List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Three books that have had an impact on me. Hmm… I’m glad the prompt is not “THE three books that have had an impact on you” because there have been many more than three.

The three I’m thinking about right now are all in the fantasy genre because that’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and because I write in those genres. Keep in mind that I’m almost sixty years old, and so are some of these books. I consider them foundational in my life.

The first book is not just a book, but a series: The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Before we had categories like young adult and middle school, these books appeared in my small town junior high library. Our librarian recommended them to me, and my life changed. People my age facing mythological beings, trying to stop the forces of evil — I know, it sounds like a thousand stories. But dressed in British folk custom, with evocative descriptions, I could read it again as an adult.

The second book was one I was turned on to in college, and it has stayed with me as if I’d read it yesterday. The book is Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, in which an itinerant man leaves interpersonal miracles in his wake. Is he the second coming of Jesus? The parallels of the narrative suggest so. The book advocates a less hierarchical, more personal relationship with God, and a view of love that transcends the restrictive culture of man. This book has informed my view of religion and spirituality and continues to do so.

The third book is, again, a series, and a lengthy one. The series is Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I cannot post this without mentioning the serious and credible allegations against Bradley made by her daughter Moira Greyland. It’s with some uneasiness that I put Bradley’s books on my list.

Darkover isn’t just a series, it’s a world. Not a perfectly realized world, but one where characters recur from book to book, where the reader can trace a family tree over a few hundred years. There’s lore and reputation and conflict — this has been as attractive to its fans as its sword and sorcery, with psychic powers substituted for the magic. Darkover fans have done genealogy with the characters, developed persona in the world, and made a role-playing society of it. I have taken my love of character development, convoluted relationships, and my dream of creating an all-absorbing world from Darkover.

So there are my three books. As I’ve said, there are many others. But these are perhaps the most influential of the fiction items.

Having it all (If all means “not all”)

What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?

One of the things I have taught and researched is well-being. Studies in economic well-being explain that when people are asked whether they’re satisfied with their income, they respond that they would like (on average) ten percent more. I suspect that if the researcher would ask them in terms of material wealth, that 10% more would hold. So money and material goods — can we have it all? Apparently not.

And if it’s not money that becomes the confining resource, it’s time. As we only get 24 hours in a day, we find ourselves making decisions on where we put our time — work, relationships, hobbies and side hustles, family obligations, relaxation. We can buy substitutes for our time: restaurant meals, nannies, maids, time-saving appliances, but they only go so far.

In other words, our expectations expand with our acquisitions. If we don’t have a car, we want one. If we get a car, we want a new or better car. A new set of dishes. A bigger house to put all the things we’ve bought into. A Roomba. A hot tub. An RV. Jewelry and paintings. A professional level kitchen …

We can’t have it all unless we define our own “all”, which will require us to go against what might be our innate human nature. Can we decide we’ve acquired enough? There’s lots of advantages to this. Less stress, more room in the house or apartment, fewer things in landfills, less need to have yard sales. Some would argue more time with people because we have to work less to buy things.

One Small Improvement?

Daily writing prompt

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

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Feeling uninspired today, I decided I would try the prompts that are now packaged as part of WordPress. And as you can see from the above, I got a doozy.

I’m all about big audacious goals, showy goals, big reward goals. Intoxicating goals. Probably comes from being one of those honor students who got external validation in the form of praise and trophies.

There’s one little improvement that would increase my quality of life, but thinking about the improvement itself makes me want to sit in the middle of my living room and cry.

It’s cleaning my house.

My house is about what you’d expect with two bookish types working full-time who hate housework. I have writing as my pressing hobby; Richard just hates housework.

Our house is cluttered. Despite the fact that this house is over twice as big as the one we moved out of eleven years ago, it’s just as cluttered. We just got more stuff to fill the space.

I feel like my writing would be better if I didn’t have to look at so much stuff and move it aside so I can sit down. Having a clean house would feel like a holiday!

I have to start somewhere, and there’s just so much stuff and I can’t throw any of it away. Maybe if I (and/or Richard) pick one room at a time and have a sorting basket nearby. Think of places to put the clutter, places that make sense. Don’t put the clutter in yet another pile to be sorted eventually. Proceed to the next room, which hopefully doesn’t have new clutter piles from the last room cleaned. Phew!

It looks like maybe cleaning the house isn’t a “small improvement” after all.