Reasons to Stay Alive

 Today, I finally finished a book that's been on my "book-it list"  for a while: Reasons to Stay Alive. 

More or less, it's what you think--a book about depression. It's mostly memoir with a smidge of self-help; the author shares his struggles with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, and also his gradual recovery. Parts of it were a rough read, as one might expect, but parts of it were extraordinarily comforting. On the one hand, the author didn't say anything that I didn't already know...but on the other hand, I felt seen. One of depression's most common weapons is its way of isolating us, making us feel completely alone and like no one else has ever gone through anything like it. So, it's reassuring to once again see a fellow soldier in the trenches. 

Towards the back of the book, the author shares some reasons to stay alive, reasons he had crowdsourced from people online. The reasons were in turns poignant, petty, painful, profound--and all resonated, in some way or another. And it made me think--it can't hurt to have my own list of reasons to stay alive. It's probably a good thing to have in my "toolkit." So, without further ado...

Reasons to Keep Buggering On

• First and foremost: there is a small clutch of people who would be left completely devastated if I exited this Earth. So, I gotta stick around. In other words: Love and duty are the foremost reasons to stay alive. 
• My cats. I'm responsible for these handsome, entitled little fuckers; I give them love and cuddles and food and kindness and shelter, and they are my responsibility. 
• The music of First Aid Kit--both their existing body of work, and whatever future delights they will produce
• Thunderstorms, particularly as they are approaching
• The cacophony of crickets and cicadas on warm summer nights
• The silent glow of fireflies lighting up those same summer nights
• The hugs of both of my brothers-in-law. Seriously, those dudes can hug.
• My Aunt Jo's cooking
• My Eldest Sister's Cooking
• Chris Evans as Captain America
• David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor
• All the books that I still have to read
• The words "crockery" and "cookery". Seriously, what great words!
• My sisters
• Tacos!
• Also, cupcakes. 
• All the places I haven't yet explored with my Travel Companion and North Star, Brian
• The simple contentment that comes on a random day, on which nothing remarkable happens one way or the other
• The sound of ocean waves breaking on the shore
• A good night of sleep, and the feeling of refreshment that comes in the morning
• Also, the feeling of faith that I cannot shake when I say, things may look better in the morning.

What are your reasons to stay alive?

Keep Calm and Read On. Unless You Can't. That's Okay, Too.

 In 2013, I read 142 books. At one point, I joked that it was because I was at my unhappiest point of my life, and was trying to escape. 

In 2016, the number of books I read plummeted to 76; I joked that it was because I had returned to Indiana, and was at the happiest point of my life.

And then, in 2020... I read 41 books.

That's an astonishingly low number, given how much of the year I spent shut indoors, isolated from everyone. But upon further consideration, I don't think it's so shocking. I know that in March, April, and May of 2020 especially, my concentration was shot. I simply couldn't focus. Many of my friends and colleagues agreed that they were having the same issues. Now, of course, I understand that we all were (and still are) enduring a traumatic situation in real-time, and naturally there will be some impact on us and our minds. 

Fortunately, as the year went on, I was able to shake off some of my mental torpor, and I buckled down to the arduous task of literary escapism, resulting in the aforementioned 41 books read. I logged them all in my Goodreads account, which is rather fortunate--my dear friend Anna recently asked for a rundown on my "pandemic reads", and in reviewing my 2020 Booklist on Goodreads, I am absolutely floored by how many of them I simply do not remember reading. Like, I know I read them. But damned if I remember much about them at all. Trauma, amirite?

