While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public. There are many obvious advantages to this. You don’t have to dress up, for instance, and you can’t hear them boo you right away.

- p. xiv

LL got me Bird by Bird for a present awhile back, thinking I would enjoy Anne Lamott’s writing style and writing advice. Enjoy it? Ha! I adored it. And if there was any way I could carry Anne Lamott around in my pocket, I would do it in a heartbeat.

She voiced the words that every writer hears in the back of his head – words of inadequacy, jealousy, frustration, passion, joy, and more inadequacy. She shared her personal story of why she writes. And she inspired me to keep on keeping on.

Now if only I could have her whispering these sweet nothings from my shirt pocket every hour on the hour.

Writing and life (p. xii)

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.”

How writers differ from everyone else (p. xx)

“I suspect that (my dad) was a child who thought differently than his peers … who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal. Throughout my childhood I believe that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head.”

On C.S. Lewis (p. xxi)

“I remember reading C.S. Lewis for the first time, Surprised by Joy, and how, looking inside himself, he found “a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, an ursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds.” I felt elated and absolved.”

On consistency (p. xxii)

“‘Do it every day for a while,’ my father kept saying. ‘Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.’”

On brain cancer (p. xxiv)

“My father was diagnosed with brain cancer. He and my brothers and I were devastated, but somehow we managed, just barely, to keep our heads above water. My father told me to pay attention and to take notes. ‘You tell your version,’ he said, ‘and I am going to tell mine.’

“I began to write about what my father was going through, and then began to shape these writings into connected short stories. I wove in all the vignettes and snippets I’d been working on in the year before Dad’s diagnosis, and came up with five chapters that sort of hung together. My father, who was too sick to write his own rendition, loved them …”

On hating what you wrote (p. 8)

“But the bad news is that if you’re at all like me, you’ll probably read over what you’ve written and spend the rest of the day obsessing, and praying that you do not die before you can completely rewrite or destroy what you have written, lest the eagerly waiting world learn how bad your first drafts are.”

On writing advice for life (p. 18)

“E.L. Doctorow once said that ‘writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

On perfectionism (p. xx)

“I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds – the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both – to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp.”

On faking (p. 60)

“The reader will stop trusting you and will possibly even become bitter and resentful. These are the worst possible things for a reader to become.”

On rejection (p. 87)

“I licked my wounds for a couple of weeks and waited for my confidence to return. I tried not to make any big dcisions about how to salvage the book or my writing life, because the one thing I knew for sure was that if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.”

On emotions (p. 112)

“Remember the scene in Cat Ballou where a very drunk Lee Marvin goes from unconscious to ranting to triumphant to roaring to weeping to defeat, and then finally passes out? One of the men watching him says, with real awe, ‘I never seen a man get through a day so fast.’ Don’t let this be you.”

On jealousy (p. 124)

“Jealousy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer, and the most degrading. And I, who have been the Leona Helmsley of jealousy, have come to believe that the only things that help ease or transform it are (a) getting older, (b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and (c) using it as material.”

On determination (p. 130)

“‘I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.’ The way I dance is by writing.”

On critics (p. 142)

“Who was it that said, ‘A critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the battle is over and shoots the wounded’?”

Novels and salvation (p. 167)

“I heard Marianne Williamson say once that when you ask God into your life, you think he or she is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture and that everything needs just a little cleaning – and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re gonig to have to start over from scratch. This is exactly what it can be like to give, say, a novel to someone else to read.”

On writer’s block (p. 178)

“The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty.”

Books as presents and legacies (p. 185)

“Twice now I have written books that began as presents to people I loved who were going to die. I’ve told you a little about my father’s diagnosis of brain cancer, how all of a sudden I had a sad story to tell. It was a story rich with drama and humor, about a father and his three semigrown children living in a tiny town filled with aging hippies, trust-fund radicals, artists, New Agers, and ordinary people, whatever that means. Out of nowhere, the rug was suddenly pulled out from under the family, when it looked as if the father had a terminal illness and was actually going to go ahead and die.

“So I started writing about our new life. I recorded moments of my brothers trying to help our father, trying to help one another, all of us trying to keep our senses of humor, trying to find meaning in it all, and saying what was really on our minds.”

