015.  It’s been a rough decade or so.  I blame Citizens United.

From July 2020:  This post is from 2015!  Just sitting there, in the drafts, unpublished!  As an update, High School English seems to have beaten DC1’s perfectionist tendencies out of hir. 

From 2015:

There’s a common theme on some of the more… dramatic… lifestyle blogs.  This idea that nobody has it together.   Everybody fights with their spouse.  Everybody has massive major problems.  They’re just lying and pretending that everything is ok.

On the whole, yes, I mostly have it together.  And that’s ok.

Not like I don’t do stupid things:  See recent trip sans credit card.  But it’s hard not to see the humor in that, and I’m very good at pushing the annoyance out to the CC company and not to myself.  This is why I had a back-up plan, why I kept calling the first company, but it’s irritating when the back-up plan fails.  And I know I’m supposed to use the CC at least once a year, but meh, I have a lot going on and I’m going to forget from time to time.  I don’t think this means anything deep about me.

I do get very stressed out at work on occasion.  But these stresses are usually because of taking opportunities.  I’ve done research long enough that I know it’s messy and sometimes I am just going to fail flat on my face.  But that is far better than not taking chances at all, and every failure really is a learning experience.  That doesn’t help when I feel like I’m back in grad school with a paper due on a short deadline that I haven’t even started that someone really important is going to be judging me on but I can’t work on it because I have these five other much easier projects where I know what I’m supposed to do also looming.  But I also know that more famous people than I will end up submitting something crappier than I did and that there will be second and third chances to redeem myself before a final deadline.  If I end up not getting included, that sometimes happens with even very good papers, and at least I tried.  I feel a lot calmer though when I have a path going forward– it’s the omigod omigod what am I going to do that freaks me out.  When that’s happening I’m too stressed to blog about it.  When it’s over I wonder what the big deal was.

Yes, my husband and my marriage and my family life really are as idyllic as advertised.  So is #2’s.  I don’t know if it’s that we both married our high school sweethearts so we’ve gotten all our major fights out decade ago, or if it’s that our husbands are chill amazing guys (they are), or what, but there’s trust and teamwork.

My kids are great.  Age seven was a bit of a pill, but age eight is much better.  We still have worries about perfectionism with DC1.  DC2’s eczema has cleared up and zie has outgrown hir food allergies.  They’re both amazing and wonderful and challenging and active and tiring and they want to be good kids.  I cannot complain.

I really just don’t worry about my appearance.  I’m sure if many of you had my appearance you’d worry about it (and you’d look a lot nicer even though you were worrying, or because of it).  I just can’t care and I don’t have to because it’s fine if I look a bit dowdy at work.

Making more money than I ever dreamed (especially since my dreams were not actually that big– I dream bigger now) helps a lot.  Once we passed a certain savings level it was a lot easier to say, “well, it’s only money and we have money.”  (This was true even when “certain savings level” was a 6K emergency slush fund, but now we can handle losing bigger amounts like 4.5K prepaid to a daycare that goes out of business.)

My life now is just so much better than it was in middle school (something I still, deep down, probably haven’t gotten over) that I can’t complain.

Sometimes genuinely bad things happen.  Infertility.  Miscarriage.  Pets die.  Grandparents die.  Mothers get cancer.  Fathers get shingles.  Extended family members get into horrible financial difficulties or teenage pregnancy or trouble with the law.  These are real and horrible.  The kind of things that put minor stuff in perspective.

So, what’s the point:  1.  Not everybody is lying.  2.  How a person reacts to setbacks is important.  3.  Don’t manufacture problems because you want to be “brutally honest” unless you’re  a performance artist.

Ask the grumpies: Recent good change in your life?

Debbie M asks:

What was a recent good change in your life?

Not that recent, but learning about roasted vegetables was pretty cool.  Every time I make them I’m like, we should make these more often.  My new tennis shoes are comfortable.  Sister Kitty is nice because she loves me and it’s so weird that she wants my attention and not just food when I come home.  Though I wish she and Nice Kitty got along better.

Man, I don’t know.  I hope I get an equity raise.

I know these are supposed to be uplifting questions and they really should be.

Grumpy Nation, tell us about good changes in your life!  They don’t have to be recent unless you have something recent!

