Social Media and Self Censorship

A lot of us are drawn to social media due to what I believe is a shared human need – the need to connect with others. So if I’m to be found here on this blog, and on Twitter and such, why wouldn’t I feel free to open up and tell the world what’s on my mind?

Let me tell you a story. I have been on a few job interviews lately and one of them was with a well known not-for-profit entity that is associated with a particular religion. My recent background is in digital advertising sales, so an interview with a non profit is slightly discordant to begin with, but nothing I couldn’t manage. Here’s the rub: I went home and wanted to ‘tweet’ a link to a newspaper editorial, and then stopped myself cold. How would that piece ‘play’ to my prospective employer? (Not that my interviewer would necessarily even know what Twitter IS, but you never know.)

That’s just one example. How about this one: I politely decline an invitation to something I have absolutely NO interest in by apologizing and saying that I’m already booked that night. Then I have to go and note my calendar NOT to go to Facebook that night and post an update like “Watching Goodfellas for the 65th time and eating pizza – good times!”

I’m home sick with a cold and as I follow the health care reform bill, I have thoughts I consider sharing, but then decide not to. During the last presidential election, I watched heated debates take place all over various social media channels, and I stayed on the sidelines. It looked like most were just preaching to their own particular choirs anyway. And when there were the inevitable clashes, the results were usually horribly polarizing.

People used to say that there were three topics you needed to avoid in polite company – politics, sex and religion. It seems like when I am faced with this whole self censorship battle, the reason is generally traceable back to one of these topics. But I have never been one to shrink away from any kind of battle, so why does this one seem more difficult?

Does anyone else out there struggle with this or am I being silly?

How Do You Know If You’re Ready or Not?

Change is wrenching, isn’t it?

One of my all time favorite American novelists, F. Scott Fitzgerald opined: “There are no second acts in American lives.” I have to respectfully disagree. I’ve been through at least three acts so far, and I think I can still shake out at least one more.

Becoming a parent definitely splits your life into ‘before’ and ‘after’ acts. If you go through a major career change, or even totally re-invent yourself, I’d say that counts for an act as well. The most difficult part of making big changes in one’s life, it seems to me, is getting beyond that moment after you look, but before you actually leap. How do you know if you’re ready or not?

When I was a child, my Dad gave me his blueprint for making any kind of decision. He favored the time honored method of making a list of pros and cons, and then evaluating the list in order to make the best possible choice. Good as far as it goes, I suppose. But what about that emotional ‘X-factor’ — that feeling of creeping doubt that seems to freeze you in place at the precise moment you need to take some decisive action to put your plan into play? I’ve actually come to think of this moment as a kind of ‘psychic threshold.’ Either you stay where you are, on your side of the door, or you throw it open and leap into the darkness. This requires great faith — in yourself , in your abilities and in your assessment of the challenges that await you.

At this juncture, is it a good idea to consider the implications of possible failure? Perhaps not. Or better yet, what if you didn’t classify unwished-for results as failure? What if you decided that whatever happened, the result meant you’d acquired knowledge?

This summer, I’m in the process of readying myself for change. I’m writing myself another ‘act’ and trying to see around every corner, which of course, I can’t. I’ll have to remember that no matter how it goes, I’m going to learn a few new things, and in the end, that’s how we grow, right?

Leaping into the darkness yet again — frightening, yes. But always exhilarating!

Can you really go home again?

I attended the funeral of a ‘black sheep’ cousin two weeks ago. I looked around and it hit me hard that my extended family is getting smaller. When I was a kid, I remember times when we’d host big parties that were attended almost exclusively by family members. They’d all be laughing like hyenas, telling stories and sharing opinions while eating a lot of fantastic food cooked by my Mom. Everyone enjoyed it so much and felt lucky to be a part of it. I guess we were a typical Italian family; we were all pretty close.

In those days, it seemed like people tended to stay geographically closer to each other, too. My parents’ generation had what they called, “The Cousin’s Club”. This group grew up together and caroused together, married, had children, the works. They often even vacationed together (hey, this is starting to sound like “Goodfellas.”) It was pretty amazing to have my grandparents next door, two aunts and two uncles in a two block radius, great aunts and uncles, even a great-grandfather who was local (and grew grapes for his own wine!)  Of course, this also meant hot and cold running cousins and various in-laws (and out-laws!) Man, did we have fun.

Here we are years later and we’re all flung in different corners. Some kids couldn’t afford to stay in the kind of neighborhood we lived in. And sure, people got older and more than a few have passed on. Some of the club members’ kids never married, and those that did, didn’t always have children, or fewer of them. The ‘killer blow’ — my parents, who hosted most of those gatherings, moved to Florida when my Dad retired. He’d been saying it for years – “I am NOT going to be shoveling snow after I hit 55!” And of course, New York taxes had always been a sore spot for the old man.

