The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving – A Short Story Review

Posted on April 25, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

I had grown up familiar with the story of the Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane, and Sleep Hollow. However I had never actually read the story itself. Out of a 39 page story, it took about 33 pages to get to the climax where Ichabod finally goes toe to toe the Headless Horseman. I had no idea there was a such a back story, all you ever hear about is the end result.

Ichabod Crane was a schoolteacher from Connecticut and was teaching in Tarrytown, just North of New York City and just outside of Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow was described as having a dream-like quality to it with no shortage of haunting tales with ghosts and goblins running amok at the witching hour. “It breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.” Ichabod had fallen in love with a girl who’s family owned much of the land around Sleepy Hollow (he lived just on the other side of the Hollow). Ichabod attended a party, stayed late after all the guests had left, and unfortunately he was shut down by the love of his life. Distraught he took off on his horse to head back home. It was then that he realized that he would have to ride through Sleepy Hollow during the witching hour where it was known that the Headless Horseman could appear.

Eventually he meets up with the Headless Horseman and once it was clear that the Horseman wasn’t going to leave Ichabod alone, they had an all out race for the bridge that led out of Sleepy Hollow. It is said that the Headless Horseman bursts into flames when he crosses the bridge and cannot follow you on the other side. He’s always looking for another head, so he will chase people down to try and take theirs before they reach the bridge. Just as they were approaching the bridge at full speed, the Headless Horseman wound up and threw a pumpkin at Ichabod, hitting him square in the back of the head, and knocking him out cold and off the horse.

Ichabod was never seen again. The only remnants were his horse, his cap, and a shattered pumpkin on the ground just before the bridge. Some say he moved out of town in shame of being shut down by the love of his life but most say that the Headless Horseman took his head, claiming yet another victim on the road through Sleepy Hollow.

About the Author Washington Irving:
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”, both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846. He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in… (Courtesy of Amazon.com)

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber – A Short Story Review

Posted on April 19, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Walter Mitty’s life is something I’m afraid of. As an old man, his day to day has become so mundane, not to mention he’s got a nagging wife who is always on his case for mundane things. She complains about how fast he drives, she tells him he should buy overshoes to keep his shoes nice, wear his gloves while he’s driving, pick up dog treats at the A&P, pick me up after my hair appointment, etc. “You’re not a young man anymore”. I hear this kind of stuff all the time at work from my older coworkers who have slowed down and let old, married lives get the best of them. “I better do X or else I’ll hear it from my wife” or when I ask what they did over the weekend they’d say, “Oh just went to Home Depot to pick up some tile for the bathroom/grass seed for the lawn/dog treats for my dog/etc. Ugh. In order to escape from the monotony and incessant nagging, Walter Mitty escapes to several different fantasy worlds where he becomes a commander on a Naval ship, a trauma surgeon with unique skills no one else has, a man on trial for murder, a Captain in a WWII bomber and others. The story ends while he’s smoking a cigarette outside of the drug store waiting for his wife to pick up some medication, which was likely for his “daydreams”. It started to rain, he finished his cigarette, put his shoulders back against the wall, snapped his heels against the wall, put his head up, and slipped into another fantasy where he faced the firing squad. He died “proud and disdainful, undefeated, inscrutable to the last.” This is where the story ends but I can imagine that when his wife came out of the store she made a remark about his aloofness and he snapped out of his daydream, forced to live out his reality as an old man in an unfulfilling, uncreative, and mundane life. All three of those things are some of my biggest fears: unfulfilled, uncreative, and mundane. So I don’t blame Walter Mitty for wanting to escape to something more interesting and engaging, I just hope it never gets to that point for me.

About the Author James Thurber:
James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker magazine then collected in his numerous books. One of the most popular humorists of his time, Thurber celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people. (Courtesy of Amazon.com)

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February Dream Journal Summary

Posted on March 2, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Here is the summary of my dream journal from February’s 30 day life experiment of getting 8 hours of sleep per night and keeping a consistent dream journal. I missed one day throughout the month because I didn’t immediately write down the dream after I woke up and I subsequently forgot about it. All of the others were incredibly vivid and worth remembering. Who knows, you may find yourself as a character in one of these dreams. Enjoy:

I highly recommend trying to keep a dream journal as a life experiment. It’s really fun to look back at all of them to see all the wacky places that my subconscious takes me to while I’m asleep. Now that I’m back in the habit, I’m hoping to keep it going.