Inspiration for writing (p. 186)

“Another propellent for this first novel of mine was that I found myself desperate for books that talked about cancer in a way that would both illuminate the experience and make me laugh. But there weren’t very many. In fact, there was only on that I was aware of, Violet Weingarten’s Intimations of Mortality, a journal of her chemotherapy, from which I got this book’s epigram: ‘Is life too short to be taking sh–, or is life to short to be minding it?’”

Writing as a love letter / Writing as immortality (p. 188)

Sam was getting bigger and Pammy was getting sicker, and I was writing as fast as I could, trying to get it done in time for her to read it. And I did. I gave her a finished copy four months before she died. It was another love letter, mostly to her and Sam, and for her daughter, Rebecca. Pammy knew there was something that was going to exist on paper after she was gone, something that was going to be, in a certain way, part of her immortality.

The holy goes on (p. 192)

This is from the end of a story of Lamott taking her son Sam bowling after the death of his friend Brice:

“Bowling is life at its most immediate – you fling a balll and the pins fall down, sometimes. And I also wanted to show Sam that the holy goes on, no matter how many balls you fling at it.”

Use your best stuff now (p. 202)

“Annie Dilard has said that day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects. If you give freely, there will always be more. This is a radical proposition that runs so contrary to human nature, or at least to my nature, that I personally keep trying to find loopholes in it. But it is only when I go ahead and decide to shoot my literary, creative wad on a daily basis that I get any sense of full presence, of being Zorba the Greek at the keyboard. Otherwise, I am a wired little rodent squirreling things away, hording and worrying about suppply.”

The value of writers (p. 237)

“When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t sop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

Having read Tim Ferriss’s Four-Hour Work Week, I had a point of reference for The Art of Non-Conformity (TAoNC). That point of reference: People who call their own shots are egotistical, worldly, unattached figments of the imagination.

Surprise! Chris Guillebeau is none of those things. He seems like a regular guy, except that he writes books and does whatever he wants all day every day. TAoNC began as a website, which interests me, and turned into a life plan, which interests me less. And that may explain the disconnect I found in some chapters, mostly the ones where Guillebeau cheerleads and romanticizes. The only time that has ever interested me was in the movie Bring It On.

Still, my overall impression of the book was a good one, and I actually found myself recommending it to friends. The money-management advice and career planning were my favorite parts. In short, spend money on the things you like and get your money from doing what you love. I love writing, so I guess it doesn’t work for everyone. But one can dream!

The game of mediocrity (p. 5)

“If you’ve ever completed a task for the sole purpose of making yourself look better without any improvement being produced for others (customers, colleagues, etc.), then you’ve been a participant in the game of mediocrity. Similarly, if you’ve ever been to pointless meetings that drag on far too long, this description should come as no surprise.”

Four Keys to non-conformity (p. 7)

1. You must be open to new ideas
2. You must be dissatisfied with the status quo
3. You must be willing to take personal responsibility
4. You must be willing to work hard

Relevance (p. 8)

“Whether it’s this book or any other resource, almost nothing you encounter will ever be 100 percent relevant to your situation. The goal is to focus on on what is relevant and apply those key ideas to your life.”

The One-Year, Self-Directed, Alternative Graduate School Experience (p. 118)

• Subscribe to the Economist and read every issue religiously. Cost: $97 + 60 minutes/week.
• Memorize the names of every country, world capital, and current president or prime minister in theworld. Cost $0 + 3-4 hours once.
• Buy a round-the-world plane ticket or use frequent flyer miles to travel to several major world regions, including somewhere in Africa and somewhere in Asia. Cost: variable, but plan on $4,000.
• Read the basic texts of the major world religions: the Torah, the Ne Testament, the Koran, and the teachings of Buddha. Visit a church, a mosque, a synagogue, and a temple. Cost: materials can be obtained fre online or in the mail + 20 hours.
• Subscribe to a language-learnign podcast and listen to each 20-minute episode, five times a week, for the entire year. Attend a local language club once a week to practice. Cost $0 + 87 hours.
• Loan money to an entrepreneur through Kiva.org and arrange to visit him or her while you’re abroad on your big trip. Cost: likely $0 in the end, since 98% of loans are repaid.
• Acquire at leat three new skills during your year. Suggestions: photography, skydiving, computer programming, martial arts.The key is not to become an expert in any of them, but to become functionally proficient. Cost: variable.
• Read at least 30 nonfiction books and 20 classic novels. Cost: $750.
• Join a gym or health club to keep fit during your rigorous independent studies. Cost: $25-$75 per month.
• Become comfortable with basic presentation and public speaking skills. Join your local Toastmasters. Cost: $25 once + 2 hours a week for 10 weeks.
• Start a blog, create a basic posting schedule, and stick with it for the entire year. Cost: $0.
• Set your home page to Wikipedia’s random page. Read it. Cost: $0.
• Learn to write by listening to the Grammar Girl podcast on iTunes and buying Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Cost: $0 for podcast, $14 for Lamott.
• Instead of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, read The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs. Cost: $15.

