This past fall, Dave and I took a road trip that has resulted in all sorts of feelings about where we’re living and how we’re living. To track my take, check out Trip Report on Literate Ape.com. Or gather tips for your own RV adventure by reading Dave’s posts on OdometerDave. And if you check out our YouTube channel, you can watch the action and tell us about your own experiences in the world of what-if.
I was eight or nine, and my mom was in the basement cutting my hair with her father watching. She would have been mid-40’s, younger than I am now. I always think of Grandpa as 95 but he was probably early 70s, still working part-time as a foot messenger for Cannonball. I know he was retired from the CTA by then, because I’d only been three or four when Mom put me on her lap for his last L ride, flashes of light speeding past and someone’s shoulders blocking the view ahead.
On this day Grandpa was at the height of his bargain-gathering phase, hardy enough to haul multiple shopping bags full of discount socks and skates and egg timers from Montgomery Wards and the Marshall Fields bargain basement around the Loop and back to his and Grandma’s apartment on Oakdale. He’d then organize the stuff and take it on the bus to deliver to his kids every weekend, using the free pass given to retired CTA conductors and drivers.
One of the bargains was a home hair-cutting kit—scissors and shaver and blades organized in a hinged, red metal case with a rattling handle. It came from Sears Roebuck and Company, where Uncle George worked in the Fire Safety Department. Either he was keeping Sears safe from fire or servicing some kind of product customers could buy like an insurance policy, and it gave him an employee discount card that Grandpa borrowed on Wednesdays to combine with the senior discount.
Mom complained privately that her sister Marie always got the better stuff. Grandpa always went there first on Saturday mornings, taking the Austin bus south to Jackson, walking west to Marie’s, offering up the week’s haul of costume jewelry, small appliances, saucepans, and then stopping at ours on his way back north. Mom prided herself on never appearing to need anything in Grandpa’s bags but after he left she’d say, “Marie’s kids get skates that fit and we get a bunch that are too small or too big.” On some bargains, like the Brooke Shields clock or the hair-cutting kit, Grandpa got multiples so she and Marie got the exact same thing.
I sat on a high stool in the basement, pink plastic cape fastened around me and Mom trying to cut my hair. Grandpa stood watching. Mom muttered, “Damn this thing,” when she couldn’t get my bangs even all the way across and had to keep making them shorter. Grandpa proclaimed, “It’s a bad carpenter who blames his own tools.” Mom retorted—a verb you could never apply to Marie, who accepted all things with a quiet, uncluttered smile, while retort should have Mom’s picture beside it in the dictionary, hand on hip and half-turning away, “That’s because a good carpenter doesn’t buy crappy tools.”
In that answer is possibly the kernel of my entire adult personality. Don’t ask, don’t appear to need, know that someone else is getting a better version of whatever it is than you are, and passive-aggressively blame the benefactor you really should, for all sorts of reasons, be thanking.
Of course Mom also got the fun of sparring with Grandpa, a man who silenced many including Marie with his unrelenting moral code: Life is an obstacle course comprised of venial sins and mortal sins, and the only safe activities are bible-quoting, bargain-hunting, and occasional practical jokes. Maybe Mom felt it was worth getting second-choice merchandise for the pleasure of reminding him she didn’t subscribe.
When she and Maria were still living at home Grandpa wouldn’t let them go out at night, some bible logic about wise virgins keeping their oil lamps full. One night Mom rebelled and got herself dressed up for the Riviera ballroom. When Grandpa asked what she thought she was doing she said, “I need an oil change.”
Marie used her Sears hair-cutting kit for years to cut all her children’s hair, plus Grandpa’s and Grandma’s. Mom’s lived in our linen closet unused for years, lid latched and metal handle rattling whenever you opened the closet door, until they moved and I never saw it again.
The other night Xeena mentioned a video on Facebook and asked if I’d seen it. I should have, because my husband Dave posted it. “Noooo,” I fake-apologized, in that way people do to let you know they are better than Facebook, “I haven’t been on.”
“Oh, are you taking a break?”
“No….,” I smiled coyly and tried to remember what it is I’m doing with Facebook right now.
“Are you just limiting your time?”
“No….”
“Well, what? What’s the mystery?”
“I’m just kind of…scheduling my time on social media differently,” I finally stammered out. Ugh, that’s not what I mean, I thought. I’m making social media sound way more important than it is/should be in my life. I’m an adult for God’s sake. “I mean, I’m just trying to make it more an intentional part of my schedule so that I can focus on other things better, um…”
Xeena smiled, maybe wondering why we were still talking about this. She added, “I just kind of do what I want to do when I want to do it.”
Yes! That’s what I want, too! Only I have bigger wants and smaller wants, and too often my smaller wants (ice cream and online shopping) hijack the bigger ones (writing something longer than 7 pages).
I’m reading Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport, and adapting the wisdom for my own brain and heart. Newport is a computer science professor who writes about the intersection of technology and culture. His writing has helped me think differently about my time and what I’m doing with it.
Here are the points that stuck out to me, that might be useful to you:
Those are my takeaways. There’s a lot more to the book, including a streamlined version of the arguments in Digital Minimalism, which I read first but didn’t finish. That book is basically about how digital engagement doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It’s a matter of what’s of value to you. At a minimum, books like these invite us to acknowledge and engage with the power of seemingly small choices. If you check them out or experiment with similar practices, let me know how it goes.