Savvy Women

That is the question. Before I provide you with my answer to that query, I’d like to announce a major discovery.

A couple of days ago, I found this really cool blog called Rocketboom. The site describes itself as “a daily international news program based in New York City” that provides “a wide range of information and commentary from top news stories to contemporary internet culture.” Having had a good look at the site, I’d say that’s a fairly accurate description. They did leave out two important points, though. One, they failed to mention that the site features videos. And two, they forgot the part about how much fun the blog is.

This week’s Rocketboom video offering is Ellie Rountree’s “6 Gadgets to Help You Multi-task in Comfort.” Having watched it a couple of times now, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really like the “multi-tasking chair” and the Sony Sountina speaker system. (Sorry for that spoiler.)

Now, to get back to the question I posed in my opening. I asked it because I wanted you to think about multi-tasking. I know that the sort of lives we live demand that we do learn how to do it, but frankly, I’m philosophically against multi-tasking, as a practice.

Those who argue that we should turn multi-tasking into an art form are really saying that we should squeeze every ounce of productivity out of ourselves and never let a single moment go to waste. Actually, I think that sounds unhealthy and would, on the contrary, advocate that everyone get a little better at loafing (or kicking back or decompressing or however you want to say it) without feeling guilty about not always being at peak efficiency. After all, humans are not machines, and we shouldn’t try to imitate them.

Plus, too many of us are already spread too thin. What we don’t need to do is behave in ways that cause us to “fragment” or “dilute” even more than we already have. Rather than doing five things at once (and probably not doing any of those masterfully), we need to learn to focus and concentrate.

Gosh, I’m probably sounding like some kind of Buddhist or something.

This video reminded me of a trip I took several months ago to Dubai, the “Las Vegas” of the UAE and a city that has been in the news much of late, mostly because it has had money troubles and would have defaulted on a bunch of its financial obligations had not Abu Dhabi, the Emirates’ more sedate capital, come to the rescue. Anyway, on my way to Dubai, I had a brief stopover in Manama, Bahrain.

The clip ends with Ms. Latifa declaring her love for Bahrain and talking about how she wants to play a role in helping the country thrive. After seeing her behind the wheel, it’s easy to believe that she’s on her way to making a pretty important contribution.

I can’t believe it took me this long to get around to blogging about Jane Juska and her two books, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance and Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex, and Real Estate, the latter of which I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) about a year or so ago. Ms. Juska, as it turns out, is one of my all-time favorite memoirists and one truly courageous individual.

I hadn’t seen her do any talks or interviews until I looked online to see what I could turn up. There’s not a lot there. I was able to locate three clips, and I’ve included the longest one available, a talk she gave at something called Idea City 2007, which advertises itself as a gathering of “the smartest people” discussing “the biggest ideas.” By the way, though this video is twenty-two minutes long, Juska’s presentation takes up only the first thirteen. I chose this one because the others involve an interlocutor. This one, however, doesn’t, and it seems our author is at her best when she’s allowed to have complete control over the direction things go, which doesn’t surprise me given that she is such a strong-willed and self-directed woman.

I did notice one thing about all the videos I watched. Juska seems a little uncomfortable in front of the camera. Again, I’m not surprised by this. By all accounts of her life, including her own, she lived very quietly and privately until the publication of her first book, which turned her into an overnight celebrity at the age of seventy-one. I wouldn’t be at all shocked to hear her confess that she’s had a hard time adjusting to all the publicity and that she feels a little ill at ease doing televised events.

One of the things I really like about the video I’ve included is that it shows her discussing her days as an English teacher. During that part of her presentation, she says that “most kids are being taught how to write; they are not being taught to write.” The distinction, Juska explains, is that students learn to write when they see their teachers modeling writing, meaning, of course, that teachers should write with their students. As a fellow writing instructor, that’s one I’m going to need to spend some more time thinking about.