Gavin DeGraw – "I Don't Want to Be" (2004)

All I have to do is think of me

And I have peace of mind

(Ur funny!)

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According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – or “DSM-5” – one of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is “excessive devotion to work and productivity.”

At first blush, that doesn’t seem to apply to me.  I retired from my job several years ago, and I was far from being a workaholic during my working years.  

But the word “work” doesn’t just refer to a job you’re paid to do.  It can also be used to describe any mental or physical effort that is performed to in order to achieve a goal – whether you’re paid a salary for that effort or not.

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Think about the leisure activities that I’ve talked about in the previous posts – e.g., watching TV and movies, reading, collecting coins and sports cards, and playing bar trivia.  

According to one source, those with OCPD “choose hobbies that are organized and structured, and they approach them as a serious task requiring work to perfect.”  

That description certainly applies to hobbies like coin and sports card collecting, which require considerable organization and sustained effort.  But does it apply to watching TV and movies?

It does when you watch TV the way I do.  Before I watch a new streaming series, I read reviews – and when I’m done, I add the series to my list of watched shows.

I also read reviews before choosing a movie, and keep a list of the movies I watch.  But I often follow up one movie with other films by the same director, or from the same historical era – my movie-watching choices are organized and structured.

For example, earlier this year I watched about a dozen examples of French “poetic realism” films from the 1930s and 1940s – movies like The Rules of the Game, Hôtel du Nord, and Children of Paradise.  And I watched them in chronological order.

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My approach to reading is equally systematic.  

I currently have 34 library books in my apartment.  If you don’t believe me, check out this photo:

(Actually, that number is an understatement.  There’s a library book on my bedroom nightstand and another one on my coffee table that I forgot to include in that photo.  Plus I have half a dozen library books on my Kindle.  So the actual count is more like 42 books.)

Those library books were not chosen willy-nilly.  For example, I’m sitting on several collections of short stories by the late Nobel Prize-winning author, Alice Munro.

    

Earlier this year, I read a long New Yorker article about Munro, who chose to stay with her second husband even after she learned that he had sexually abused one of her daughters from her first marriage.  (The abuse began when the daughter was only nine, and continued for several years.)

That article cited a number of Munro’s short stories that featured women who were desperately in love with emotionally unavailable or abusive men.  Like some of her characters, Munro was apparently in thrall to her second husband – despite the extremely disturbing nature of his behavior, she chose to stay with him. 

I was fascinated by that New Yorker article, and decided that I needed to read not only the dozen or so stories it mentioned, but all 163 of Munro’s short stories.  Once I managed to obtain all 14 of her story collections from my library, I started reading them.

Why did I need to have all 14 of Munro’s books before sitting down to read the first one?  Surely you wouldn’t expect me to start reading her first book until I had all of them in my possession.  

What if I got through her first five books and wasn’t able to find her sixth one?  I needed to read them in chronological order – skipping from the fifth story collection to the seventh without reading the sixth one first was not have an option!

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But when it comes to making the case that I have an “excessive devotion to work and productivity,” the most persuasive piece of evidence that I could offer is this wildly successful little blog itself.

I’ve published almost 2200 posts since I gave birth to 2 or 3 lines in November 2009.  (Maybe I should have named it 2 or 3 posts a week because that’s what I’ve averaged over the past 16 years.)

Those 2200 posts contain over two million words!  That’s the equivalent of 20 to 25 average-length books.

So if I had started writing books in 2009 instead of spending all my time on this stupid blog, I could have cranked out two dozen or so books by now?  

I’m not sure if I have OCPD.  But I’m pretty sure I have depression.

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Gavin DeGraw’s 2004 hit, “I Don’t Want to Be,” was used as the theme song for the WB’s teen drama series, One Tree Hill – a show I’ve never watched.

When I watched the official music video for “I Don’t Want to Be,” I was pretty sure that I recognized the actress who portrayed the angsty teenager.  After a little research, I figured out that actress was Shiri Appleby, who was one of the stars of UnREAL, a brilliant series about a Bachelor-type reality show that I watched on Hulu earlier this year.

Shiri Appleby in UnREAL

Click here to watch that official music video.

Click here to buy “I Don’t Want to Be” from Amazon.

Gavin DeGraw -- "I Don't Want to Be" (2003)

I'm tired of looking 'round rooms

Wondering what I gotta do

Or who I'm supposed to be

I'm currently reading a very interesting book: Louis Begley's 1996 novel, About Schmidt.

