My mom is like yours, always dissatisfied and making adjustments. It takes her half an hour to make a sandwich, even when she's really hungry, because it would be *perfect* with these other things in it.
I am the type who remains utterly content until, suddenly, I get a bee in my bonnet about everything at once and I change everything.
I'm dissatisfied with everything but never take any steps to change things. Worst of both worlds.
Before we get to the substance of the post, which one did you get? What convinced you to get the Creuset instead of the ceramic? Anxious readers want to know.
I got a 7 quart Le Creuset round French oven. There's a place near me that actually had the Emile Henry in stock and they seemed pretty neat, but since the question of hot spots was unresolved and I've used and liked Le Creuset before, I got that.
I think I love your mom, Ogged.
One piece of advice on the LeCreuset: do not (particularly if you have an electric range, but even on gas) leave it on a burner and forget about it entirely. The enamel can get damaged. This is especially so if you leave it on the burner while you are away for an entire weekend. So I'm told.
I think relationships between people who differ in this way can work....
Well, you're wrong.
And now I see you anticipated my comment in your closing parenthetical. Well, yeah.
Huh. We got the oval 8 qt. just last weekend.
6: But this is just the special case of a more general principle for you, John. (By the way, is there someplace where I can find the definitive statement of the theory behind your no-relationship policy? Of course, I ask after having recently entered a relationship...)
Like Ogged, I'm at the far end of the stoic scale. I wonder, though, whether you might want to distinguish prospective and retrospective "coping". (E.g. "I don't care which restaurant we go to" vs. "Okay, it's been decided already, so I'll just have a good time even though I'd rather have gone elsewhere.") Can you be the latter kind of person without falling into the former pattern?
Give your moms a break, people. Moms worry about socks at Yosemite because they have many years of reinforcement that if you forget about socks at Yosemite, you'll spend the entire weekend with a kid who has cold feet/blisters/a rock in his shoe.
I completely recognize this thought. I am also very far on the "making do" end of the scale.
I have always described myself as, "competative but not ambitious." Which is to say that I try to do as well as I can at meeting the challenges in my current situation, but I don't try to change the general situation.
Come to think of it, I get the sense that teo is somewhat similar (correct me if I'm wrong) and this post helps me understand what I was picking up on with some earlier advice that I offered him.
10: That's when you leave them there. Either they die from exposure, or come out of it with a sense of perspective. We all have to do our part for the therapy industry, right?
Right, well, see, we difference feminists would point out that if women were capable of such callous indifference, the species would not have survived. Because uncomfortable feet is the least of the many childhood inconveniences.
I think I'm outwardly quietist, but the problem with me is that my long-term plans, such as they are, don't suggest any particular action in the present, and so I do nothing. Or I just act on impulse.
Ogged is right that it takes energy to reconcile yourself. I think it's why low-status types tend to be unhealthy even when their diet is OK.
It also takes energy to fret over things and try to change them, though.
children may be seen to have uncomfortable feet, but they should not be heard to have uncomfortable feet. Maybe that should have gone in the old-tyme diseases thread.
I, myself, catastrophise, hence am usually pleasantly surprised when things go well. OTOH, it leads to [over]planning, which is probably why things go well. I ceased being a sandwich perfectionist when I realised that nothing ever was going to make a package of hot dogs and a package of buns come out even.
My first Le Creuset 9-qt pot is now older than Ben and somewhat rusty around the edges where the enamel has worn off. The second is somewhat newer and a few quarts smaller. I love them both so much I'll probably have my ashes put into one for the funeral party.
Second oblique Sir Thomas Browne reference in a week.
Hmmm. I feel solidly in neither camp, but I think they are accurate profiles of some.
16: That's all very well and good except when they constantly fall behind while you're hiking.
What about those of us who fret over unsatisfactory situations, but then sit on our asses like purring cats once we finally get our way?
I ceased being a sandwich perfectionist...
Which is a damned good thing, as I no longer feel the necessity of reading all of the 1000+ comments on a given subject.
I remember reading (once) that it makes people happier to not overthink big life decisions (career, what city to live in, etc . . .) and focus one's energy on smaller scale, more controllable problems.
I don't know if that's true, but I find the thought reassuring.
