I only discovered Oiselle this past March

This explains why I am defaulting on my saving goals... And where my "treat myself paycheck" for teaching went.  Omg.

This rivals the running gear collection I have from 16 years of running...

Sad to say that you need to cut back a little bit, graduate student C.

Well. No regrets. True love can't be denied. :)

Ups and downs

Grad school has been really tough on me. Specifically, my PhD. I don't remember feeling so many downs, or trepidation, insecurity, deflated confidence issues that these past few years have brought to me. I was the gung-ho person in my masters program, extremely driven, and there was never a doubt in my mind that I was going somewhere, that each step would take me to a better place.

I had a hard talk with my advisor recently because I defaulted on my dissertation proposal goals. I know I set myself back by a few months. It's not too late for me to graduate on the time table I originally proposed, but I have not been meeting with him regularly, giving him my updates... I haven't been myself, pushing towards my goals. I've been avoiding my proposal. He put the hammer on me in this meeting. He didn't understand why I was shuffling my feet. He thinks it's a matter of being internally motivated, but he doesn't know why I'm not.

What happened to me? I know the me who came into this program was very different. Maybe I was too arrogant about my abilities, but I'm certainly not stupid even now (grad school definitely makes me feel like I'm losing it). At least, I don't believe it more days than I do. I talked with Garima about this - how badly I felt after my meeting with him, what I think has happened to me, what's going on? I think I know. There have been so many setbacks in this program - from being cheated out of co-authorship on a publication, being given tasks that were way over my head, missteps in coursework, bungling on my core exams, and then finally, after all of that... exiting into a structureless environment. Feeling insecure about what I'm capable of... being isolated... I have never felt a period of life where it seemed that no one understood what I feel and that I have no one to talk to about this. So alone. Sometimes I even question myself and what grad school has done to my social abilities, my happiness, my sense of self.  Seriously, why all the questions? What happened to me?

I'm insecure. I need to build confidence in my abilities again, but first, I need to be able to let things go. I need to have a thick skin and it's all in the past. I can only move forward. As Garima says, I need to convey that there's no way they can get rid of me. Even if it takes me 10 years (it WILL NOT), I am not leaving here until I have my PhD in hand. They can tell me I'm stupid, but fine - so what? I'm here to learn and I won't always be stupid. At this point, everyone is here to help ME. This is my opportunity to be something amazing. Remember this. And if you ever feel the same dread and sickness in your stomach of failure, take Nicole's advice and go talk to a therapist. It's ok to seek advice on how to cope; you might need to be told that this happens to many grad students. You might need advice on how to let things go, to forget, to move on productively.

The one thing I've been looking forward to more with these daily and dominant struggles, is my running. I've been babying myself and am still not keeping true to my savings goals and shopping like crazy. I have a ton of Oiselle gear at this point and stalk their blogs and website every day. Sigh. It makes me so happy, it's like seeing a light in a faraway tunnel. Someday I will have a community I belong to again. And someday, I hope I will be a formal part of that community!

Running-related bucket lists:

• Run a sub-4 hour marathon. (One that I am proud of)
• Qualify for the Boston Marathon
• Qualify for the Gansett Marathon
• Run Chicago, Big Sur, and Bay to Breakers

John is ridiculous.

I adored this pic and showed it to him, giggling.  

 

Here's what he sent me back:

What do I choose to subject myself to...

Consumerism and the eternal hunger for acquisition

Well, the bad news is that in March and probably April (already, gah!), I will have defaulted on my savings goals.  The good news is that I will be stylin' - some of it will be reinforcing my running goals and the others, just fanning my vanity, ha.  Here's what I bought recently.

 

 I just discovered Oiselle a few weeks ago on theclymb.com and was compelled to check out their website to get an idea of how the fits were.  I have been obsessed ever since!  This is a fun "Stripey" shirt with thumbholes. I've already taken it for several runs and while it's a bit large, it works perfectly for those 30 degree runs!  Unfortunately for my "wish list," it's gotten obese with all the Oiselle "wants" I've added.

Now,  onto the bigger purchases, *cue the doom music*

 

Stella McCartney for adidas, the Ready to Dance gym bag.

