essays on life...by me

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Outlander – it’s all about them…and them…and them too

Somewhere back in the late 1980s/early 1990s there was a TV show on that I really enjoyed. It took a while to get it, over here in Sweden and it took even longer for my apartment to get the cable channel that showed it so I didn’t start watching it till it had been on TV in the US for at least a year or so. It was called thirtysomething. I found myself relating to it a great deal. I felt like the show was about my life – though my story would have been more like fortysomething because as usual, being the late bloomer that I was, I didn’t start the kind of life thirtysomething was about till I was 10 years older.

Thirtysomething was a TV show about Michael and Hope, a young couple in their 30s, living in Philadelphia, and their new baby. It told stories about their life, how they adjusted to new parenthood, about how they dealt with their careers, how they dealt with their relationship with each other. I loved watching that show because my husband and I also were adjusting to being new parents too and I could relate. But it didn’t just tell the story of Michael and Hope and little Janie – because nobody just lives in a vacuum – people always have other people in their lives. While Michael and Hope were the center of the story, the show also had stories about Michael’s relationship with his business partner Elliot and Elliot’s wife Nancy. The show examined stories about Michael’s friendship with his best friend Gary, Michael’s cousin and photographer Melissa and her love affairs, and stories about Hope’s best friend Ellyn.  Thirtysomething lasted for 4 years on Television. And then we all moved on…but I never forgot the show.

Thirty years later, there is Outlander. I started out by watching the TV series. Four episodes in, I had to read Diana Gabaldon’s books. That was in 2014. It’s been four years now and I am still reading the books, over and over again and am now almost about to watch the final episode of Season four which is based on book four, The Drums of Autumn. There are four more books in the series already published, another is possibly going to be published this year in 2019 and a tenth book is promised. So if everything works out well, I have 6 more seasons of the TV show to look forward to. In the meantime, I keep myself busy with the Outlander subreddit, posting occasionally when I feel I have something to say. I read the Gabaldon thread on The Litforum though I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to post anything there. I follow various people from the Outlander world on Twitter and I am a member of the Facebook group Outlander Sweden, even going so far as attending a real-life meet up with members of the group here in Stockholm.

I have to admit, it is mainly the 16 episodes of season one, in which Scottish Jamie and his English Claire find each other and fall in love, that I have watched the most often. During the almost year-long hiatus between the end of season one and the beginning of season two, I watched the episodes over and over again, so much that I could almost recite them by heart. The following 3 seasons, not quite so much but by then I was deep into the books, reading them continuously on my Kindle. On a Kindle all books look the same – same page format, same font – so its hard to remember which book I am actually reading at the time. All eight Outlander big books have somehow coalesced into just one very very long story and while I remember events in the story, I have a hard time remembering what happens in which book.

In my lurking around on Reddit/Outlander and even on Twitter, I have come across a lot of comments about how after Season one and two, there just isn’t enough Jamie and Claire. And especially now in season four there are even episodes where they are barely glimpsed and that in some episodes they aren’t even seen at all!! People are complaining that this is supposed to be a show about just them! Nobody else counts! It should be the love story of Jamie and Claire and only that. That’s what they come to the show for. I assume that the majority of these complainers are mainly non-book readers though there are a few who claim that when they read the books they skip over the parts that are not Jamie and Claire centered because…those other parts are just boring.

Now I admit I can understand the skipping-over-parts thing – because in my first read of each book I found myself skipping parts too. I skipped over the medical explanations; I skipped the battle planning scenes; I skipped the physical descriptions of various new characters; I skipped the parts that said what the scenery they were traveling through looked like. I skipped all these things because all I wanted to know in my first read-through was what is going to happen! On subsequent readings I read all those skipped parts because I either found I loved the way the descriptions were written or I realized that what I had skipped was actually important to understanding the story. But these complainers, whether they be book-readers or show-only viewers seem to think that all that stuff they were skipping or thought unnecessary was not really important to the story because the only important thing was the love story between Jamie and Claire and they wanted more of the intimate and needless to say, sexy scenes between them in all the series episodes and even in all the following books too.

Now Diana Gabaldon has in no uncertain terms stated that Outlander does not fit within the Romance trope – It is not just about how one person pursues another and after much trials and tribulations, they finally hook up, get married and live happily ever after. Those type of stories usually only have two main characters, the pursuer and the prey. Everyone else is unimportant and just minor page filler. If that was all Outlander was, I probably would never have made it through the book or bothered to open Dragonfly in Amber. Or watched more than the first season.

