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Our Monthly Male hasn’t been very monthly, but I can hardly blame that on him. For all I know, Paul was sitting in his room, sobbing uncontrollably, wishing I would ask him to write something for me…

Probably not, though. Anyway, he’s back with the answer to a question I asked him last week.

Now, before any of my female readers get all huffy about this, let me remind you that I am a very emotional person. This does not mean that every woman is an emotional box of crazy… I just know that I’m not alone in this, so I asked Paul (not my Paul, remember) how he’s dealt with the emotional women in his life. This is his response:

One very important thing that I’ve learned throughout life is that men and women are very different. I know…I was surprised, too! Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Little girls are made of sugar, little boys are made of snails. The list of differences between Guys and Dolls is as long as the San Andreas Fault, and 10 times as confusing, but nowhere is this dichotomy more clear than in the world of emotion.
Men and women feel emotions about different things, and to different degrees. While Sheila could freak out about a chipped nail, Steve might put a fist through a wall over a football game. Each reaction seems perfectly reasonable to the individual in question, and completely insane to their counterpart. Jerry Seinfeld said that “Men and women will never understand each other, so we might as well stop thinking about it. I’m not wasting any more time with this!”
The real difference, though, comes in the way the different genders react to their emotions. With the exception of sports, guys tend to keep their emotions close to the vest. I, for one, put a great deal of effort into suppressing, hiding, or ignoring whatever feelings come my way. Women, on the other hand, wear their emotions on their frilly little sleeves. Now, of course I’m making generalizations here, but to quote the inimitable Dave Barry, “If God didn’t want us to make gender-based generalizations, She would not have given us genders.”
The differences themselves are not a problem. The problem arises when men and women are forced to interact at times of high emotional distress. I have been lucky that over the years the most important women in my life have been reasonably not-crazy in the emotion department. Every once in a while, though, one of my sisters or my ex-fiance will take a quick dive off the deep end and I’m left fruitlessly trying to empathize with or cheer up the sobbing mess in front of me.
For a while, my approach was as follows: Put an arm around a shoulder, speak as calmly and rationally as possible, and attempt to calm her down with reason and logic. After a number of times when that served only to make the situation worse, I was forced to change my strategy. I decided it would be more effective to make jokes, and offset the tears with laughter and with my undeniable cuteness. That method was hit-or-miss, sometimes saving the day, sometimes setting off fits of hysteria.
Ultimately, I have found that the best method consists of two essential tools: a big bear hug or hand squeeze, and complete silence. There are no words that my male brain can produce that will make a woman calm down. My best bet is to close my mouth, batten down the hatches and weather the storm. Eventually she’ll calm down and real life can resume.
The one thing that I absolutely can NOT do, is try to understand whatever disaster has caused this emotional outburst in the first place. Sometimes it’s obvious (like when my ex’s dog died, or the end of “Toy Story 3”) but more often than not, the catalyst for a break-down is a completely mystery to any but the shrewdest observer of the feminine mind. Even if I can somehow discern the cause of a crying spell, that doesn’t get me any closer to understanding why it is such a tragedy, which brings me back to my “Smile and Nod” strategy. True empathy is rarely an option, so I’m left with: Hug, Hush, and This Too Shall Pass.
Now that I have stumbled upon a tried-and-true method for averting tear-soaked disaster (sixty percent of the time, it works every time!), the real challenge becomes anticipating and preventing the melt-downs. Of course, if I can ever discover the trick to that, I’ll become a millionaire relationship guru and I’ll be able to hire a counselor to calm down my significant other while I watch football. Until then, I stand armed with a comforting shoulder, a box of kleenex, and zipped lips.

As Paul gets closer and closer to starting school, I find myself longing for college. One of my favorite things in the whole world is sitting in a classroom on a cloudy day, drinking a cup of coffee, and listening to people talk about literature. I miss hearing the thoughts that have been brewing in peoples’ minds as they pondered the book they were reading.

I just miss college. Plain and simple.

It’s a good thing I procrastinated on posting Kevin’s guest post, then, huh? I’ll admit it, because i’ve admitted it to him: Sometimes reading his fabulous blogging makes my brain hurt…but it’s because my brain has been a big lazy, Ally McBeal-watching couch potato lately. He writes with academic flare and gives your brain a little “wake the heck up” slap when he does so. I asked Kevin to write about his blogging. Why does he do it? What does he get out of it?

What I got out of it was a beautifully written, insightful blog post…perfect for this cloudy day. If you’re not a blogger yet, perhaps you’ll let Kevin change your mind. Also, it’s his birthday today, so you should leave him a ‘Happy Birthday’ in the comments!

Years ago, while visiting California, I grabbed a copy of The Independent, Santa Barbara’s free weekly newspaper, to read an interview with T. Coraghessen Boyle, author of Riven Rock and The Tortilla Curtain. Have you ever experienced a stranger saying something that describes you perfectly? I did that day. Though I’ve long since lost the paper and can’t muster an exact quote (and it’s not archived online), I remember the gist.

Boyle, who teaches creative writing at USC, admitted he writes about political and social issues in his award-winning novels because, until he writes his ideas, he doesn’t know what they are. As soon as I read that, a bell rang in my mind. I, too, often write without a clear idea what I have to say, because my thoughts are by nature ephemeral. Until I crystallize them into words, I have no more idea what I think than any random stranger.

Since I started writing my blog earlier this year, I’ve progressed in my ambitions. Initially, I intended to simply resume the book column I wrote for the student paper in graduate school. But once I started writing, I realized I had much more to say than that. Though I still review books, my media and culture commentaries have become much more prominent in the process.

I write three 750-word blog entries each week (though a new job recently made me miss two consecutive deadlines). That word count equals three pages in standard format. Thus I write as much every two or three weeks as many college professors expect undergraduates to write per semester. And I do it all for one reason: so I can understand what I think, and maybe hear from others who will help refine my thinking.

The key to writing for this purpose is remaining open to surprise. When I taught college English, my students often struggled to start writing because they thought they had to begin with a clear vision. Nothing could be further from the truth. The act of writing, turning abstract thoughts into concrete words, is an invaluable learning tool. And nobody learns more from the process than the writer.

Peter Elbow, in Writing Without Teachers, describes a process he calls freewriting. He simply sets himself a timer and pours his ideas onto the page as fast as he can, without correcting or censoring. He does not want, in this case to write finished work. His only purpose is to get all ideas onto the page as fast as he can; he’ll have time later to polish and refine.

An eight-dollar Wal-Mart kitchen timer makes a good tool for this. Most cell phones today also have timer functions. For those inexperienced with this format, ten minutes makes a good deadline. I can usually hand-write about 300 words in ten minutes, or type about 500 words. If I can overcome the internal censor who edits work on the fly, I often surprise myself with ideas and juxtapositions I never knew were percolating in my own head.

I recommend this for anybody who wants to improve themselves. No skill, not even specific job skills, matter like the ability to refine ideas and communicate them to others. World-changing ideas, like general relativity, democracy, and the personal computer all survive because somebody wrote them down. Who can say how many other good ideas vanished because we have no written record?

My blog may not change the world. But it has certainly changed me, and set me on the track to possibly change the world. Turning indefinite ideas into solid words could do the same for you.