Do people really love it when bad things happen to people and hate it when good things happen to people?: A deliberately controversial post

Preface:

Here’s another draft from 2014 that never got finished.  Let’s see if we can finish it now!  And provoke discussion!  BTW, newer readers– back in the day when we had more bandwidth (though I’m not sure why we had more bandwidth?  I guess everything was easier pre-Trump) we used to occasionally post deliberately controversial posts wherein we would post what was basically a position piece and then encourage discussion (both assenting and dissenting) in the comments.  (If we didn’t want to allow for dissent, we would not post with the debatable or deliberately controversial tags.)  (Debatable was for smaller posts where we didn’t feel like there was as much discussion to be had.)  If you’re interested in the conversations from these, check out the “deliberately controversial” tag and especially read through the comments section– Grumpy Nation has always been full of intelligent and thought-provoking commenters.

This post was inspired by the comments section in a lauravanderkam post.

crabs in a bucket, mommy blogs

We don’t go those places anymore.  (One of us never did)

Love leightpf.wordpress.com  Read the patty books by carolyn wells… Change the radio station…

chat history 5/6/14

Alas, google conversations seems to have deleted the chat history from before a certain point.  2014 definitely isn’t in there.  So much lost!  Leightpf.wordpress.com is now private access, but it was a wonderful blog from someone who spoke confidently (and correctly!) about personal finance, particularly personal finance for upper-middle-class earners.  Unapologetic.  The Patty Fairfield books are an early 20th century series about a nice girl who was always the “popular girl” and was from a working-rich family (her dad is a lawyer, IIRC) and everyone liked her and she did fun things– free on gutenberg or for kindle.  (Her mom did die before the series started, but her father eventually remarried one of her older friends, which is a bit sketchy.)  The comments on the goodreads post for the second book sum up how it’s an antidote to h8ers.  Ok, with that context (or lack therof)… what was it we wanted to say?

Post start:

In the comments section of a Laura Vanderkam post, Leanne says:

I also don’t understand why most people respond so strongly to the “hardship” stories. It’s not my personal preference; I find “success” stories much more interesting. I’d rather look up for inspiration than down for validation, but I think that viewpoint is more the exception than the rule, unfortunately, at least for adults.

We agree.  I feel really sad when my friends have to deal with hardship and health problems (and I listen because it’s my friend!) and I certainly don’t actively seek out such stories from other people.

Many people do.  They prefer blogposts where people have hardships and health scares.  They love when someone’s “perfect” life is shown not to be so perfect after all.  They love divorces and finding out the gossip of what happened to cause the divorce (so long as it’s not the boring “we grew apart”).  The Financial Blogsnark sub-reddit is almost entirely comments about some woman named “Hope” who has been a financial train-wreck for over a decade.  (How do I know this?  I don’t keep up regularly with many personal finance blogs anymore, but saw a post title on a blog roll and checked in and then I, TBH, wondered what had happened to the Frugal Girl when she signed a new lease and this sub-reddit had the whole story.  That said, I would have been happier with “we grew apart.”)

Back in the day, I used to spend a lot of time on mommy forums and mommy blogs, and there was definitely a big negative contingent of people who loved to hate on successful women.  (And lots of dramatic fights about WOHM vs. SAHM etc. etc. etc.)  It was a big time-suck, and although some useful things came out of participating in those fora and reading those blogs, it’s nice to be away from the drama and negativity.  IRL, people just aren’t that negative when your kids are doing well and you’re balancing work and child-rearing like they are online.  Maybe they feel that way deep down, but at least they’re polite enough not to say anything or to yuck anyone’s yum, so to speak.  Or at least not to me.

I don’t know what the scientific evidence says– do people prefer sad or happy things?  Popular fiction sales suggest that the average person likes to read about people getting out of bad situations.  So maybe a little bit of both?  And, of course, there’s also the people who enjoy best sellers of fine literature where everything ends sadly.

So it could just be that there are different kinds of people.  There’s a couple of econ papers that find that on average people are happier getting off of Facebook, but that is driven by the contingent of people who get jealous of others’ successes.  Not everyone feels threatened by curated lifestyles, but a good proportion of people do.  Not everyone likes reading sad stories, but a good proportion of people do.  Some people really do enjoy schadenfreude.