So, without further ado, here are the highlights of my "Pandemic Reads"

No one can do narrative nonfiction like Erik Larson. Whether he's recounting the Titanic's last hours, a serial killer in Chicago, or a selfish socialite in Hiter's Berlin, this man can sure as shit tell a story that makes you want to read just one more chapter. Last spring, as the weather grew warmer and the world fell down around us, I made my way through Larson's latest, an account of Winston Churchill and his inner circle during some of the worst days of the London Blitz. Vaguely, I felt as though perhaps there were some parallels between their struggles then and our struggles now, which perhaps accounts for why on occasion I lapse into some war metaphors at work, much to the bemusement and consternation of my colleagues. Anyway! Good book! And spoiler alert: Britain got its ass kicked yet didn't lose. 

Ah, the good ol' days, back when kids killed each other for entertainment...wait, that's still happening? Anyway, remember The Hunger Games? The author released a prequel in the first half of 2020 (I think? why do we bother measuring time anymore, anyway?) and Vox.com promptly called it "your apocalyptic escape from our current apocalypse." They...aren't wrong, really. This is a perfect example of my headspace at that time: I remember the basic plot of the book, but none of the details. But I didn't forget how deliciously escapist it was. 

So this last book that I'm going to mention is not technically one that I read in 2020, but it is one that I read during the apocalypse. I actually picked up this book last month, after galloping my way through the Amazon Prime show, The Expanse, which might be the single best show I've binged during the pandemic. And is based on an entire series of novels! George R.R. Martin calls the first one, Leviathan Wakes, a "kickass space epic", and while generally I think Martin is a useless lout who should fuck off into the sun...he's not exactly wrong. This series is set a few (or several; it's really not important) hundred years in the future; Earth is grossly overcrowded and has long since colonized Mars and various asteroid belts; and there is all sorts of conflicts and internecine strife and warmongering and faction building and class warfare, so...everything is basically same as it ever was. And that's before you introduce the element of extraterrestrial life, which is about to fuck everything to the sun and back, perhaps literally. 

So, there you go. A small overview of some of the books I read during a rather lackluster period of bookwhoring in my life. Feel free to pop over to my GoodReads account and see what else I've read in past, happier days and years! 

February 2020 BookIt List

The Long Petal to the Sea, by Isabelle Allende 
Strangely, I've never read anything by Allende prior to this; perhaps it's my odd aversion to magical realism. Still, I saw so much buzz building around this book that I went ahead and checked it out. Immediately I was swept up into the chaos of refugees fleeing Civil War Spain only to endure the melancholy of exile in Chile. It's a magnificent story, filled with love and history and so much of the awfulness of the 20th century...yet filled with the goodness of people, too.

Wild: From Lost to Found On the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed
I'm only, like, eight years left to the party on this one, but whatevs. This is a book that has, so far at least, aged well. Or at least, not aged poorly. I'm sure that Cheryl Strayed was quite an idiot to readers in 2012 when they first began to read of her ill-advised venture into the California wilderness; she was that same idiot when I began reading in February. I don't want to get too far into the story here, I will say that there were many parts of this book which resonated with me--particularly the author's struggle to come to terms with her family, most of whom were dead or else scattered to the winds. A particular quote, about her stepfather, gutted me: "He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered."

Why We Can't Sleep At Night: Women's New Midlife Crisis
I turn 40 in three months. And because I round up, in my own mind, at least, I'm already 40. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't bother me. And yet, turning 40 isn't what's bothering me. What's bothering me is this feeling of restlessness that seems to grow within me, month by month, as I ponder where I was, where I am, how I got here, and what comes next. I'm not unhappy. But I am...curious about what comes next. Which may be what makes me different from so many of the people described in Why We Can't Sleep: the author plunges deep into the lives of hundreds of US Gen X women, now in middle age, and the various struggles they encounter. There are rays of hope in these womens' lives, and Calhoun offers plenty of good insights, but so many of the women in this book don't seem curious. They seem defeated. Is it because I'm on the tail-end of Gen X, and inherited some of the optimism of Gen Y? Is it because of my white and first-world privilege? Is it because I'm childfree, and thus free of the grim despair that attends the knowledge that I've brought a new generation into this ugly and failing world? My life will end with me, and I am genuinely curious about the remainder of it, and what good can come of it. Still, this was a highly necessary read, and there was plenty of info that was highly relatable.