In case you forgot, I began this post talking about a completely different TV show. No, I havent absent-mindedly wandered off topic. When I read all these complaints about the lack of Jamie and Claire story, I keep thinking back to thirtysomething. Now, Michael and Hope were interesting characters that I related to and I liked watching as their relationship moved forward (and sometimes backward) but what made the show so great was watching how M&H related to all their friends and family around them and how these people affected M&H. The same can be said for Jamie and Claire.

The fictional lives of Jamie and Claire Fraser also do not exist in a vacuum. In the first book/season it is mainly Jamie’s family and the people he knows that we get to meet; his sister Jenny, his uncles Dougal and Colum. Jenny’s husband is Jamie’s best friend. We meet Dougal’s two henchmen, Angus and Rupert and grow very fond of them. And of course there is Black Jack Randall. By getting to know these additional characters and how they affect Jamie and Claire, we get a better idea of who our two favorite characters are, and what they are made of…in ways we wouldn’t know if all we did was see them in bed together. They broaden the story, make this fictional world more real, because like all of us, there are people all around them that they react to and affect. As long as those secondary characters simply circled around our heros, that seemed to be ok to the complainers. Our heros were always there to watch, standing in the center.

But by book 3/season 3, we get two new heros who slowly seem to start taking center stage away from our central love story  – we get introduced to Brianna and Roger. Like our initial heros were when we first met them, Brianna and Roger are young and you can tell that they are destined to fall in love and fall in love hard, like Brianna’s parents did 20+ years ago. Both Brianna and Roger are very important people to Jamie and Claire and their story needs to be told. Brianna and Roger are like a reflecting glass to Jamie and Claire, showing us more about who J&C are by the way they react to their daughter and her Roger. There are whole chapters devoted to just Brianna or just Roger. And an entire season 4 episode without any view of either of our favorite heros. And then there is Young Ian, who shows us how Jamie would have been as a father if he had had the chance to raise any of his own children. Whole chapters just about Ian – how will they do that in the show I wonder. Sacrilege, some will cry I am sure! And further on in the books, lots and lots about William, Jamie’s son who in the series we have just barely begun to get to know. And as the books go on, Gabaldon draws more and more characters that rub elbows with the two people in our favorite love story. How the show will deal with them, who will make it into the episodes, who will be forgotten and left to inhabit only the books, is anybody’s guess at the moment. Only the show writers will decide that (perhaps with help from Diana).

But in spite of the growing number of important characters who appear, our beloved Scot and our beautiful Sassenach are still the center of the story. It is because of them there is even a story at all and we always keep coming back to them. They are like the stones dropped into a large shallow puddle, lying there in plain view, in the middle of the widening rings spreading out from the place where the stones landed. So I am more than happy to read about/watch episodes only showing Brianna or Roger or Ian or William and any of the other characters who Diana writes into the lives of Jamie and Claire. Because by getting to know them and how they are related to our heros, by the time I meet up with Jamie and his Claire again I know so much more about these two  characters who I have grown to love through eight books and 4 seasons of TV. I can’t wait to follow all the threads that Diana and our TV writers weave around Jamie and Claire Fraser.

Twittering

I can’t remember why I joined Twitter in the first place. Perhaps because of work. Or because of a friend suggesting it. But I can see on my profile that I joined in March of 2009. My first tweet was “Im not sure what Im doing” and my fourth tweet was “My goodness-I actually have people following what I have to say. How bored can you get??” (those first followers were my son, my husband, my cousin and two friends) I had already been on Facebook since 2007 and was very active there. I posted a lot and even still do. But I never just shared articles. When I shared something that I liked I always told why I was sharing it – what I thought about it. I also posted a lot of stuff about what I was doing or thinking or feeling. And I didn’t use those feeling icons to substitute for my own words. I wrote my own words. I liked talking – still do.  I guess I’m just a blabbermouth, with lots of opinions about things. But except for a very few people most of my contacts on Facebook were real people who I had actually known in Real Life. I rarely Friended people who I had never met or had only met once for a very short time. So this meant that most of the posting and sharing I did on Facebook went out to people who actually knew me in person.

Twitter was a whole different ball of wax.
First of all I had to confine myself to only 140 characters!! I like words. Words have meaning and nuance and syntax and even grammar. To say a whole idea in only 140 characters is very hard for me. As I said I’m a blabbermouth. So much nuance has to be removed in order to fit that parameter. I have spent my whole working life as a professional graphic designer – visuals not text. I have never considered myself an artist, a person who makes Art with a capital A – Art that is created to serve the artist’s own vision. I do commercial stuff. I like getting assignments. I like working within defined parameters. So I figured Twitter was just a matter of learning how to edit, to work to fit the parameter. Knowing how to and being able to edit is always a good thing.

