Category Archives: Writing

How To Be More Honest?

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Having blogged for a decade plus, I run the risk of repeating myself. But maybe you’ll forgive me if I come clean about it.

In September, 2018, I started a post titled “What We Get Wrong About Honesty” this way:

That it’s mostly telling the truth to others. But being honest with one’s self is a more essential starting point, and because we lack any semblance of objectivity, far more difficult.

None of us are ever completely honest with ourselves.

Especially as a writer, I want to be more honest with myself, and by extension, my readers. I suspect that starts with more honest internal dialogues.

My older sissy said something seemingly innocuous to me awhile back, that I can’t stop replaying in my head. I was telling her I want to really improve my freestyle swimming, but it’s hard given the years of imperfect muscle memory. I explained that I had checked a book out of the library that broke the freestyle stroke down and had watched lots of youtube vids.

I thought I had made a convincing case that I wanted to improve, I for sure had convinced myself, but when I came up for air, she offered this brutally matter-of-fact reply, “No, you don’t.”

Staggered by her honesty, I forget what came after that.

As soon as I regained my footing, I realized she was right. My efforts to improve were superficial at best. I hadn’t worked with a coach. I hadn’t used video. I hadn’t committed to the drills that help improve one’s catch.

Despite saying I want to improve, my elbows still drop, I still slap the water, and I don’t rotate nearly enough. My stroke is a mess, but that’s not the point. The point is, with no coach, with no video, with no commitment to drills and going slower to eventually go faster, I should stop lying to myself about wanting to improve. I should just accept that my stroke will always suck.

Of course, my shite freestyle doesn’t matter, at all, but the all important question raised by my sister’s “No, you don’t” is what else am I lying to myself about? Surely, lots of stuff of far more consequence.

I may never have high elbows, but can I learn to be more honest with myself, and by extension, you? I don’t know. But I think I’ll try. Just don’t tell my sister.

The First Year Writing Seminar

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Is always evolving. This fall’s iteration. Would you sign up?

The Art and Science of Human Connection—Ron Byrnes, Education

     In this seminar we work together to improve as readers, discussants, and writers while exploring the challenges and rewards of meaningful friendships. Our readings, discussions, and writing overlap with the University’s Wild Hope Project, which asks, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” We will be as introspective and transparent as possible as we get to know one another’s stories and draw on history and social sciences to explore what’s most important in life. Among the questions we’ll consider: What makes life most meaningful? How do we want to balance work and individual economic aspirations with recreation and close interpersonal relationships with others? What is easy about making friends and what is hard? How can we be better friends to ourselves and others? And does social media make it easier or harder to build strong interpersonal relationships?

Good Stuff

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THIS is the example to use when teaching alliteration in fourth or fifth grade.

Verne Lundquist, 83 year old sportscaster extraordinaire, who just called his last Masters, exited at the top of his game. I forget which player it was that was getting chewed up by the Augusta, Georgia winds and glassy greens. Not holding back, Lundquist said, “The wheels aren’t just falling off, the rims are too.”

Postscript: More alliteration. This morning, as the trial gets underway, Trump is said to have scoffed, smirked, and slept.

Being A Public Secondary School Principal Is Not For The Weak Of Heart

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Or anyone lacking superhuman interpersonal skills.

Jessica Winters’s story in The NewYorker titled ” The Meltdown of a Middle School in a Liberal Town” (April 3, 2024) left me wondering how a school district starts over. It’s a case study of things completely falling apart in an Amherst, Massachusetts public middle school. It features angry parents, school personnel ignoring the separation of church and state, educators wholly unprepared to work with trans students, cultural conflicts of all sorts, and many other layers of public school dysfunction.

Today there’s a similarly harrowing story in The New York Times, titled, “A Principal Confronted a Teenage Girl. Now He’s Facing Prison Time.”

The heart of the matter:

“For educators everywhere, the criminal prosecution of Mr. Sanchez for an action that schools typically handle using their own disciplinary codes opens up new levels of potential risk. Fights are part of high school life. If a school official can be not just disciplined but also jailed for intervening to break up or prevent a fight, what are teachers supposed to do?

In an interview, Mr. Sanchez mentioned a fight last year in which a teacher told the students to stop but did not physically separate them. ‘And the parent was just so upset when they saw the video, like, ‘Why isn’t this person stopping it?’’ he said. ‘And to be honest, I was a little upset, too. I didn’t say that to the parent, but I did say, ‘Well, because sometimes people are worried about liability.’”

Recently, I did a writing workshop with fifteen K-12 teachers who are seeking school principal certification. More specifically, they were applying for grants that provide them substitutes for their classrooms so they can get the required hours interning as administrators-to-be.

Impressive group, but after reflecting on these stories, I can’t help but wonder if they know what they’re committing to. The numerous simultaneous challenges they will soon face. The public’s anger and disregard for one another. The tenuousness of the public commons. The toll it will take on them and their families.

My guess is not entirely, because if they did, they’d probably choose professional paths where mere mortals stand much better odds of succeeding.