Creating followers (p. 131)

To move prospects from window shoppers to followers, you’ll need to focus on asking and answering the “reason why.” The “reason why” refers to the question we all ask when we check out a new person, organization, or even a general resource such as a book or website. The question is: “Why should I care about this?” or, phrased differently, “What’s in it for me?”

Sustainable income on 1,000 true fans (p. 140)

Kevin Kelly, Wired essay … possible for a musician, band, or almost any artist to earn a good, sustainable income with a fan base of just 1,000 true fans. Remember that a true fan is someone who will buy almost anything you produce. These fans will drive long distances to concerts, actively post reviews of your work, debate critics on your behalf, and regularly tell their friends about you

Happiness versus income (p. 153)

“… studies have consistently shown that there is a relatively low limit beyond which happiness and income are not directly related. To take one estimate, after a person earns around $40,000 a year, the amount of happiness doesn’t increase very much. The goal is to know where you fall on the money and happiness scale, so you can then plan your life acordingly.”

Discretionary spending (p. 153)

“After paying the rent and other recurring bills, the way I approach my discretionary spending is outlined below.

1. I happily exchange money for things I dtruly value.
2. As much as possible, I don’t exchange money for things I don’t value.
3. All things being equal, I value life experie ces more than physical possessions.
4. Investing in others is at least as important as my own long-term savings.

On retirement (p. 158)

“Retirement for many of us is an old-fasioned idea – we may want to retire from a particular job and then move on to something else, but we don’t necessarily want to stop working altogether.”

Bill Gates and radical exclusion (p. 176)

“… Bill Gates famously did this during his ‘Think Weeks,’ where twice a year he would shut out all distractions and head into a room of reading material for several days at a time. An aide would bring in grilled cheese sandwiches and diet soda twice a day, and Gates would plot the future of Microsoft’s world domination strategy.”

Living simply (p. 178)

“David committed to living with only 100 items in his possession … David published his 100 things list online at GuyNamedDave.com.”

Legacies (p. 210)

The following are legacy project characteristics for Chris’s Art of Non-Conformity website.

• Vision: to empower people to live unconventional, remarkable lives
• Beneficiaries: A grou pof at least 100,000 passionate individuals who want to live differently and change the world
• Primary method or medium: Writing
• Output: At least two articles each week, one book per year, regular guest columns, 300,000 annual total words
• Metrics: Site visitors / subscribers / page views / social networking stats / nice emails

On editing (p. 217)

“The creative diversity definitely helps me going. Note also that the editing process inevitably cuts a lot of the initial output. I follow a classic rule of writing and editing: when writing, don’t hesitate to include something; when editing, don’t hesitate to throw it out.”

***

Exercise No. 1: A day in the life … (p. 31)

Create your ideal world: Write out your idealized, perfect day in great detail, beginning from what time you get up and what you have for breakfast all the way through what you do for each hour of the day and who you talk to. The more detail you add to the plan, the better.

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping … Wake up when I’m done sleeping and not because an alarm went off or I have something to do … Take a shower…. Wear my Idaho Physical Therapy t-shirt and my new jeans … Either be told I look good by LL or think I look good when I catch myself in the mirror … Eat whatever I feel like for breakfast and be completely unaware that I have anything else going on the rest of the day – OR – make LL something for breakfast and while I’m cooking, she does something she enjoys … Play a video game while listening to fun, new music that I never knew existed before … Spend an hour or two writing something clever and entertaining …

Meet my parents for lunch at Idaho Pizza Company … Get the buffet … Make it so that there is always fresh pepperoni pizza available … Have our meal comped …

Get a group of people together to play an active game outdoors or indoors, kind of like P.E. or intramurals but better because I know everyone ..Make sure the game is not too competitive and there are sugar-free PowerAde drinks that taste like real PowerAde in a cooler somewhere … Purple ….