Anyway, after 6 tweets in 2009 I didn’t do anything until about 4 years later when in 2013 I put up a new picture as my avatar. And then again nothing until March 2015 when I twittered this, “I’m following people’s tweets only due to my Outlander obsession.“.

Since then I’ve written 451 tweets, liked 1,217 tweets by others, I have 45 followers and I follow 136 mostly, total strangers. All because sometime in the late fall of 2014 I got introduced to Outlander, the Starz TV series and have been addicted ever since. I’ve read all the big, enormous books, most of the smaller novels and some of the bulges, as author Diana Gabaldon calls her handiwork. And I have of course watched the TV series’ first season episodes a zillion times and the second season episodes, so far shown, at least 3 or 4 times. I’ve probably watched most of any Outlander panel discussions and interviews with stars that I can find on the Internet. I joined the Facebook group called Outlander Sweden (since that is where I live) Both my husband and my 24 year old son think I’m a bit nuts (they thought that before but now they think they have evidence) And my former co-workers wouldn’t let me even mention the word Outlander at lunch breaks. I have one good friend here who I have caused to follow in my addiction. So yeah, I guess you could say I am a bit obsessed. You can read more about my obsession here. And here. And even here.

And now there’s Twitter
First, I have to get one thing straight – I don’t only post, read or share Outlander stuff on Twitter. I also post pictures from my summer house, I announce posts from this blog, sometimes a political opinion creeps into my posting, I also follow CNN, New Scientist and the New York Times among others. My Twitter posts also appear on my Facebook feed where my real-life pals like my posts or even respond. But yes, I admit it, most of what I do on Twitter has to do with Outlander. I’ve become a Fan! I’ve joined a Fandom! And its lots of fun. I read what Sam or Caitriona or Tobias or Graham or Ron or Diana or Maril or Terry or JON GARY or a bunch of others involved with the series have to say. In some ways I feel like I know them. But I never cross the line to think that they are my actual friends or I am their personal friend. What I am reading are the public personas of the private people that they really are. A tiny glimpse that they allow me to see. And I am grateful for that.

As a former Fashion Design student in my way-back-when life I like reading what the Outlander costume designer Terry Dresbach posts. She often starts really interesting discussions in 140 characters. Sometimes I have been able to partake in those discussions. Once, at 2am, lying in bed with my smart phone glued in front of my nose, desperately trying to keep up with a fascinating discussion, I rapidly typed out a comment to the conversation and suddenly Terry answered my question! I sat up in bed and yelled, “Oh My Gosh! She answered my question!” My husband, suddenly awakened, looked at me as if I was crazy and told me to please go to sleep. I have to admit, from that moment I felt like I was talking to someone I knew. It was really cool. I’ve followed and even participated in a number of other conversations started by Terry and always enjoyed them. The very fact that I can be sitting in my home, having discussions with people from all over the world at the same time is just amazing.

But it seems like there is trouble in paradise.
It seems like there are twitterers out there who feel like they have the right to say whatever they want or feel to the people they follow; who feel like they have the right to be mean, to chastise, to demand attention, to spread rumors without any regard to how their 140 characters can hurt the people they are aimed at. And in addition there are others who feel they themselves have been terribly hurt and thus have the right to hurl hurt back at anyone they can. The Internet can be a fantastic place but its defining anonymity can also cause it to be a very terrible place. So all I seem to be reading from my favorite Twittering people is how twitterers are throwing mud at each other, blaming others for feeling hurt and abused.

As a kid growing up I remember being called a lot of unpleasant names. Tall, skinny, freckled and with out of control curly dark auburn hair; beanpole, stringbean, jolly green giant were just some of the things I got to hear thrown at me. My mother telling me that “Sticks and stones can break your bones but names will never hurt you” didn’t really make me feel better. I knew that names definitely could hurt me. I had to learn very early that the names people threw at me didn’t define what I thought of myself. Perhaps I just learned to grow a thick skin. And I learned to develop a very fine-tuned sense of humor about things. Maybe the younger generation, a product of helicopter parents have never learned the lessons that I did, never learned how to grow a thick skin.