Oh yes. I had been eyeing this baby for several months, obsessively stalking it as the lion hunts the gazelle.  Or, the poor graduate student swarms the website every day, waiting for the price to drop within her budget...  Finally, after months of waiting, I decided to just take the plunge since the price wasn't budging below 50% off full retail value.  

 

Kate Spade Charlotte Street Sylvie handbag.  

Oh my gosh... Once the floodgates opened, they could not be contained!  Another closely coveted item, I wanted this purchase (FRV at $398) to drop below $200 and I kept watching it, hoping it would... But it never did.  Finally, it just disappeared from the site and I thought that was it.  But then a few days ago, I was just browsing the site randomly and saw it reappear!  At that point, I decided I would just get it.  And now I wait for its arrival tomorrow...


And for the literary geek in me...

   

 

The Flannery O'Connor anthology by Library of America: I decided to take the plunge on this, as I'm following Yale Professor of English Hungerford's set of online lectures on Modern American Literature, one which features "Wise Blood," and with my own Classic Literature book club in the mist of reading the set of short stories "A Good Man is Hard to Find," this purchase seemed economically reasonable. As an avid [paperback] book collector, I never gave credence to hardcovers, but this book is BEAUTIFUL.  Truly, a lovely, lovely book.  I will be on the lookout for more Library of America editions in the future. Highly recommended to fellow book worms!

Richard Wright's loosely autobiographical, Black Boy:  So what was the impetus for this random book selection?  Well, since graduate school, I've let my literary analytic go to waste.  After a book club meeting that I thought was interesting, but more resembled an instance of the blind leading the blind just grasping in the darkness, I hungered for the expert analysis of someone who knew books!  A fellow book club member suggested an online lecture for interpretation of our Cervantes selection and that's where I discovered more online lectures and finally, wa la! Professor Hungerford's set of lectures.  I must say that this was a surprisingly quick read.  Wright is amazing - a one of a kind man, who is a minority even among minorities.  He was always individualistic and evaluating of life and social norms such that he would never fit in.  It's as Hungerford characterizes the book - one driven by an "identity" plot, where we have the protagonist who does not fit among any of the identities he holds membership to, and herein the struggle creates the story.  As a result, I have Native Son sitting on my night stand, queued up on the precariously high stack of books that I must read sometime soon.

At Large and at Small, Anne Fadiman.  Erudite, obscure in her geeky loves, witty, delightfully elitist.  I love her writing.  Set of essays that celebrates many random things like her and her brother's love for collecting insects, their shared love of ice cream, her fascination with Charles Lamb and Coleridge, and her defense of night owl ways.  (Thank you!  Why must we be made to feel guilty by all normal early riser, early sleepers?!)  It was a total bargain buy, which made me smile and need to get it at once.

Finally, "Mostly Harmless".  Ah, prolific economists in my field.  This somehow led to me searching up Thomas Strauss' info and then stumbling upon a syllabus for his class on poverty, human resources, and economic development.  The funny thing is that this syllabus is 32 pages long!  It now goes on the bucket list of things to read to really know my field.  Also has me thinking about where I'd like to end up by the end of all of this...  Anyway, the book is an accessible application of major studies in research design and econometrics.  It reads quite easily compared to other texts, is cheap, and functions well as a refresher to all that I've forgotten!  After recommendations by someone in my field, spotting Lauren reading it, and finally, Jade!, it was time to get it myself. 

There are more, and I will update as they arrive.  But it hasn't been a good couple of months for my wallet, also because of the fact that I decided to pull the trigger on a bunch of races I had been considering!  One, the Anthem Half Marathon during St. Patty's weekend that Amanda, Erin, and I decided not to run.  There went $95, down the hole... But I guess my foot was in bad condition at the time, so it was justified...

The hunger to run
Here is a meaningful quote that really hits home after this past month of dealing with my navicular tendon and knee injury.  From Runner's World:

My injury was devastating. But I decided I wouldn't feed negative thoughts. I was going to surround myself with positive people, imagine the best outcomes, and bathe myself in awesomeness.

Lauren Fleshman, two-time U.S. 5-K champion, after an IT injury forced her to refocus her 2012 Olympic Trials goals

 How true - if only I could have adopted that kind of attitude after all this time.  Gosh, I still remember the morning I got in a fight with John after coming back from the bad 16 mile run... I was bawling because I felt this training was ruined and my goal of hitting a marathon this April was ruined.  In many ways, it was all true.  But it took me a month to believe it was ok.  I will do a marathon this summer or fall, and I will be stronger when I do it.  Which brings me to my next discussion...

