Making (air)waves

In the past several days, as I’ve been contemplating my apparent need to spice up my daily routine, I’ve been noticing cool things in my life that I seem to have been taking for granted. Things that are already there that are pretty “extraordinary” (to borrow from my last blog), but that I’ve stopped noticing because they’re so … well, there. I had an experience like this just the other day when my partner and I teamed up to do an interview for a this week's rendition of the radio program we’ve been working on for about a year and a half—“Outsources,” KGNU’s weekly prime-time LGBTQ feature show (FM 88.5, Mondays at 6:30, or anytime at kgnu.org/outsources, just in case you were wondering how you could hear it. Soon, we'll have podcasts).

Sometimes, doing this show feels more like a chore than like fun, and in my doldrums, I believe I’ve been a bit caught in that view of it. It’s not hard to get there if I focus just on the tasks it requires. Our radio station, KGNU, is scrappy, low-budget community radio, and our little team, the “Outsources Collective,” has to do everything for ourselves. Unlike Terry Gross and company, we have no station staff who will produce or run the show so that we can just chat with the guests. Nope. We, radio novices all, are responsible for every step in making a show happen. That includes coming up with ideas, discussing those with the group in our bi-weekly meetings, tracking down potential guests, developing a “script” for the show in collaboration with the guest(s), creating a “promo” to attract listeners, and then producing the actual show by recording and editing it or by hosting it live—including running the recording and/or broadcast equipment, doing all necessary editing, and being sure that it all gets to the right place for it to air at the right time. In all, each show typically represents several hours’ worth of work, so it’s no minuscule undertaking. 

But that’s just one way of looking at it—the way I’m prone to think of it when I’m feeling bored. But the other day, perhaps energized by my attention to livening up my life, I slipped into a very different perspective on this project. Instead of the show-as-chore story I just wrote above, I was hearing a different tale as we produced this show. In this version of my life as a radio show host, I marvel at the amazing circumstances that grant a handful of local LGBTQ folks—with no particular qualifications for or even prior interest in radio broadcasting—half an hour every week to explore topics that matter to the LGBTQ community and our allies and to share those explorations with whoever wants to listen. Half an hour of public broadcast time, ours to do with as we wish. Well, within reason—there are those seven words we can’t say.

Although we’ve been doing this show for a while now, we haven’t even come close to running out of topics. Over this time, we’ve had shows on topics like an “out” grade school principal, Denver and Boulder Pride celebrations, a play written by a straight man based on his gay uncle’s journals, conversion therapy, a local queer musical group, allies in middle school, LGBTQ aging, community choruses, AIDS, interviews with authors of queer-related books, dance in the queer community, a national queer activist conference, immigration issues, Grindr and other social media, a critique of same-sex marriage, future directions for PFLAG, queer philanthropy ... the list just keeps growing.

It’s a cool setup, actually—individual members of our small collective are variously interested in a variety of domains: local community agencies and organizations, the arts, social media, trans issues, LGBT history, public policy, queer psychology, local politics, diversity within the queer community, and on and on. Collectively,we’re all interested in giving voice to people and issues that folks might not hear much about otherwise, topics found outside the scope of mainstream coverage.

So I was thinking about this on Monday as we interviewed a local attorney about the recent Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage. Maybe surprisingly, we’ve barely mentioned marriage on the show, largely because there are already plenty of people talking about it. In fact, our one show on the topic was a critique of marriage. But the Supreme Court hearings were all over the news last week and this really is a huge case (or cases, actually) that could have profound implications for couples in Colorado. So it seemed right to give it some thoughtful—even thought-provoking, we hope—coverage.

