Changing and Looking Ahead

Last week I turned down a job I would have jumped all over were I the recent college graduate I was six years ago.

I didn't apply said job. It just unexpectedly (but not surprisingly) presented itself in my inbox late last week. Just one of life's many options drifting through the universe, and an option that I stopped and inspected on its way past, then sent it back on its merry little way bouncing through the world. The timing wasn't right, it was too big of a commitment, and although we never got around to discussing financials, I have a strong suspicion that the pay was below the modest grade I've worked up to and come to expect.

Part of me's still a little astounded at how easily I dismissed an opportunity that I would have fought tooth and nail for six years ago. How could the "future self" I'd projected back in college and the actual "me now" differ so much? Then, on the other hand, how could I have ever expected my predicted self and real self to be identical? (That said, I fully expect my 38-year-old self to totally have all of her shit together. *snort*)

I was listening to a public radio story a while back where the interviewee pointed out that we never really know who we are. Sure, we have names, careers, habits, likes and dislikes, but none of those things are the core of our being. To deal with this mystery of self that haunts us our entire lives, we're prone to adopting labels to trying to push ourselves into boxes so that others can understand who we are.

Accepting the job that floated through my inbox last week would have helped solidify my writer label; it would have helped me define myself to world as "I'm Ada - I write, I edit, I publish." But I couldn't accept a job just because I have a certainty affinity for labeling myself as a writer. I had to look at the big picture and see what was best for all of me and this job just wasn't right.

This recent event was more proof that despite the aversion most of us have to change, we're constantly changing, pushing against our boundaries and stretching in ways we often can't imagine before the fact. But then it's funny to think, how, in those early days of dipping our toes into adulthood how we're drawn to boxing up our personalities and selves: I am a writer. Full stop. How confused my 22-year-old self would have been to think in just a handful of years I would have picked up labels like "manager" and "small business owner", while my writer label is kept tucked under an arm while juggling everything else. Yet with each passing year we gather more and more labels, which can confuse and contradict each other.

I fully look forward the labels I'll add to "me-ness" of my future. But for 2013, I'm also planning to look at some of the labels past "me"s had adopted, labels that have grown a bit dusty and worse for the wear. It's time to polish off the fiction writer label again. On the other hand, the radio commentator label was given a fond, but much needed final farewell very early in 2013.

While I'm not making any grand resolutions for this year that's just begun - after all, New Year resolutions aren't my thing although last year I made a set of fiscal resolutions which I happily kept and continue to keep - I do find January to be excellent time for reassessment and laying out action plans (be it my 2013 Etsy business plan or simply completing monthly blog editorial calendars). And so here I am, pondering the me that was, wondering about the me that will be, but most of all, trying to develop create a most me-ish of lives.

 "Am I living it right?" It's a question that trips us up our entire lives because there's really no right answer. But by taking time to look at the nearly constant reincarnations of ourselves, at least we gain the knowledge that life we lead is one of our own choosing.

How have you changed from the person you once were? What are you looking forward to this year?


 

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Because That's A Laugh . . .

I must be on a "not my job" kick, because I suddenly feel the need to share with you all another career confession. This one's pretty silly.

You see, a couple years back, disillusioned by the terrible job market I found after college, I decided I needed to go to school . . . to get my elementary teaching certificate.

Let me explain. The "decision" came about a year and a half after college graduation, when I was in my hometown, living in my childhood bedroom. A few months before that I'd ended my first long-term relationship and had almost immediately started a less than great "rebound" relationship which mainly involved me throwing myself at someone who really wasn't willing or able to be what I wanted him to be. I was ready to get on with my life, to go all confidently in the direction of my dreams like Thoreau recommends, but on the way between here and dreamland, apparently I'd lost my map. When at the proverbial fork in the road, I figured, best to go back to school.

At the time, teaching didn't sound like a bad gig. I like kids and I'm actually pretty good at developing educational materials. For several years during high school, I'd coached little munchkins (K-2) in hockey and soccer. I'm not going to say I was great at it, but I wasn't half bad either.And summers off for writing? Heck yes!

