YA Addict Anonymous

Six months of working from home and I’m more than ready to return to the workforce. No deadlines, no schedule, no structure make Buttercup a very slow girl. The work ethic is there, just not the diligence when I could be watching Adventure Time or reading books. Gobs and gobs of books.

And what have I been reading? The only legitimate book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Began it in November, and have steadily made progress so that I’m in the middle of the story. Unlike the other books I’ve been reading (we’ll get to my silliness soon enough), Tolstoy cannot be read in a single day…or night, as the case is more likely to be. Like all Russian literature of that time, Anna Karenina is encumbered with too many points of view and sprawling explanations of characters’ personal philosophies and the events that change those philosophies. The character develops not by overcoming some heroic flaw, but by showing a progression of social and religious beliefs. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment “overcame” his belief in Nietzsche's superman to Christianity’s Christ. Levin in AK has an evolving social-eco-political understanding of muzhiks and how they fit into his life as workers on his farm. As his understanding evolves and changes, so do his actions rationally align themselves to reflect those changes, and so we see the character develop as his relationship with the Russians peasantry develops.

It makes for slow reading. A few things have lodged with me, and eventually I might get around to exploring them in a blog. I have always sympathized with Russian internalization. The characters are forever analyzing themselves, their actions, and others. In that way, I feel very Russian. However, this rational alignment of actions to beliefs I do not find to be true in life. People just don’t behave in accordance to their personal philosophies most of the time. But more of that in some future Russian post. (I know, what fun!)

So Anna Karenina is my legitimate reading, but I’ve had quite a few illegitimate page turners as well. Young Adult fantasy fiction. Shiver me timbers, is it addicting! I didn’t always love YA. In fact, when I was a young adult myself, I read adult books such as Murakami, George R. R. Martin, classics (of course!), C. S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and loads of historical fiction about Queen Maud, Mary Queen of Scotts, and other primarily United Kingdom-centric personalities. Now that I’m in my middling twenties, I’m reading YA like a teenager. What’s that all about?

It began with Harry Potter—that seemingly innocent series of J. K. Rowling that makes the magic world seem so fantastically and ridiculously opulent and somehow plausible. It took me a year to finish the series because I just couldn’t bring myself to read of the death of beloved characters, but by then I had the YA bug. The next book club I was in was Looking for Alaska by John Green. Mister Green, I believe, has more to with my unnatural obsession than any other author (even J. K., though she got the ball rolling).

Hello. My name is Buttercup Harding, and I am a female whose favorite genre is male coming-of-age novels.

John Green is a master. Hilarious. Each character is quirky but believable and identifiable and endearing to the nth degree. After reading Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (not his best), he landed on my list of literary loves. His talent totally deserves to be on my list, but the fact that I a) identify with high school-aged male protagonists, and b) identify with the themes/messages of the books worries me about myself.

For instance, An Abundance of Katherines ends with three different epiphanies by the three main characters: 1) I’m not a doer, 2) I’m self-centered, and 3) I want to matter. All three of these I identify with, and that worries me that at twenty-whatever I am still struggling with the same issues of high school students?

What book genres do you read and why? What’s the appeal? Do you think that your late twenties is an appropriate time to be coming to terms with such issues as selfishness and wanting to matter? What literary character do you most identify with?

Priorities: Harry Potter Had Them

I am twenty-six years old and just finished the Harry Potter series. Does the shame I feel come from reading juvenile fiction at my age, or the fact that it took me so long to read the HPs? I'm just kidding. I don't feel shame. I'm talking to all of you pressurers who have tormented and hounded me about reading Rowling's books. I am not ashamed, you hear me?!

But my shame is not what I want to discuss. I want to shame others. I want to shed a light on priorities. It's something that's been consuming my mind in recent years. Yes, even before I quit my job and became an impoverished parasite living at my parents' house with way too much free time on my hands. But again, this isn't about my shame--or my current shame.