Take a nap …

Work on a 5,000-piece puzzle with Lindsay while watching a TV series on Netflix or DVD … Preferably a sitcom, but I can be talked into something else … Have someone sort the puzzle pieces for us … Go to a matinee movie at the theater with free movie passes … Sneak in chocolate covered peanuts … Eat some, but not enough to ruin dinner …

Order takeout from a favorite restaurant, like Hong Kong or Applebee’s … Invite friends or family over to eat with us … Play a card game together … OK, play Rook … Have no awkward moments of conversation whatsoever … .

Hang out around the house with Lindsay … Watch the sunset … Read a magazine … Blizzards! Delivered! … Stay up late watching football with no commercials …Go to bed when I’m tired, and not a minute earlier!

Exercises No. 2 and 3: Life list and radical goal-setting (p. 33)

Life list / bucket list: Spend an afternoon, or even just half an hour, listing out a range of activities and experiences you’d like to have sometime. The typical life list contains a wide variety of goals, ranging from the trivial (“try 100 fruits”) to the difficult (“camp on Antarctica”).

• Write a book about my dad
• Learn to play the piano
• Learn Spanish
• Start a brain cancer non-profit
• Compete in a Hearts tournament
• Participate in National Novel Writing Month
• Start a website for our son
• See a US soccer game live
• Attend the World Cup
• See a hockey game in Europe
• Get access to Boise State practices and skybox
• Get good at photography

Take the overall list and break it down into measurable goals with an approximate deadline.

One-year goals: This list gets reviewed a few times a year, and I create next year’s goals each December. I break this list down into further specific categories. Some of mine are Writing, Health, Business, Friends, Familyh, Service, Travel, Income, and Giving.

• Learn Spanish
• Start a brain cancer non-profit
• Compete in a Hearts tournament
• Participate in National Novel Writing Month
• Start a website for our son
• Get good at photography

Five-year goals: This list gets reviewed once a year and contains some of the “big things” you hope to do in the near future. Note that as some of the goals on the one-year list are completed, other goals from the five-year list shift down.

• Write a book about my dad
• Learn to play the piano
• See a US soccer game live

Lifetime goals: This list gets reviewed once a year and includes everything that you want to do, but either don’t have a timeline for or will take a long time to accomplish.

• Go to the World Cup
• See a hockey game in Europe
• Get access to Boise State practices and skybox

Exercise No. 4: The To-Stop-Doing List (p. 177)

An important principle of life planning is that you can have anything you want, but you can’t  have everything at the same time. To be able to devote most of your time to projects and activities you enjoy, you’ll need to be forceful about droping a lot of other activities.

The best way to stop spending time on unnecessary distractions is to make a “to-stop-doing list.” This is better than a to-do list, because it helps you see what’s bringing you down. Your to-stop-doing list is exactly what it sounds like: a list of things you simply don’t want to do anymore.

Think about the tasks that drain your energy without contributing to anything worthwhile. There will always be tasks that drain your energy for outcomes you believe in – it takes a lot of energy to be a social worker, for example – but the to-stop-doing list is for tasks that bring you down without giving you joy or helping anyone else.

Try to come up with at least three to five things you currently do that drain your time and keep your focus away from more important tasks. The first time I made a to-stop-doing list, I realized that I was spending at least five hours a week on things I derived no value from. While life is filled with some things we don’t like to do, the principle is that many of these things can be left undone or removed from our weekly activities without much repercussion.

• Yard work
• Shaving
• Haircuts
• Talking on the phone
• Junk mail
• Home Depot projects

Lindsay’s answers

I’m not sure about the ethical ramifications of my deciding what Lindsay would prefer in life, but here goes nothing. It’s either adorably sweet for me to do this or heavy-handed and totalitarian. YOU WILL ENJOY YANKEE CANDLES!!

