Done yesterday (20120217 Fr)

[mdlbear]

Hmm. A pretty good day, I guess. Maybe? 2.3mi walk. Worked seriously on the Consonance concert set, and got in some practice. Put in a request for a concert at Westercon.

I realized, during my walk, that I don't know how to smile on demand. Never have. I smile when it's... induced?... by the situation, but I can't do it deliberately. Supposedly, if one smiles, one becomes happier. The best I can do now seems to be some kind of grimace. I'm guessing it's a skill worth learning. Wonder how much time looking stupid in front of a mirror it's going to take...

I spent quite a lot of time reading The Language of Emotions; my bullshit meter pegged at a couple of points, especially in a section where she groups various drugs and practices into categories by their effects. Other parts seem to make sense, but how much of it can really be trusted? I don't know enough about the subject to tell.

About 10:30 pm I started drifting off. As I'm starting to do now.

0217 Fr
  * up 6:45; W=191.6; drugs, nose, teeth, dishes, exercise, light
  & dropped Dilbert and User Friendly from my morning tabs.  Boring, and
    Dilbert was doing pop-unders.
  * concert.songs for Consonance.  Thinking about order.
  * practice:  WItC, When I Go, Another Country -- been a long time for that 
    one; there's a riff in there that I've forgotten; will have to reconstruct. 
  @ mudcat.org: Lyr Req: The Family Car (Lou and Peter Berryman)
  * walk: 2.3mi, 2.9mph, 228cal  battery at 63%
  % I don't know how to smile on demand (from exercise in Language of
    Emotions; various "if you smile it will..." incidents)
  * ask for LgF concert at Westercon 
  : Almost ready to throw LoE across the room:  what she says about various
    drugs, and the categories she puts them in, is totally wrong.
    " The anesthetic drugs and practices -- painkillers, cigarettes, heroin,
      marijuana, excessive reading or TV and movie viewing, and overeating --
      help numb the body, the emotions, and the thoughts...
  : My bullshit meter is pretty well pegged at this point.  Her lumping
    equally disparate drugs into other categories is just as bad.  Bits of it
    seem to be ok, but how the hell am I supposed to tell _which_ bits?
  : ... and love isn't an emotion.  WTF?  We're not speaking the same
    language, are we?  I guess the question is whether she has something
    useful to say that I can translate.
  % 10:30 drifting again
  @ the QUILTBAG (via the Crowdfunding
    Creative Jam) 

Comments

[filkermanque]

I'm sure your on-demand smile looks as real as anyone's. Let's see about mine:

:)

(And yes, I do feel happier.)

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

About 20 years ago or so I started learning two different skills. One was the realization that I had a face that people responded to - though I never could fathom why :). So I found that if I smiled first and or made eye contact most folks would smile back and this would in turn make me smile back more and "truer" if that makes sense. And yes over time it has made me happier. A note to add is that it needs to be employed with a touch of intuitiveness since there a strangers in public you don't want to smile at!!

The second skill was smiling on demand for photos. I had a really good photo pose smile and now that the weight is a third of what it was the smile doesn't look right anymore... at least to me. So I'm awkward with photos once again but shopping around for that new photo smile :).

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

Although I can do it, smiling on demand doesn't do anything for me except piss me off. It's something about the 'demand' part of the equation, I think. As for excessive reading as an anesthetic drug, what's 'excessive'? And what's next, twelve-step programs for people who read too much?!

[mdlbear]

Maybe "demand" isn't the right word, since the demand is internal. More like "when I want to", as opposed to when I do it unconsciously.

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

I get the actual 'demand' from overly cheerful strangers who'll say "Smile!" when I really don't feel like smiling. I don't mind if it comes from someone I know, but the idea that total strangers have the right to dictate the positioning my facial muscles gets on my last nerve.

[mdlbear]

You're right, that's unacceptable. So is yelling "How are you" at me when I'm out walking, while running in the opposite direction. I get that one a lot.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Whenever I am reading a book, and parts of it hit the "Um. NO!" button, I have difficulty trusting a lot of what the author says after that, too.

I'm sure there's a fancy logic train crash name for that feeling, but I don't know it.

My most recent "crash" reading was in a book on childhood discipline, when on the topic of kids doing outrageous revenge actions like breaking computers or the family dishes when tantruming, that they just needed more love and attention to "fix" the problem. Every thing else the author says, even things that I DO at work is now under scrutiny for being wrong.

[mdlbear]

Yes, that's it exactly. The whole subject's completely foreign to me, so now it's really hard to trust anything in it. Whenever I see something surprising, I have to wonder whether it's just surprising to me, or whether it's completely bogus.