February Recap: 8 Hours/Night + Dream Journal

Posted on March 1, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

There’s something about the urban environment and lack of sleep that seem to go well together. There’s always something to do and always something to work on and think about. I’ve always been a morning person, but moving to Boston has also made me a night person. I’ve found that late nights and early mornings are not the best combination. This month’s challenge came at a point in my life where I was sleeping on average 6 hours/night or less. Really I’ve just been trying to absorb as much life as I can after work, four or five hours at night during the week just isn’t enough time. I was consistently overtired, drinking roughly a liter of coffee per day, and not performing my best both at work and on the weekends athletically.

Going into this month’s life experiment I thought the hardest thing would be to put myself to bed. It turned out that the issue was a little more complex than that. The struggle typically had to do with other people, not myself, putting myself to bed was easy. Several nights involved me leaving a friend’s house early, leaving the bar early, or cutting the conversation short so that I could get to bed by 10:30 (which I’ve learned is not appreciated by girlfriends). Chances are, your buddies or your significant other is not going to accept, “Sorry, I have to go to sleep so I can get a full 8 hours” as an excuse for not hanging out or not talking. However, I made a goal to myself that I would start taking care of my sleeping habits this month and that is what I did. As a result I actually feel fantastic but it definitely took a concerted effort.

I got in the habit of sleeping a full 8 hours, then when my alarm went off in the morning, I snoozed it for 15 minutes more, and then had no problem waking up on the 2nd alarm. My morning wakeup before this month went something like this: annoying preset alarm on my cellphone goes off, I respond “Argh F*$K”, and I start the day angry. This month I felt significantly better starting my day knowing and feeling that I had a full nights rest, I highly recommend it despite what your friends think of you. I’m still not sure that 8 hours is the magic number, but that’s not the point, the point is that I hadn’t been taking care of my health and I made a conscious effort to slow down and take care of myself.

The other goal of this month was to rekindle a practice I started in high school but let drop off during engineering school; keeping a dream journal. I have some pretty wild dreams and so I’ve wanted to get into the habit of writing them down again but just haven’t done it. This month has refocused that effort and the result has been pretty awesome.

Like a good engineer I analyzed my dreams by putting them into nine different categories just to see what patterns emerged. 45% of my dreams involved work in some capacity which is a bit unfortunate considering for me, work is work, do it 9-5 and leave it there. So I wasn’t happy to see that it followed me into my dreams. A great example of this was my post on “Where are my Adventure Dreams?“ I hate to waste a perfectly nice night of dreams on something work related.

Fortunately, the majority of my dreams involved adventures. I spend most of my week planning trips for the weekend so naturally, adventure is on my mind daily if not almost hourly. Close to 60% of my dreams involved adventure (sometimes work and adventure, but that would be an ideal situation wouldn’t it?). A few of my favorite adventure dreams were “Muslims in Nepal“, “Avalanches“, and “Biking Across the USA” because they involved world travel, big mountains, snow, and learning about myself.

Another area I looked at was WHO was in my dreams. More often than not, my dream was filled with strangers (45% of dreams), nebulous dream characters who I simply interacted with throughout the dream. 20% of my dreams involved me being alone the entire time, 15% involved my girlfriend, and 20% involved friends from real life. It’s interesting that the majority of my dreams involved people I didn’t know, I wonder why that is and what it says about my subconscious.

Lastly, I also rated my dreams as realistic or wildly unrealistic and unfortunately, the realistic dreams won 55% to 45%. Given the choice, I’d rather have my dreams be so outrageously unrealistic that I would wake up to my alarm clock saying, “Wow that was incredible” versus “Hmm that was totally normal”. Normal is for real life, adventure and unreal scenarios are for your dream life. A few of my favorite unrealistic dreams were, “Underwater Battle with Megatron“, “Basement Technology and Unicorn Blankets“, and “X-Men Taking Over My Brain“.

I highly recommend keeping a dream journal, it’s not hard to start that habit. Simply keep either your laptop or a notebook/pen right next to your bed and while you’re still groggy in the morning write down your dreams before they escape your mind. I’ve found that the more I do this, not only does it become easier to remember your dreams, you tend to have more intense and detailed dreams. The ultimate goal would be to dream lucidly (i.e. control your dream life) but that is harder to come by and can take years of effort. It’s really fun to look back at your dreams. I went through my dream journal from high school with Sarah and it was crazy to see some of the things my sleeping mind was creating.

As with all of my life experiments thus far, the goal has been to lead an examined life (Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia) through making a concerted effort for 30days to relook at how I live my life and challenge myself to live differently. I’ve seen the results of my 30day life experiments filter into the rest of my daily life as new habits and ways of living. I’m hoping that sleeping well and keeping a dream journal follows suit and becomes standard practice moving forward.