Lindsay’s perfect day

Sleep … Wake up when she can’t sleep any more … Lie in bed for awhile … Take a shower … Have clean-shaven legs without having to shave … Put on the purple lumberman shirt and comfy pants … Watch cartoons (Looney Tunes, maybe Horse Land or Arthur) and eat warm pancakes for breakfast … Get ready for the day … Go on a bike ride with Kevan on the greenbelt in Nampa or Boise (Boise is only an option if we can teleport) … Meet a group of puppies while biking … Get a Starbucks drink on the way home …

Have lunch with friends at her favorite restaurant … Use a coupon and have it all be free …

Play Harry Potter video game for an hour or so … Bake a pie for friends or family to eat later … Get a massage … Read books for the rest of the afternoon …

Invite friends or family over to grill pizzas … Use ingredients from her garden for the pizza … Not have to clean the house … Laugh with friends or family … Play games (Settlers of Catan) with friends or family and watch them eat pie … Go on an adventure with Kevan, Scott, and Hannah …  Shop online … Watch a new episode of Modern Family .while taking a bath … Go to bed …

Lindsay’s life list

• Get a master’s degree in counseling
• Start a family
• Wish lanterns on the beach
• Own an iPad
• Own a dog
• Travel to the East Coast
• Watch a meteor shower
• Spend more time outside
• Plant new vegetables in the garden
• Pergola
• Visit family in Montana

Lindsay’s to-stop-doing list

• Couponing
• Going to Valley Shepherd services
• Cleaning the bathrooms
• Sitting in traffic / driving

Reading books in small groups is always an interesting undertaking. History has taught me that one of two things will happen: 1) No one will read the book, or 2) you will read the book together, out loud, in the group, and everyone will be bored to tears.

My group took option No. 1.

Reading on our own went fine for the first few weeks, but eventually, the momentum ceased. Ironically, this was very similar to how the book reads.

John Eldredge starts off with his hair on fire, preaching about the heart and its overlooked value in the life of a Christian. It is inspiring and encouraging and … oh good grief, get to the meaty stuff. After several chapters of cheerleading, the book drags, and it seems like every other phrase and story ends with “guard your heart.”

I powered through the final half in one or two sittings, and I’m glad I did. While there was still more heart-guarding to slog through, I found that the parts that spoke loudest to me were buried in the back – stories of community and friendship that were really relevant to me at the time.

Here are a few of my favorites:

On the perspective of suffering (p. 110) …

And being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks. What put a stop to all this was a sudden fright. Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him. It was pitch dark, and he could see nothing. And the Thing (or Person) was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls. What he could hear was breathing. His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale …

If the horse had been any good – or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse – he would have risked everything on a breakaway and a wild gallop. But he knew he couldn’t make that horse gallop. So he went on at a walking pace and the unseen companion walked and breathed beside him. At last he could bear it no longer. “Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.

“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep …

“Oh please – please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world!”

Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. ”There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”

Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.

“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.

“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.

“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.

“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and …”

“There was only one; but he was swift of foot.”

“How do you know?”

“I was the lion.”

And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”

“It was I.”

“But what for?”

“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers.”

( Excerpted from C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy)

On living together as one body (p. 187) …

“You must cling to those you have; you must search wide and far for those you do not yet have. You must not go alone. From the beginning, right there in Eden, the Enemy’s strategy has relied upon a simple aim: divide and conquer. Get them isolated, and take them out.

“When Neo is set free from the Matrix, he joins the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar – the little hovercraft that is the headquarters and ship of the small fellowship called to set the captives free. There are nine of them in all, each a character in his own way, but nonetheless a company of the heart, a “band of brothers,” a family bound together in a single fate. Together, they train for battle. Together, they plan their path. When they go back into the Matrix to set others free, each one has a role, a gifting, a glory. They function as a team. And they watch each other’s back. Neo is fast, really fast, but he still would have been taken out if it hadn’t been for Trinity. Morpheus is more gifted than them all, but it took the others to rescue him.”

On the power of unity (p. 194) …

“On a Tuesday evening last January, those of us in our fellowship were sitting around talking about our need to see the rest of the picture, how we cannot make good decisions or even know what’s really going on without eyes to see. That led into a conversation about the power of myth to open the eyes of our hearts. I suggested we do this: ‘Write down on a piece of paper five words or phrases that capture your life right now. What does it feel like? Don’t edit. Don’t make it sound better than it is. How are you doing?’ It began an incredibly eye-opening jouney.

“Once we had our words or phrases (many of us coldn’t keep it to five), I then asked, ‘What stories or scenes or characters help you interpret those words, help you see what’s going on, give a context to your words for your life right now?’ You see, no experience or feeling provides its own interpretation. You feel besieged on all sides. Are you Elijah on Mount Carmel, on the brink of great victory? Or are you Paul in Thessalonica, and you’d better get out of town, fast? We have to find something that gives our experiences meaning and context. And that’s when the really good stuff took place. First, we shared our words and the stories that we felt interpreted them for us. Then, the fellowship offered to each other the characters and scenes that we saw for each other.