Other books I read this month this month:

     

   

2020 BookIt List: January In Review

Good golly, Miss Molly...hello, February!

My pride in getting 6 books read in January, despite my neverending sickness, is a little quelled by the fact that each of the books I read was historical fiction. That, in and of itself, isn't so much the problem. It's just that I love historical fiction, and I keep intending to branch out. So, in that sense, I kinda failed in January. Oh well, whatevs. Here's a review of the books I got through:

 The Lady and the Highway Man, The Vanished Bride, and the Widow of Rose House
I'm lumping all of these together, as they all cover my favorite historical time, The Victorian Era. The sad thing is, I'm always looking for a good Victorian novel to devour, but so much of the time, the novels I consume disappoint, somehow. Perhaps it's my expectations that are at fault, and not the novels. The Lady and the Highwayman looks to be the start of a new mystery series involving the headmistress of a lady's school and her partner-in-solving-crimes, a penny dreadful author. It wasn't awful, just not very substantial. Still, I might read a sequel. The Vanished Bride will appeal to those who are in love with the Brontës; in this novel Charlotte, Anne, and Emily, with their nogoodnik brother Branwell, are defying custom and propriety as they scamper about the Yorkshire countryside, trying to solve a mystery. The author does a rather good job with the atmospheric settings, and one does come away with a sense of each of the Brontës as individual--again, I wouldn't be adverse to reading a sequel, should this turn out to be a series. The Widow of Rose House, I found to be the most annoying and disappointing. The plot is okay enough: a scandal-riddled widow returns to America to renovate an old house; old house is haunted and no one will go near it; to avoid financial ruin, Scandalous Widow commences an association with a vaguely Doctor Who-vian Mad Scientist, who is determined to study the ghosts and put them to rest. Of course he's indifferent to scandal, and of course they fall in love. I think my beef is more with the characters--the Mad Scientist is a little to perfect, and the whole thing just felt really insubstantial. 

Basically, The Turn of Midnight is a medieval soap opera about a too-good-(and educated)-to-be-true English noblewoman and her serfs as they try to survive the Black Death and basically revolutionize medieval society. I'm not sure what it is about this book, or its predecessor The Last Hours, that appeals to me. The author does a fine job with the pacing and the unrelenting suspense, and I'm almost disappointed that there doesn't seem to be room or reason for a third book in this series.

Fortunately, not all the historical fiction I read was fluffy. One of the first books I read this year was Homegoing, a family saga that imagines and explores the experiences of Africans involved in the slave trade (both as the perpetrators and the victims), and then follows their descendants through colonisation and decolonisation in Africa, as well as Antebellum America, the Jim Crow and Great Migration years, and well into the 20th century. Now, I've read plenty of books, both fiction and nonfiction, depicting the experience of the people who were enslaved and exploited through these centuries. However, I've never read anything depicting the experiences and histories of the African people who participated in the slave trade, so this is a really valuable addition to the historical fiction genre.

Pachinko was hands -down my favorite book of January. I started reading this just last Friday at lunch, and then brought it home and had this 500+ page book finished by 11 PM that same evening. Set in Korea and Japan, mostly, starting in the 1930s, this story follows the ebb and flow of one family's fortunes as they endure and experience decades of 20th century history. The bonds of this family, fraught with love, loyalty,  conflict, duty, were a profound joy to see unfold.

So! That's my progress on my 2020 Book-It List. What did you read in January, and what was your favorite book?

52 Lists for Happiness: Week 1

Someone I knew said recently that I am "a woman of deep irony," which I think is probably pretty true. One of the ironies of my life is that when I am experiencing happiness, I usually simultaneously am filled with conflicting thoughts which potentially undermine this happinessAm I worthy of this happiness? It's fleeting, therefore it's not real. At the very least, it won't last. It's just my privilege that affords me this happiness. Etc.

