I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

- from simulator (photojournal), scooped via Rose, cross-posted at Just Between Us

“Wave.” A variation on shake.

I’ve asked myself all the “what if” questions this past week like: What if I don’t make money? What if I get lazy? What if I end up like so-and-so who has talent but sits around all day afraid of the world? What if I really don’t have talent? But I figure the only what if question that really matters is: What if I don’t try this?

What if?

- Girl at Play, Alex Beauchamp

My insightful (and soon-to-be-married!!) friend Erin asked this question on her blog recently, and it got me thinking: “Are we asking less and talking more?”

When I get together with other writer friends, some other people in the arts, even, we usually don’t converse with question-and-answer conversations. We usually volunteer information in a back and forth manner… One could go an entire — fulfilling, polite, engaging — conversation like that, without really asking questions of the other person…

Which leads me to wonder: are we all a little bit more self-centered in this age of readily available status information?

My thought is yes, although I don’t know if it’s because of the readily available status information, or vice versa. Would Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or (dare I say it) blogs be popular at all if it weren’t for a generation that grew up thinking we were special and should make our voices heard?

As I (theoretically) mature, I try to keep an eye out for things about myself that I can improve, and this self-focus issue is a big one for me. It’s not that I don’t care about other people — precisely the opposite! I am fascinated by other people and genuinely want to connect to them, yet I often find myself walking away from a conversation wondering why I started every other sentence with “I.” I think it’s because that’s how I was taught to relate to people: show them I can identify by contributing a similar personal experience. Only sometimes, that hijacks the conversation away from them. So I’m working on asking more questions and leaving “I” out of it. (When I can remember…)

Erin goes on:

…we’re all in touch in a way we could not have been a generation ago — scant years ago. And we’re in touch while barely communicating. I haven’t heard the actual voice of many of my friends who live far away in months and years. We talk casually via the internet and social media and that’s it. We haven’t seen or spoken to each other “IRL” or “in RL” or “in real life” — but is that bad? (And what’s real or, conversely, fake, about these online communications?) Does this represent a degeneration of personal communication, or is this an efficient streamlining of it? We can stay in contact with multiple people at once; we can multitask socializing. Is that a good thing?

Haha, depends who you ask. Again I say yes, it’s a good thing, even though I miss my friends’ voices. I mostly feel this way because I’m not a fan of the phone. I just can’t concentrate on it! (I also don’t like someone being able to reach me anytime they want, although selfishly I like to be able to reach out to someone whenever I want.) But with chats or emails, I’m in control of when I reply, and I can keep in touch with more people pretty efficiently.

Face-to-face communication with friends is almost always preferred, because it’s the most fun, but as the world becomes more accessible and we all start moving in our own directions, I’m so grateful we have the technology in place to make thousands of miles feel like hardly any distance at all.

Anyway, there’s more to the whole discussion, and I don’t think either Erin or myself have or expect any definitive answers, but I enjoyed reading her post because it mirrored a conversation I’d had in my head many times in the past year.

(And yes, I regularly hold conversations with myself in my head. Sometimes even with my mirror. Don’t you? Or is that just me? If it is, I blame Andy, who is always happier when I’m quiet.)

I’m feeling more or less human again, so that’s a plus. But for the past two days I had little to no energy, which means sleeping, reading, and watching TV were about the only activities I could manage. Thus I did end up plunging through New Moon (not as good as Twilight) and Eclipse (not as good as Twilight but better than New Moon).

I also took some time to read a few speeches and essays by Alice Hoffman, who wrote the book behind one of my favorite movies, Practical Magic. I’m horribly embarrassed to admit I haven’t read any of her books, despite wanting to, but I loved a lot of what she had to say in these articles.

From “On Being a Woman, A Writer, and A Citizen of the World”:

Professor Guerard, who was both a scholar and a novelist, believed that the most important aspect of being a writer was the writer’s voice, and that it was this unique aspect – so original and singular it was like a fingerprint – that made for great writing. The writer’s voice was made up of childhood experience, childhood readings, adult reading and experience, along with dreams and desires. A writer often began to find his or her voice by imitating the writers with whom he or she felt an emotional connection.

From “Sustained By Fiction While Facing Life’s Facts”:

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

From “Nothing Is As Healing As a Book”:

Often the people who succeed, in spite of the difficulties they may face, have one thing in common. They read. They are the people who can escape into a book, who know there are other worlds to be found. They are the ones who carry books with them to movie theaters and street corners, who lock themselves in the bathroom to read when everyone in the house is too noisy, who open a new chapter when the world outside their windows is too horrible or disappointing or simply too fast. They have hope because they know that once upon a time there was a boy or a girl, a woman or a man, who managed to survive. Somewhere, among the pages and the print, there was someone who found solace or justice or truth, or maybe just a chance to tell her own story.