…

Ah, the holiday season. A time of joy and laughter and relaxation. Days full of mirth and miracles and magic. A period of reflection, introspection, and appreciation. The most wonderful time of the year!

Until you turn twenty.

After that, it’s the rigors of end-of-term exams, or the hassle of traveling home via crowded airports and interstates, or the stress of finding fabulous gifts for all your family and friends – without zeroing out your bank account. Growing up is the difference between believing in Santa Claus and being Santa Claus.

…

MJ begins her holiday journey stranded in the UK. Her flight to Newark has been canceled, and if she doesn’t get another one soon, she won’t make it home in time for Christmas.

Claudia decides to drive from her new home in the Midwest back to Texas. Since Eli is flying to see his family, she’s in charge of their puppy Max, who whines incessantly for thirty miles. Her nerves are shot by the time she crosses the first state line, and there are still twelve more hours to go.

Sophie, of course, is working on Christmas Eve. Technically it’s a holiday, but in reality their biggest international client could care less. A deadline is a deadline.

…

Rather than crowd the service desk with all the other disgruntled Americans, MJ sits patiently at what was supposed to be her gate. Airline staff discuss the remaining flights over their walkie talkies, and MJ realizes there are just four seats available for nearly a hundred passengers. She sighs and stands, headed for the pay phones to call her parents and deliver the bad news. Just then, a nearby elderly man loses his grip on the armful of packages he is carrying. MJ quickly catches them before they crash to the floor.

“Oh, thank you! These are toys for my grandchildren. I guess I got a little carried away buying so many…” He smiles sheepishly. In no rush to catch a flight, MJ helps carry the gifts all the way to the Arrivals area, where the man’s daughter is waiting with her twin boys.

When MJ returns to her gate, one of the airline staff members motions for her to come over to his desk. When she gets there, he hands her a ticket. “I saw what you did for that old man,” he says. She starts to protest, feeling guilty as she thinks of all the other people at the service counter who surely want to return to their families too, but he cuts her off. “You started the holiday cheer. I’m just following your lead.”

…

Somewhere in Oklahoma, Claudia feels a weird bump as she drives over an old bridge. Suddenly her car tilts and begins to make an awful thumping noise. She pulls over on the side of the interstate and sees the flat tire. She wants to cry, but Max is already making more of a fuss than she ever could.

She remembers an exit not too far back, with signs advertising food and gas. She is debating whether or not to walk back when a car pulls off the road and stops in front of hers. As it reverses, she discreetly slips her cellphone into her pocket and hits 9-1. She waits to see what else will happen before dialing the rest.

A man emerges from the car and says, “Need a hand?”

Wary, she shakes her head.

“You’ve got a flat,” he says. “I can change it for you.”

She’s about to say no again, but a small voice interrupts her. “Daddy, where are we?” A little girl pokes her head up from the back seat of the man’s car.

After he explains to his daughter that he’s going to help this nice young lady whose car has a problem, Claudia hangs up her phone and shows him the spare in her trunk. When he finishes, Claudia wonders if it would be inappropriate to give him money as a thank you for his assistance. She reaches for her purse, but he shakes his head. “That’s not necessary,” he says. “When I saw you on the side of the road, I pictured my own little girl.”

They both look over to his car, and are surprised to see not just his daughter, but Max as well. The girl heard his puppy cries and came over to let him out. She holds his leash firmly as they play carefully away from the road, and he licks her hands and face enthusiastically.

…

At the office of Arden Advertising, Sophie rubs her eyes and glances at the clock. MJ should be landing shortly, and Claudia is probably settling in at home. Meanwhile Sophie is facing another hour or two at work.

The only silver lining is that she isn’t alone. Among those assigned to her project is the new and gorgeous copywriter Diego. He’s very talented, but she can tell he is still nervous about his new setting, his new country. Throughout the night, the team members stray off-topic, discussing their upcoming holiday or new year plans. Only Diego stays silent. And Sophie notices.

As they are finally wrapping up, she approaches him in the corner of the conference room. “Diego, are you doing anything special for the holidays?”

“No… My family is all in Venezuela, and it is too expensive and too late to fly back to be with them.” The wistful look on his beautiful face breaks Sophie’s heart.

“Do you want to come to my place?” she asks. His hesitation prompts her to clarify. “For Christmas dinner! Tonight. I’m having a few friends over to celebrate.”

In reality, it is just supposed to be her and X, who is back home for the holidays. Their plan was to have a quiet night together catching up, and then she would drop him off at his parents’ house in the morning on the way to her own. But she knows of a couple other people she can call in a pinch, and she figures X won’t mind – too much – that she wanted to make a new coworker feel welcome.

Diego smiles, and this time Sophie’s heart melts.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you. I would like that very much.”

…

Some do it for strangers, some for their children, some for just a smile. Santa does it for cookies and milk. Whatever your reasons, be sure to spread some holiday cheer this season. It’s the best gift you can give.

You know, every time I write passionately about pop culture, someone will inevitably tell me to lighten up. It’s fiction, idiot. It’s make believe, dumbass. It’s not real, loser. Get a life! This is always terribly edifying. I’m so glad someone finally let me know.

Aside from wondering why these people are on a pop culture site in the first place since they’re clearly so busy doing important things with their lives like collecting unicorn tears to cure global drought, I always want to ask if they think art – even popular art – happens in a vacuum. Sure, we use it to entertain. But we also use it to illuminate, to educate, to elucidate, to fascinate. At its best it’s not just a mirror to reflect our current reality, but a powerful looking glass which we can travel through to imagine a world exactly how we want it.

And popular art, pop culture, matters exactly because of its popularity. It’s our mass opiate, but with more than just the ability to get us high. It came make us think. It can help change who we are.

So here’s to art, in all its forms, the high brow and the low brow. The popular and obscure. The message filled and even mindless. May we never stop demanding it be better. May we always look to it to show us who we are, and who we’d like to be.

Homer: “I just hope we put in enough steampunk. Whatever that is.”

LOL! Big thanks to Sonje for telling me about it.

 
Me in the afternoon vs. me in the evening. (Credit: Sailor Moon screencaps.)

In fairness, it wasn’t JUST Maureen. A staggering number of authors/writers/bloggers linked to my post “A reminder about what really matters” – like the INTERN, Stephanie Perkins, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Kate Hart, Carrie Ryan, Lisa Schroeder, even agent Michelle Wolfson, among many, many others. To say I was floored would be putting it mildly. More like I went right past the floor, down through the earth’s crust and into the core.

The rush of traffic from everyone’s Twitter followers (thousands!) had me dazed and grinning all afternoon. Y’all’s comments blew me away. I had no idea that what I’d written would affect and resonate with so many people. I’m glad it did.

But then, around 5 p.m. my website crashed. I had a very basic hosting plan, which had served me fine for years, but it couldn’t handle the sudden spike. After hemming and hawing (and hoping things would magically fix themselves — because, you know, they always do??) I ended up having to switch to a new host, which got me up and running within an hour. Luckily I had a backup of my site from last week, and I was able to copy and paste recent comments from my inbox. Stressful, but successul.

Live and learn and upgrade your servers, eh?

(Still, I really regret all that downtime, when people who may have been trying to come here got “this account has been suspended for bandwidth overage” instead. If you know anyone who wanted to read the post and couldn’t, please let them know it’s up again!)

Anyway, I know that this incident, like the one in October, is just another “15 minutes of fame.” But it’s still exciting and encouraging to see my name linked in any way, shape, or form with so many writers that I admire. It’s also … interesting, for lack of a better word, that something I wrote took on such a life of its own. I mean, it’s only a blog post. I can’t imagine the magnitude of what I might feel when something “bigger” (a personal essay, a short story, a novel) takes off.

Or rather, I can imagine it, and I can’t wait.

2. Spread kindness, positive energy, and creativity.

3. Enjoy life.

First, I have to say “Happy Birthday!” to my little guy. Hard to believe it, but he’s 4 years old today. Or 28 in dog years, which makes him older than me and Andy… But shh, don’t tell him that! He already tends to think he’s in charge.

Second, thanks to e-publishing Twenty-Somewhere, I would call myself an “accidental indie author,” and today I’m over at All Things Books as part of a month-long Indie Authors Bash. I ended up blogging about book covers, and how all books (traditional or indie) need to have good ones, because they are like the handshake of the publishing world. I’d be honored if you would hop over and show me and hostess Tanya some love. Danke!

Last but not least, my friend Angie wrote a great post about “The Power of Sharing,” and how her family has gradually opened up about her sister’s developmental disabilities. They even helped start a nonprofit for families who are caring for members with special needs. Angie has always humbled me with the love, patience, and concern she shows for her sister, so when she says that her parents are her inspiration, you can imagine how great they are.

…

The other day I read someone’s Twitter bio and laughed. Then I thought, Maybe I should change my bio to something funnier. But wait, I’m not good at funny! “Sorry, I don’t do funny.” Would that be funny? No, it wouldn’t… I guess my Twitter bio is okay. I mean, it’s friendly. And honest. And that pretty much sums me up.

This happens from time to time. This desire to be funny — or pretty — to be memorable, really — creeps up on me occasionally. But I’m not that person. I’m not Rachel Green, the fashionable, sexy girl that everyone hits on. And I’m not Chandler, with his sarcastic jokes, or Joey and Phoebe, with their silly quirks. I’m not the instant or usual favorite.

No, I’m Monica and Ross. I’m a Geller.

I’m a little bit nerd, a little bit weird. I don’t always say the right thing, and when I’m passionate about something, I can come on kind of strong. (Or awkward.) I’m close with my family, borderline spoiled, proud of my intelligence, yet surprisingly dumb/dense about things.

I also have shiny brown hair.

Basically, I’m someone you have to get to know in order to love. But once you do, we’ll probably be friends for life! That’s just how I roll.