We wanted something more nuanced and more particular than the mainstream presentations. We wanted to do a hyper-local discussion—just two members of the radio collective and a local attorney who is really smart and thoughtful about such issues—not to mention clear in her explanation of them. We got to talk, the three of us, about the comfortable but questionable certainty that the Court will rule in our favor. About our curiosity around the unexpected questions raised by Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts. About whether the “swing vote” will rest with Kennedy (as has been the case in other recent LGBT rights cases). About what sort of confusion might ensue if the court now rules that state prohibitions against same-sex marriage are constitutional—after thousands of couples married under the Circuit Court rulings saying they’re not constitutional. And especially, about what all of this means specifically to Colorado couples and their families. (If you’re curious about what we said about all these things, you can listen here.)

The whole thing is astonishing, really. What a gift to have this time set aside—the only such show in the state—for a topic that’s rarely addressed with much depth or texture in the outlets that most of us rely on for our daily dose of information. And what a privilege to be involved in it. True, the demand to create new shows sometimes feels daunting. But when I’m actually in the middle of one, like this week, it seems well worth the hassles and headaches. It even seems extraordinary.

Wait! Did I actually say, just the other day, that my life was feeling boring? 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Hijacking the self-driving auto: A short story

Foreword

You’ve probably heard about Google’s driverless car, currently being tested on roadways around the land, and now we’re hearing about Chrysler’s roll-out of a self-driving semi—imagine seeing that in your rear-view mirror. To be totally accurate, I guess these are not driverless vehicles. It’s just that the actual “driver” is a robot of some sort, a computerized master executive that gathers relevant data and directs the vehicle appropriately. Besides, at this point, at least, there still needs to be a human “back-up” driver to take over if things don’t go as planned. This new, no-longer-futuristic technology crossed my mind as maybe a perfect analogy for my current quandary. Here's the story.

Chapter 1 

The other day, I was having lunch with a friend, and we were talking about life and aging and adventures and such—common topics for lunch with this long-time friend. As she talked about her travels in recent months and her plans for a very active summer, I had this “ah ha!” moment. I hadn’t thought about it in advance and didn’t quite understand what it meant, but I explained it to her like this: I feel like my life is in a bit of a rut. Too much sameness. Every day is just every day. Even “events” fall into predictable categories and sort of run together. I hadn’t especially noticed this, although I had felt a bit cabin feverish over the winter. But now I had a hint of what was behind this small sense of ill ease that had been floating around my mind of late—not acutely troubling, just vaguely nagging. I said to her, “I need something extraordinary in my life.” Not something monumental or extreme. Just something extra-ordinary. Something that marks a moment, a day, even a year as special, different.

So, I’ve been reflecting on that comment for several days, trying to understand what I meant and what I need to do. Slowly, but purposefully, I’m beginning to craft some ideas about what I’d like my life to hold that would feel extraordinary. Temporary adjustments, to be sure, but perhaps that’s the point—keeping my life populated with temporary extraordinary moments. Some ideas have come to mind and are slowly shaping themselves into plans. Among them, I’m eager to write more—which means doing things other than gazing at the sides of a rut, as ruts have little to offer as literary devices.

Chapter 2

Driving to the gym, I heard a short segment of a TED talk, part of a series on the theme of “identities.” The speaker said something about how important it is to be clear about your identity. That isn’t necessarily, she said, where you live or what you do for your work. It’s more about what matters to you, what you value and what principles you represent in your life. This is not a startlingly novel proposal, but given my frame of mind, her words hit home. I realized that I didn’t have a clear answer (even for myself) to her question as I heard it: Who am I in the world? If I looked at myself from the outside, what values would I see? What do I stand for? What message does my life convey to those around me? How would I describe my place, my meaning in the world?

Of course retirement plays a role in this. I’d venture to guess that this question is familiar to many retired folks, since we often can’t call on the things that used to define us—occupation, family role, position in an organization, etc. Still, there have been times in my life, before and since retirement, when an answer to that question was much clearer. But right now, it’s not. In that moment’s thought, I realized that my life has become pretty self-absorbed. It strikes me that events of the past several months may have nurtured this frame of mind—some deaths in the family that have made my mortality all too evident, my own struggles with health issues, changes in my habits (induced by routine, laziness, boredom) that have kept me inside, at home—all may have contributed to my sense of disconnection from the larger world.

