Journaling project, Day 39

You’re not the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or a week ago. You’re always growing. Experiences don’t stop. That’s life. And the very experiences that seem so hard when you’re going through them are the ones you’ll look back on with gratitude for how far you’ve come.

What’s the hardest thing you’re trying to accomplish or cope with right now? What is something small and necessary about this struggle?

I certainly hope I'm always growing - that was sort of the theme of my response to the last prompt. Learning what I need to do, understanding how to do it, then doing it - it's a neverending process. The day I stop is probably the day they bury me. I'm not so sure about the retrospective, though. Thinking back on my hardest experiences, though, I'm not sure about the gratitude. I think the core assumption is that people don't grow without hard experiences - I'm not sure I agree with that.

The "oh no, not another learning experience" phrase is a joke but also based in truth. Experiences, hard or otherwise, can be opportunities for learning and growth. Sometimes people seek out harder experiences, or push boundaries, or do things that are hard or scary in order to see what they can get out of it. All valid. But I also don't want to denigrate the work of someone who sets out to train or practice. The "10,000 hours" meme is pretty well debunked, but it's based on a core idea that by doing regular practice, even if it's boring and unchallenging things, you can improve and grow. Great pianists do finger scales; top athletes do light jogging. I am both trying to do things that are hard or scary for me (going canvassing again on Saturday, I hope) and also trying to develop regular good practices (take my meds, sleep enough) that are unchallenging but important for my growth.

The hardest thing I'm trying to accomplish now is figure out what the next phase of my life is going to look like. The "being a parent" thing is winding down and I don't want to retire yet (hahahaha college costs hahahahaha *cry*). I want to make the next part of my life involve more of some things, less of others. What I want, and what I can realistically afford and that my body will realistically do are pretty far apart right now. I understand why people have "midlife crises" but I'm too much of a planner for that.

Right now I have a whole bunch of unrealistic ideas, a set of threads that aren't related or are even contradictory, and a few years to figure things out. I'm not in a great rush. I think it's necessary because I hate to drift, or worse to feel like I'm stuck or trapped. So the planning itself is a necessary component of my sanity maintenance and growth, even if I never enact most of the plans.

Slow politics

Like a number of other commentators I've largely given up on trying to keep up with the stream of head-snapping political news. By the time I've sat down to digest and understand a political story, and decided I have something thoughtful to say, it's gone like Dorothy's house in the tornado.

Fortunately, there are people who get paid to do that kind of longer-arc analysis and it looks like one of them may have landed a big one. Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of UPenn's Annenberg School and a founder of factcheck.org, is about to release what ought to be a bombshell of a political book.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump

In the current climate I doubt this kind of thing will make an impact - positions are already hardened and nobody who still backs Trump will actually care about the subtle distinctions between "foreign agent" and "useful idiot" for Russia. Congress isn't going to prosecute either charge, anyway, and the President will continue to obstruct efforts to protect elections and investigate past malfeasance by those around him. The importance of this book is as historical record, as well as proof-in-fact.

As the New Yorker piece points out, much has been made of the idea that we "can't know" what influence Russia had and what the effect of that influence was. Professor Jamieson's scholarship stands in contrast to that dismissive attitude and is important in showing how we can actively set and follow standards for investigation. Airtight proof, such as you'd want in a criminal case, is extremely hard to come by - it's virtually unheard-of in social science research. But the "preponderance of evidence" standard is also viable, and something we use for many matters. That seems to be what Jamieson is going for here.

I will want to read this book, but the New Yorker delivers the punchline that has been circulating for some time - the election was tipped by getting people who would have voted to stay home, and encouraging others to come out. It was remarkably effective, using a few tens of thousands to counterweight three million. The question now is, what do you do about it?