Kara Swisher And The Female Ego

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I regularly listen to both of Kara Swisher’s podcasts, her own, and hers with Scott Galloway. As a result, I’m an expert on all things KSwish.

She’s a fascinating case study in gender because she prides herself in being atypically female. Her extreme self-confidence often tips over into bragging about herself. She makes no apologies for being the self proclaimed “best tech journalist” currently working. When you look up “swagger” in the dictionary. . .

She is good at what she does and she has accomplished a lot. At present, she’s on a nationwide book tour for her new book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, which is selling well. Among other things, people like that she’s so opinionated.

Normally, I think of her braggadocio as a harmless personality quirk, but her promoting of her book tour is proving way, way too much. The to-this-point undefeated male ego has finally met its match. Name an especially egregious male whose ego runs amok. KSwish would give that dude a run for his money.

Case in point. She recently bragged about doing the best job of anyone reporting on what really happened with Sam Altman’s firing and rehiring at OpenAI. She said something to the effect of, “It was cool to see I still got it. And that I can still be the best beat reporter going.” Swisher isn’t a reporter anymore because her ever expanding ego makes it impossible to defer to interview subjects. She has to be the story. End of story.

Maybe a women with an unbridled ego is alright, fuck the patriarchy and all, but I’m repelled by egomaniacs of either gender. I’m at an “advanced” stage of my life where I’m drawn to people who sublimate their ego in the service of others. Especially when that service takes the form of disciplined listening. Of choosing not to speak. Of looking, and listening, and learning.

That said, I am down with KSwish-like ambition. And even her admittedly excessive work ethic and intense focus on professional status. With the critical caveat that we keep Qoheleth’s Old Testament Ecclesiastes insight front and center—that’s there’s a season for everything. Including ambition, professional status, and ego.

In your 20s, 30s, and 40s, go crazy. Be ambitious. Work hard. Achieve things. Line your pockets. Increase your status.

But KSwish, like your Humble Blogger, was born in 1962. And listening to her promote herself over and over makes me wonder, when should one stop giving a shit? When is the time to cull our professional “to do” lists and create space for others?

Of course it’s a personal decision. KSwish would vehemently reject my suggestion that we think about our professional identities in terms of life chapters. She would profanely brush off my suggestion that we defer to our younger colleagues on their way up.

And that’s her prerogative.

I’m repelled by KSwish’s self promoting, look-at-me, in-your-face ego. But, but being the expert I am, I can say this with total confidence. She doesn’t give a shit about what I think about her. Which is her most appealing trait.

It’s My Parents’ Fault

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Suffice to say, my personal life has gotten significantly more difficult of late. Obviously, this isn’t the time or place for any details. Just know, as your humble blogger, I am “compartmentalizing” these days.

The GalPal wants me to find a therapist to help make things less difficult. I know lots of people who are benefitting from therapy, and intellectually I am definitely pro-therapy, but when push comes to shove, I am Resistant to seek the help of a mental health counselor myself.

Not only am I pro-therapy, I believe our well-being depends largely on the quality of our closest interpersonal relationships, and those relationships depend largely on our willingness to be vulnerable about our inner lives.

The gender stereotype that males think and talk almost exclusively about tangible objects—whether news, weather, or sports, okay maybe cars too—doesn’t apply to me. I’m always thinking about deeper things than just how bad UCLA men’s basketball is this year.* What to do with the nearly constant deeper inner dialogue, that is the question.

Two imperfect answers spring to mind. The first was modeled by a friend a week ago when he asked if we could talk. He suggested a bike ride, and despite the frigid temps, of course I was in. Looping FishTrap Loop shoulder to shoulder, I initiated, “So, what’s up?” “It’s a long story,” he started, but really it wasn’t. It was a very good talk/ride and I’d like to think he felt better afterwards.

What’s imperfect about that? With occasional exceptions like the one just described, my closest friends, being of the male persuasion, aren’t as adept as women at talking about their feelings. As a result, it’s rare for a male friend to genuinely ask, “So, what’s up?” Could I take more initiative with my friends in digging deeper into “real” life? Fo sho.

In theory, writing could be a helpful outlet too. That is, if I could figure out the endlessly convoluted privacy concerns of those nearest and dearest to me. Which I can’t. And before you suggest it, journaling ain’t the answer, because that’s just a more visible form of the inner dialogue.

So, given those limitations, why not just “do” therapy? Asked differently, what the hell is wrong with me, that I’m so resistant to “professional” help?

I’ve been mulling that around and around.

What I’ve concluded is that the Good Wife doesn’t fully appreciate just how much I am a product of my parents’ “too extreme for their own good” intense independence. Both my mom and my dad grew up without much, during the Depression, in eastern Montana. When my dad died, his obituary was in the New York Times. Individually and together, they developed resilient, “grin and bare it” approaches to life that worked for them.

Mostly. Better for my dad than my mom who would have benefitted greatly from therapy after my dad’s death, from which she never really recovered.

Again though, that knowledge of how helpful therapy can be is overridden by my parents’ modeling which was rooted in the brutal conditions of eastern Montana in the 1930’s. Suffering was synonymous with living. You just endure it, in whatever form it takes.