So now, it seemed, my “extraordinary” task looked three-fold—and, paradoxically, more ordinary: to create extraordinary moments in the everyday, to be sure that some of those are about something bigger than myself, and to write more about it all.

Chapter 3

As it happens, just before my trip to the gym, my partner had mentioned an article she just read about changing norms regarding disability language—i.e., how people with disabilities prefer to be named. It sounds fascinating and important, a window on dramatic shifts in the world of disability and disability rights. I expressed interest, which was totally genuine, but I didn’t think much about doing anything more with it than reading it and discussing it with her. She even suggested it as a blog topic, a proposal I set aside. But after the “identity” comment, I thought about it again. The article and what I might do with it now embodied just the sort of thing I’m looking for—something out of the ordinary, something that meshes with the values I want to represent, and something to trigger write-able thoughts.

Chapter 4

I came home from the gym to find a Smithsonian article about this self-driving semi. Nice analogy, I thought: I’ve been taking a ride in a self-driven vehicle that’s nicely programmed to follow the same routes, safely traversing the streets of my life without much thought from me. Safe, maybe, but being safe is not the same as being alive.

So then I wondered: It this just another version of a recurrent theme in our lives? Does everyone have these periods—you realize that you’ve gone on auto-pilot and that it’s time to grab the wheel? I bet so … or at least lots of us. I know I’ve been here before. On one occasion, I remember writing here about computer ruts, and on another, talking about making summers noteworthy—a different focus each time, but a similar point. And I expect I’ll be here again. This time around, it just took a spontaneous comment to call my attention to my own ruttedness, jerk my attention back to the road and, to stretch an analogy, the many other roads I could be traveling. Once that happened, things started to move, to shift. Now my job is to turn off the auto-pilot, stay alert, get busy driving my life, and open my eyes to the possibilities for extraordinary moments. Summer seems a perfect time to do that.

Afterword 

Stay tuned: there may be a self-driving vehicle commandeered by a genuine human traveling the streets near you, headed for something extraordinary. We could make it a caravan, if you’re so inclined.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Cyberblanket

“Security is a thumb and a blanket”

-         Linus

A few days ago, I wrote about my encounter with the thought that I had slipped into a rut that threatened to lead me straight to boredom. Well, a friend responded to that post by email, and her comments were really thought provoking. I asked her whether I could pursue it here, and she said OK. So …

My friend suggests that computers encourage a sort of passive, reactive relationship to the world instead of an active one—hardly her presentation in life. Given this perspective, she didn't like that she was spending so much time on her computer. So she decided to undertake a “project” to see what it would be like to spend a lot of time away from her computer. She found the experience freeing … and her story about it set me to thinking.

As I was thinking about this in the context of my incipient boredom and my sense of being in a rut, an image of Linus and his security blanket came to mind. Make me Linus, and you know where that says about my computer.

For me, at least, spending hours cuddled up with my computer started with the fact that virtually everything I do happens at the computer. My part-time work involves editing documents online. One of my volunteer gigs is managing the website for the Boulder Valley Safe Schools Coalition, online. Most of my communications with friends and family are by email, online. I read the news every day, online. I hunt for information, find movies, get tickets for events, check on restaurant hours, etc., all online. And of course, I do this blog online.

And now, I fear I have become so accustomed to hanging out with my computer that I feel at loose ends if I step away from it. Like, I forgot how to be in the world for more than a very short time without my hands on a keyboard and my eyes on a screen. So, when I find myself with a bit of uncommitted time, I sit at the computer and try to find things to do there.  Check the news, scan the msn homepage for new stories, play a game or two, surf aimlessly.

In short, I end up trying to think of things to do on the computer instead of actually doing things in the world. I do this even though I have other things that would be much more engaging, less passive—things that I say I want to do. That’s a path started for a reason and shaped into a rut by convenience, habit, and flat-out inertia.