George and Sierra have been lobbying for me to do the Grandfather Mountain Marathon.  I gotta say, I mapped out the course after assiduously following the turn-by-turn instructions on the website... I think they don't call it "One of America's toughest marathons" for nothing...  Am I crazy enough to do this?  But on another hand, I love our running group and I want to continue with them after this training session!

And finally, Cherry Blossom 10 miler is coming up this weekend!  I am just insane enough to do a slow and steady long run with Tamara the day before the race.  I'm not really concerned about the race, actually.  But it might be stupid of me to cram in a 14 miler right before a ~5 hour drive to DC and then do a 7:30 am 10 miler the next day... and the ~5 hour drive back.  That might constitute insanity.

Race bucket list:
Boston Marathon, Chicago, Gansett!, Big Sur

This puts things into perspective.

http://www.upworthy.com/10-amazing-international-photos-that-will-give-you-some-perspective?c=ufb1

http://imgur.com/a/mN8Zs?gallery

Why do some people have so much, while others have so little?

On productivity

"I’ve systematically built these principles into the way I write. For my first three books, I sat at my desk for up 10 hours a day. Each of the books took me at least a year to write. For my two most recent books, I wrote in three uninterrupted 90-minute sessions — beginning first thing in the morning, when my energy was highest — and took a break after each one.

Along the way, I learned that it’s not how long, but how well, you renew that matters most in terms of performance. Even renewal requires practice. The more rapidly and deeply I learned to quiet my mind and relax my body, the more restored I felt afterward. For one of the breaks, I ran. This generated mental and emotional renewal, but also turned out to be a time in which some of my best ideas came to me, unbidden. Writing just four and half hours a day, I completed both books in less than six months and spent my afternoons on less demanding work."

Something to ponder, by Tony Schwartz, article located here.

For reference

"Chart of distribution relationships"



From: here

Yearly goals: Before 30!

Some of these might not fully happen by 30, but 30 will be the benchmark to make sure I am making progress. :)

1. Successfully defend proposal by February March.
2. Write the two papers - have one on the way to being published. (Prepare to leave this place!)
3. Do everything you can to make 3B a reality: funding applications!
4. Publish two articles. 
5. Get more sophisticated understanding of development literature. (100 total references in EndNote)
6. Review quantitative material.
7. Teach PLCY 220 well; without regrets!
8. Read 12 5 books - 2 must be hefty classics.
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
2. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern - Stephen Greenblatt  
3. Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel  
4. The Dialogue of the Dogs - Miguel de Cervantes 
5. The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen 
6. Black Boy - Richard Wright 
7. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
9. Attend book club 6 4 times.
1. Classic Lit: 1/8
2. Classic Lit: 3/8 
10. Watch 12 9 AFI Top 100 movies. 
1. Tootsie
2. Raging Bull
3. Annie Hall
11. Run a sub-4 hour marathon. AND run 2 marathons this year.
12. Meet the 60% attendance goal for training program.  training on your schedule
1.  Missed: 5 - 2/6, 2/16, 2/20, 2/23, 3/6
2. Because it's not fair that you got a shoe injury and had to miss all that running!
13. Advance to Intermediate level in ballet.
14. Attend yoga every 2 weeks. 
1. 1/17 - CarrYoga - Alignment Yoga
2. 2/10 - CarrYoga - Flow Yoga 
15. Become more proficient in KiSwahili.
16. Become more proficient in Chinese.
17. Open a retirement account.
• Established a life insurance plan to protect the fam.
• In March and April, you were *really* bad about this goal.  You need to be better about this!
18. Wipe off all balance on credit card.
1. Never carry balance over again - you spent $400 on credit card fees last year! F.U.!
19. Commit.
20. Go on an international vacation with the yummy bean.
21. Be more efficient with your time: 4.5 hours work (3x1.5 hour blocks) + 2-3 hours RA work, maintain social and running life
22. Go to Asheville!
23. Hike Blue Ridge Mountains.
24. Run Al Buehler Trail, Tobacco Road
25. Write 1 letter to: Jen, Nicole, Crystal, Greg, the Bum, Anne, Javier.
26. Keep in better contact with Freddie.
27. Visit the dentist.
28. Maintain better sleep schedule.
29. Drink more water.
30. Be diligent about skincare.