The first year I was promoted to management, I worked eighty-hour weeks on average. I was twenty-four. An old friend (as old as you can have them at twenty-four) contacted me out of the blue and wanted to go to lunch. I was absolutely delighted to see him and threw all thoughts of work away for three hours in order to grab a bite and catch up.

We talked of many things, but what he came back to again and again was our friendship. "If anyone had told me we would lose contact, wouldn't talk for years," he said, shaking his head, "I just wouldn't believe it. You were one of my best friends. I still consider you one of my best friends. We can't let this happen."

And it was true. He was the beginning of my priority purgatory. We left filled with plans of getting together and how we would somehow work around my insane work schedule. But reality and responsibility and other reprehensible things constricted me. Weekend after weekend I canceled our plans. Too much work, I couldn't come. It was true...but only if you're looking at it from one angle. I let work, work for an employer I disdained, work for clients who often did not appreciate it, work for a company that did not value me or the value I added to their products ahead of a friendship that could have lasted a lifetime. But it didn't. I didn't prioritize it, and I haven't heard from him in two years.

After that year of hell, my supervisor finally realized that I was near dead and would quit out of sheer exhaustion if not from finding another job (which I had no time to do!). So my work load gradually decreased to the point where I was working an average fifty-hour week. I had time to breathe, look for other jobs, and reevaluate my priorities. The only friends I ever saw were my work friends, whom I loved and still love, but that's not a full life. I had let that blimmin' job fill up every nook and cranny. I used to go home every Sunday and eat lunch with my family, but that all stopped when I got promoted. I had to work on Sundays. I used to go visit my out-of-town friend (the aforementioned Tulsa dweller) at least once a month, but after the promotion, it was more like a couple times a year. Even when I did see her, I would have to bring my work with me.

What good is whining that you have too much work to see people when you detest that work? What good is it to the people you love who want to see you? Who want to be there for you? What will your life look like, years down the road, if you keep choosing work? Is it the life you want to lead?

Harry Potter knew this. He valued friends and family over his life. That's why Voldemort couldn't kill him. (Oh. Spoiler alert.) But we aren't talking life and death here, in our reality. We're talking prioritization of time. But that can be in the HP series as well. I think I'm too much like Hermione. I value learning, but even more than learning, I like applying what I've learned and showing off what I've learned. I like being smart. I'm sure pride is part of it, but it feels like it's more about what you do well. An artist paints and draws and displays it because that's what he loves and what he does well. Like Hermione, I learn well. So I slave over books and apply it through my job or studies. But Hermione had Harry and Ron to pull her out of her studies and out of her head and keep her grounded. She prioritized her friendship with them above her studies. Every time she broke a rule or paused in her school studies to help Harry with some quest, she was choosing her friends over her studies. Sure, she helped them through her knowledge, because that is what she's good at. But she made time for them; she broke out of her "work" to nurture the friendship and simply be physically and mentally and emotionally present when they needed a friend.

Harry was only a mediocre wizard. Perhaps he could have been incredibly powerful, if he had studied. But he valued his friends much more than he did studying. In the end, it served him well.

Of course priorities require balance. You can't only spend time with friends and family. They'd get sick of you. But think, whenever someone asks to meet up, whether or not you can't set aside an hour, just one hour, to see that person. Every time you tell someone "no" because you choose work or an office party or some other obligation that you aren't even particularly happy about, you are prioritizing those things you don't love over those that you do. And the things you don't prioritize, no matter how much you tell yourself you love them, will feel unloved and eventually leave. Because how you spend your time shows your priorities. And what you prioritize above all else is, actually, what you love the most.

Now that I'm an unemployed loser, I plan on spending as much time doing the things I really love as possible.  I'm going to find a church. I'm going to do those little chores my parents want me to because I want to show that I love them. I'm going to help my brother start a business (more to come in subsequent posts, I am sure). I'm going to walk my dogs. I'm going to say YES! every time someone wants to hang out. And I'm going to read and write and edit and enjoy my life. I am determined to shape a present and a future I am happy in. What's the point of suffering through a present for an uncertain happy future? Both are possible as long as you keep your priorities in order.