For another perspective, in the comments section Ana says:

As far as why negative posts get more interest, its likely partly because we find flaws more relatable than perfection… if someone describes a challenge they are facing, I can give advice, support, commiserate, & also learn from the advice and experience of other commenters—much more of a productive discussion.

Which may be true for some, but there are definitely people who are there for the schadenfreude and not to help.

Grumpy Nation:  Do you think people enjoy when good things happen or bad things happen to other people?  Under what circumstances?  Discuss in the comments below!

 

 

 

 

RBOCareer (and also Captcha and Candy)

• Why is captcha so obsessed with finding motorcycles?
• I had a flyout with a school that would be best described as a “fixer-upper.”
• There are a lot of reasons not to take that position if offered.  But the one thing that really stuck out isn’t the department’s fault at all.
• There’s a part of the country that votes Blue but isn’t actually Blue at all.  I thought I had a good handle on all the different regions of the US but turns out I was wrong!
• I learned the term “PWI” on a tour of the campus.  (“What is PWI?” I asked, after the tour guide mentioned they were one. “Primarily White Institution,” she said, adding, “most of the black students choose to go to the HBC in our system.”)
• The Uber driver on the way back also said that integration never works because minorities always choose to self-segregate.  I said maybe, but how much of it is choice and are they getting the same quality of education?  If it is a choice and the education quality is the same, then it isn’t.  But that’s a big if.
• I went to a talk on segregation academies the other week.  They still exist and they’re still… PWI.
• Also got asked to interview for the deanlet position.
• One of my friends (in another department) basically told me not to do a long list of unprofessional things when at the interview.  I was both amused an insulted.
• My department head has, in the past, told me I should interrupt older white men less.  (I don’t interrupt junior faculty or minority faculty or women or basically anybody who doesn’t do repetitive multi-minute monologues.)  I told said head that I’d done a cost-benefit analysis.  Nobody has brought it up since I became middle aged.
• Someone from the dean’s office has started putting a large bucket of monster sized candy bars and bags of chips in the break room every Friday morning, courtesy of the dean.  Including payday which I really like.  I HATE this.  I end up spending my entire morning thinking about them and losing willpower and if I do indulge then I keep thinking about going back and getting more.  I should not be eating candy at ALL (insulin problems) and I’m also at the age where I don’t need empty calories.  Other people do obviously eat the junk food because its gone by the end of the day.  I need to work from home on Fridays, I guess, but I can’t entirely because I have office hours.
• Nobody else really likes Payday because when I went in around lunch (3 hours after I’d eaten my own lunch trying to avoid getting junk food), there were still three Paydays and a small bag of spicy chips left.
• I took a Payday. I may have to start refilling my water elsewhere on Fridays.
• When I went back 3 hours after that, the bowl was empty.   So if I wait long enough someone will eat everything I like.

Always wanting more

This is an unfinished post from 2013.  Updates in italics.

have it all  Back in 2013, I think there was a huge thing about women “having it all” whatever that means.  I’m not sure that’s part of the current zeitgeist anymore?

never–  Here I was flipping that idea about women having it all with pointing out that whenever you get close to “having it all” you want more.  And by “you” here I mean “me”.  There are probably a lot of people who are content with their lives.  I wasn’t wired that way.  I’m always striving for more on some measure.  I can’t help it.  I want things to grow.  When I try to be satisfied with my life as it is, I tend to get really really depressed.  I seem to be better off always a bit anxious and productive than the alternative.  We’ll see if that sticks as I continue through middle age and into older ages.

that’s ok  Here I was pushing a bit against the zen/minimalist/etc. dogma.  It is ok to be ambitious.  It’s ok to strive.  It’s ok to always want more.

it’s ambition!  See– ambition is ok!

it’s ok to be satisfied and happy too  But like, also people who are content and happy, so long as it hurts nobody, do what you will.  I may want to be content and happy all the time but in my cost-benefit analysis I’ve decided that I prefer ambition.  People can have made the opposite cost-benefit analysis– they may have chosen their current lives over being more ambitious and that’s ok too!  Different people have different preferences. 

Doesn’t work as well with stuff– but only because we need better organization systems.  Here I’m pointing out that always wanting more in terms of ambition doesn’t actually work well when we’re talking about stuff.  When you don’t have free disposal, you tend to have too much stuff and things get cramped or you have trouble finding stuff.  But, I push a bit against minimalism also by noting that if you have space and you have good organization then those problems aren’t really problems– if things are organized well you can find them and stuff isn’t as cramped. 

