For two days I worked from home because of the latest gout flare-up. The first day I could barely walk across the house with the assistance of the cane. The second day was much better, but I couldn’t actually get my foot into my good shoes, that’s how swollen it was. The third morning I was limping, but able to get around the house pretty quickly without the cane. So, I was determined to go into the office.…
Monthly Archives: December 2014
On apologizing
There are so many situations that would be improved if only people knew how to apologize. A good apology isn’t really that hard to make. When the author known as Lemony Snicket recently made a strange comment at the National Book Awards after Jacqueline Woodson won in the young adult category for her memoir in verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, he apologized as if he meant it. He characterized his comment as “monstrously inappropriate and yes, racist.” He said he shouldn’t have said it, he realized he shouldn’t have said it, and he’s sorry he said it. And he recognized that his words didn’t just hurt Woodson.
Then, noting that he made this remark under a circumstance where what he was supposed to be doing was help shine a light on great books, he donated $10,000 to a campaign for diversity in publishing, and asked everyone else to donate, noting that for the next 24 hours he would match all donations received up to 100,000.
None of which makes is comment retroactively all right, but because he didn’t go with the typical, “if people were offended, I apologize,” or “my comments were misunderstood,” or “anyone who knows me in daily life knows this isn’t the kind of person I am.”
When people go one of those routes, they aren’t apologizing, they’re making excuses and trying to get out of trouble. They don’t really believe that what they said or did was wrong. And they don’t believe that anyone who is offended is “legitimately” hurt.
It isn’t fun to admit that you’re wrong. Most of us are not socialized to admit that we are wrong about something. We’re taught that being wrong is bad—not just a mistake, but that there must be something seriously wrong with us if we are wrong.
Right?…
Drop-kick me, Odin, through the goal posts of life*
When I set my goals for the year, I said I’d do regular check-ins. And for the first ten months I did. I wound up not posting an update on my goals in the first week of November because during November I was working on NaNoWriMo, determined to get 50,000 words into the next novel in that month. Since last year I had posted two or three updates on my NaNoWriMo progress during the month, I figured I would do the same this year, and maybe sneak in a little bit about the over all goals.
But I only did two updates about my NaNoWriMo progress, and neither of them talked about the rest of the goals.
I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving my goals. Inspired by a friend’s suggestion, I tried to identify a better habit to replace each bad habit. So, here’s the check-in for both October and Novemeber:
Continue reading Drop-kick me, Odin, through the goal posts of life*
To absent friends…
Today is World AIDS Day. Each year, I spend part of the day remembering people I have known who left this world too soon because of that disease.
So: Frank, Mike, Tim, David, Todd, Chet, Jim, Steve, Brian, Rick, Stacy, Phil, Mark, Michael, Jerry, Walt, Charles, Thomas, Mike, Richard, Bob, Mikey, James, Lisa, Todd, Kerry, Glen, and Jack. Some of you I didn’t know for very long. One of you was a relative. One of you was one of my best friends in high school.
I miss you all. It was a privilege to know you.
Bruce Ward has written about one aspect of this long struggle: Longterm Survivors: A World AIDS Day Remembrance.
Mitchell Warren explains why We Can’t Wait Five Years to See if the AIDS Response Is on Track.
Finally, if you think this is something that only affects a limited number of people, maybe even people who have brought it on themselves: AIDS-related illnesses are the second leading cause of death among adolescents aged 10–19 years globally, and the leading cause of death among adolescents in Africa.
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