See, I think that "what city to live in", or at least, what area of the country, is both conrollable and vital. It's made a huge difference in my life.
Controllable may have been the wrong word. I was thinking of choices that are going to have to so many consequences that it's impossible to predict them.
I also wasn't saying that they aren't meaningful choices, just that (according to the one article) they aren't choices that are worth fretting about. Make a choice, don't, but then work with it.
"Controllable and vital" is not necessarily the opposite of "don't overthink it." Ruminating can really take a negative toll on someone.
NickS totally cheated to get 25 up before my 26.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
for 'governments', read 'whatever'.
I don't know where I fall on this scale. I leave it to others to tell me.
Are you content with wherever you may fall on the scale? Or is this something you'd like to work on?
I behave as if life is a test I will be graded on at the end. This means I study problems I've identified for a very long time and then guess wildly at what I think a rational, impartial observer would think the correct answer would be. It's as idiotic a strategy as it sounds, but I'm still alive, so it can't be that terrible.
Also, ogged's mom sounds amazing.
Heebie, don't go there. Kotsko has destroyed better therapists than you. They're thinking of naming a syndrome after him.
30: It'd be funny to have a meta-personality test, one that would judge you based on your attitude toward personality tests. For instance: "When taking personality tests, do you answer straightforwardly, or do you try to figure out what the question is getting at and answer based on that?" (It could be worded more elegantly, but still.)
Do you wish you could pick all the choices and end up closing the window in irritation? Or do you value the simplicity of how finite categories can forecast your future?
Heebie, don't go there. Kotsko has destroyed better therapists than you. They're thinking of naming a syndrome after him.
I sense hostility. What's underneath that?
Do you think that either/or questions are annoying? Or do you find them reassuringly clear?
It's okay. Watch that your curlies don't get caught in your zipper.
Heebie's is a very non-judgmental, safe space.
Oh dear, that sounded inappropriate.
If any of you were lawyers, you'd remember a story about a falling scale.
If any of you were lawyers, you'd remember a story about a falling scale.
Or maybe we wouldn't.
I get the sense that teo is somewhat similar (correct me if I'm wrong) and this post helps me understand what I was picking up on with some earlier advice that I offered him.
This sounds right, though "competitive" isn't the word I'd use to describe my attempts to meet the challenges of my current situation.
There's something both telling and ironic about the fact that the question that led you to formulate this schema is this: why the fuck I haven't bought [a Le Crueset pot] until now? I never thought that the Freidman argument that Rawls's work seemed deep and important until it led Rawls to specific policy proposals made much sense, but I could see that there is a certain felt truth to it. Tying deep internal insight about people who do without to doing without a lentil pot feels the same way.
You know what you could do? Work Harry Potter into the stupid lentil pot discussion and watch me rage. That would liven things up around here.
I did report on the SF oil slick thread that coots are perhaps the water birds least vulnerable to oil spills. They're really your tough, basic, no-frills water bird.
How can u just leave me standing?
Alone in a world thats so cold? (fuck I forgot the socks)
Maybe Im just 2 demanding
Maybe Im just like my father 2 bold
Maybe youre just like my mother
Shes never satisfied (shes never satisfied)
Why do we scream at each other
This is what it sounds like
When threads dry.
And on other news,
13: Are you really a difference feminist??
Are you really a difference feminist??
I think it depends what you mean by that term. I'm not really up on my feminist categorizations.
Second oblique Sir Thomas Browne reference in a week.
I like Sir Consumption as much as anyone, but I'm not sure that referring to urn burial automatically counts as referring to him.
Well, it's obvious enough that you can't 'divide' people on these grounds -- they're both bell curves. You can say that people more than 2 standard deviations from the mean in either direction are freaks. And it's not that freaks can't be happy in this life, it's just a lot more work.
"When taking personality tests, do you answer straightforwardly, or do you try to figure out what the question is getting at and answer based on that?"
(a) I answer straightforwardly.
There is no (b) or (c) or (d) to choose from.
Some people play the game, and some don't. Napi doesn't. Fie on Napi.
I'm far on the stoic end, compared to my family. Turns out that compared to lots of other people, I'm aggressive about adjusting things. That isn't my self-image, though.