As I said earlier 140 characters are not really enough to convey nuance. In response to all this recent discussion of misery and unhappiness on all sides, I posted a tweet that was trying to remind people that 140 characters do not always offer enough nuance to accurately be able to distinguish between humor, irony and satire and what might be meant as a joke could sound like an attack. It can be very easy to misinterpret what is actually being said and a bit of a sense of humor was necessary when responding to those few characters. I suggested that people should lighten up. I was accused of possibly sounding dismissive and unfairly minimizing other people’s feelings – two things I was most definitely not doing. My #lightenup was being offered as a bit of humor but that obviously wasn’t coming through and it was judged to be judgmental instead and assumed to be hurtful.

There are plenty of other things out there to feel hurt and sad and just plain awful about: child slavery, climate change, decimation of animal species, ocean acidification and the bleaching of coral reefs, poverty, hunger, lack of clean drinking water, small children picking up a gun and killing their parents. Go ahead, pick one to feel bad about. But don’t let 140 characters, without any nuance, do that to you. Its really not worth it.

My mother also used to say, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again”. She didn’t make that up either – she got it from the song but there she was actually right. So I am going to paraphrase what Terry said (if she allows me to) “Hopefully we are all done now.” And even if she feels that she and Ron will never get closure, she still felt ready to say, “I am moving on.”

And on one final note, as a fan, I am remembering our own favorite Jamie Fraser, telling his daughter how he was able to forgive and move beyond the terrible things that Jack Randall had done to him. (If this is a spoiler for non-book readers, then I am sorry) Can we in the fandom be any less than our favorite hero? Can we forgive? Can we move on? Can we take what is written in 140 characters not so to heart but with a bit of humor and try to expect the best of people rather than the worst so that I can wholeheartedly enjoy following my obsession once again? Life is much nicer that way too. IMHO.

PTSD

Its been over two months now since I last went to work at my job as graphic designer at IGBP. In December, I had a great time during my week in San Francisco with my now former co-workers. In January I met up with a few of them again when I went to my former work place to hand in my elevator key and assorted final documents. We sat around and had fika together. We talked about getting together again later in the month – maybe for drinks or even dinner.

At every workplace, there are always going to be people who find new jobs or whatever and leave. And that is normal. Sometimes one stays in touch, sometimes they are never to be seen again except maybe unexpectedly on a street corner. Many of my oldest and closest friends are people I’ve taken with me on my life journey from a place of work. And the thing is, you never know in advance who, from the job, that will be. Some workmates fade away and some stick around.  But the closing of IGBP was a bit different. Yes, a few souls saw the writing on the wall and left before we closed but it didn’t feel like they really left. They still felt like part of us anyway. But when a place closes down, scattering everyone, all at the same time, that feels different. Its almost too abrupt to really take in. So I sit here wondering what happened to my life. Because the place one works is a very large part of one’s life.

This morning a former co-worker called me. She reminded me that I had never answered her email from more than a month ago. How was I, she wanted to know. Yes, how am I, in my current stage of unemployment? I don’t really know.

I do the things I have to do. I dealt with försäkringskassan regarding my sprained ankle and cracked elbow when I first got home from California. I signed up with Arbetsförmedlingen so they would know I was unemployed and with my A-kassan so that I would get unemployment benefits while looking for a new job. I had a meeting with my adviser from Trygghetsrådet to once more discuss my updating of my CV. I worked to finish my updated Graphic portfolio and put it up online. And I made appointments with my physical therapist to get my injured limbs back in working order. All of this took time and lots of paperwork, phone calls and the odd meeting now and again. Getting myself to do it was like pulling teeth but since I had to do it, I did it. And in between doing them I did very little else.

I slept a lot, often not rising till noon. I stared at the face of my smart phone, obsessively looking at Facebook and Twitter. I re-read Outlander novels while lying on my bed and played the various episodes on the TV while I made dinner in the evening. I didn’t need to look at the TV – I knew each episode by heart so listening was good enough. I went to the grocery store to buy food. Occaisionally I would actually go out and meet some friend but mainly I stayed home. Hiding in my cave. Like the good crabby Cancerian that I was. Life had just gotten too big for me. Too overwhelming. Too confusing. So I am just hunkering down and working on ignoring it as much as possible. Until it figures itself out.

Still Obsessed

I just started my second reading of An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon’s seventh novel in her Outlander series. I’ve gotten as far as the Prologue.

The body is amazingly plastic. The spirit, even more so. But there are some things you don’t come back from. Say ye so, a nighean? True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.

And barely as the last word was read, my eyes started to fill with tears and I realized I was crying.

How? Why? Am I that much of a sentimental sap? I never thought so before. I have been reading and re-reading these books (and watching the TV series by Starz) since discovering first the show and then the books in the beginning of 2015, after my friend told me about them a few months earlier. And I can’t seem to stop. I can’t seem to be able to leave the world that Gabaldon has built and come back fully to my own. What is it about Jamie and Claire’s love affair and adventures and marriage and life that makes me want to be there with them instead of in my own life?