Do you always want more?  Are you good at being happy with where you are?

RBOC

• Tracking food again and I definitely have a problem with some cheeses causing indigestion.  Spanakopita is problematic which sucks because our grocery store has a good one in the freezer section.  It didn’t used to be problematic but what can you do?
• DC1 has mild scoliosis but has apparently stopped growing (they can tell because some part of the hip bone has fused?).  So there will be a 6 month check-up and x-ray but if there are no changes, then nothing will be done.  Apparently if it had been a 25-50 degree angle and zie had still been growing, then zie would have had to wear a brace for at least 13 hours per day until zie stopped growing.  What this means is that DC1 is slightly tilted (not really noticeably though) and needs to start doing exercises to increase lower back strength to prevent future back pain that may or may not occur.  All of us at desk jobs should probably do such exercises.
• We had to drive 2 hours away to find a doctor able to take hir! Everyone closer was not accepting new patients at all.  Apparently it’s easy to find an orthopedic surgeon if you’re an adult, but not so easy if you’re a kid.
• My pressure headaches go away beautifully as soon as it starts raining.  Like clockwork.  (Only get headaches before it rains, then when it actually starts raining they clear up.)
• I don’t know why but I’m really excited about DC1 getting to sign up for classes and placement exams and stuff.  My parents were so hands off and I’m trying to be less helicoptery, but also it’s a new step in DC1’s life and I’m eagerly watching.  Though it probably would be a good lesson if DC1 missed hir registration period and failed to get into preferred classes, but better to not learn that lesson, right?
• DC2 is starting to really get into organizing things.  Instead of undoing my alphabetization of books (younger DC2 was an agent of chaos), zie is reinforcing it.  Zie has organized the catch-all stationery drawer where we keep all the pens and pencils and other assorted writing paraphernalia.  Zie even spent some time sorting a jar full of pennies in two different ways, though those just went back in the jar (with a few Canadian pennies and special old pennies removed).  It’s really hir fault for refusing to go to more daycamps, but there are worse ways to spend time.  Oddly, DC1 sorted and organized a lot as a little kid and then really grew out of it and is now the complete opposite.
• I’m really hitting Europeans-not-checking-their-email-in-the-summer right now as an editor, to a much greater extent than previous years.  I wish they’d check and just say no so I can move on!  One of my coeditors is European at a US institution and he says he misses not spending all summer working.
• It takes a month to get an appointment for a driving test.  (We could pay extra money to a driving school and I think zie could do the test with a driving instructor, but we’re not quite sure how that would work around here.)  DH and DC1 went and they were like, you have the wrong form 4753 (form number changed for privacy purposes).  There are actually TWO form 4753 and this is the one you needed to get your permit.  You need the one to get your license.  And they couldn’t print it out because it’s all outsourced to a private company and DC1 had to watch some videos to be granted access to said form anyway.  Why do they have two form 4753s and why wasn’t this noted in all caps (or at all) on all of the lists of what to bring to your driving exam?  Or on the first form itself?  We don’t know.  So they came home and made an appointment for a month later and DC1 watched the videos and filled out the form.
• This did interfere with our plans for DC1 to drive DH home from his colonoscopy (they make another driver sit there the entire time waiting instead of being able to get an uber), and it meant I had to drive DC1 to and from hir math camp counseling job for a week.

Ask the grumpies: Benevolent ways of retiring?

‘Snough Asks:

Are there socially/economically “benevolent” (not sure of the right word) ways to retire?

Oh gee.  I mean, obviously doing a lot of volunteer work, particularly for good causes and not like, fascist causes.  Fight the patriarchy.  Fight fascism.  Help kids.  Help marginalized and poor people and the environment etc. etc. etc.

And not doing horrible things like watching Fox News or buying and using a giant yacht or private jet or supreme court justice.

I guess most of the benevolent things you would do (or not do) as a retiree are similar to those that you would do prior to retirement, just the scale is larger.

Grumpy Nation, what do you see as benevolent retirement activities?

Ask the grumpies: New positive habits?

First Gen American asks:

What are some positive habits you’ve been able to implement in your life since the pandemic began?