I'm liking the distinction drawn in the original post. Helpful, interesting way to look at it. I have tendencies, maybe strong ones, toward the reconciliation mode. I do without, and make do, quite a bit. I sometimes consider it a virtue.
Ogged at one point calls this a "stoic" approach.
So then I'm wondering about the earlier post linked to, about so-called Interactors (in relationships) vs. Autonomous types. The latter are described as "stoic."
I guess there's no reason to think that stoics with respect to circumstances would track with stoics with respect to relationship interaction.
That is, I reconcile myself to a great deal -- at least until I reach a critical mass and then run around changing a bunch of things, much as AWB related in comment 1 -- but I tend toward being an interactor relationship-wise. Yet ... there does seem to be a common thread to the two senses of the stoic here. Just can't quite put my finger on it.
I'm way, way at the stoic end. For example, my phone went out and I experimented in living without a phone. My heat went out and I experimented in living without heat. God's ways are not to be questioned.
Verdicts:
Not having a phone is great, 95% of the time, but the 5% is pretty sticky.
In Oregon, not having heat is no big deal if you can still take hot baths. (That, in fact, is the Japanese practice.)
I once melted a toothbrush in a Le Creuset pot (sigh. Boiled the toothbrush to kill germs, forgot this clever venture and water boiled away). After the toxic fumes cleared and I pried the melted plastic out, good as new.... It was like potions class in Harry Potter!
there are also people who are never satisfied and don't do anything about it. Those people need to shape up
I tend toward this end of things. Ogged seems shockingly intolerant toward passive whiners. Especially given that we make up the majority of Unfogged commenters. If he's not careful, we'll go on strike.
I haven't had the chance to read everyone's self diagnoses yet, but I want to go ahead and contribute mine.
For most of my life I have been one of those awful unsatisfied yet apathetic people. My first attempt to get out of that rut was to become more like ogged's mom. But that's not working out for me.
Should I try to be more like ogged instead? Granted that my natural state of never being satisfied and never doing anything about it (unless spending the day in bed counts as "doing something") is no way to be, which way should one resolve the conflict?
60: The first step is to buy a lentil pot.
Granted that my natural state of never being satisfied and never doing anything about it (unless spending the day in bed counts as "doing something") is no way to be, which way should one resolve the conflict?
Heh.
Rob! If your first attempt was to be more like Ogged's mom, and that's not working out, try the other.
Being one of these reconciled types doesn't mean being apathetic, you know. Anyway, it probably makes a difference whether you're talking about a lentil pot or a career change.
And then wear it like a helmet, as you wade bravely into life's travails!
And there are so many other levels this plays itself out on. You can also worry about stoicism vs. progressivism on political issues (should I just learn to live with the American political system?) basic biological issues (should I just accept that some animals have to eat other animals to live or fantasize about a reworked ecosystem without carnivorism?) and even basic metaphysical issues (ok, I accept the reality of temporal passage, but should I like it?)
65--
"stoicism vs. progressivism on political issues (should I just learn to live with the American political system?)"
on which see 28 above.
I am strongly in favor of temporal passage. Timelessness sucks.
You should just accept that some animals eat other animals.
For example, you. Without carrion-eaters, we'd just hang around forever, becoming increasingly bored and depressed.
59,60:Diogenes groused from a bathtub, whilst Marat propelled the revolution from one, til he was stabbed by a woman I like to imagine as very pretty. I don't know if this has anything to do with stoicism.
I thought of grabbing something from the Emperor about reconciling the Interacting and the Autonomous, but the Emperor is boring. Maybe Seneca, to pointlessly and shamefully drop another unread reference. Could I get myself banned by quoting at length from the Rubaiyat, Rod McKuen, or Jonathan Livingstone Seagull? I am in the mood tonight.
Plus, can you imagine the piled up corpses? Yuck.
Could I get myself banned by quoting at length from . . . Jonathan Livingstone Seagull?
Yes.
not banned, exactly.
lifted to a higher level.
I found inadequate translated Seneca for my purposes, a page of the usual blah blah wisdom aphorisms, but I did remember this Valve piece on
Seneca's Thyestes which helped me understand Stoicism a little better.
