Without even noticing it, I began to believe that certain roles and circumstances (work, home, family, you fill in the blank) were unchangeable, fixed, out of my control. I fell into patterns of behavior, ruts really, that had become comfortable, even when I knew they were wrong.

Then, just recently, I woke up. I’m not sure what snapped inside me. Maybe a whole bunch of things coalesced into a great realization: If you want something, you have to ask for it.

Asking for things has turned my life around in a matter of weeks.

Part of me groans to see this epiphany put into words, imagining you, Dear Reader, thinking either, “What an incredibly obvious, emotionally stunted person” or, “Someone has been spending a little too much time with O, The Oprah Magazine.” But bear with me for a second.

Imagine what would happen if you uttered the unspeakable truths in your life, or were just honest for once about the things you usually dissemble. (Maybe you need to ask for some space, or respect, or love, or to be heard, or just to try a different way of interacting.) Would the world end? Would the ground open and swallow you up? Would time stop? Would you pass out? Would you make someone (gasp!) uneasy? Or, just maybe, would you feel incredibly relieved? Would you even get some of what you want?

Things will change, sure. They’ll have to, because you’ve said what people have depended on you—what you’ve depended on yourself—to keep pushed down inside. Change is terrifying, and you might experience rejection. But being brave gets easier with practice. You’ll change, if only because it’s become too painful not to.

Most of my life has been good behavior punctuated with occasional rewards when someone happens to notice. It worked well for the first few decades. It’s how I first found a profession, a relationship, a city to call my own. It never occurred to me that it was a mostly passive way of being, or that it would eventually fail me.

Everyone wants to be acknowledged, to have someone say, “I see you.” The most surprising part about asking for things is that a lot of the time, people say yes.

Fortunately, it’s easy to stay amused, especially with so many great shows to discover. The Boston-NYC Chinatown bus offers long viewing session opportunities, just right for the six-to-eight hour length of most British series. One trip down and back, and you’re done!

Are English shows really smarter, or do they just sound that way? Sure, the accents are a plus, but the writing rocks, too.

Skins proves a strong exception to the one-or-two-series-and-then-quit rule of a lot of the best British shows, yet the format allows for constant reinvention. It follows a group of friends through their sixth-form college (the two years of schooling that roughly correspond to end of high school in the U.S.). They party a lot, but aren’t precocious in the American sense, where most TV teenagers are played by actors pushing thirty. These are real kids, mostly nonprofessionals, acting the hell out of complex, ensemble-driven plots.

Most seasons consist of eight episodes, and eight kids make up the main group. Each episode is told from a different character’s point of view, so while the story arcs develop across multiple ranges of vision, we also get one deep look (but only one!) at each character per season. This format makes for brilliant, riveting TV; I wish an American series could adapt it in a way that wasn’t stupid and trusted viewers to keep up. (My So-Called Life sort of tried it way back when, with separate eps that featured Brian, Rickie, and Rayanne, but it was always Angela Chase’s world–the rest of them just lived in it.)

I have only gotten through the first two seasons (there are five to date), so it’s time to exchange one group of sixth-formers for another. But this show really got to me; I am not ready to move on quite yet. It’s that good.

One sort-of guilty pleasure is an action series called Strike Back, about John Porter, a disgraced soldier who signs on with a black-ops division of MI6 to try and redeem himself. Mission after ethically-dubious mission, he strives to do the right thing, even when it conflicts with his creepy boss’s orders. Two things save this show from its own formula: first, each mission gets spread across two hours, which allows it to be fully developed and granted feature-worthy production values, including exotic locations that give the stories verisimilitude. (British audiences don’t seem as terrified of subtitles as American viewers, thank goodness.)

The second thing that makes Strike Back so fun to watch is the presence of Jodhi May as Porter’s liaison in the field. Trust me on this one, guys. May is one of the finest actors working today, and she doesn’t choose bad projects. She won the Best Actress award at Cannes when she was twelve. She is endlessly versatile–films, TV, stage, costumes, accents, you name it. She could be our generation’s Meryl Streep, she’s so good. (Oh, did I mention that she has a literature degree from Oxford? Just sayin’.)

I saved the best (and most embarrassing) one for last: Lip Service. If you can set aside the strange concept (an L Word-type show set in Glasgow) and the god-awful name (seriously, is that the best they could come up with for a lesbian drama?), you will be pleasantly surprised. The show is sexy, incredibly funny, affecting, and wonderfully cast, especially with the luminous Laura Fraser in the central role. Fraser’s Cat Mackenzie has just gotten over her bad-girl ex (Frankie) and started getting serious with a responsible detective sergeant (Sam) when Frankie reenters her life. Which one will Cat choose?

Without giving anything away, I can tell you that I am firmly on the side of

Six hours of charming Scottish accents, ace storytelling, and great love scenes (did I mention the accents?) later, you’re ready for Series 2, coming in Spring 2012. I should get around to watching it this time next year, probably on the Chinatown bus back from New York.

Today I really loved my job. In the morning I taught Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, which takes place in the summer of 1985, when the narrator is 15. (The book’s climax, if it can be called that, is the day that Lisa Lisa—and Cult Jam!—come into the ice cream shop where the narrator works and order waffle cones.) The class was a freshman seminar. The students were born in 1993. They want to know: Did we really rollerskate that much? What did New Coke taste like, and why was it such a big deal? Why were arcade games so fascinating?

1985. Reader, it made me proud that the first record I ever bought with my own money was Purple Rain, and that I saw The Goonies in the movie theater several times that summer.

In the afternoon I taught Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. (The goon in question, if you’re wondering, is Time. The destroyer.) The novel won the Pulitzer last year and, if you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to do so right away. It begins in the punk scene of the 1970s and goes several years into the future. Kind of a Gen-X Remembrance of Things Past. Makes you wonder where we’ll be ten years from now, and what popular music we’ll be digging by then.

In between, at lunchtime, I thought a lot about how this year’s mix was shaping up and how ambivalent I feel about the synthetic eighties production drenching most of the tracks. Were the eighties really that great? Post-punk and new wave, sure. But this year’s music doesn’t ape Joy Division or even The Cars. (That’s so five years ago!) No, we’re talking unabashed Top-40 plundering, Billy Ocean and Belinda Carlisle-type shit. Can’t we just let those sounds rest in peace? And does it sound so unwelcome to my ears because it was bad the first time around, or merely because it was the soundtrack to my most awkward years? (Also: does pop always get more sugary the worse the economy becomes?)

My students love this music fervently, nostalgic for a time that never really was. Then again, The Breakfast Club is their Citizen Kane. (Doesn’t it make you happy for Molly Ringwald, that she grew up just fine and moved to France? And glad for all of us, that we grew up, too?)

Listen here. (p.s. Some of the tracks are from 2010. It’s hard to keep up. “Time is a goon.”)

1. The Fight—Sia
2. Junk Of The Heart (Happy)—The Kooks
3. Fair Game—The Like
4. Little Numbers—Boy
5. Amor Fati—Washed Out
6. Paradisco—Charlotte Gainsbourg
7. When We’re Dancing—Twin Shadow
8. Paradise Engineering—Yacht
9. Hoop of Love—Dominant Legs
10. Bicycle—Unknown Mortal Orchestra
11. Romance—Wild Flag
12. Lazy Bones—Wooden Shjips
13. Last Legs—Army Navy
14. Jesus Fever—Kurt Vile
15. Boxer—Lovers
16. Who Am I to Feel So Free—MEN
17. Sutphin Boulevard—Blood Orange
18. Lose It—Austra
19. Book Of Revelation—The Drums