(Aside: even if it is my privilege that affords me this happiness, does it make it any less genuine? Also, should I be more obligated to appreciate and experience this happiness, so that I am not wasting this opportunity and privilege?)

(See what I mean?)

Anyway, to cut this rambling short: I struggle with the concept of happiness. I also struggle with online shopping right after Christmas, which means, that this year, I ended up with this book:

So, I'll bite. Let's see what we can see.

Week 1's Project was to List What Makes You Happy Right Now. So I did: 

Looking back over my list, I'm struck by how much on that list is sensation- or productivity-based. The sound of the wind howling, of my cats purring; the feel of my warm feet on a cold night; the sight of a brightly and neatly-polished nail (preferably mine). The sense of accomplishment at the end of a productive day, knowing I've helped someone at work or been useful to a friend, feeling as though I am needed. Just as there are languages of love, I wonder, are there languages oI f happiness?

Week 1's  Challenge was to Take action. How often do you actually get to experience these things? How can you take one item on this list and turn it into a daily practice of happiness?

Upon honest reflection, I think it's possible-likely, even-that many of these things do happen on a daily basis. I call one of my sisters frequently (I'd bug the other one more if she didn't hate the phone so much); I try to have productive days every day; I often ponder old, happy memories. So perhaps in those sorts of situations, it's a question of permitting myself to relish the residual emotion (hopefully, happiness) that comes from these things. But then, does it become a situation of being hyper-aware of my thoughts and feelings and analyzing them as they happen, and then getting to the point where I am over-thinking it...

(Ugh, there I go again. For fuck's sake, brain, SHUT UP.) 

In other cases, I think there are certainly things I could do, mindfully, each day, to provoke happiness, or at least contentment. Taking 5 minutes to pet Austen and Indiana up into a purr; shooting off texts to my nearest and dearest; even tidying up my purse before I turn in each night. (Seriously, so many of the stresses and ills of my life are provoked by a messy purse which never yields up the whatever-it-is I need in that moment. Do you have the same issue?) 

Thus ends Week 1 of the 52 Lists for Happiness Project. 

A Brilliance of Books, Late June 2018 Edition

The year marches on, and here we are, almost halfway through. I'm behind in my reading goals for the year--the first few months, being the chaotic, delightful adventure that they were, didn't leave me much spare time for literary ...

I can't say that life has settled down much--that's not really what life does, after all--but I have been going about one of my favorite pasttimes with a bit more purpose. Some of the goals I tackled in May and June were:

The Cafe By the Sea-Chicklit isn't really chicklit anymore. The Great Recession put the finals nails in the coffin of that sub-genre, at least in its early form. Or perhaps chicklit has just been sucked back into the "mothership" of women's fiction. Or perhaps it's just matured into something that's a little more substantive and sensible. Either way, Cafe by the Sea is a combination of chicklit and women's fiction, with just a tiny dash of cozy. Jenny Colgan's books (fortunately) lack the glitz and glamour of New York City, and are real in their exploration of messy, realistic family dynamics...and they include lovely rural UK villages and delicious-sounding foods.

Perception-As I'm a rather nerdy, pompous bookworm who has known from a very early age that my face would not be my fortune, I've always had a wee bit of a soft spot for Mary Bennet, the plain middle sister of Pride and Prejudice who hid her shortcomings behind a bookish disdain for society and pretensions to intellectualism. And with that bias in my heart, I always gravitate towards Pride and Prejudice spin-offs in the hope of reading more about this intriguing changeling and seeing her come into her own. Perception is the one of the latest offerings, and while it was a little on the fluffy./historical romance side, I still enjoyed it. There's another possibility though, Mary B, due out later this summer, and I have rather high hopes for that one. It looks like it might less..floofy.

(I tend to consume a lot of floof. I need to counter that consumption whenever I can.)