Shuffling on my dissertation proposal

I don't know why it's been so hard for me to get my feet together and move forward on this thing, but it has.  Maybe I'm motivated by fear, laziness, some deeply rooted anxiety, discontent with my life... But it's the first step to getting out of here.

Usually am not a fan of Hemingway, but this is exactly what is going on with me right now.  From http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/06/13/ernest-hemingways-top-9-words-of-wisdom/

Also - a side note - I don't really agree with the blogger's interpretation of everything here... 

3. Keep your eyes on where you are going.

“Never mistake motion for action.”

It’s very easy to get lost in busy work. You may spend much time in your in-box or filing and organizing things. But at the end of the day or week, what have you accomplished? 

Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go. To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.

So, improve your effectiveness and productivity. But, more importantly, never lose your view of your big picture. And take the action and do the things you need to do to get yourself where you want to go.

[CH note: I've been using Ashu's work as an excuse and distraction away from what I really need to do.  It's time to get on that, make more time.  Get on a normalized sleep schedule, throw myself into my work and making myself the best person I can be.]

4. Just do.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

How do you get things done? You take action and do them. You may need to do some planning, but don’t get lost in that stage or in over thinking things. Planning or thinking won’t get you any results in real-life if you don’t take action too.

So take action and just try something. Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll fail, but if you do then failure can always teach you a bunch of things. The worst thing is not failure, it’s to just sit on your hands and do nothing.

Developing a just do it habit – where you learn to do what you know you want to do despite how you feel or what your thoughts are telling you at the moment – can be difficult. But it’s rewarding not only because you’ll get actual results and – sooner or later – success. It also builds real confidence in yourself, in your capabilities and in your own personal power to achieve what you want in life.

[CH: Stop talking, just do your shit.]

5. Do. Fail. Learn. Do.

“The first draft of anything is shit”

So you have to keep your eyes on where you are going and do the right things to get yourself there. However, you will not always get what you want on your first try. No worries though, if you have the right attitude. 

What attitude is that? The attitude of the much younger you. The kid who learned to walk and ride a bike. A younger you that doesn’t put so much value into a failure. But instead just gets up after falling down, learns a lesson or two from what happened and then tries again. And again. 

By cultivating that way of thinking about failure – instead of the more usual, more grown up one where you may think that the world will come to an end just because you failed – you can over time achieve some pretty awesome things.

You can read more about how failure can be redefined and be of great help to you in 4 Reasons Why Failure is Pretty Awesome.

[CH note: And first product of your shit is going to be shit.]

9. Don’t judge.

“The writer’s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.”

I think this is not just a great piece of advice for writers but for anyone really. Seeking to understand rather than judging is hard but is something that can help you and the people around you a great deal. And this also goes back to the first tip, the one about listening. To be a good listener you must have the intent to understand the other person rather than judging him/her.

Instead of going into interactions or just life with a bunch of judgements that you apply on everything and everyone try acceptance. This is not easy if you are used to making judgements about everything. And the thing is, by making a judgement you can often strengthen you ego. You get a small ego boost and you feel good for a while. But just like with caffeine this wears off pretty quickly and you soon need to judge again to feel good.

Accepting may not feel so appealing or “normal” but I have found that when I just accept things I feel a relief and stillness inside. You just feel good. I’m still working on this though.

Accepting someone’s opinion doesn’t mean that you surrender and let them “win”. Nor does it mean that you need to just sit back and cannot take any action. You can accept and still take action to change something if that is what you’d like to do. Accepting just means that you let that person think and feels as s/he likes without judging it. When you just accept and let your judgements rest it’s easier to really understand each other and connect. 

[CH note: don't realy like this interpretation - not knowing the context with which this was written, I think Hemingway is telling us not to form impressions and judgments informed by our framework for understanding, but to watch and be receptive to a reality we are unfamiliar with.  You're a researcher, your job is to watch, be observant, and try to understand what is going on with the world and/or data.]

Can women have it all? Should we be telling them they can?

So many articles I've been reading about how tough it is to be a woman - to find the perfect partner, to excel the most covetous of professional positions.

Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard Alumnus and MBA and CEO of Facebook's TED talk:

1. "Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success."
2. "Make your partner a real partner", as in share the division of labor.  (Duh.)
3. "Don't leave before you leave", don't back out of the professional world because you have a child, don't slacken your career aspirations in anticipation for being a mother.

A response to L. H. Santhanam's recommended article:

Gosh, I just recently read another article that talked about how women really couldn't have it all.  It was written by a high level political committee member who realized that it was impossible to sustain an insane (by normal people standards, but typical for her position) working schedule and balance family life.  She left her position, even though some people thought she was crazy to do so.

This subject has also come to my attention many times before - if not as a concerned woman interested in working in international development, but also as a graduate student.  A few months ago, I listened to the Dean of Graduate Studies at UNC talk about what it took to make tenure at a public university.  Though his speech was mostly un-useful because his privilege discredited his message, he really alienated his female audience when they asked him about work-family life balance.  Of course, he got to where he is now because his wife stayed at home and took care of the children while he was taking on more and more responsibility in the work place.  And, of course, he really did not do enough to acknowledge this, only saying that "You should do what's expected of you", "There are no tricks to getting tenure in academia", and that he made smart choices that inevitably brought him closer to a high-level administrative position within the university.  Suffice to say, several of my fellow female graduate students left his talk dissatisfied. 

My own thoughts on this are that women are achieving more than they have in the past, in terms of educational attainment and attaining high paying jobs.  In this respect, I don't believe women underachieve next to their male counterparts.  But admittedly, if we use elite positions like management in businesses or the head of state as a benchmark, there's a way to go.  I wholeheartedly agree there is a glass ceiling for women - whether of their own doing or of systematic disadvantage.  The incentives just aren't balanced for women, as they tend not to give up their family for their career.  And there's nothing wrong with that!  I think for all women who listen to Sheryl Sandberg, they need to understand that ambition and career promulgating comes at a cost - spending time with family.  When Sandberg urges future generations of women to break traditional gender role expectations, she does mention that women should make their partners fulfill their end of domestic duties.  But, if both people are career-minded, the household begins to look differently - it's one that outsources its child care and domestic duties, i.e., you're going to need a lot of hired help, at least until the child is old enough to be semi-independent.  Child care is expensive!  And not everyone can afford to do that.  I don't think it's realistic to diminish the sacrifice (and ultimately, reward) that comes with deciding to have a family, and I'm not sure we should be fooling women into thinking that they can have it all if they just work their asses off.

Keeping a relationship together over the long haul

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lydia-netzer/marriage-secrets_b_1459770.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=3293498,b=facebook

Edit: 6/17.  This is what I must strive for:

"But there is a third kind of marriage. The third kind of marriage is not perfect, not even close. But a decision has been made, and two people have decided to love each other to the limit, and to sacrifice the most important thing of all—themselves. In these marriages, losing becomes a way of life, a competition to see who can listen to, care for, serve, forgive, and accept the other the most. The marriage becomes a competition to see who can change in ways that are most healing to the other, to see who can give of themselves in ways that most increase the dignity and strength of the other.  These marriages form people who can be small and humble and merciful and loving and peaceful.

And they are revolutionary, in the purest sense of the word.

Because we live in a culture in which losing is the enemy (except in Chicago, where Cubs fans have made it a way of life). We wake up to news stories about domestic disputes gone wrong. Really wrong.  We go to workplaces where everyone is battling for the boss’s favor and the next promotion, or we stay at home where the battle for the Legos is just as fierce. Nightly, we watch the talking heads on the cable news networks, trying to win the battle of ideas, although sometimes they seem quite willing to settle for winning the battle of decibels. We fight to have the best stuff, in the best name brands, and when we finally look at each other at the end of the day, we fight, because we are trained to do nothing else. And, usually, we have been trained well. In the worst of cases, we grew up fighting for our very survival, both physically and emotionally. But even in the best of situations, we found ourselves trying to win the competition for our parents’ attention and approval, for our peers’ acceptance, and for the validating stamp of a world with one message: win. And, so, cultivating a marriage in which losing is the mutual norm becomes a radically counter-cultural act. To sit in the marital therapy room is to foment a rebellion.

...

