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Perspective

2013-10-29 · John · watch on YouTube · Personal life · reflection essay

Prompted by Hank's million-seconds video, John tells how at 24, depressed after a breakup in Chicago, he took leave from Booklist, got treatment and watched Harvey, and argues that you can't know what an experience means until time gives you perspective.

What is said

00:00:00 — Reply to Hank's million-seconds video: John guessed 12 years, it is 12 days; he is bad at measuring time

  • ★★ In the description John's one piece of advice is: watch Harvey. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Asked by Hank's video to guess how long ago a million seconds was, John's immediate thought was 12 years; it is in fact 12 days. (playful) — 00:00:10
  • ★ John admits he is bad at measuring time, as long-time Nerdfighters will remember: he once acted as if a minute had 100 seconds. (playful) — 00:00:15 · Nerdfighteria

00:00:28 — At 24 in Chicago after a breakup: depression, a stalled novel, only Sprite; calling his parents, Bill Ott's leave and note ('watch Harvey'), home to Orlando, therapy, medication

  • ★★★ At 24, John's longtime girlfriend had just broken up with him; he lived in Chicago in what had been their apartment with what had been their cat, and was pretty depressed. — 00:00:28 · Chicago
  • ★★★ John thought his depression came from being dumped, but in retrospect being dumped was probably partly a result of the depression, with its obsessive thinking, self-focus and inability to act. (hedged) — 00:00:38
  • ★★ He was trying to write a novel but had not written a sentence he liked in over a year; despite a great job at Booklist, colleagues, friends and family, he was 'really losing it'. — 00:00:52
  • ★★ Many days the only thing John ate or drank was one 2-litre bottle of Sprite, which he jokes leads to weight loss and eventually scurvy. (playful) — 00:01:03
  • ★★★ He called his parents, they agreed he should come home, and he tried to quit; Booklist publisher Bill Ott suggested a two-week leave of absence instead, one of the nicest things anyone did for him. — 00:01:17
  • ★★ Ott left John a note he still has, hoping he would be back in two weeks with a longshoreman's appetite and urging 'Now more than ever, watch Harvey'; Ott had pushed the old film for three years. — 00:01:34
  • ★★★ John's dad drove up to Chicago and they drove back to Orlando; John got into daily therapy, started a much better medication for him, and watched Harvey. — 00:01:51 · Chicago, Orlando, Florida

00:02:01 — Suspicious of epiphanies, yet better after Harvey; Elwood P. Dowd's 'smart or pleasant'; back to Booklist, 40 pages to Ilene Cooper that became Looking for Alaska; a life beginning

  • ★★★ John is very suspicious of epiphanies: people often have life-changing revelations that turn out not to change their lives. (hedged) — 00:02:01
  • ★★★ Still, John woke the morning after watching Harvey feeling a little better, and has never since felt as hopeless as before. — 00:02:08
  • ★★★ Harvey is about Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend is a six-foot invisible white rabbit; John thinks one line really changed his life: 'you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant… I recommend pleasant.' (hedged) — 00:02:21
  • ★★★ Two weeks later John went back to Booklist, and within six months handed his mentor Ilene Cooper 40 single-spaced pages of what became Looking for Alaska. — 00:02:38 · Looking for Alaska
  • ★★ It was not all rosy: John still missed his ex-girlfriend, was still really screwed up, and those 40 pages were pretty terrible. — 00:02:47
  • ★★★ With a million — or rather 365 million — seconds of perspective, John sees a life he is now grateful for beginning to happen; then he only knew he was a little less hopeless. — 00:02:54

00:03:06 — You can't know what an experience means until you are future you; the gift of Elwood P. Dowd; sign-off

  • ★★★ John's lesson: you cannot know what an experience will mean to your future self until you become that self; it takes millions of seconds of perspective, which only time buys. — 00:03:06 > «You can't know what an experience will mean to future you, until you are future you.»
  • ★★ Until then there is always the gift of Elwood P. Dowd, who answers a mailman's 'Beautiful day, isn't it?' with 'Every day is a beautiful day.' — 00:03:16

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