Fact is, my parents are really fun people. As soon as they got down to Florida, they started building a whole new network of friends, Dad jumped into local politics, Mom started teaching a tap dancing class and they both loved the people they met through their new country club. We’d take our families and go to visit them and it would be pretty funny what we’d go through to schedule visits. My parents always have house guests! You had to grab a spot on their calendar and get in there early.

Tomorrow I’m taking a Jet Blue flight to southwest Florida to visit my folks. My sister and I went out for a cup of coffee after the funeral and shared some memories. We both realized that my parents are ‘getting on’ and when she suggested we just grab a flight and go down there, I felt like it was an inspired idea. We considered taking the redeye flight so we could repeat one of our uncle’s old pranks, namely, huddling under the bedroom window at daybreak to sing “Strangers in the Night,” but ultimately decided against it. We’d just be boring and tell them ahead of time so they could come and get us at the airport.

So, even though the Florida house isn’t the home back in Queens I remember with such nostalgia, it is home because when we get there, it’s going to be just the four of us again, our original nuclear family under one roof for the first time in many years. It’s different now in so many ways, sure. This time around, my Mom is not going to take my bedroom door off the hinges (she didn’t like it when I constantly kept my bedroom door locked when I was 14); my Dad won’t come home knocked out from work and charge outside to mow the lawn. My sister and I will not be fighting over the remote control — there’s a flat screen TV in every room of that house.

But here’s the thing — they’re older now. That feels kind of strange and not a little scary. I’m going to hold on to what’s important. We’ll be together. And when we’re together, there’s always love and lots of laughter. I can’t wait to see them both. Yes, you can go home again and I’ll be there tomorrow.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I live on Long Island, which seems to be an area that attracts ghosts – or at least, folks who tell tales of having seen them. While tooling around the net, I discovered a wonderful blog that I found absolutely fascinating:

http://longislandgothic.com/

It’s written by Todd Atteberry and I spent the better part of an hour enjoying the author’s whimsical style and absolutely gorgeous photos. (Besides having a very unique voice, Todd is also a talented photographer; his photos are evocative and very much suit the ‘feeling’ of the LongIslandGothic.com blog.) The Long Island ghost stories  are certainly eerie, but there is something very unexpectedly playful about the way he tells them — please don’t take my word for all this, go and have a look!

I was elated to find a post about Winfield Hall, which is the old Woolworth mansion out in Glen Cove, NY. On my refrigerator, a magnet holds a faded newspaper clipping. It’s a story about Winfield Hall. I keep it there to remind me of a journey I once made there (as if I could ever forget!) and possibly to goad me into making a return trip sometime.

Winfield is a 30,000 square foot Italian Renaissance mansion which sits on a 16 plus acre property. The grounds surrounding the mansion, now overgrown and wild,  once featured lush gardens fashioned after those of the Villa Borghese in Rome. A 15,000 square foot clock ktower and a carriage house also sit on the property. The main house has 11 bedrooms, 10.5 bathrooms and 16 fireplaces.

F.W. Woolworth is said to have been a strange man. He made a fortune inventing the ‘5 and Dime’ of yesteryear and was supposedly obsessed by Napoleon, as I learned from “The Magic of Believing” (a  book which deeply influenced me and which is discussed in an earlier post here). While that book did mention some  of Woolworth’s rather ‘mystical’ interests, it did not deeply examine aspects of his personal life.

I have read (in “Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths”, by Monica Randall) that one of his daughters committed suicide in the house while a party went on downstairs. She was distressed about her father’s refusal to allow her to mary as she wished, so the story goes. There are rumors that Woolworth’s remains are hidden in an enormous sarcophagus in the basement of the mansion. I doubt that old Woolworth’s body is anywhere on the premises (not so sure about his spirit, however!) , but I am certainly more than convinced that it’s a sad house.

About two years ago, I decided to go and take a look at this property. I knew I wouldn’t be content to drive around it and peer through the fences either. I wanted to really see the house — up close and personal. Here’s the story of that visit, which I posted in the “Comments” section of LongIslandGothic.com:

I have walked the grounds of Winfield late at night. I made it up to the front veranda of the mansion with a companion and we used the flashlight we’d brought along to illuminate the entry foyer and also the beautiful room with the golden ceilings (concealing the hidden chamber above).

The marble staircase was incredibly beautiful; it literally seemed to glow. At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, I have to confess that I thought I saw something. I sensed movement and felt as if my hair were trying to stand on end, because what I was seeing was a figure in a long dress slowly coming down the stairs. At the same time, I felt as if someone was advancing on us from behind as we peered into the house. We both gasped when we saw the figure, I clicked off the light, and we got out of there as fast as our feet would carry us. Later on, we found that we’d both seen the same apparition. VERY creepy. End of story.