This is a good question for the new year, eh?

Exercise, I guess.

I’m better able to work from home now– home computer isn’t just for goofing off.

Not sure what else…

Grumpy Nation, what positive habits have you been able to implement in the past few years?

DH’s mom has uterine cancer

This is her second bout with cancer.  She had breast cancer 20-30 years ago which left her with lymph problems.

Uterine cancer has a good 5 year survival rate (81% overall, 95% if it hasn’t spread).

She has an appointment for the end of the December to discuss a hysterectomy and that’s all we know.

A lot of weirdnesses about holiday planning this year make a lot of sense now.  Turns out DH’s worries that something was wrong with his parents’ health were right.

I am cautiously optimistic, after having read up on uterine cancer.  I don’t think I can have the capacity to believe something will go wrong at this point and won’t until there’s more information.  My brain does its future planning thing where it’s like, who will fill all these functions she fills, but then it completely shuts off and refuses to go there and moves to how can we provide support during medical treatment and during our trip which is a much healthier and more useful line of mental planning.  (We’re bringing more masks and more covid tests for one– if any of the 8 kids is sniffling this year we’ll have tests and appropriately-sized masks for all.  We also plan to be on little kid duty.).  The nurse-themed hand sanitizer lanyard and mini hand sanitizers I picked up for her (I wanted to meet a free shipping price from bath and bodyworks) seem an even more appropriate gift now.  We’re also going to provide a sampler of masks that DH likes for his dad who has been even better about mask wearing than DH’s mom has.  Covid doesn’t seem to be super prevalent where they live, but RSV and flu are filling up the hospitals there too.

DH, naturally, is very worried.

Ask the grumpies: What do you want to keep from pandemic-life?

Lisa asks:

One thing I am particularly interested in right now is what people want things to look like “post-COVID”. For example, you talk about probably not being back in the office full time in the fall, but why should we ever go back to the office full time if there are some things we can do more productively from another space? I’m trying to think outside the box beyond having “home” days and “office” days (which is what I’m doing now while two kids are still in remote school) and imaging a mix of things, like coming home when my kids come home from school or perhaps working from home sometimes while the kids are at school and working in the office in the evenings. In a flexible work environment, there’s no reason (in my opinion) to go back to the way things “have always been”. I am trying to grant myself permission to work the schedule that works best for me. I do have the great privilege of tenure to back me up, but am passing this permission and flexibility on to the trainees who work in my lab as well. I hope we will continue to livestream seminars – of course I’d rather be there in person to get a cookie and socialize a bit (remember cookies and socializing?), but it’s SOOO convenient to be able to tune in wherever I am and listen to the speaker. I love the grocery pickup service offered by my favorite local store and will stick with that for sure. I’d love to hear what others are planning to keep from this past year, or ways they’ll modify “normal” going forward.

I asked my students a similar question– what do they want to keep in terms of teaching.  Do they want zoom office hours or the ability to stream in to class when they’re sick etc.

The livestream seminars have been a wonderful democratizing thing– all year NBER has been livestreaming a lot of its conferences and that means you don’t have to be a member of the “club” to see what some of the top economists are talking about and doing.  I’ve also been able to attend two conferences at the same time, picking and choosing talks to go to even if they normally would have been on opposite coasts of the country, which is nice for me.  I do miss talking with my conference buddies though, even if I don’t miss planes and airports.  :/

I like zoom faculty meetings much more than in-person, though most of my colleagues disagree– they miss small-talk.  I do not miss small-talk.

I’m not sure if we’ll stick with grocery pickup or if we’ll go back to shopping in person at our regular grocery store.  Instacart has been pretty terrible, so we have only been doing that about once a month or so (basically when I run out of Spindrift grapefruit fizzy water or when we need a fennel or gochujung etc.).  Curbside pickup is nice, but today we got some brown lettuce and pico de gallo that had gone bad and a personal size watermelon when they charged us for a full size, and the week before last our bag of pepperidge farm whole wheat bread was moldy.  And this is the good curbside pickup with dedicated store employees– instacart at the other store is way worse.  So we will probably go back to regular shopping most weeks.

I do think I will keep zooming RA meetings so they don’t have to come across campus.

I’m not sure what else.

What about you, Grumpy Nation?