In marriage, losing is letting go of the need to fix everything for your partner, listening to their darkest parts with a heart ache rather than a solution. It’s being even more present in the painful moments than in the good times. It’s finding ways to be humble and open, even when everything in you says that you’re right and they are wrong. It’s doing what is right and good for your spouse, even when big things need to be sacrificed, like a job, or a relationship, or an ego. It is forgiveness, quickly and voluntarily. It is eliminating anything from your life, even the things you love, if they are keeping you from attending, caring, and serving. It is seeking peace by accepting the healthy but crazy-making things about your partner because, you remember, those were the things you fell in love with in the first place. It is knowing that your spouse will never fully understand you, will never truly love you unconditionally—because they are a broken creature, too—and loving them to the end anyway." 

From http://drkellyflanagan.com/2012/03/02/marriage-is-for-losers/

Edit 6/18: The beauty of fortitude and patience in honoring a marriage for a lifetime:
http://www.wimp.com/missinghusband/ 

Things I love

This makes me giddy and giggly at the same time.  Must day leverage enough social debt over time to get John on board.

 

Totally obsessed with Penguin Cam for the last few months.  Blubbery, waddling, awkward-winged creatures.  May they keep up with this endeavor forever.

Edit: 4/9.  Oceans are freaking awesome. And so is xkcd.

White man's burden versus white savior complex

I don't necessarily agree with this article, but it did make some strong points commonly brought to bear when asking ourselves what the objective of development ought to be.

My thoughts to Booger #1:

yeah, i read that and thought it brings up some interesting points, namely - who should be responsible for solving global issues.  i do agree with him development needs to be about local ownership and can be paternalistic.  but to say it is the white/privileged man's complex and this complex is all about nosing its way into into local politics of other countries is too simplistic in ways that black power and post-colonialist literature can be.  there are many types of people and institutions which work in development who are not characterized  or motivated on the basis of race and power plays, but more on ideology.  sure, there are differential power structures, but these camps are driven not just by economic concerns (and not necessarily of the self-serving kind) but moral (and different types of moral concerns, at that!), and they work to correct institutions which fail people and exacerbate bad conditions locally.

I love this. 

I totally agree with this.  And that's why I stopped bringing my computers to Abernethy.  Productivity increased! 

Encouraging reminder to myself, when I was struggling post-core

Two little mice fell into a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned, but the second mouse, he struggled so hard that he eventually churned that cream into butter and he walked out.

Deepak Chopra replies:

Relationship Is a Daily Rescue

Although the differences between men and women have been much emphasized, there's one thing that both sexes must do in a relationship: rescue love. Relationships are happy where love is nurtured. They begin to fray around the edges when love is compromised, and they end when love is gone.

What causes love to go away?

Many answers have been offered — boredom, routine, various distractions, outside obligations, fixation on work, wandering libido, lack of trust.  But instead of dealing with such a long list item by item, there might be a simpler way. If you can rescue love every day, bringing yourself back to the place where love is, all the other problems don't have a chance to grow.

To rescue love, you first must understand what it is. Love includes affection but is more than affection. It associates itself with sexual desire, kindness, compassion, altruism, and mutual regard.  With those things in mind, many couples turn love into loving acts and loving feelings.  But such efforts are the effect of love, not love itself. You cannot turn an effect into a cause. For example, if you find out that your partner has cheated, you have a reason not to love him or her.  Trying to be nice instead of nasty won't revive your love.

If you can discover how love works as a cause, you can rescue it every day.

Love as a cause goes beyond the individual. It's transpersonal or as spiritual teachers say, transcendent.  That's not the same as mystical. To transcend means to go beyond.  In this case, we want to contact love that goes beyond the ego. The ego is often put in charge of love. When love becomes what "I" want, then relationship is a negotiation between two selfish points of view.  There's nothing wrong with negotiating the everyday details of your relationship – who does the dishes, when to have sex, how to have sex, etc. -- but love isn't about trade-offs and what happens in bed.
Love beyond the ego has to be on a new basis. It's not about quid pro quo, giving as long as you get to take. It's mutual. It exists in a space between two people. The only way to be deeply happy in a relationship is to find that space every time you lose it.  In this way, love goes beyond affection and being nice.  Loving acts blossom naturally once you find the place in your own awareness that is love. Needless to say, becoming aware is a process, in love as in everything.