71 -- Bob, Charlotte's not Glenda Jackson for you?
54 -- Nápi plays each hand a little differently. Sometimes stoic on matters others find alarming, sometimes making elaborate plans to accomplish truly trivial objectives.
75:Hey, Glenda was pretty enough at that time. I found her very attractive, well, actually she scared the living shit out of me in most of her movies. But that was kinda attractive in those years of 2nd wave feminism.
Fun question:Did Juliet Landau look to Glenda/Charlotte when playing Drusilla in BtVS?
71: oh, I may have misunderstood.
1) I am into 19th century painting and the history channels, and have seen many representations of Corday.
2) The play has little to do with the French Revolution, and Glenda is only playing a symbol/archetype called Charlotte Corday.
77 -- Oh Emerson, what will the lurkers think?
79.2 -- Of course. That didn't make her any less scary.
On the subject of the original post, I'd say my pathology is characterized by long periods of endurance followed by intense bursts of rising up and changing everything. In the latter, my vision is crystalline and my will implacable. I've ended several relationships according to this sheme, and it has also worked out nicely in home improvements.
nothing ever was going to make a package of hot dogs and a package of buns come out even.
Modern food technology has solved this problem.
snoo: Your link seems broken. Is this what you meant?
I hate to admit this, but I am a lot like Ogged in this regard. I can deal with just about anything. With my daughter, I am basically forced into dealing with whatever comes my way. Screaming fit in the grocery store? Oh well. deal with it.
That said, I am really impressed by Ogged's mom and people like her.
My people have lived in Virginia forever. My gf's family are New Mexicaners. Those people are not afraid to move far, far away from the rest of their family. My family is still giving my sister a hard time for moving 2 hours away.
OMG guys, it was feldspar who was commenting as: all that time!
this message was brought to you by the unfogged's new continuous commenter care policy. we notice your comments--because we care!
Huh. As a New "Mexicaner", I'd never thought of us that way...but here I am living in DC after having gone to college in Chicago, with my childhood best friend up in New York. Maybe there's something to it.
Wandering is part of the New Mexicanese nature.
hey, "snoo" is a great pseud, isn't it, dudes? it's like snow, but gooier. or maybe it's like someone was really drunk and he started to say "s'no problem" but right then he stepped off the edge of the front porch and fell into a hydrangea bush. hydrangea? or maybe, like, just an azalea bush that wasn't blooming then, because it's almost summer. whatever, I'm loving that pseud. LOVIN' IT!!
900: you're like a whole barrel of fruit baskets today, alameida.
Sifu, out of interest, what are the stock prices you're seeing right now?
What stock prices should I be seeing?
I just made myself a breakfast of real Virginia country ham, with eggs, grits and toast (wasn't motivated enough to make biscuits). Mmmmmm. Every time I eat that stuff I get all Robert Penn Warren and shit.
The my daughter walks into the kitchen with a look on her face and says, "Daddy, I don't like that smell!"
"That smell," I wanted to tell her, "is your heritage! From the limestone caves of your ancestral homeland came the saltpetre that cured those hams and made the black powder that fought off the yankee agressor..." But I realized this would make me a raving lunatic, and accepted that I am raising a yankee.
I am eating a breakfast of grits, scrapple, fried eggs, and toast: oh hell yes.
Those people are not afraid to move far, far away from the rest of their family. My family is still giving my sister a hard time for moving 2 hours away.
The farther west you go, the more mobile people are, and the tendency is to move even farther West (e.g., Alaska, Hawaii, China, Nepal.)
You can find scrapple in Massachusetts? What the hell? Where?
And don't tell me Whole Foods, because buying scrapple from Whole Foods would be tantamount to instigating a matter-antimatter collision.
KR: Just remember that squirrel brain omelettes give you mad squirrel disease, heritage or no heritage.
South Bay Plaza, baby. You can also get it at Savenor's on Charles Street sometimes, if you're a heartless yuppie.
It's just that you were commenting from the future in 91 and I was hoping for some tips on prices.
I don't touch anything from the central nervous system of the squirrel, but there's nothing wrong with eating the major muscle groups. We have some really well-nourished squirrels outside our house who treat our bird feeders like a Vegas buffet. I'm always threatening to pop off a couple of those fuckers and put 'em in the crock pot. One of these days I'm going to do it.
