Lately I’ve been reading two authors who couldn’t be more different: Jenny Lawson and Gretchen Rubin. The former writes memoir about rowdy and hilarious encounters with taxidermy and mental illness, and the later writes about habit and happiness. Jenny’s writing process involves watching funny Youtube videos, watching lots of Dr. Who, and frightening the natives with her antics. Gretchen’s involves copious note-taking and scheduled writing time. Jenny lives in Texas and Gretchen lives in New York. Jenny is a breathtaking mess and Gretchen is wonderfully together. The only thing they share is a love of perfect grammar and a new friend, me.
It’s not a traditional friendship. I’ve never met or contacted either of them, but they way they write about their lives makes me feel like I know them. I think when one person writes and another person reads and *hears* what they’re saying, a tiny bond springs into life. I figure that’s why we cry when certain celebrities die, because somehow, some way, they reached us with their art.
Anyway, Gretchen’s Better than Before is pretty good. It’s her latest book and came out this year. It’s about habit formation, and it’s really made me approach habits in a new way (and hopefully with more success). A big part of the book is about using knowledge of yourself to help you form habits more successfully (e.g. if you’re not a morning person, don’t try to start going the gym at 5 am). She also gives several examples and anecdotes, which I appreciate. She’s actually really good at habits, which I think gives her an interesting perspective on habit formation. It lets the rest of us know that it’s possible to become better than before. I’m currently reading an earlier book of hers called The Happiness Project (2009) which I like significantly less, so far. You can see the ground work for Better than Before forming in its pages, but the ideas are not fully crystallized and the writing isn’t as concise and snappy. However, I’m only about a quarter through, so we’ll see how it pans out.
I adored Jenny’s Let’s Pretend this Never Happened for many reasons, but I think the two big ones are 1. It’s hilarious and 2. I’d never seen writing like that before. It was irreverent and wild, and gave me a picture of life that was significantly different from my own. Her story is intriguing. In her newest book, Furiously Happy, she takes a slightly different approach. She discusses mental illness more directly (in the prior book, she tells stories about incidents prompted by her anxiety, but didn’t really talk about the anxiety itself much) and we get more into the depth and breadth of her various afflictions. It’s been sort of like a healing balm that also happens to make you guffaw a bit. I’m only about a quarter through that book as well.
I guess what struck me is that we can learn cool stuff from people who are extremely different, from each other and ourselves (I am not much like either Jenny or Gretchen, much as it pains me). I guess we gain insight from others, because their experiences have let them see things we are still blind to. I sort of think that each of these women might scoff at the other, unable to comprehend how on earth a person could live and work like that, and it gives me a chuckle.
The Imp Strikes Back 