Consider how relationships develop. We get along well with someone else who agrees with our point of view. We feel an intimate connection; we feel validated in their presence. Then the spell is broken. The other person turns out to have many opinions and beliefs where we don’t agree at all. At this point, the war between right and wrong starts and the road to unhappiness unwinds.

The very fact that you are intimately related makes it even more painful to find areas of disagreement. At the subtle emotional level you feel abandoned. The beautiful sense of merging with someone you love is shattered.  At this point love is compromised. Both people feel the return of the ego, which says, “I am right. My way of doing things is the only way. If you really loved me, you’d give in.”
When the need to be right fades, we stop having so many grievances and resentments, which are the fallout of making someone else wrong. Instead of wasting time with the ego's version of love, return to the place of love.   To detach yourself from anger, resentment, and the sense of being a victim happens only in the space beyond ego.  You can only find this space by devoting yourself to knowing who you really are. Leaving the ego behind is the same as the spiritual quest for the true self.

When two people are on this quest, they are on the journey to a kind of love that can never be taken away.  The differences between a man and a woman fade in the light of a shared goal that is bigger than any ego need or desire.  Every day becomes both a rescue and a surrender. Not a surrender to another person's ego, which can only feel like defeat. Rather, both partners surrender to the larger goal.

The ego's path is much easier to walk and far more familiar.   I know that someone is on the path of love when they ask the following kinds of questions about their relationship every day:

• Which choice is more loving?
• What will bring peace between us?
• How awake am I?
• What kind of energy am I creating?
• Am I acting out of trust or distrust?
• Do I feel what my partner is feeling?
• Can I give without expecting anything in return?

These questions don’t have automatic answers. They serve instead to wake you up spiritually.  They attune you to a process that is more than “me” and “you.”   When you become devoted to that process together, you and your partner will accomplish what seems impossible: your happiness will be as full for each of you as it is for the two of you together.

Psychology + economics = behavioral economics. Scary and fascinating.

From an email that I wrote to Jen.

Subject: Have you read this article?  

there are two themes that stand out to me, but they kind of get blended together: 

human behavior - how our behaviors, spending included, are reinforced by habit. conventionally, economists believe the things we spend our money reflects our internal preferences (what we like), and the way people spend their money is simply on the combination and quantity of things that make them happy.  but this idea that spending is also habitual, tells us that there is a psychological component to spending.  we buy because it's been ingrained into our behavior, because we associate the product with a routine or a memory.  it means it is possible for us to change our spending habits by changing underlying habits and being cognizant of internal conditioning.  but it also means...

our ability to spend is manipulable not just to our own wills, but marketing and market research.  second theme: how corporations have developed sophisticated models to figure out how they can get us to incorporate their products into our habits.  the scariest thing to me: that they can tell certain life events by the types of purchases you make, especially target.  "The study found that when someone marries, he or she is more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When a couple move into a new house, they’re more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they divorce, there’s an increased chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer." and the whole thing about pregnancy... one of my classmates is pregnant right now and indeed, she went to target!  i wonder if this is going to change her whole pattern of spending. 

i know we could be indifferent about this, at least in believing we are in control of our wallets and our habits.  i think what is disturbing to me is all this record-keeping of my spending habits, my online activity (that bothers me!), and who knows when or where this information could be used against us? 

Continuing with positivity

I wish I could streamline my thoughts in Jen's post forum with this blog.

