What I Learned Today

FarmVille is, I hear, some kind of game one plays on Facebook. Well, not just one; the game has over 82 million active users as of May 2010. I’ve never tried it myself, so I don’t really know what makes it so fun or addictive. And although I knew of it in passing, I thought it was confined to Facebook.

Not so.

FarmVille (and its sister games such as Mafia Wars) have entered the real world, the one that you and I live in, through (of all places) 7-11. I was driving along a week ago when I noticed this billboard. That’s right, if you buy a Slurpee, you get a “virtual gift” in the FarmVille world. The gift turns out to be 200 “FarmVille dollars.” Am I the only one who finds this utterly bizarre? I’m aware that people buy and sell virtual goods for real dollars in Second Life. I know that some MMORPG players pay others real dollars to generate game commodities like experience points or gold. But for these virtual objects and services to obtain a “real world” value, they have to reach a certain level of social dissemination and perceived value in a large real-world community. And certainly, 82 million people is a large community — I hadn’t realized just how many people were playing this game.

I now wonder how much of an incentive 200 $FV is. What’s that worth to anyone? Is there an exchange rate with USD? To those of you who’ve played FarmVille: would the promise of 200 $FV be enough to persuade you to buy a Slurpee?

I have read and re-read and savored Anneli Rufus’s wonderful book, “Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto.” The author defines a loner as one who actually enjoys time spent alone — as distinct from those who are lonely (which is the state of being alone and wishing you weren’t). Being a loner doesn’t mean that you hate other people (misanthropes claim that distinction), but that you just don’t need them around all the time, and you rather hope they can understand this and not take it poorly. My full review of the book goes more into its scope and ideas, but here I wanted to record some of my favorite quotes:

• “We are at our best, as Orsino says in Twelfth Night, when least in company.”
• “Anything done alone is discredited, demeaned, devalued, or at best, simply undiscussed. People talk about other people, and of the things they do with other people.”
• On phone calls: ”Being home alone, they presume, could not possibly also mean being busy. Or contented exactly as you are. Unwilling to be interrupted.”
• “Loners have nothing against love, but are more careful about it.”
• “But loners, no matter our taste, eat many meals, if not most, alone. At home, this affords the essence of choice and spontaneity [...] Jell-O eaten from a toy pail with a toy spade while taking a bath? A beef-tongue omelet? Why the hell not?”
• “Unmoved by the mass hysteria, immune to the contagion by which nonloners spend fortunes just proving they like a certain song or style, we do not give the entertainment industry what it seeks.”
• “Time spent alone has a way of winnowing the inventory of what we need.”
• “For some loners, a paucity of friends is a matter of time. There is simply too much to do alone, no time to spare. Shared time, while not entirely wasted if the sharer is a true friend, must be parceled out with care, like rationed flour. And time shared, even with true friends, often requires loners to put in extra time alone, overtime, to recharge.”
• Quoting Sasha Cagen: “For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. On a fine but by no means transcendent date we dream of going home to watch television. We would prefer to be alone with our own thoughts than with a less than perfect fit. We are almost constitutionally incapable of casual relationships.”
• “The solo expedition, traveling beyond reach, is a big thing still and will always be. To the loner, such an adventure promises epiphanies, wonders never to be forgotten, elemental challenges, confrontations with the ultimate and the self.”

If that’s not motivating, I don’t know what is.

After five days of visiting my nieces (2.5 years and <2 weeks old, respectively), I’ve learned some relevant lessons.

• Toddlers are really good at figuring out what their points of leverage are. (“Mommy can physically pick me up and move me, but she can’t make me eat…”)
• As adults, we send mixed messages and do hypocritical things all the time. We don’t realize it until we encounter a strictly literal individual, like a two-year-old.
• When a toddler refers to a container of sour cream as “ice cream”, it’s not actually worth correcting her (unless you’re really interested in having a knock-down-drag-out argument.). Same with her stuffed “tiger” (actually a leopard), “Hot Dog” (Mickey Mouse), “snack” (can only refer to chips/crackers/pretzels, not fruit/cheese/anything currently undesired), and that prize word: “mine” (telling her that it’s yours is like bear-baiting). Not every moment is a teachable moment.
• I’d forgotten how much fun rolling around on the floor and tickling someone is, especially a giggly two-year-old who keeps laughing, “I got you!” even when you’re the one getting her.
• Projectile vomiting is not, as I had thought, just a funny phrase used by the over-inebriated.
• Breast milk has natural antibiotics (!) and you can use it to clear up mild eye infections, such as those caused by blocked tear ducts. This actually worked!

