Hello!
I am currently working on a post about Robert A. Johnson's She: Understanding Feminine Psychology for a (possibly one-shot) series that I am calling "Hate-Read with Lydia". This book is truly, truly terrible, and I am excited to horrify you with extensive quotes and my own descriptions.
However, as it turns out, doing a quote-and-commentary style blog post takes a significant amount of time. While I could theoretically work late into the night to write a sub-par post about a subject I care about, I would prefer to give the compiling of this post the time and attention that it deserves.
So, rather than that blog post, you are getting this brief prequel blog post. I want to talk a little about today's work, and the process that I am using to write a more labor-intensive blog post.
I first encountered this book while supervising the counselors-in-training (CITs) on their day off. We went to Tome on the Road, a bookstore in Las Vegas. I spotted this book at a table of $1 books, and began reading ridiculous quotes from it out loud to our long-suffering CITs. After learning that the proceeds of books sold from this table would be donated to a library, I purchased She: Understanding Feminine Psychology and continued to read passages aloud throughout the day.
When we returned to camp, I started reading this book from cover to cover. I used my sticky tab dividers to mark any passages that seemed ridiculous in order to facilitate reading passages aloud more easily in the future. By the time I was done, my copy of the book looked like this:
When I returned home and started blogging every day, I began to think that I should write a blog post about this ridiculously misogynistic book. Initially, even as late as this morning, I thought that I might want to produce a companion podcast episode to go along with the blog post. I wanted to capture the feeling of sitting at a lunch table only to have me ask "Can I read another quote?" and, upon receiving your consent, begin reading a passage from this text.
Then, I thought that I wanted to create short recordings of myself reading each passage, so that blog readers wouldn't have to wade through long passages of text. I even began recording myself reading some quotes from the book. While this idea is still tempting, the sheer amount of time that it would take to edit those raw recordings and embed them into this blog post feels ludicrous for my purposes. While I may post a recording of myself reading the post aloud after it is complete, I decided that I needed to focus on the drafting of the blog post itself.
Since I could not hold a slim paperback open while typing, I photographed each quote with my phone and used my cloud storage to access them on my laptop's web browser in order to transcribe them. For some of the quotes, the page number was not included within the photograph, and so I cross-referenced the photos with my physical copy of the book to find the appropriate page. After all that effort, I wound up with nearly five pages of typed quotes in single-spaced Times New Roman 12-point font when I initially transcribed all of the quotes that I would like to share/discuss.
Sorting through these quotes to find the best ones and to provide proper commentary about them is taking awhile. As we speak, I have written commentary for quotes through page 17. (The book is 71 pages long.) I don't want to force you to wade through a long stream of illogical quotes, but I also do not want to create an endless bog of my own commentary and feelings.
Hopefully, this blog post will be ready to post by tomorrow evening. If you would like to prepare yourself for that post, I would recommend brushing up on the Wikipedia page for the myth of Eros and Psyche. In the meantime, I hope that you have an amazing day!
I am currently working on a post about Robert A. Johnson's She: Understanding Feminine Psychology for a (possibly one-shot) series that I am calling "Hate-Read with Lydia". This book is truly, truly terrible, and I am excited to horrify you with extensive quotes and my own descriptions.
However, as it turns out, doing a quote-and-commentary style blog post takes a significant amount of time. While I could theoretically work late into the night to write a sub-par post about a subject I care about, I would prefer to give the compiling of this post the time and attention that it deserves.
So, rather than that blog post, you are getting this brief prequel blog post. I want to talk a little about today's work, and the process that I am using to write a more labor-intensive blog post.
I first encountered this book while supervising the counselors-in-training (CITs) on their day off. We went to Tome on the Road, a bookstore in Las Vegas. I spotted this book at a table of $1 books, and began reading ridiculous quotes from it out loud to our long-suffering CITs. After learning that the proceeds of books sold from this table would be donated to a library, I purchased She: Understanding Feminine Psychology and continued to read passages aloud throughout the day.
When we returned to camp, I started reading this book from cover to cover. I used my sticky tab dividers to mark any passages that seemed ridiculous in order to facilitate reading passages aloud more easily in the future. By the time I was done, my copy of the book looked like this:
 |
| A paperback copy of She: Understanding Feminine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson sits on top of a black-and-white polka dot cloth. The edge of the book is lined with a total of 30 blue, pink, purple, and yellow sticky tabs. |
Then, I thought that I wanted to create short recordings of myself reading each passage, so that blog readers wouldn't have to wade through long passages of text. I even began recording myself reading some quotes from the book. While this idea is still tempting, the sheer amount of time that it would take to edit those raw recordings and embed them into this blog post feels ludicrous for my purposes. While I may post a recording of myself reading the post aloud after it is complete, I decided that I needed to focus on the drafting of the blog post itself.
Since I could not hold a slim paperback open while typing, I photographed each quote with my phone and used my cloud storage to access them on my laptop's web browser in order to transcribe them. For some of the quotes, the page number was not included within the photograph, and so I cross-referenced the photos with my physical copy of the book to find the appropriate page. After all that effort, I wound up with nearly five pages of typed quotes in single-spaced Times New Roman 12-point font when I initially transcribed all of the quotes that I would like to share/discuss.
 |
| One of the images from the book that I used in order to transcribe quotes. The image is slightly blurry, but the text is legible. It reads, in part, "Almost every woman I know has waded right out into the river and has been overwhelmed. Almost every woman I know is too busy. She is into this, studying that, driving in a car pool to this and to that, working hard on some big project, racing around until she is ragged. She needs to be quiet, to approach the vastness of life's responsibilities in a more orderly manner, to do one thing, take one crystal goblet, at a time, concentrate on it, and do it well. Then she may move on to other things." |
Hopefully, this blog post will be ready to post by tomorrow evening. If you would like to prepare yourself for that post, I would recommend brushing up on the Wikipedia page for the myth of Eros and Psyche. In the meantime, I hope that you have an amazing day!
Best wishes,
Lydia
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