Granted, the last 4 years have been difficult ones, filled with sorrow, disappointments, illness and changes.

In 2011 my mother got sick and at the very end of that year I spent the last month of her life by her bedside in New Jersey watching as she slowly passed away. You can read about that month I spent with her under Saying Goodbye to Mom. On a cold January day my family and I said our final goodbyes at a wonderful funeral (if one can call a funeral wonderful) and a joy-filled Chinese lunch (her favorite sort of food) with friends and family. And then I returned to my home and my life in Stockholm. Once back here I managed with great help from her Finance Guy, Dave, to settle all her bills, tie-up loose ends, and pull together what needed to be done to file her estate income tax forms. Done! Chapter settled and closed! Or so I thought.

Then 2 years later, I received a letter saying I was being sued for unpaid property taxes! It seemed that the person who had been renting the property that I had inherited from my mom had not been paying said taxes as he should have been and now I was required to pay a huge sum of money in back taxes and interest. I almost had a heart attack. As luck would have it, I actually had a lawyer who could help me and even just enough money to save my property. The stress from dealing with all that finally ended up causing me to decide to start taking anti-anxiety meds. It has taken the last 2 years to finally work out the situation. I don’t believe in writing gratitude lists but I am very grateful for my lawyer Gary. He saved my sanity. What I have left of it at least.

Then just after finding out I was being sued, I heard that my job as a graphic designer, that I enjoyed and liked working at was soon going to end. IGBP was going to be closing down at the end of December 2015 and as I write this I am now officially out of a job. And looking for a new one. I think…..

And as a last straw, in October of 2014, my husband got sick. He developed an aneurysm that started to bleed right at the top of his spinal cord where all those little nerves are gathered. He spent 2 months in hospital, needed brain surgery and almost died. He is home now and still himself but the bleeding affected certain nerves leaving him dealing, for the past year and a half, with a number of physical disabilities and has  affected the way we see and live our life together – how we go forward. Oh, and did I mention those added anxiety and stress levels???

Sooo, as I said above, the past 4 years have been pretty crappy and I find myself often not really wanting to crawl out of bed.

But when I do, I find myself still standing and even still able to make a joke. But I am almost afraid to open my email – who knows what disaster awaits me there. I don’t feel very much like socializing since I am boring even myself with my negativity about life and my lack of enthusiasm. I don’t want to keep spreading it around my friends or I won’t have any left, friends that is. Facebook and Twitter are my main social outlets – I don’t have to get dressed or put on my face for that! Or even leave my bed!

I need to concentrate on finding a new job but I don’t seem to be able to muster much enthusiasm for that task either. Being a graphic designer is how I have earned my living most of my life and actually is the only work skill I really have. But, I don’t know – images are just all starting to look very grey. Words are what fill my head now. But getting the energy to sit myself down at the computer to write – that is so hard too. Its as though my computer has become my enemy and I can’t dare to face it. All my shoulda, woulda, couldas get saved to the very last minute before I can bring myself to attend to them. And I find myself getting very sloppy by the time I actually get to them. And its the sloppiness that bothers me. The not caring. The lack of … whatever it is I am lacking. Perhaps its just the will-to-do that’s missing.

So I lose myself in Diana’s world. Its not the same as when I read over and over again Peter and Wendy (the original book about Peter Pan) as a child or lost myself in The Lord of the Rings as a teenager. Its not just escapism.

Its like that prologue I quoted at the top of the page, that started me crying: I think I reacted to it because I too am looking for that part of me that is still not destroyed. The me that is still left. Her words are filled with that sort of thing that seems to be speaking to me directly.

Her story of Jamie and Claire’s life, of how they are as a married pair – I wish I had that as an idea of a life together. I almost wish I had read her books when I was young, in my 20s. My parent’s married life, the only example I had, was not really happy and I admit to avoiding pairing up for a very long time because of their example. In reading how Jamie and Claire are with each other, it gives me a different model to follow in my own marriage. I almost wish I had learned those things 30 years ago.

So I continue my Outlander obsession. Reading and rereading over and over again. Each time finding small bits and pieces that leave me weeping, with sadness or joy but still engulfed in tears, sharing their lives. Waiting for mine to recover and figure out what my next stage will contain. I sometimes wish I had Jamie’s resilience to disaster and hardship but maybe I have more than I think I have. I’m just waiting for it to bounce back so I can discover who I am again.

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