Other experiences that capture my week:

• On a walk, we encountered a flower. Me: “I wonder what kind of flower that is?” Toddler: *throws a rock at it*
• Toddler, after breakfasting: “I’m done!” Me: “Okay.” Her: “No! I want to tell Mommy!”
• I walked in after an afternoon trip to the grocery store. Toddler: “Daddy!” Me: “No, Daddy’s still at work.” Toddler, running past me to check the garage: “Daddy daddy daddy!” Me: “No, he isn’t home yet.” Toddler, echoing in garage: “DADDY!” Repeat for five minutes. (She does love her Daddy!)

I’m already looking forward to my next visit. :)

On Sunday, I drove out to Amboy Crater in the desert between Barstow and Needles. More on that later. On the drive out I listened to the LibriVox recording of How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day, a book written in 1912 by Arnold Bennett. It’s a delightful book with tips not about time management per se, but more about how to enjoy living your life in the hours available. His tips include:

• Get up earlier in the morning. You don’t really need as much sleep as you’re getting, and it keeps you from more interesting mental activity. “Most people sleep themselves stupid,” he quotes.
• Difficult tasks are good for you. He lauds the “necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done,” indicating that this is what separates him from the cat on the hearth. Well, he has a point; the deliberate choice of difficult endeavors is not something a cat regularly attempts.
• You aren’t really tired when you get home from work. “Mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity [...] all they want is change, not rest.”
• His prescription: use the morning commute to train your mind to focus on something, anything, of interest, and keep it there for the whole time. Use the evening commute to learn about your self: analyze your behaviors, desires, goals, and really get to know what makes you happy. Use 3 evenings a week to, basically, improve yourself: e.g., pick an art you like (music, ballet, theater, etc.) and learn about how it is produced, its details, its history, and your enjoyment of such performances will be greatly heightened. Or do some “serious reading”, by which he means, specifically, “difficult reading.” He recommends “imaginative poetry” as the most difficult sort, and therefore best for you. He recommends starting with “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which I am now intrigued by and have placed on my to-read list.
• Reading time should be split half and half between reading and reflecting on what you have read. I find this an interesting proposition. He notes that you will make slower progress, but it will be richer progress. This seems likely to be true, yet could I force myself to spend so much time on reflection and analysis? A good challenge!

Overall, I found the book thought-provoking and very entertaining as a reading (listening) experience alone. It’s only 1.5 hours long spoken, so I imagine it’s an even quicker read… consuming a minimal amount of your 24 hours.

Last semester, I joked that I’d somehow gotten ahold of a virtual Time-Turner, since I was taking a class at USC that occurred at the same time I was teaching at Cal State LA, on Thursday evenings. This was possible since I was taking the class through the Distance Education Network, and therefore could view the 2.5-hour lecture on my computer at a later date (usually the weekend).

Santa sometimes has a funny sense of humor, and this Christmas he brought me (among many other wonderful things) an actual Time-Turner. And yet — while it was pretty cool to be able to turn time last semester, unlike Hermione I didn’t actually end up with any more hours in the week. By the end of the term, I was aching for a break. So I held my Time-Turner and realized that, rather than a symbol of incentive for double-booking, really it was more of a warning — a caution against that kind of stacked-up crazy schedule.

But did I heed the warning of the Time-Turner? No. By the time January rolled around, I’d already committed to an even crazier term: working, teaching an entirely new class at Cal State LA, taking yet another class at USC, all the while trying to write a Master’s thesis so I can graduate this spring. None of them are technically overlapping in time, but (just as when the Time-Turner let me spread things out) all together it’s still a gradually suffocating weight.

Thank goodness my teaching duties end with the winter quarter at Cal State LA. As of March 15, I’ll have one less thing to occupy my energies. And if I ever propose this sort of schedule again in the future, someone kindly strangle me with the Time-Turner’s chain.