one down!

[rivendellrose]

Had the last day of my seminar today, and it was actually pretty fun. Our prof brought muffins, one of the guys brought bagels, and the presentations were on a pair of current-day self help books, to compare to the 19th and early 20th century ideas of self help and inheritance we've been looking at this quarter. One was the (apparently) in/famous "He's Just Not That Into You," written by the guy who's a consultant for Sex in the City... and the other was a backlash book called "Admit it, You're Not Really That Into Him, Either" or something like that. As you can probably guess, the presentations were pretty amusing, especially on the first book. The poor girl was going on about how her friends and roommates carried the damned thing around like a Bible, and how all the letters in it were fictional and it made women sound like insipid vacuuous puppies.

Who is surprised? Not I.

The other wasn't that much better, although at least it was written with more respect for women. Honestly, self help books have seemed to me to be about 80% useless platitudes that you could get out of any third-rate Hallmark card, and 20% nonesense psycho-babble.

I believe in acceptance of human nature, including my own - I believe in looking at my inner workings in the same way I look at the innermost thoughts and actions of characters and realizing, first and foremost, that yes, that's the way I work. But when a book says something like "You can't know someone else until you really know yourself," I kind of go... "Well, duh. Now if you're going to put yourself up on the know-it-all pedestal, fucking help me figure out how to do that, already!!!" Which, when I start thinking about it, is pretty damned stupid. It just gets me - there are teenagers everywhere who know exactly what they want to do with their lives, and I've got not a damned clue. On the other hand, when I was a teenager, I thought I knew, so maybe I'm just onto that step ahead where I'm mature enough to admit that I haven't got a clue. Now, how about the next step, where I really do figure something out?

This will now conclude Jen's traditional "got off from seminar and am in the lab so I'm randomly babbling" post.

Quick addition to say that Coldplay's "Clocks" is one of my insanely-happy songs. *Joy*

Comments

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

My recommendation to everyone is to start RPing with 3+ chars. A backhanded way of knowing yourself via knowing who lives in your head . . . (and while the suggestion is tongue-in-cheek, it actually does help emphasise things that you might not know about yourself, just from seeing which things resonate with different characters. Says the person who plays 5 varying extents of control freak out of about 8 chars . . . )

As for self-help books . . . I suppose some can give you insight into what's going on in your mind, but I tend to think that common sense works a lot better than platitudes, and just looking at the way you react to things, and *why* you react to them.

All of that, and I really just commented to say that I love "Clocks"

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you - it's bizarre how much I've seen of myself in totally disparate characters. There's the nasty, cynical, truly frightening part of me that I put into Lucius, the good-intentioned and devoted but totally traditional, fickle-minded, and self-centered stuff in little Narcissa, the complete spazziness of little Sibyll... it's bizarre. If you smush all my characters together, I figure you get a pretty good idea of my own crazy personality. ;)

Exactly. It's the *why* that a lot of people don't seem to get to - I've talked to a lot of people who don't seem to be willing to analyze their reactions to things. Why do you like the kind of person you like, why do you dislike the sorts of people you dislike, etc.

It's such an awesome song! And now Lifehouse's "Spin"... wheeee. The online radio station I'm listening to is batting a thousand with playing songs I love, today!

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

Exactly ;) There's a lot of elements of each character that DON'T click for me, but for each, there's at least a couple of noticeable traits which really are me- Tonks is ADD to say the least, my Ginny is needy and attention-seeking, but highly protective of her friends, Rodolphus takes control freak to an entirely new and scary level, and doesn't trust anyone to be on the level unless he's manipulated them into a corner. It's a good way of taking small things that you might not notice in yourself- good and bad, both- and exaggerating them until they're more obvious and have an impact.

And it's the why that you need to figure out, before you can affect anything, really- about yourself, or your reactions to people.

Which station is it you listen to? I've been looking to find a decent one for when I'm at work . . .

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

There are definitely aspects that I don't find in myself - thank goodness! And for the parts that I do find in myself, I'm a lot more able to notice the patterns and analyze them in other characters, which can be really fun, and pretty helpful, too.

That's exactly the way I look at it. Or even if you can't or don't want to change it, it's so important to be aware of that sort of thing.

I listen to the adult alternative station on Yahoo Launch. I've had really good luck with them, and the short little commercials aren't bad, especially when you compare them to all the shit you get on real over-the-air radio stations.