I just bought my 225th (or thereabouts) self-help book. I'm always vaguely embarrassed to admit that I buy and read self-help books....probably because I've bought and read 225 of them, and I still seem to be the same person with the same problems. Oh, well. Hope springs eternal, right? Or so promises the self-help industry. Come to think of it, they're all rather vested in the notion that their books not be too helpful, or else you wouldn't need to buy more of them. Are there clinical terms for this phenomenon, like 'impermanent improvement'? Or 'boomerang bolstering'? I wonder if they have self-help conferences or workshops for self-help book authors, with panel discussions on topics like "How to Be Marginally Helpful, But Not SO Helpful That They Won't Need MORE Help." Do self-help book authors read self-help books along those lines? And in between panel discussions, do they complain to their colleagues over a cup of coffee that they're tired of being taught to be marginally helpful in a marginally helpful manner, so that they too must continually read more books and attend more workshops?
For that matter, aren't most jobs in the world propelled by the notion that you have to do it well enough to remain employed, but not so well that you permanently complete your task, or irreversibly solve a particular problem.....lest there be no further use for you, and no accompanying paycheck?
All interesting theories I'd like to explore in more detail, although it's making my head hurt a tad right now........and not why I started this entry.
My recent self-help purchase reminded me that I still own the very first self-help book I ever bought back in 1981, Miss Piggy's Guide To Life. This was back when I came by money via "allowance" instead of "salary." And you know what? This is probably still one of the most useful self-help tomes in my possession. Miss Piggy pioneered the whole no-holds-barred approach to self-help way before Dr. Phil swaggered onto the scene. Case(s) in point:
On beauty, and being confident in one's appearance, she writes: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
On using subliminal body language to convince a beau to take you out to a nice dinner if you are too ladylike to make the suggestion outright: "As you pursue some innocuous conversational topic like the weather, you construct this simple 'secret' sentence: "I" (point to yourself) "am famished" (rub tummy) "and would like to go out and eat" (knife and fork motions, with a little chewing). "Your" (point to companion) "treat" (rub first two fingers and thumb together)."
Or in "Deck 'em or Decorum?", Piggy ponders thusly: "Another kind of awkward moment is one in which you are confronted with really rotten behavior and have to choose between turning the other cheek and responding in a cool but civil manner, or deciding that what is right is a good left."
Great stuff. Of course this was written back before self-entitlement had become a societal norm thanks to the shenanigans of the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world. Somehow, coming from Miss Piggy, the advice was more spirited than spoiled.
Z.'s napping, so maybe I'll crack open my latest self-help volume now, and perhaps even return to this blog tomorrow as a new, improved, calmer, happier, more enlightened human being! If not, maybe I should write a self-help book for people who want to stop buying and reading a lot of self-help books. Self-Helpless: When The Helping Helps Less has a nice ring to it............
As a kid, I was a voracious reader. Of course, in imagining along as I read, I typically cast myself as the central heroine of every story, and I was consistently inclined to cast any and all "older" adult-ish characters (basically anyone reputed to be over the age of 13 or so) as anonymous and faceless shadow figures......... not far off from how the grown-ups in those animated Charlie Brown specials were portrayed, which was off-screen altogether, speaking in a warbled, "Wah wah wah wah wah wah!" sort of blather, if and only if it was absolutely necessary to acknowledge the trifling presence of grown-ups in the first place. 
