Scaredy Cat.

You know that nagging feeling that tells you you could be doing so much more with your life? That little voice that’s always in the back of your head? I’ve been trying to kill mine for a while now. I thought I’d succeeded, and maybe I did…. maybe more likely I just scared it away for a little while.

However, I think he sent in his evil twin brother as backup – that nagging little feeling that tells me maybe the reason I’m not doing more with my life is that I can’t, that I’m not good enough, that I can try, but I’ll only fail.

I want my old voice back. Old nagging “you’re being lazy; do something worthwhile and stop procrastinating” voice, please come back to me. I’d take you over crippling self-doubt any day.

William Shakespeare wrote: ”Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt” (Measure for Measure). This simple idea rings so true, especially for me, a girl afraid of everything, even my own dreams.

I recently started a book that I’m hoping will change my life (or at least inspire me to change it myself), and I came across this passage:

They liked to talk about their dreams, but in the end, they left them just as dreams. They didn’t know …. that dreams are in fact realities waiting to happen. But they don’t wait forever.At some point you have to help them make the transition. Or eventually, they just fade away.

– John Strelecky, Life Safari

Again, true words. And they made me realize that being scared is silly, that I may fail, but failing would be so much better than sitting by and letting my dreams “just fade away.” I can deal with failure; I’m tried and true on that front. I’m not so sure I’d ever be able to cope with allowing my dreams to die. I don’t want to find out the answer to Langston Hughes’ age-old question.

It won’t happen overnight, and I’ll probably still be scared a lot. But, at least I won’t have to say I never tried.

More transitions.

I’ve been making the transition from my old Windows PC (Henry) to my new MacBook Air over the past week or so. So far, I’ve been loving everything. There are a couple little things that have stopped me up and frustrated me, but overall, I’m very happy with my decision to make the change to an Apple computer.

The thing I love most about my new MacBook is its size. I’ve decided to name her Heidi because she’s so skinny. I can carry her all the way to campus, around campus all day, and all the way home without my shoulder cramping even once. It’s glorious. Anyway, I’ve also run into some problems. For instance, my blog updates no longer automatically appear on my Facebook. I’ve read a few suggestions about fixing this issue, but nothing seems to work. Boo. Also, my iCal app keeps giving me an error code when it tries to sync with my google calendar. Second boo. In the long run, these are minor issues, but if anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, I’d greatly appreciate the help.

It amazes me how far technology has come over the last several years – even just in my own lifetime. The fact that I have this tiny computer that weighs maybe 2 pounds that can access the Internet from anywhere, sync with all of my other devices, and still look super streamlined and beautiful amazes me. I’ve really been missing all of my friends from Orlando and my family and friends from back home in South Florida recently, but with e-mail, Facebook, and my phone, I can talk to them whenever I want. Yesterday, I was working on a paper for my Shakespeare class and was sorely missing one of my best friend’s input. We used to spend hours in the library (or the Starbucks, depending on how late we’d been studying the night before) bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve been missing that. Most of my friends here in NJ are Diplomacy students and not very much help when it comes to analyzing Shakespeare. Through a Facebook message, an email, and a text, we were able to recreate our study session technologically. How great is that?

I’ve also had friends who hate the idea that new technology enables us to be accessed at any moment, that we can’t stop the deluge of information and demands on our time. I see their point, and remember one friend in particular who decided to give up on Facebook for a while to see how many people would actually in keep in touch with her via phone only. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure I 100% buy the idea that Facebook, email, and other avenues of social media remove all personal connection from our interactions with others. Sure, I can’t hear my friends’ voices when I talk to them via Facebook messages or texts, but I still share my thoughts, feelings, and emotions with them. Yes, I miss seeing my boyfriend in person every day, but I also smile every time his name pops up on my phone because he’s sent me a text message. I still have a connection to the person behind the technology. Rather than a telephone as the vessel for communication, I have a computer. Is that so bad?

Transitions are a natural part of life. That’s what I’ve learned. Embrace the change.

