The Project

I think that the course of this blog is going to change a bit in the coming months and sadly for you all I don’t anticipate it being for the more-exciting.  Lo siento amigos. I’d love to report that I’ve found a job rating five start tropical resorts and that in the coming months I’ll be regaling you with blow by blows of frozen drinks, complimentary spa treatments and long, long days of lounging on white sand beaches.  Sadly for all of us, this is not the case and instead I’ve decided to read more.  I know, you’re VERY excited. :)   

In all seriousness though, I want to talk like they do on The West Wing.  Not really because I know that it’s a scripted TV show and in real life nobody is quite that witty all the time, but I want to know more things and I want to be able to talk intelligently about them when the topics come up. I want to be not only well-informed but more importantly (at least to me) well-read.

I think that I may have been this once, back when I was in graduate school, but that’s the beauty of school,  it can force even the most reluctant into awareness.  When you’re in school it’s your job to learn and if you perform at even the most mediocre of levels,  you inherently become reasonably well-read.  I majored in history and took American history classes but also classes on Native American nations, religion, European revolutions and British government.  I took Latin and translated Roman poetry and the Aeneid.  I’ve taken classes in Anthropology, Algebra, Literature, Astronomy, Biology and Education.  I’ve passed tests, written papers and given presentations on all manner of things.  Some of it I understood well and the rest of it I understood just well enough to fake it.  The problem is that all of these things are in my past and the act of being informed and being well-read only counts in the present tense.  I fear my present tense isn’t very impressive.

It occurs to me that in my post collegiate years I have become over-embroiled in pop culture and that the portion of my soul that likes to believe that it is well-read has become more than a little deluded.  I don’t like this.  Without the onus of exams and term papers my world has become...well...smaller.  In my defense, I’ve spent a lot of this time learning about blood cancers and clinical trials for work, but that’s about it.  It’s been incredibly interesting but it’s also a very small area.  In my free time I’ve  abandoned my three book reading system and instead I’ve read what is entertaining: mostly novels and a lot of pulp fiction.  I’ve found my comfort zone and I’ve been staying in it.  It’s comfy here in my little box but as much as I have enjoyed reading the whole Twilight series I don’t think that I’m doing myself any favors.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do with my life.  I love the work that I currently do but for reasons that I’m not going to go into (in large part because I don’t want to pull a Dooce but also because it isn’t pertinent) I distinctly suspect that I won’t be doing this for the rest of my life.  Which leads to the question of what am I supposed to do with my life?  I have absolutely no answer to this question.  I was a Liberal Arts and Science’s major after all and in practice that’s just another way of saying I’m a pansy-ass-waffler with an above average understanding of English language mechanics.

I’ve done a few different things since I matriculated but am struck by a crazy desire to find something that I love, not just hope to tolerate for an extended period of time.  This is probably unrealistic in that no matter how strongly I enjoy my work, there’s always going to be a time when it feels like, well, work.  I’ve gotten a slew of advice in this area and while the honest encouragement to pick something that sounds good and then make it work makes sense to me, I honestly don’t even know which way to turn on this one.  How do you pick when you don’t even really know the options, or more accurately when the options are so vast and overwhelming that they all blend?  I’ve never been this at odds with the task of living my life or this uncomfortable with the unavoidable fact that I’m one hundred percent responsible for making all the decisions. I am not qualified for this level of responsibility.

In my experience the only way to combat rampant not knowing is to just start knowing things.  My world has shrunk significantly since I left school and it’s time of come out of the corner that I feel so backed into.

The task that I’ve set before myself is to read Modern Libraries Top 100 Nonfiction books.  I looked at a lot of different “top 100 books” lists and settled on this one for several reasons.  One, it was one of the few lists that didn’t have Bridgette Jone’s Diary on it.  Now I’m not trying to knock Helen Fielding because let’s face it, she’s had a least one more book published than I have but I am confident that it’s not the kind of reading I’m looking for.   I felt similarly to most other novel lists, there’s dozens of fiction books that I’d like to read  and the lists looked fun-ish but the nonfiction list looked, well, intimidating.  I know that I can read literature but Albert Einstein?  Richard Feynman?  I just don’t know about them because I’ve never tried.  If I’m really lucky I might find something intriguing that makes me sit up and think about running full steam ahead towards it.  If not, I’ll at least know more about 100 things that I didn’t know about before.

There are several books on the list that I am looking forward to and several that I want to run so far and so fast from (ahem Principia Mathematica) that I’d give Usain Bolt a run for his money.  To avoid any chicken pooping out on the harder texts I’ll be working methodically from number one, straight through to 100 and heralding you with the things that I learn along the way.  I know that this is vaguely Julie Julia Project-ish but since I’m very well aware that this will most likely not be my path to fame and riches, I’m okay with that.  As thrilling as it was to watch a neurotic girl cook her way through a 365 Julia Child's recipes, I’m pretty sure that watching a neurotic nerdy girl read would be even less so.  The blow by blow would be interminably painful and thus I’ll just be hitting the high points, and no worries - I’ll still be up to my usual shenanigans and writing about trivialities, besides, if it gets to dry around these parts I’ll just start drinking more and that should spice it up!