I have two thoughts about this (other than recognizing the compelling draw that this machine seems to have):

• First, back in the day, people had similar worries about the telephone and then about TV. It will make people lazy, they’ll never bother to go out to visit neighbors, they’ll wreck their eyes staring at the screen and their bodies sitting on the couch eating junk food.

I guess some of those things have happened. It’s true that we phone when we could go over. And the epidemics of obesity and ill health can be laid partly at the feet of TV. But civilization didn’t end, people didn’t stop growing legs (which my father predicted), and TV didn’t turn out to be the end of the line as far as passive entertainment goes. So, are computers really so bad? Can we tell yet? Is our worry about over involvement with our computers just the contemporary version of our grandparents’ and parents’ fears about phones and TV? If so, does that mean our fear is misplaced?

• My second thought is about this concept in psychology called functional autonomy. It refers to the fact that something that initially served some purpose (or function) can eventually become important in its own right (or functionally autonomous.) This concept has been used to describe things like smoking (Folks start for peer approval, but smoking soon becomes its own motivation, and smokers smoke even if their peers hate it. Smoking has become functionally autonomous) or mastering a skill (You begin a craft to earn a living, but soon, the mastery takes on importance in its own right, even if you earn nothing for it. The skill has become functionally autonomous).

Hanging out at the computer seems like this. You start because it serves a purpose. Pretty soon, just hanging out at the computer becomes an end in itself. You do it even when it serves no purpose other than to fill / pass / waste time. This suggests that sitting at the computer has become self-sustaining, although it’s purposeless. Sort of like Linus’ security blanket, holding back all the fearful goblins. Like what? Boredom? The need to actually decide how to spend time? Not a happy thought, in my book.

I have no answers to these things, but I’m very curious about what other folks have to say about it all. I'm guessing some of you have ideas about the risk of letting computers and other techno-gizmos eat up our time and our enthusiasm for other things. Or maybe about how grand they are in the scheme of things. Maybe there are some other Linus clones out there. It would be fun to have a conversation about this, so please join in!

Below a place to add your comments—just click on the drop-down arrow by the box marked "comment as." If you want, you can sign in as "Anonymous," which is the last choice in the drop-down menu, or as Ellen DeGeneres or Aristotle or The Flying Wallendas—whatever! (If you’re reading this by email, go to the blog online at retirementinthemix.blogspot.com to add your comments. Or send me an email and let me know if I can pass it on). Comments from 100 incarnations of “Anonymous” would be sort of fun. Of course, I wouldn’t mind hearing what Ellen DeGeneres thinks of this issue, if she’s willing to share.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll name my computer “Linus” to remind me, in a mildly humiliating way, of the risk of undue attachment to this machine and its magic.

Neophilia

Recently, I wrote about my need for change, and the risk of boredom—and worse—if I lose touch with that. Imagine my delight when I came across an article talking about new research on this very phenomenon. Even better, these researchers give it a name: “neophilia” (your basic ancient Greek: “neo,” meaning new, and “philia,” meaning affection). I said to myself, Voilà! (your basic modern French, meaning “Voilà”). Precisely! I love novelty. 

I heard a lot about “novelty-seeking behavior” during my career in psychology. Much of the research tied it to problems: dangerous thrill-seeking behavior, problems with impulse control, alcoholism and substance abuse, etc. The main message was something like, “If you need new, stimulating experiences all the time, if you can’t settle down, if you’re always seeking change, you’re headed for trouble.”

But, as I said the other day, I learned a while ago that the reverse is true for me: If I don’t seek change, that’s when I’m in trouble.

Now, a whole new body of research is exploring this concept of neophilia in a new light. And they’re finding that novelty seeking, when coupled with certain other traits, is actually very good—for the individual and for the world. (I can hear every teenager who’s blissed out on multitasking among YouTube, an iPod, and a thousand smart phone apps: “Well, yeah!”) Those other traits, for the record, include persistence—the ability to stick with a task even through frustration—and “self-transcendence”—a focus on concerns broader than oneself.

