Virtue and vice at a conference

"My scheme of Order," Franklin wrote, "gave me the most Trouble."  His theory of order was to assign times of the day to different purposes, and while that worked reasonably well for a man who could command his own schedule, for a man like Franklin himself, a printer catering to his clients, depending on their convenience, a man "who must mix with the World," there was more difficulty in consistent ordering of his schedule.  (And his possessions – more on this in a future post.)

I spent most of Order week preparing for a conference and attending it.  While the conference itself assigned mostly clear purposes to different times, purposes I by and large fulfilled, the week in general bore little relation to the discipline I intended the entire virtue system to inculcate.

Conferences, it turns out, offer numerous opportunities to commit "blots."  Let's take a look at the week:

You can see the pileup.  An overindulgence in the remarkable Sichuan food of Bellevue, WA (where I participated in a dinner involving the best-ever jellyfish, tiny cubes of rabbit and peanuts swimming in fruity chili oil, pork kidneys, and duck smoked in camphor wood, though I skipped the kidneys).  On Friday, I chose sleep and breakfast over the 9 am session, in a minor Resolution failure.  I spent more money than Franklin, quite possibly, could imagine (at the ballpark, for instance, where I chose better beer for nearly double the price).  My tranquility suffered when I heard my work misquoted and misunderstood by a hostile reader ("be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable"), an experience which in retrospect seems almost exciting.  And my humility suffered when my favorite critic made a date with me for a nightcap – even though he later forgot it after an attack of arthritis in the chilly, humid land of Microsoft.  (He bought me a beer the next day, so humility's comeuppance was short-lived.)

Not a good week for Franklin!

This week is Resolution: "Resolve to perform what you ought; Perform without fail what you resolve."  One of my resolutions is to follow more closely a Franklin-like system of scheduling the day – a system that properly should have been developed in a conference-free Order week.  As a result, I will continue working intensely on Order this week also.

I suspect Franklin was an extrovert, a person who is energized in company.*  Unlike me, he might not have been exhausted by even very pleasurable demands of catching up with new work in my field and with friends.  But such networking inevitably interrupts the leisurely solitary rhythms necessary for the writer – even Franklin would have had to make the five-hour drive down I-5 back to Eugene (stopping in Portland at Powell's to buy a couple of books – used, of course, per a return to Franklin normality).  There are few opportunities for betterment on the interstate.  But sometimes our profit necessitates mixing in the world, a pleasant displacement of order.



*Extroversion: I suppose this is debatable – Franklin seems so relieved, for instance, when he gets out of family dinners at his brother's printshop, preferring the oatmeal and raisins and private study.  Work as a printer was not solitary, but Franklin typically barely represents his co-workers except when criticizing their economy and efficiency (as when both are compromised by the alcohol consumption of English printers) or their competency.  Always a systems analyst, he comes off as a mind evaluating others rather than primarily interacting with them in fellowship.  Still, his few gestures at relaxation are typically social – the Junto, frolicking with fellow Boston youths by the seaside and on boats.  Alone, he is merely driven.  Maybe he is outside the categories of introvert and extrovert – someone recharged by industry and achievement itself.