The Silence of Ghosts--I don't often say this about a book, but I regret reading this one--at least, I regret reading it when I did. This delicious ghost story deserves to be read in darkest October, close to midnight, as the shadows of the year are closing in, and the icy fingers of seasonal death tighten their grip on the world. It's certainly a book I will happily read again.

Mrs. Osmond-Ever read Portrait of a Lady? I haven't. Saw the movie once, but I recall very little about it other than John Malcovich's overweening smarm. But I'm familiar enough with Isabel Archer, her wonderful prospects, and her very, very poor choice of husband, to enjoy this literary offering from John Banville, who explores the "what next?" after the end of Portrait. While it's technically a historical novel, it isn't primarily a historical novel--it's literary through and through. It's also a book that I will need to re-read...I devoured it for its plot, but unfortunately, this is not a book to devour. This is a book to savor. 

The Monsters of Templeton-Eldest Sister told me about this book as she was reading it...a freakin' decade ago. (It's a little disturbing that I can now break my life down into decades.) I still remember how excited her voice was as she described this book, filled with ghosts and family secrets and lake monsters and quirky characters who make all sorts of questionable life choices. Why did it take me ten years to read this?

Welp. The year marches on, and here we are--day by day, the sand in the hourglass trickles down, and there is ever-less time to read all the books that I want to. All I can do is go about it with a purpose and a plan.

A Brilliance of Books, Mid-May 2018

There were a few years there in my life where I was reading an insane amount--upwards of 125, 150 books per year.

These were also some of the unhappiest years of my life. Coincidence? Nope. Not even a little bit. Books were my escape, of course, but they were also a way for me to mark progress through something. Stagnated as I was in my career, trapped and immobile as I felt in my life, there was (I thought) little room to move forward, to progress in life projects. So, page after page, I moved through stories, moved through piles of books. In hindsight, I wonder if there was something a bit...compulsive about it?

And now, here I am, in 2018.So far this year, I've not even managed 30 books. Sure, we could chalk it up to me juggling all the jobs in Bloomington, and moving households, but also, I think it's got something to do with the fact that I am just...happy. I'm occupied with pursuits and people and projects, and while I still love to read, I feel like maybe it's become a bit more proportional to the other facets of my life.  

What I've Read This Month, So Far:

Ann Rinaldi, Brooklyn Rose
Have any of you ever read anything by Ms. Rinaldi? I know I did, a very long time ago, and of course she came up in my children's literature class back in library school. This prolific author produces a lot of historical fiction, focusing on momentous events told through the mouths of fictional characters--indentured servants of Abigail Adams, or wards of the haberdasher to Queen Victoria, or some such. It's a bit of a cliched literary device, to be sure, but it certainly is one way to get young folks reading about history. Early this month, I stumbled across Rinadli's name somehow, and got it into my head that I should read something of hers. So, I checked out the title that I found the least ridiculous  that sounded the most appealing, and spent an evening reading about Rose, a Southern gal who marries into a wealthy Northern family and must test her mettle against her overbearing mother-in-law. Verdict: Entertaining enough, but by no means earth-shattering.

Mariah Fredericks, A Death of No Importance
Now this--this book was one of those that it was a true pleasure to read, that I hated to put down, and hated, too, when it was finished. A murder mystery, this was, set in 1910 New York City, and told through the voice of Jane Prescott, a ladies maid to the Benchleys, a nouveau riche family learning to navigate high society. Throw in a gruesome murder, some violent anarchists, and suspicious characters with no end of motives, and you gain a good read, and lose a night to its consumption.

Anne Easter Smith, Daughter of York
Originally, this book caught my notice out in California, when one of my colleagues nominated it for a staff pick. It looked vaguely interesting, so I threw it on my GoodReads list...where it proceeded to languish for the next eight years. I took up this doorstopper this month more to get it off my damned list than for any other reason. It tells the story of the War of the Roses in the voice of Margaret of York, Duchess Consort of Burgundy, who was sister to two Kings of England. I plowed through this a little bit at a time during my lunch breaks the last two weeks, and it was one of those that held my attention enough as I was reading it, but didn't stick very long in my memory otherwise.

Kerry Greenwood, Murder and Mendelssohn
The twentieth (and latest) installment in the Miss Fisher mystery series, this books is now four years old, and I've heard nary a peep about further books illustrating the intrepid antics of Australia's most fabulous flapper. So I read this book as slowly as I could, but there are only so many ways that one conductor can possibly be killed (my personal favorite was him choking to death on a choral score), and finally, I turned the last page. I miss Phryne already.

What I'm Reading Now (Not pictured):

Kintsugi Wellness and Harvard Business Review's 10 Must Reads for New Managers

Extrapolate from that what you will.




Now excuse me while I go on to my next book, which is...a historical novel.

A Brilliance of Books: March 2018

Fare thee well, March. We'll not see the likes of you again! As months go, this was a rather... ooooof kind of month. In addition to the usual work and life stuff, I was rather focused on getting The Haggery settled, as well as pursuing a couple of substantial professional undertakings. As a result, my recreational reading time was a bit limited, and my ability to really devote attention to what I was reading was, too. What's a Book Bitch to do?

Decimate the local library's collection of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, that's what. 

Now, my mother-in-law turned me onto the television series back in 2015, on a lazy weekend that I spent with her down in San Diego. I was--and am--addicted to that sumptuous, gorgeous show, but there are plenty of differences between the books and the tv series, so I can enjoy each on their own merits.

And so, whenever I had a spare moment this month, I'd hunker down on the couch, under a blanket, and immerse myself in the world of 1928 Australia and the society of the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher, a rags-to-riches socialite with a knack for accumulating waifs, making wise investments, and alternately seducing, charming, and buying her way to the bottom of the crimes she solves as a "lady investigator. 

There is so much to enjoy in these books--Splendid secondary characters, including her Communist muscle men Bert and Cec, her devout companion Dot, and the long-suffering Detective Inspector Jack "Call me Jack, everyone does" Robinson. Beguiling descriptions of food, 1920s society, and haute fashion. And truly amusing dialogue...for example: "The night would degenerate into the usual problems of an orgy: where to put what and where and when, and how to find room for one's elbows", or, with reference to some hotel's housemaids, Bert knew "that some of the Sailor's Rest young women had professions which might involve beds but did not involve making them." 

The plots sometimes seem to rely heavily on coincidences, and Miss Fisher--beautiful, wealthy, generous, clever, very sexually accomplished, remarkably open-minded for her time period, and quite skilled in exotic dancing, nude modeling, art investing, race car driving, aeroplane flying, and god only knows what else--from time to time comes perilously close to Mary Sue territory. But as she is a fearless explorer, that's not much of a surprise. 

I'm up to book 15 in the series, and there are only 20 at this point. I'm going to be quite adrift--gutted, really--when I'm caught up, and I'll have to return to more high-minded reading. Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is like a rather pleasant, not entirely but still slightly frivolous vacation from the literary world, and it was definitely one that I needed this month.

Another Homecoming

Well and so! Another August--my second one back here in Bloomington--draws to a close. Other than a few brutally hot days, it's been unusually mild and dry, and while I'm no expert when it comes to leaf science (is that a thing?), I wonder if this weather has anything to do with the red and orange pops of color that are already here in the trees.

With the end of August comes the inevitable return of the students. And here is a rather unexpected development--the students are not the only ones returning to Indiana University. I am, too.

Two weeks ago, I stood before a class of library science students. Eleven and twelve and thirteen years ago, I had been one of those students, sitting in that same classroom, prepared to absorb the information my instructors were about to impart. Now, I am one of those instructors, teaching Collection Development. Strange to think that I'm now a little bit of an expert, at least in terms of having over a decade of professional, practical public library experience, which is apparently a marketable commodity.