Likewise, the risk of kuru should discourage you from honoring your dead ancestors by eating their brains.
One of the few things I know about my grandfather is that he was a great squirrel-hunter. He died 15 years before I was born. Not of mad squirrel disease, but the family forebore eating his brains.
It doesn't prevent kuru either if you bury the ancestor and then dig him up a year later. The New Guineans thought they were so smart with that trick, but it didn't work.
I just went to a wedding between an indian muslim singporean and an indonesian mislim singaporean, and ate some kick ass mutton briyani. and gonerill, so typically observant of you to notice that about the comment numbers!! it's people like you who make this place what it is. people who notice other people's comments. respect.
I wonder if you could make lamb scrapple? Or scrapple biryani?
Halal Indian Southern comfort fusion cuisine, here I come!
Stop fucking with squirrels, you savages.
Why thank you alameida, that's very kind -- characteristically kind, I should say. Just the thing that makes a semi-lurker like myself feel at home here, in this wonderful place, especially if you have somewhat heterodox opinions. You know, I was recently reading a new study that showed women are much more likely to fail in their career aspirations if they have more than two sexual partners before the age of 25? But, you know, I wouldn't want to drag a thread off-topic or anything.
111 can be complimented at every point along the unctuous insincerity-sincere guffaws continuum.
I don't get why all these people I know by name are calling themselves lurkers or semi-lurkers! Gonerill, I don't think of you as a lurker at all.
We should be more welcoming to Alameida. Narnians are very sensitive and shy, especially the delectable Narnian women.
You are perfectly welcome here, Ala! We realize that in some sense we are squatting in your place which is yours, but that doesn't mean we don't want you to visit!
I was recently reading a new study that showed women are much more likely to fail in their career aspirations if they have more than two sexual partners before the age of 25?
How did they even find enough people for the comparison group? Most of my female friends hit that by the end of high school.
111: It's the whole marshmallow experiment -- delayed gratification breeds success. I am going to be so successful one day!
How did they even find enough people for the comparison group? Most of my female friends hit that by the end of high school.
Oh they just compared them with men with the same or fewer number of partners.
111: wow, gonerill, that sounds really interesting! I'll have to forward that comment to bitchphd and see what she thinks. or LB! she loves that kind of thing. thanks for adding more red meat to these wimpy threads!!!
Who knew achieving a more welcoming environment and greater acceptance of obviously idiotic points of view could be so easy, or so rewarding! I'm going to try to live this way every day of my life, even when I'm not in San Francisco!
Red and Green:
I am amazed by early Westerners, or really any pilgrims. They leave their families with a high probability to never to see them again. It takes a certain spirit of wanderlust that I admire.
I think I have pretty strong streaks of both tendencies, evidenced by the fact that when I am suddenly moved to just fucking take care of something, because it's not great and it can be fixed, I am extremely proud of myself and consider it a noteworthy event.
I think I should make some lentils today.
Chaste women just have more pie left and thus are more successful. (But not because they hand out their scarce and valuable pie to influential gatekeepers!)
111: I realise this is completely made-up bullshit. However if it were true I ought to have been highly successful but it seems I didn't have much in the way of career aspirations. That is, I have a perfectly fine middle-class job but am probably less "successful" than most of my college classmates.
Like many Unfogged commenters I have from an early age been hearing lots of guff about my great potential so I definitely feel like an underachiever. I had this vague idea that I would have a balanced life between career and family - but guess what, the husband and children part didn't pan out. Now I'm kinda sorry I wasn't more hard-nosed about my career and to hell with the personal life.
On the bright side, Jackie, had you pursued an ambitious career, you would probably be consumed by anxiety right now and husbands are not invariably an unmitigated pleasure.
Seriously, comfortable middle-class job and autonomy to live life as you choose is worth a great deal.
(Shorter: You should see the grass on this side of the fence!)
I thought of this thread and smiled when I heard these lyrics from "Extraordinary Machine"
But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so / I can't stop changing all the time. ...
But he's no good at being uncomfortable, so / He can't stop staying exactly the same.
