October 29, 2012
Free computer coding lessons. It's in preparation for some kind of project, but I hope they leave the site up for a while. I could get into this over winter break.
Because I missed the NFL entirely last weekend.
One of my favorite ways to escape this trap is to take a narrative that society has framed as deviant or unacceptable or sad and flip it on its head to occupy it with my own meaning. This can take many forms. GOOD executive editor Ann Friedman, who has no interest in getting married, has proposed reframing the term “spinster”: “I want to reclaim it, like ‘bitch,’ until it carries the same connotation as ‘bachelor’: free, fun, independent, loving life.” For long-term singles like us, constructing jokes around the #foreveralone hashtag helps recode activities society sees as lonely and pathetic to ones we see as lonely and awesome. I often listen to a sad song that has a lyric that goes like this: “I know you feel how I do, too, and even though I’m close to you, I can’t be what you need, ‘cause you’re just as lost as me." He sings it like it’s a sad thing, but I think it’s really romantic—one of my life goals is to be close to other people, but not to get tied down to them, and that song helps me remember that.
The upside of the relationship flip book is that it contains endless little details that do not fit into the big stories society has written around it. We can use that scrap material to build new arcs. (Modern love pro tip: Keep every Gchat on the record—a targeted search is all it takes to get some new perspective on old memories). I have a peculiar insight into this romantic narrative construction process—I edit a column called Dealbreakers in which writers dig into the reason that they broke off a previous relationship. Often, these exes don't know how to begin to spin a complex relationship into a story—one with a beginning, end, climax, theme, and emotional thread. They broke up for a lot of reasons. Life is complicated.
In those moments, I encourage them to settle on one framework for filtering that relationship—something as literal as He's A Crack Addict or as loose as She Needed Me—then shake out the flip book onto the page to see what sticks. At first, that framework might seem limiting, but it actually forces you to think deeply in a direction you haven't before. In the process, these writers take their memories, mix them up and turn them over. They go back and tear out more pages from the back of the book that they forgot even existed. Then, they rearrange them into their own personal narrative that still builds to that satisfying emotional release.
8Tracks sports over 600,000 playlists, all created by users, that are organized by genre, style, artist, and even mood. If you're feeling like something chill to help you work, you can search for "chill" or even "work," and hit play. When you hear a mix you like, hit the heart to like it, then follow the DJ to see other mixes they've curated.
There are plenty of streaming services that offer anything you want to hear when you want to hear it, but there's something special about listening to a playlist that's been curated by hand with real thought about how the songs flow together. That's what 8Tracks offers, and the new iPhone app is designed to help you find those mixes and songs faster than ever. The app is free (there's an Android version too, it just hasn't been updated recently), and there are no ads—in the app or in between the songs.
Today's Photos:
The best move we ever made was involving high school volunteers.
The whole league runs itself.
So, the adults just sit back and have fun.
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