So. It seems I've come home, in every sense of the word.

The basement halls and lockers around which  I and my friends and fellow students hung around now echo--other students cluster around them, of course, but all of my people--even the most of the professors I knew--have shuffled on to other things--other jobs, retirement, even death. Now, down these halls I walk, an almost middle-aged woman, missing those who populated my youth.  I try to hold myself rather accountable--"I'm not chasing some lost youth or fanciful second chance, am I?"  But still, I'm simply grateful to be here once more. It's another way to be useful and occupied and to try and lead a life of significance, if not success.

And I now have a solid reason to spend time on this beautiful campus, observing the lively, hopeful students, being challenged intellectually and professionally, roaming the stacks of the Wells Library.

Here, at least, things have not changed. These books, also my friends, have not left. They greet me, as they greet all, with a studied, passive indifference, but they accept me. They are steady, and change only as much as the people who read them (or revise them) change and project their own thoughts and interpretations onto the texts.

Most comforting of all: the campus, while now boasting of old buildings with sometimes-new names, and a few new buildings and cosmetic features, hasn't changed much either. It's still lush and green and a little bit abandoned in high summer, a little bit burnt-brown and a lot crowded in the late summer, but the land endures. The thoughts and personalities and hopes and sadnesses and worries and insouciant joys of thousands of students seep their way into the trees, the paths, the soil, becoming part of the story of our university, becoming the stories that nobody hears, but that endure nonetheless. A dozen years ago, I was one of those students, and my story became part of the university. Now I'm back to write another chapter.  

There are many, many things that I disliked about my California exile. One of the more ironic things (given my line of work) that plagued my time there was the fact that I was never able to get a good book club going. What makes a good book club? Good books, good wine, good snacks...and good people who, you know, actually read the book. I eventually got fed up with the women who turned up and said sheepishly, "I didn't get a chance to read the book this month..."

A couple of months back, when I was working the Reference Desk, I helped a woman find a book. She mentioned that it was for her book club.

"Oooh, where's your book club?"

An impish smile tugged at her lips. "It's just me and my friends." She paused, lowered her voice. "We call it Read The Book Or Get The Fuck Out."

I've found my people.

Last Wednesday, on a weirdly stormy evening, I went to C3, a pretentious neighborhood (not my neighborhood) bar for the first book group meeting of the year. Other than the woman who originally told me about their group, I hadn't met any of the other members. Yet within a few minutes of meeting these women, I plunged into a fantastic conversation about books. Is there anything better than talking about books? 

Eventually, we got around to talking a little about the books--The Glass Castle and Echo--one of which we each had to read. Here's the funniest part about the whole evening--we probably spent 5, 10 minutes, tops, talking about those specific books. And then we went back to talking about other books. But hey, we all read the books we were supposed to. None of us had to get the fuck out. 

The evening was a long one, filled with lots of conversation. I talked--I'm good at that--but I also spent a lot of time listening and observing these women. We ranged in age, from 34 to 44. All of these lovely ladies sported sparkling diamond rings on their wedding ring finger. Most of them spoke of children. All of them spoke pretty lovingly about their husbands, their shared lives and interests. 

What is that? Speaking to these women, I felt like I was catching a glimpse of some sort of weird, parallel universe. Like I was this close to being one of these women, but for some quirk, some twist of timing and fate, I missed the boat that was sailing towards Normal Life Isle.

Do I miss that sort of life? Sometimes I do. That night, I did.

I read to hear stories about other people, to gain insights, to re-learn empathy, to travel outside my own head, to ponder different possibilities. And that night last week--and many nights in the future, I hope--I didn't need the books to ponder different possibilities. Those lovely ladies gave me a glimpse into another world. I'm not sure I want that world, but I'm not turning away from it just yet, either. And I'm definitely not going to get the fuck out.