Do you believe in ghosts?

You carry your ‘rank’ in your eyes.

What do YOUR eyes say?

Several years ago I read a book which was to change my life. “The Magic of Believing” by Claude M. Bristol posits that one can achieve any goal by harnessing the extraordinary power of one’s own belief in one’s self. As I absorbed this, it came to me that I’d put this system to work many times without being consciously aware of it. If you’re focused on a particular goal without letup, you do tend to realize that goal.

This can be as simple or as complex as your individual goals.

Over the last few years, I’ve heard a lot about “The Secret” and “Laws of Attraction.” I really like Bristol’s approach, though. He calls this area the science of ‘mind stuff’ and discusses techniques for how to leverage the power of an your mind. 

In the end, it all comes down to ideas. Everything you see around you started with an idea. Ideas require ACTION in order to bring them to life.  One needs to have a specific goal and then must “begin with the ending” in mind.

Think of planning a road trip. You decided on the destination first.  Then you figured out the stops along the way. You planned which roads you’d take, where you’d stay and what you’d see. You began with a vision about where you’d end up.  That’s how this works. There’s no mysticism involved. Bristol says “Thought attracts that upon which it is directed.” Think about it.

There is a kind of ‘magic’ in this, though. When you believe certain things, you act differently. And when you act differently, others react to you in a different way. There’s a kind of ‘electricity’ in how this takes place. You carry yourself differently when you know who you are and where you’re going. You change, and everything and everyone around you changes. It is a kind of magic.

I expect to come back to this topic again. It’s the reason I named this blog the way I did. I’m interested in a lot of different things and hold opinions about most of them. I’m all over the proverbial ‘map.’  What doesn’t change, though, is this belief I have in the power of ideas coupled with directed energy.  It’s unbeatable.

So what are YOU thinking about?

 

“The private lives of people are an endless mystery.”

I am remembering all those creative writing instructors who insisted you “write what you know.”  Problem is, my most interesting stories are better left unexposed to the light of day.  

Gay Talese seems to have had no such qualms. His book, ”Thy Neighbor’s Wife”, was published in 1980 and was hailed by Atlantic Monthly as  ”A sexual Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Imagine it – at the height of the sexual revolution, a fairly well known married male writer ‘tom-cats’ all over town in the name of literary research and goes on to pen a best selling book about the experience.

Sure, it made for fascinating reading, but one couldn’t help but wonder how Mrs. Talese dealt with all this. Nan Talese wasn’t hiding in the kitchen baking cookies while all this was going on, either; she was then an editor at Random House, working a mile or two from where her husband was busily exploring the seamy underside of NYC’s various sexual playgrounds.  Their eldest daughter was 16 when the book came out. Care to walk in her shoes?

Well, Gay Talese is still at it. His new book deals with his marriage — and this article in New York Magazine allows the reader a glimpse into their lives. Most interesting.

http://nymag.com/arts/books/profiles/56289/index7.html

On being opinionated while remaining open-minded.

I’m one of those people who always has an opinion. Not so good. Wouldn’t it be better to resist forming an opinion? Keeps you open minded, right? 

Here’s an example — I read the Chris Buckley piece in today’s ‘New York Times Magazine’, which is fascinating:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26buckley-t.html?_r=3&scp=1&sq=buckley%20and%20pup%20&st=cse

After I read it, my first thoughts were rather harsh. (Mine usually are.) That’s bad, because I understand the need for all of us to remain non-judgmental. Seriously, if we could all do that, we’d transform the world. Still, I couldn’t help but pity and envy the writer all at once. His parents were so ego-centric, and yet he grew up amid such glamour.  Recurring thought — if you have enough money, is it perfectly OK to be crazy? And didn’t they both seem kind of nuts?

William F. Buckley could write, oh yes. And if you have ever seen him at work on ‘Firing Line’, he was undeniably a silver tongued devil, as they say. I met Pat Buckley once. It was at a party (I was very young) and she was the cynosure of all eyes (have been dying to use that expression for quite some time, so now it’s out of my system) but you had the feeling that she was kind of ‘tightly wrapped’, you know? The organizers of this event were thrilled that she’d accepted their invitation. When she showed up, everyone treated her like she was a movie star. I just remember she was rather loud, had on a lot of makeup and appeared to be inebriated when she arrived. 

Well, I was a kid, so what did I know? Look, they were his parents and he loved them. I happen to be crazy about my folks. But I can’t help going down this path, especially since I saw the new HBO version of “Grey Gardens” the other night, and I kept coming up with the same thought, to wit:

Have you ever met someone who was downright certifiable but who also had enough dough to get away with it?

Now I’ll go back to trying to be non-judgmental. Right.