Last night was rough.  I tried to be positive about things, but at times, it was too difficult.  I think John made some facetiously negative remarks earlier in the day that brought me down a bit, then later, we got into a full-fledged argument about how I unfairly blamed him for a sudden audio-outage during videochat while I was asleep.  Then, after, about Harvard and his former desire to be a resident tutor.  During the argument, I felt myself growing distant and increasingly silent as I no longer felt the urge to fight him.  I don't know what has been happening, but apathy about this relationship has been sinking in the more we've been fighting.  I think I'm tired of it all and becoming more ok (at least in theory) with a break up.  I again told him I wanted to break up, and between his 2012 stance of a recalcitrant "no we're not" and all these fights, I am closer to resigning in separation.  There was another instance recently where I realized that I said some things to John, knowing full well these were things that bothered him (making fun of his "Boston girl friends" and how we were broken up), but not caring how he would feel.  I went into such a funk when I realized that.  Hurtful, thoughtless girl!  This is not who I am... but the more we fight, the more distant I am and the less I care.  I need to stop this.  When he made a passive-aggressive remark about how if this relationship persists, he will die 10 years prematurely because each time, he feels a tightening in his chest.  That hurt me and I thought, we really should not be in this destructive relationship.  But it doesn't need to be our end - we just need the drawn-out conflict to end.  I believe I can make him happy.  I am capable of being thoughtful and considerate and I know when we are in good moods, we make each other happy.  We are both multifaceted in ways such that going through a regular day is amusing and interesting...  Like lying in bed together, just talking and reflecting on moments of our shared days, he'll make a joke and I will laugh full-heartedly and want to kiss him.  Or some of the bigger crazy moments, like running across Harvard Bridge.  Or, locking myself out of my apartment right before I was supposed to take him to the airport last Tuesday and having him hoist me through my kitchen window as I burgle my way back in.  (Luckily, we still had time to make a pre-airport Cook Out run!)  Love those moments. 

Positive notes:
Had a bad day yesterday, but today the sun was shining and it felt like a good day.
Feeling like I can tackle the next segment of my comprehensive exam, although I am a little behind.
I can see my comprehension of field literature improving!
Looking forward to grasping things that are still out of reach, and learning more as time progresses.  

(and good memories) 

Feeling like I'm gaining a step towards recovery in the relationship, post-conflict.

Bought John some food from Cinderella's so he didn't have to leave his apartment or go through his usual indecisive agony when figuring out what to eat (what a weirdo!).

Watched him sheepishly slink into his room after fully stripping for a shower because he "forgot something."  Hahahaha, wtf!  
Looking at his puffy, lab-burned (?) face throughout the day.

Feeling reassurance when he made me tell him I love him.  After I extracted his admission that he is my yummy bean, of course. 

Thinking positive

Though I don't agree with everything he says (it smells a bit like hippie) and was a bit turned off by his allusions to Harvard & Yale, I like Shawn Achor's message (credit for finding this goes to Hoda).  75% of success is determined by the individual's optimism, social support, and ability to see setbacks as a challenge rather than as a threat. Good message!

My only reservations with his message are that
* He confounds ideas dissatisfaction arising from endless ambition (Harvard kids being dissatisfied after achieving their "elite" status) with negativity.  I think those are distinctly different.  Ambition may be a cause for dissatisfaction, and perhaps negativity, but not always the case.  I can't really see a reverse relationship where negativity would be a cause for ambition...  They are distinctly different concepts to me, where he is interested in knowing their effects on success.  But why do I bring up this point?  In my opinion, it's not wrong to be dissatisfied and always look forward to the next accomplishment.  However, being negative about challenges and your ability to accomplish them, that is an incorrect attitude to maintain, one likely to reinforce failure.  I just had a conversation over dinner with Tina and Lauren last week about this.  Our 2nd years are the biggest whiners - talking about how much work they have to do, how difficult it is, how we "don't understand," which as Tina said, is wrong!  We've all been through it!  Jade has spoken about two of them, who would spend many productive hours whining, in the past.  Lauren constantly hears them complaining in our offices, which share a thinly separated wall.  I brought up Achor's point - graduate school can really get you down, especially when you add in the hurtles from this program.  It's fine to feel down for a little bit, but focusing on the negative only reinforces your negativity and propensity to fail.  The only thing that has worked for me is to pick myself up and try again.  It's getting harder over time, though.  I do feel that the eager beaver who entered this program 2 years ago has been whittled away to a hardened, skeptical shell.  I think, in my 30 minutes pact, I'm also going to devote that time to writing 3 things that made me feel good or happy each day. 

* His critique of averages - “if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average" - the social sciences would disagree with that...  The point of studying averages is to be able to predict what might happen.  For instance, clinical trials, public programs.. If we don't know how people are likely to respond, we don't know whether things will work!  Using averages helps us find commonalities among people so we can increase our understanding of people and their development.  It should not be the end-all-be-all, but it it is what links people with many different identities, orientations, physiologies together.  

Another goal

Spend 30 minutes a day either running, reading for leisure, or just relaxing.  Pact made with Jen.

 from JL.  Love it.