“Misty had moved to our community a year earlier and had gone through a pretty tough time. New apartment, new job, all that. Would she fit in? Does she really have anything to offer? Her words wer: ‘Newness, uncharted territory, yellow brick road, fighting, a page turned, warfare.’ She thought that, maybe, there might be some truth for her in Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, at least early in the story: ‘She sees things in others and calls them forth, but she’s desperate to come home.’ The other story Misty chose felt more true; she really felt like the yount woman in Ever After who ‘poses as royalty to save a servant friend, but she is exposed as less than royalty.’ As we listened first to her words and then to her intrepretation, we all quietly jotted down our own stories for her.

“When it was our chance to offer comments, five different people said, ‘Arwen,’ from The Lord of the Rings. It fit perfectly. She is beautiful (what woman doesn’t long to hear this?), she is a warrior, and she is regal. And that is so true of Misty – all of it. Three folks also chose Dorothy from Oz; not because she’s lost, but because she is right where she needs to be, and especially because she has a heart of gold. (By this point Misty is in tears. Did I mention she moved here from Kansas?) Then a real home run came – at least two of us offered Joan of Arc. I was one of them, and I had no idea where it came from. Misty was speechless. ‘I’m reading a book on her life right now. She’s who I so want to be.’ God was speaking. What made it so powerful was that we saw her, she knew she was exposed to us, and what we saw was her glory. She felt called into something Great and Weighty, with beauty and courage to match.

“‘Longing, fear, lonely, waiting, thwarted.’ Those were Aaron’s words. He chose Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring ‘because he’s the one that gets taken out, he’s unstable, a mess.’ Aaron has fought a long, hard battle against a lot of oppression – some pretty fierce stuff. And his deep brokenness has often made him feel like he’s just a mess. It’s not true – but you know how when you’re in need, it feels so shameful, like you’re always in need. There was a moment of silence. Then every last one of us said, almost in the same breath, ‘Strieder – Aragorn.’ Early in the story, isn’t he also longing, lonely, waiting, thwarted? Aaron was speechless. ‘You’re a good man, Aaron. You’ve walked a lonely trial, fought many hard battles. But your heart is good. You are Strider.’ Very, very quietly, like the dawn, he said, ‘That’s who I want to be.’

“Stasi’s words for her life were ‘persevering, hidden, misunderstood, weary, mudane tasks.’ She chose Lucy from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ’because she wants to be faithful and true.’ (You’ll recall that Lucy was also rather plain and not too pretty.) She also wrote down Lucilla, the empress in Gladiator, ‘because I long to be a beautiful, courageous empress.’ Notice that nearly always our interpretiation of our days will reveal what we long to be but fear we really are not. Then it was our turn. Someone offered Cinderlla, and everyone said, ‘Oh, my gosh. Yes!’ She, too, was persevering, hidden, misunderstood, given mundane tasks. But she was also beautiful and didn’t know it. We know Stasi’s story; her glory has been assaulted. Remember how the wicked stepsisters tore the gown off Cinderella, so she couldn’t go to the ball? I reminded Stasi of the time her sisters actually did that very thing to her. She burst into tears. ‘I forgot all about that … Oh, my.’ The truth was reaching her heart.”

Make a list of the things you love

Early on in the book, John Eldredge challenged readers to make a list of the things you love – don’t edit, don’t think twice about anything, don’t feel bad for writing three different variations of “video games” (I may have added that last rule myself). I posted my list, and I also posted one for LL.

The exercise taught me a lot about what is important to me and how I should spend my time. And it taught me a lot about LL. If the book would have ended right then and there with the love lists, I would have been content … and not just because it came 50 pages in and I don’t love to read.

It is not the brightest who succeed … Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

- p. 267

The ideas and theories contained inside Malcolm Gladwell’s Outsiders represent thinking outside the box at its finest. Or thinking outside the box on steroids. Gladwell invites you to look at the world in a different way, and I RSVP’ed a wholehearted “yes.” His perspective is exciting and fresh and, most important to me, steeped in data and research. There is evidence behind his reasoning for hockey player birthing windows and Korean airline terror and Jewish lawyering. In short, Gladwell argues that to know where you’re going, you should look where you came from. I am who I am in part because of my upbringing and circumstance and environment and in part because of the decisions I made and the work I put in.