I suppose this may be a tribute.

I use the word “tribute” lightly here. I never followed the history of Apple Computer or truly understood the impact Steve Jobs had on the world. I probably still don’t, and I don’t mean to jump on a bandwagon and claim that he changed my life. He may have – without my knowing it, but how will I ever tell? People tell me he changed the world, but I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it while it was happening. I live (and always have) in the already changed world.

See? It's a whale.

Sure, I’ve bought his products. I think iPhones are great and text message whales are cute. I’m eagerly awaiting a new MacBook Air in the mail and am excited to own it and call it mine. All of these gadgets are a part of my life and a part of the way I see the world and perhaps I owe that to their creator.

For me, though, it’s been more of an experience by proxy. I had an iPod because that was the coolest thing in a post-Walkman world. I got an iPhone because my brother’s was neat and I was sick of my 1988 flip phone brick. I bought a MacBook because I was tired of dealing with my old laptop and Windows which couldn’t seem to stop complaining. I even watched Pirates of Silicon Valley because my boyfriend said it was good and I was bored. My experience with what Steve Jobs created has been largely second-hand and influenced by those around me, but today as I was surfing the Internet, wasting time, trying to avoid working on the presentation about Shakespeare’s The Tempest I’m supposed to give on Wednesday, I came across a quote from Steve Jobs. The Internet’s been full of them lately, and I have no way of knowing if he actually said this (or if he did, in what context). I simply stumbled across these words and they awakened something within me again.

As most regular readers of this blog know, I have had quite the tumultuous experience in graduate school so far – I’ve left my family completely for the first time, my boyfriend moved to California 3,000 miles away, according to my professors I don’t talk enough in class, I may want a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric rather than Medieval Literature, I’m still terrified no PhD school will take me, I ended up in the middle of a crime scene the other night (That’s a story for another day), and I’m still trying to figure what the heck I want from this life. Sometimes I lose my faith that it will all work out okay.

Then I read this:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

–Steve Jobs

And I realized that I have been doing just that – worrying about what others think of my goals, fearing that my heart has been lying to me, forgetting to trust my own intuition.

I suppose that now I can say Steve Jobs changed my life – or at least words that some Internet site attributed to him did. I also suppose that I’m a little late to jump onto the tribute ship, but, then again, I’m still not sure I would consider this a tribute – perhaps just a thank you, a thank you for saying something (most likely) years ago that inspired someone to record it so that I could read it today. So, thanks for that, Steve Jobs.

Diversion

I have diverted from my original reading list for the summer.  After finishing Eat, Pray, Love, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Wuthering Heights, I was supposed to begin rereading The Catcher in the Rye, one of my all-time favorite books, but I, instead, opted for a new read.  I figured now is my chance to read the books that have been sitting on my shelf forever waiting and wishing to be opened.  Although Catcher will have to wait for me to revisit its pages, The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare has finally felt some love.  This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while now, and after registering for a Shakespeare seminar in the Fall, I figured there was no better time than the present to crack it open.  I’m about halfway through and am 100% happy with my decision.

As an English major, bibliophile, and anglophile, I have, of course, always been a fan of Shakespeare.  I think it’s a graduation requirement for all English majors, especially those looking to pursue a career in academia, and even more especially those wishing to pursue a career in academia focused on Medieval and Renaissance British literature.  For the previous sentence, read: I’ve done my fair share of reading about Shakespeare.  This book, however, offers a whole new perspective.  The authors posit that Sir Henry Neville is in fact that “real” Shakespeare and set out to prove (quite convincingly, I might add) that he wrote the many plays attributed to the world-famous, Stratford-born William Shakespeare.  Their research and hypothesis has introduced me to a whole new facet of Shakespeare’s plays and has made me revisit some of my favorites in a new light.  Repeat: I am 100% happy with my choice to venture into the unfamiliar “I’m reading nonfiction for fun” waters.

I also can’t wait for next year.