So, I just wanted to put in a good word for those of us who love change. Those who, when we’re at our best, seek out novelty at every turn. We may sometimes be impulsive, but our enthusiasm can be put to good ends. And we have our own official label: we are neophiles. I agree heartily with the words (if not the theories; more on that another time) of E. O. Wilson:

“I am a neophile, an inordinate lover of the new, of diversity for its own sake.”

Retirement, change, and (yikes!) boredom

This morning, I noticed a shadow floating through the corner of my mind. It took me a minute to realize what it was. Finally, I recognized it: boredom. That’s a red flag for me, a warning of trouble ahead unless I pay attention. For me, it works like this.

Word on the street is that people don’t like change. Change is scary, it’s confusing. It interrupts our comfortable lives and demands that we adjust, adapt.

Change means that we have to give up whatever we’ve held on to and learn a new way of being in the world. This is true when it happens on a minor scale (How do you turn on this flippin’, new-fangled faucet?). It’s true when it happens on a world-shaking scale (How do we understand the place of the US in the world after 9/11?). And it’s true of all the medium-sized changes we face every day.

Retirement brings change on virtually every level: daily schedules, familiar routines, financial needs and resources, relationships and social needs, physical abilities and health, our place in the workings of society, our minds … all of these change. If you like things to stay stable, retirement is probably not comfortable territory.

But I actually thrive on change. If things don’t change, I get bored. And for me, it’s just one short step from boredom to depression—uncomfortable territory, for sure. So, for a changeaholic like me, the change built into retirement is perfect. In fact, that’s precisely the origin of this blog’s title “Retirement in the Mix,” meaning retirement that incorporates anything I can manage to mix in.

Still, the freedom of retirement also allows me slip into dangerous (if comfortable) habits. It can lure me into a “routine” that makes my days sort of tend to themselves. Therein lurks the boredom that I noticed flickering through a corner of my mind this morning.

Here’s the irony. My new regime—lower workload, more time to do other things—looks ideal as an opportunity to keep my retirement lively and full of change. My plan has been exactly to fill my new-found time with changes, with new adventures.

I’m not talking about exotic trips to distant lands. There’s plenty to keep life lively right here. I have a pile of unread magazines tall enough to be their own coffee table. I want to read those, and I want to devote enough time to reading that I actually keep up with them down the line. I also want to read novels and non-fiction books. I want to hang out at the local coffee shop. I want to take walks in different places instead the very convenient route out my door. I want to go to museums and hang out for hours. I want to go out to lunch with a friend. I want to enjoy my volunteer work without feeling the urgency of getting back to work. I want to do political and professional stuff for fun instead of feeling stressed by the time it takes. I want to go to movies and talks and performances in the middle of the day. I want to take a drive because I love driving. I want to think about where I’ll go on my drive.

Basically, I want retirement in the mix. So what’s stopping me? I could do all these things! In fact, I have made some changes already—taking time for the gym, for instance. But overall, I fear I'm getting stuck. Caught in a rut. Running the hamster wheel. Trapped by my own inertia. I’m discovering that it’s hard to break the habit of living at my desk. More to the point, it’s hard to imagine how to do that. And that  sense of "stuck" feels boring, risky.

Wait (I said to myself)! I’ve done this lots of times before. Each time we moved, I found myself recreating a life that fit my need for change and variety. We’ve been in Colorado for several years now. Why would I be surprised that it’s time to rearrange my life? As the kids would say, Duh! Hello!

So, it’s time for me to stir up some change, rattle my own cage, try out things that take me away from instead of back to what’s familiar. I need to stop letting my days manage themselves, stop just yielding to what comes automatically. I need to actually think about what I’d like to do. Daily. I need to make novelty a top priority. So, I have my task. For someone who craves change, this is just another round of the never-ending game.

Oops. Now that I’ve said it here, in public, I guess I’ll have to do it.

Yikes.

Yea!