And I’m okay with all that. Because contrary to what it sometimes feels like, life is NOT a popularity contest. At the end of the day, your happiness and self-worth are not going to be determined by the number of Twitter followers you have, or Facebook friends, or RSS subscribers, or daily pageviews, or whatever. Those are not the measurements that count. In fact, most of what counts can’t be measured at all.

(For example, it’s not the number of real life friends you have either. What matters is the quality of the relationships in your life, not the quantity.)

So embrace who you are. Even if who you are isn’t funny or pretty or retweet-worthy. Be memorable in your own way. Be you.

2. Today I’m over at Writer Unboxed talking about bad/blah books and why I’ve learned to put them down. Some people come to this realization more quickly than I did, especially with bad books. But I want to stress here that I’m including BLAH books now too — the ones that are oh-kaay, and you kind of want to know what happens, but you’re just not enjoying reading them. For me, those are much harder to put down than flat-out bad books, but just as important to abandon (if not more so). Read the post to find out why.

(For the record, both surgeries went well, and Andy has already flown twice since the CAT incident.)

The thing about the internet is, it’s forever. And also, it’s full of strangers. And though I may think I’m saying something harmless, I don’t really know who’s reading or how they might interpret my words.

In general, I’m not one of those people who fears that what they say will get twisted and shoved back in their face. I believe in the goodness and rationality of mankind. I figure that if someone misunderstands me — or even if I really do mess up and say something stupid — I can clarify and be forgiven. Life will go on.

Furthermore, who’s really listening, right? I’m not John Green or Heather Armstrong or Ashton Kutcher. I have my little circle of friends (you guys ROCK, btw) so what’s there to worry about?

Well, that’s where the “forever” part comes in. In real life, when we have late night conversations with our friends, where we ramble for so long that we start to forget what we’re saying even as it comes out of our mouths, it’s no big deal. We’re expressing a single thought in a single moment. Then the moment passes. Like a footprint in the sand, the thought has made it’s impression, and then it gets washed away. Harmless.

On the internet, moments don’t pass. They can be stumbled upon or searched for, days or weeks or years later. Even deleting your words doesn’t guarantee that they can’t be found. (Thanks, Google cache.) Maybe I’m not famous now. Maybe I don’t have enemies or “haters” yet. But maybe someday I will.

Look, I don’t believe in living my life in fear. But I also don’t believe in living in ignorance. So all I’m trying to say is, sometimes I don’t know how much to say.

(I realize that for something like health scares and traumatic plane rides, I’m probably safe. Short of crazies or trolls, no one’s going to attack me about that stuff. But this issue of “what you say online” has been on my mind for a while. And not just for my own blog, but also for comments, and discussions boards, and Twitter, and everything.)

It’s funny, because this is part of why we all blog, right? We want someone to read our words, to connect, to respond. It’s not about agreeing all the time (because wow, that’d be boring). It’s about sharing experiences, ideas, and opinions. It’s about learning and growing and feeling. It’s about adding our thread of life to this vast digital web.

So I’m not going to stop blogging, and I’m not going to stop getting personal. But I guess I just wanted to say that it’s not always easy. That there are valid concerns, and I don’t always know what to do about them. So I have to proceed as I would with anything else: the best I can, and with good intentions. Hopefully that’s enough.

Same rules as usual: Please leave a comment below and let me know which of these 2 books you’re interested in. If you’re interested in both, that’s fine. You have until the end of this month to enter, and then I’ll draw names at random and announce the winners on Mon, Oct 3rd. Must have US mailing address — sorry, international friends!

Images and descriptions courtesy of GoodReads.

On Beauty
By Zadie Smith

Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African American wife Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children — Jerome, Zora and Levi — are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives.

After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive older son, Jerome, escapes to England for the holidays. In London he defies everything the Belseys represent when he goes to work for Trinidadian right-wing academic and pundit, Monty Kipps. Taken in by the Kipps family for the summer, Jerome falls for Monty’s beautiful, capricious daughter, Victoria.” But this short-lived romance has long-lasting consequences, drawing these very different families into each other’s lives. As Kiki develops a friendship with Mrs. Kipps, and Howard and Monty do battle on different sides of the culture war, hot-headed Zora brings a handsome young man from the Boston streets into their midst whom she is determined to draw into the fold of the black middle class — but at what price?

Broetry
By Brian McGackin

As contemporary poets deliver entire volumes on subjects like incest, menstruation, and pine cones, regular guys are left scratching their heads. Who will speak for Everyman? Who will articulate his love for Xbox 360, for Mama Celeste’s Frozen Pizza, for any movie starring Bruce Willis?

Enter Broetry. “Broet Laureate” Brian McGackin goes where no poet has gone before — to Star Wars conventions, to frat parties, to video game tournaments, and beyond. With poems like “Ode to That Girl I Dated for, Like, Two Months Sophomore Year” and “My Friends Who Don’t Have Student Loans,” we follow the Bro from his high school graduation and college experience through a “quarter-life crisis” and beyond. Packaged in a small gifty hardcover and illustrated with tasteful black and white illustrations, Broetry is a funny and sly look at modern masculinity.