My son will be the same.

So if I’m holding out for that vicarious Pulitzer Prize, I better move him to the East Coast asap.

The hidden keys to success (p. 19)

“In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. Peope don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. … It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”

Holding kids back in school (p. 28)

“Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it’s hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier, but most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn’t. It’s just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years.”

10,000 hours (p. 40)

“Researchers have settles on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

“‘The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything,’ writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin.”

The test of objects and the reality of higher IQs (p. 86)

“Write down as many different uses that you an think of for the following object:

• A brick
• A blanket

… “Here, for example are answers to the “uses of objects” test collected by Liam Hudson from a student named Poole at a top British high school:

“(Brick). To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, turn and throw – no evasive action allowed). To hold the (duvet) down on a bed, tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles.

“(Blanket). To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart, or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.

“It’s not hard to read Poole’s answers and get some sense of how his mind works. He’s funny. He’s a little subversive and libidinous. He has the flair for the dramatic. His mind leaps from violent imagery to sex to people jumping out of burning skyscrapers to very practical issues, such as how to get a duvet to stay on a bed. He gives us the impression that if we gave him another ten minutes, he’d come up with another twenty uses.

“Now, for the sake of comparison, consider the answers of another student from Hudson’s sample. His name is Florence. Hudson tells us that Florence is a prodigy, with one of the highest IQs in his school.

“(Brick). Building things, throwing.

“(Blanket). Keepig warm, smothering fire, tying to trees and sleeping in (as a hammock), improvised stretcher.

“Where is Florence’s imagination? He identified the most common and most functional uses for bricks and blankets and simply stopped. Florence’s IQ is higher than Poole’s. But that means little, since both students are above the threshold. What is more interesting is that Poole’s mind can leap from violent imagery to sex to people jumping out of buildings without missing a beat, and Florence’s mind can’t. Now which of these two students do you think is better suited to do the kind of brilliant, imaginative work that wins Nobel Prizes?”

Parenting styles and “concerted cultivation” (p. 104)

“Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style “concerted cultivation.” It’s an attempt to actively “foster and assess a child’s talents, opinions and skills.” Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of “accomplishment of natural growth.” They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own.

“… in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages.”

The keys to satisfying work (p. 149)

“When Borgenicht came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss. He was responsible for his own decisions and direction. His work was complex: it engaged his mind and imagination. And in his work, there was a relationship between effort and reward: the longer he and Regina stayed up at night sewing aprons, the more money they made the next day on the streets.

“Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between efort and reward – are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”

Lessons (p. 151)

“The most important consequence of the miracle of the garment industry, though, was what happened to the children growing up in those homes where meaningful work was practiced. Imagine what it must have been like to watch the meteoric rise of Regina and Louis Borgenicht through the eyes of one of their offspring. They learned the same lesson that little Alex Williams would learn nearly a century later – a lesson crucial to those who wanted to tackle the upper reaches of a profession like law or medicine: if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagnation, you can shape the world to your desires.”

One of the first things you are likely to learn about me is that I love birthdays. And not just my own birthday. I love every single person’s birthday, to the degree that I get in trouble for being overly enthusiastic with people who aren’t as into birthdays. I am borderline offensive with my love of birthdays.

My birthday is tomorrow.

I will do the usual birthday celebrating – extending my birthday for a full week, taking multiple liberties with our dining out schedule, going all Red Scare on any and all birthday present information I can dig up – and I will have a great time. How can I not? It’s a birthday. I’m going to get a Madden video game.

Nevertheless, this birthday is very different for me, and all future birthdays might be, too.

Last year, we rearranged my birthday plans so that my dad could go to football practice. No big deal … until he was diagnosed with brain cancer in November and my mom mentioned that his choosing football over my birthday should have been a sign to her that something was wrong. So knowingly or not (I guess it is knowingly since I’m writing about it now), I dated the beginning of my dad’s illness to my birthday.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of when this whole life-change started. Part of me wants to drive off into the country with a shovel and ceremoniously bury an item in a field as a way of putting this year behind me and moving on to better things. Part of me thinks that is stupid and something that would happen in an indie film. Part of me is sad. Part of me is happy. Part of me just wants to go out to dinner and open presents.

There is no right way for me to feel. I guess the feelings – whatever they tend to be from day to day and hour to hour – just strike me as new. My birthday is different this year. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. I’ll just have to add it to my celebratory repertoire.