Scratch and Sniff or, because it's all been said

I have a strange relationship with Bartlett’s Famous Quotations. We seem to have four or five different editions sitting around the house, the one from 1955 being a bit worse for wear. I’d say it smells a bit like the 1940′s, if I didn’t know better. I also have a strange habit of smelling books in order to ascertain what year they are from.

Depending on how and where they were stored, sniffing the pages can usually give you a pretty accurate idea as to when it was published. Plus, books just smell good. New books aren’t bad, but they don’t have much aroma. Still, I can tell when I walk into a Barnes and Noble on scent alone. Though the ever-present Starbucks may help with that.

But back to the Bartlett’s thing; every day I flip to a random page in Bartlett’s and pick a quote to mull around my brain for the day. Sometimes I will pick an author or two, and take more than one quote with me. This usually happens when I am not in the mood to be serious all day. Or even half the day.

Fitzgerald was today’s random pick: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

The other is curtosey of E.B. White:

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time.”

I’ve gotten some strange looks when I mention the fact that I am reading Bartlett’s. But I don’t find this obsession with Bartlett’s particularly alarming, as most of time time, whatever you want to say has been said better by someone else.

I was raised in the tradition of these expat writers, to some degree. E.B. White doesn’t exactly count, and I’m on the fence about James Thurber’s expat status, but I’ve always grouped them with the lot. I still remember having Hemmingway, Thurber and White read to me as a child.

White isn’t that surprising of a choice, but James Thurber’s Fables for Our Time probably messed me up for good.

"Early to rise and early to bed
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.”

It’s possible that I was a rather sarcastic and fatalistic 6-year old.

Idle Hands and Post-Its

"Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach." - William Ellery Channing

I tend to have some problems with motivation, I am easily distracted by shiny objects. Post-it notes and quotes are my current cure for the common de-motivation. Put quotes on the Post-its, and the Post-its over the shiny objects. Problem solved.

My current problem to solve is finding a way to actually utilize my college degree. It’s collecting some dust, and getting a bit annoyed with me. Occasionally (usually while I’m deliriously tired) it will call me up and try to have a chat about our future.

It usually affects some strange mix between a British and Boston accent (which I’ve always thought would sound more Irish), and berates me for not going down to D.C. and “camping out in front of government buildings until someone gives me a job”. But then I point out that “Perhaps there is a better way? Like… putting in resumes?” To which my BA degree replies, “Hm… yes, I suppose so. SO why don’t you get on that?” It tricks me into that quite often.

I proclaim myself unemployed, though only because I am not currently employed in a job that I view as desirable. Unemployment can be approached as an insurmountable obstacle or an opportunity. I have watched others who are unemployed, or employed outside their areas of interest, grow morose and hopeless. In some ways, unemployment is like standardized tests.

If approached as something to fear, it is difficult to fare well. But when approached as a challenge, it becomes something to analyse and defeat. And maybe even have some fun with. That’s not to say a retail job is the best time of anyone’s life, but taking life as it comes works out better than trying to fight it every step of the way.

Oh, and actually settling down and sending in copious amounts of resumes helps as well.

So, perhaps another fitting Channing quote (to place on the Post-it note covering the “Facebook” tab on my browser): "Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. "