Begley (who was born Ludwik Begleiter in Poland in 1933) is a holocaust survivor whose family moved to New York City in 1947. Begley graduated from Harvard College (summa cum laude) and Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), and then went to work for a prestigious Wall Street law firm, eventually heading up the firm's international practice.

Louis Begley (and friend)

Begley surprised his law partners and friends when he published a highly-praised first novel in 1991 -- he was 57 years old -- and he's gone on to write nine more.

The protagonist of About Schmidt, Albert Schmidt, is a sixtyish partner at a white-shoe New York law firm who takes early retirement to care for his dying wife. When the book opens, he is living in comfort in a lovely home (left to his wife by her maiden aunt) in an affluent beach community on Long Island.

He dotes on his only child, a beautiful, brilliant (i.e., Harvard summa cum laude) daughter, Charlotte, even though she has gone into public relations, a career that he views as beneath her.

Even worse, Charlotte has decided to marry a young partner at her father's old firm -- a talented lawyer whom Schmidt mentored and supported for partnership, but never really liked.  Schmidt is unhappy about the match in part because the prospective groom is Jewish.

Schmidt is also worried about what to do with his home.  His wife has left him a life estate, so the house will go to his daughter when he dies.  But he feels he should move out and give her and her new husband the house now even though there would be a sizeable tax bill to pay as a result.

Complicating the situation further is the fact that his former law firm has decided to amend its retirement plan so retired partners get less and the working partners get more. 

Given the looming tax obligation, the need to buy a new house to live in, and the upcoming reduction in his pension, Schmidt is facing not only a life without female companionship, but also a much more modest standard of living.

Then something completely unanticipated happens: Schmidt falls in love (in lust?) with a friendly waitress from the local bar and grill -- a waitress who just happens to be younger than his daughter.  And for no apparent reason, the waitress -- a smart, attractive, and non-gold-digging young woman -- is physically attracted to the rather dull, sixty-something Schmidt.  

I am sufficiently narcissistic to find parallels between myself and the protagonists of many of the novels I read.  But any objective observer would have to admit that there are a number of similarities between Schmidt and myself.

To wit. We are both lawyers, and both the same age. Schmidt is recently retired, and I expect to be retired soon.  Each of us has a recently-engaged daughter.

Schmidt's wife's family's house on Long Island is something like my mother-in-law's Cape Cod house.  (The photographs that illustrate this post are daylilies that were blooming at that house when I was vacationing there last month.  They were planted by a man who rented our house many years ago.  He was a devoted daylily hybridizer, and for all I know, these are unique cultivars that are found nowhere else on earth.)

Here's where Schmidt's fictional life diverges sharply from mine: my wife is not only alive, but perfectly healthy.

That places a rather large obstacle squarely in the way of my shacking up with a lissome, twenty-something waitress like that lucky bastard Schmidt.

Actually, I can't really imagine having much of a relationship with a woman who is younger than my daughters.  But someone closer to my age would be very nice.  (Not too old, of course -- I'd have to draw the line at 59.  Most of the women I know really hit the wall at 60.)

By the way, I not only have some things in common with the protagonist of About Schmidt, but also with its author.  For example, we are both graduates of Harvard Law School.  Also, neither of us wrote a novel before turning 57.

Begley has written two sequels to About Schmidt -- I have all three novels, thanks to the public library, and I expect to read them back to back to back. 

I also expect to start eating out more.  (You never know . . .)

About Schmidt was made into a 2002 movie starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Alexander Payne (who also directed Election, Sideways, and The Descendants).

In the movie, Schmidt lives in Omaha instead of New York City, is an insurance actuary instead of a lawyer, and has an RV instead of a house in the Hamptons.

The movie Schmidt does have a daughter who is marrying a man he doesn't like, but there's no young waitress.  That's because his wife is still alive.

A New Yorker article about the movie was titled "Not Really About Schmidt."  The trailer for the movie proves that as far as the book and movie are concerned, never the twain shall meet:

Our featured song, Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want to Be," sounded vaguely familiar to me when I heard it on the radio while driving to the Kream 'n' Kone in South Dennis for a big plate of fried clams (with bellies, of course) and onion rings. It was the theme to the long-running TV teen drama, One Tree Hill, and has been performed by at least six American Idol contestants.

DeGraw said that "I Don't Want to Be" enabled him to pay off his college debt.

Here's "I Don't Want to Be":

Use this link to buy the song from Amazon: