Ariane Sherine (December)

I think we have all met and felt supressed by the obesity of apathy. It is an interesting state that allows one to go on doing whatever it is s/he is doing; all the while s/he knows that all around them, temporally and in any number of other terms, responsibilities are piling up and one is becoming all the more distanced from their dreams and their goals and, nonetheless, s/he goes on doing whatever it is they are doing; unable to make themselves respond; unable to put a rule down, knowing they are going to follow it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we have all put down our own self-imposing rules. Unfortunately, most of us know, unless we are good rule-makers and followers, that the rules we set for ourselves are not always golden. And so, smokers keep smoking and the ones that managed never to start, go on never starting. I am one of the fortunate people who took it upon himself to quit, and succeeded.

In accordance with the title of this pointless number of paragraphs, I think I should make a point of talking about Ariane Sherine. I myself am a Youtube fan and use it most everyday. Since I quite dislike religion in general, and since I am fond of beautiful women, let it suffice to say that the movement did not go on long without me. Among the many articulate minds there, I found a very beautiful, well-spoken, responsible, moral, educated, friendly, and, I imagine, very loving person, named Cristina. On her latest video, as of today, the 29th of December, 2009 at five fifty-six in the morning, she referred me and any watchers to Ariane Sherine, adding about her a number of the same remarkable qualities I mentioned above.

After I had made my way to her site, looked into her on Youtube and other places on the internet, I found that she was indeed a very pretty lady and interested in some of the same things as me; comedy and atheism, which was excellent.

Why I pay homage to her here, however, is not so much about these personality traits or her musical look-alike (inside joke, follow link below and read her blog), but, because of something that happened when I visited her blog. It was probably pretty early in the morning when I was clicking around and noticed that highlighted on the left in list format were months of the year. I found it rather peculiar that she should only have one blog entry for each month. I felt a sense of discovery because it had dawned on me that for whatever reason, here was a pretty successful, good-looking, orderly, responsible adult…only writing a post a month on her blog. I realized: oh my god! I can do that too!!!!

Now, please do not laugh, if you are even still reading. You see, I consider myself a pretty serious, rigorous person. When I start or stop something, I like to do so one time and have it be that way all the time, every day. Take smoking. A lot of people start smoking in a day, sure; but not a lot of people start smoking a packet of 20 cigarettes daily, do they? Likewise, smokers do not usually stop cold-turkey, and never smoke another fag in their lives but, cut down as much as possible or simply get some help. It takes quite a bit of energy to really make yourself quit something like cigarettes for good, I should know.

When I saw that she was posting an entry every month, it made me believe that I could do the same as a minimal starting point for just such ambitions. As I had just then been reading her entry about ghost blogs across the internet and their being un-harvested crops for journalists, I thought of my blog and how it was this fantom; this closet problem in my life, and it made me feel so good to think that I could do what I had for so long wanted, practically and dependably; confidently. Almost with the same confidence that one has in their going to work tomorrow or eating at some point in the day. If ever they were challenged by unemployment or an eating disorder or perhaps famine, I would not think it so different to be able to eat or work again, practically and dependably and confidently, rather than just once every six months. I would not think it a very different sense of relief to believe that they could build a habit of eating or working by starting on a basic, practical pattern. A basic, practical pattern that does not demand them to exhaust their willpower and, one that does not demand of them their every profundity of attention but, one that they know they could accomplish if they gave themselves a reasonable time frame.

Like I was saying, I consider myself a rigorous personality in a lot of ways and this means to me that I like to start something and, even if it requires my attention every day; even if it asks that I make an effort daily, without exception, then that is what I expect of myself. However, one’s expectations, as I pointed out above, and one’s actual admissions are a very different thing. I had never known that starting something anew and expecting it to be carried out in a daily pattern…might, Justin-forbid, be way too much to ask of myself. I had never realized that so exigent a process might, simply, be unrealistic; regardless of how many hours were in each of those days and regardless of how many minutes were in those days and, regardless of how much free time I had or how great or ambivalent or melancholic my moods were.

So, above and beyond her awesome, very inclusive campaigns for probabilities rather than emotional conveniences, and, above and beyond her very beautiful person, I would like to thank Ariane Sherine for the format of her blog and the topic of her blog, as bizarre as that probably is to any human reader. For all aliens, this is actually a human blog, sorry; you’ll have to navigate elsewhere–plus I don’t speak alien.

I post her link here: http://arianesherine.com/#

There you can also see some great pictures of her and the very commendable Richard Dawkins, much less outspoken than Christopher Hitchens and not nearly as haughty-taughty; though I also like Hitchens a lot, of course.