Congratulations to Dr. Felicia Gottmann!

On a few occasions, I like to highlight accomplishments from my friends in this spot. (And we all know that I spend too much time talking about myself anyway, so this is a welcome break from the usual deal.)

I just got back from the celebration for a successful D.Phil defense (a "viva") for one of my best friends---for one of the dearest, closest friends I have ever had or will ever have. And I try to do the best I can in return.

So that means it's time to pause and use this spot to express congratulations! Felicia passed with flying colors, which was not a surprise at all. (A foregone conclusion in fact, though it's obviously always better after the fact.)

I know Felicia through Somerville, and she studies French and history. The title of her thesis is "The eighteenth-century luxury debate: the case of Voltaire"---quite far from anything I can even pretend to know, but surely that is because all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds?

There were a lot of mathematicians at the pub, so ironically I was the one who knew other people. This resulted in our table getting recruited for charitable donations (one of the staff members left her job today and was celebrating the end of her job), and one of my students also dropped by to say 'hi'.

Anyway, it was all very excellent and fun, and now I am pretty tired. I should also mention that Felicia's mother (who flew in from Germany for the celebration) called me "an international phenomenon". Maybe I should adopt that as my tagline?

It's not every day that I get to celebrate an important day for one of my best friends, so today has been a good day.

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Gottmann.

Perspective

I want to keep a proper perspective. Really, I do. Though I think anybody who truly knows me well also knows that I fail miserably at it (the proverbial "do not", as Yoda might say). I know that I fail at this, and I still worry endlessly and on a regular basis make myself absolutely miserable with worry about either trivial problems or even things that aren't actually problems at all. And this can sometimes---much more often than should be the case, IMHO---lead to my frustrating the people I care about most (naturally, exactly the people I don't want to annoy). Meanwhile, people with real problems seem to be worrying much less than I am. It's at times like these that I realize just how much of a piece of work I am. I have trouble believing that my good qualities make up for this, given that I sometimes (and certainly far more often than I'd like) end up annoying other people with my worrying or my actions that are directly related to my worrying. And, naturally, it's my closest friends who I end up frustrating the most, and these are exactly the people I least want to annoy. How did I ever get this far without driving the people I care about away from me?

I think that during my life I have usually worried less when there is a real issue just because for most real issues that I have had to face, I spent so much time trying actively to solve them that it didn't leave much time or energy to worry about them. (I realize that there are plenty of real issues for which I would not have that luxury---and on occasion I have been faced with such issues---but such major issues have been far less common for me than ones that I felt I would be able to make concrete efforts to solve.)

I think I'm going to call someone to talk. There isn't a problem to solve, although I am genuinely worrying about something silly, and I think that talking will help me to act with more patience than I actually have without driving myself nuts in the process (and also to not frustrate one of my dearest friends, who besides her other excellent qualities has put up with me amazingly well for more than 2.5 years). And somehow certain types of uncertainty are the ones that correlate the most with my driving myself nuts. And I don't actually need to talk about this---just to have a live phone call with a friend and talk about stuff; something to occupy myself with another person I like involved and there with me in a stronger sense than just typing something on the computer.

Grrrr.... I am my own worst enemy. I always have been, and at the moment I'm exhausting myself mentally without any good reason at all.

Update (8/08/10): I had a 3-hour conversation with my friend Danny (who has been my friend for more than 30 years), and that helped a lot. I'm still worrying over something I don't think I should be worried about (and indeed have no right to worry about, given that other people I know have things to deal with that genuinely merit worry), but some time during which I am not driving myself nuts is always good. And I don't think I annoyed any of my friends either, which is also very good. Maybe one day I will achieve genuine patience, which I really wish I had. I think that lack of patience is one of my major flaws. And just because my best friends have shown willingness to put up with my flaws (with occasional expressions of frustration, as to be expected) doesn't mean that they should have to. Indeed, I more than anyone else don't want to be a cause of frustration for them---they are my friends, I care about them deeply, and I would rather that my flaws slowly eat myself alive than end up frustrating them on occasion. Though I think that adverse effects on me and on them actually tend to arise simultaneously in practice. ("With self-inflicted wounds.")

Update 2 (8/08/10): I am no longer worried about the thing about which I shouldn't have been worried in the first place. My so-called worst-case scenario [which, as I hinted, is not anything even remotely horrible... only suboptimal], which I should be able to handle more stoically anyway (because, as I mentioned, I have no right to worry about such things), is of course not happening. I still don't know what to do about my propensity to worry about things that pale in comparison to real worries.

"Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday."

In fact, I tend to follow the "worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum" bit in practice, but I think I'd be much happier if, instead, I just didn't worry about things so much---especially when the "bad" outcome is nothing more than suboptimal rather than genuinely bad.

Friendships in Baseball's Minor Leagues

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here's a very nice post by baseball player Randy Newsom at Dugout Central about the intensity and often fleeting nature of friendships in baseball's Minor Leagues. The movie Bull Durham has a lot to say about this as well. (For that matter, so does the Major League series of movies, though there are certain important differences between the minors and the majors here in terms of a collection of people struggling level by level without having the major stars around.)