Asking me to just dial up a therapist feels like asking me to break from my past and my people, to defy my DNA. Despite all the decades, I am still of eastern Montana, still of Don Byrnes, still of Carol Byrnes, still of believing that I must grin and bare it mostly alone.

For better, or more likely, for worse.

*thank goodness for the women

On Today’s Run

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I listened to Ezra Klein talk to Gloria Marks about her book,“Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity”. Marks is a professor at UC Irvine.

I probably wasn’t paying close enough attention, but I was underwhelmed by Marks who confirmed Klein’s view that we’re easily distracted these days and how helpful walks in nature are to our paying attention and well-being more generally. Despite Klein’s borderline annoying earnestness, Mark’s came across as “All hat and no cattle.”

And let’s not rule out the very real possibility that I’m just jelly that I don’t have a remotely similar platform for my own peabrain ideas.

Maybe if I did a deeper dive into Mark’s work, I’d be more impressed, but having been around the academic block a few times, I suspect her academic profile is the result of two things—focusing exclusively on a highly relevant topic and mastering the art of self promotion. Do note the slick personal website.

Often, there’s a weak correlation between the intelligence and importance of a person’s writing/speaking and their relative popularity. It’s rarely, if ever, what you see is what you get.

I prefer more original writers/thinkers that cast wider nets, blur the lines between disciplines, and challenge my preconceived assumptions about things.

The Best Book of 2023

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In the 2022 film, Banshees of Inisherin, Colm Doherty’s motivation may not have been fully appreciated amidst the story’s intensity. Doherty wanted to avoid smalltalk at any cost because he realized he had become old and the end was near, so if he was going to leave any meaningful legacy, he had to focus exclusively on his musicianship.

I wonder if we avoid questions of legacy out of a fear of being forgotten. Will anyone remember? If so, who? And what will they remember? And for how long?

Enter Jonny feckin’ Steinberg, author of Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage. I predict Steinberg’s book will be the go-to source for understanding the end of apartheid for hundreds of years. I read it because I followed the anti-apartheid struggle closely in my twenties and I wanted to learn more about two of the central characters. And not knowing much about their marriage, I suspected there would be some salacious details.

Almost immediately though, I got distracted by Steinberg’s brilliance, constantly wondering how he managed telling such a complex and intimate story in the most intelligent way imaginable. Surgical is the word that springs to mind. Steinberg, working mostly from a 15,000 page file illegally held on to by one of the government’s top security officials, repeatedly takes readers inside the Mandela’s relationship, into Nelson’s Robben Island prison cell, inside the African National Congress’s machinations, and onto the streets of the Soweto uprising.

The descriptive writing is good, but what’s most exceptional about the book is Steinberg’s masterful interpretation of documents and events. It’s an ingenious example of historiography or how history should be written. Sometimes Steinberg opts for humility and uses tentative language such as “Although we can never know for certain, . . .” At others, he fearlessly calls into question both central characters’ veracity, especially Nelson’s. Most of the time though, he’s helpfully splitting the difference, thoughtfully offering a particular interpretation based upon the precise historical context and the preponderance of evidence. Very early on, Steinberg’s brilliant interpreting and reasoned judgement caused me to conclude that he was the most credible of narrators.

Steinberg’s acknowledgements reveal that he had eight editors across three publishing houses. And he’s generous in crediting his research assistant, several archivists, and numerous readers of his drafts. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but publishing a seminal work of this nature, clearly is not.

In terms of the story itself, first and foremost, one can’t help but be overwhelmed by the scale of the government’s persistent human rights abuses and violence, but also the black-on-black violence it engendered.

Another lasting lesson is that the media places individuals on pedestals, whether Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, or Volodymyr Zelenskyy by limiting coverage of their failings, both personal and political. For if we get too close, we will always find, just like with Nelson and Winnie, the famous aren’t just fallible, they’re extremely flawed.

There are many other take-aways. While an imperfect analogy, I came to think of Nelson as a Martin Luther King like thinker and activist and Winnie as a female Malcom X. This tension begs important questions including how does social change happen, nonviolently or violently, slowly or quickly? And if changing a violent regime requires its own violence, how do the survivors turn off that spigot?

Sometimes There’s A Breakthrough

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The final paper. A self-assessment of one’s writing progress. Which admittedly, is a bit presumptuous.

A fave excerpt from one student’s paper.

“But this prewriting is different than what I thought it would be; my prewriting involves putting my professor into a (metaphorical) box, and I put that box into another box. Then, I put that box in the garage and forget about it. Only at this point do I return to my brainstorming and drafts. I have learned that if I do not do this I expend too much energy trying to inject the professor into my creation. Once I realized that my writing is for myself, not the professor, I found that writing is an engaging process of self discovery and growth. This is most evident in my penultimate paper on the concept of soulmates.”

Typically, academic writing is an impersonal jumping through hoops, with students preoccupied by grades. Students inevitably develop a teacher-centric orientation when writing in school, asking themselves, “To get the best grade possible, what and how am I expected to think and write?”

If I could only get all of my students to put me in a box, inside a box, in a garage. Yes, I would prob suffocate to death, but I would die happy.