But, needless to say, I didn't go back to school for my teaching certificate. It's shame really, because sometimes I really regret not getting to deal with situations like this on a daily basis. 

Yes, these children are taking turns strangling each other. I mean, how precious is that?! 

We keep having field trip at work and whereas each field trip goes a little better than the last, I'm always amazed by just how much crowd control is involved in public schooling and how little "schooling" gets done. I mean, were we this bad on our school field trips? (Of course we were!) I'm also always pretty astounded by how bad I am at getting the kids to listen and get my point across. Although I assumed I'd be a natural at the whole teaching thing, the truth is that teaching does not use one single skill from my "best skill set."

So no, I don't have a teaching certificate and you know what? I'm okay with that.

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Leprechauns and Mysterious Moving Flowerpots, oh my!

The other day, on the way to the mailbox, I swore I heard a leprechaun.

A steady tip, tip, tap, tapping noise came from the base of nearby tree not too far off in the roadside woods. We’re a ways away from rainbow season so I thought I was really in luck. There might just be a pot of gold tucked away in the undergrowth.

For those who might not realize, leprechauns aren’t actually in the sugar-coated, marshmallow-studded breakfast cereal business. They’re cobblers by nature. When I heard that tapping noise, I assumed it was a leprechaun working away on the sole of a shoe or a shoelace rivet. (Random trivia: leprechauns only make single shoes, never a pair.) The thing about leprechauns is, they’re not very generous. You’ve got to sneak up on them, maybe grab them by the coattails, and trick them into telling you where they’ve hidden their gold.

I bent down stealthily and peered into the shadowy woods. Nothing. Then I spied a big ol’ pileated woodpecker, tapping away at the base of a balsam tree. So close, yet so far.

Spring must be coming because it seems the sprites and faeries have been burrowing out of their deep winter hiding places lately.

On Monday morning, I noticed a peculiar object out on the lake near the shore. It looked just like an overturned flower pot. There were tracks behind the object, as though it had walked out to its resting spot. But that’s just crazy, I thought.

Two hours later, I glanced out the window and did a double take. The object, which was now clearly a flowerpot, had taken a right turn in its progress across the lake. It literally looked as though the pot had either a mind of its own or a small inhabitant. I could just imagine a little mouse, or maybe even a gnome, holding the flowerpot over its head and heading off into the great yonder, setting its overhead shelter down whenever it needed a nap.

Andy pointed at the path behind the flowerpot. The path was constructed of small circles overlapping big circles in a chain pattern.

“You can clearly see that the wind flipped the flowerpot over itself across the snow there,” he said.

True.

But it was so much more exciting to think of little magical creatures run about on their tippy-toes on top of the snow, getting into who knows what sort of shenanigans.

Does this sound like cabin fever? Anyone? Anyone? Have you noticed any peculiar goings-on in your neck of the woods?  

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Writing into Stupidity

Inspiration is all around us. Like this icicle that looks like a hand. Or carrots . . .

“The artist goes through states of fullness and emptiness, and that is all there is to the mystery of art.” – Pablo Picasso

Writers like to call upon muses to guide us through tricky plots and help us wrap our pen around poems which float evanescently through our minds. We like our writing to feel like it comes from some external source. Nothing’s more fun than feeling like we’re simply the funnel who captures words on the page.

But common knowledge is, if you want to make a buck at the whole writing game, you haven’t got time to wait around your muse. There’s writing that needs to get done right NOW and the best way to get that writing done parking your butt in your chair and starting in, well, writing. Muse or no muse.

To be honest, I find the muse concept kind of flighty and impractical. (It’s stuff like that that gives us writers our starving artists’ reputation.) But I’m enough of a dreamer to find the “butt parking” mandate a little harsh. I mean, it kind of takes all the supposed romance right out of this writing life.

So I spend my writing life in between those two mentalities. I have to use the latter advice because I think my muse’s kind of beach bum. She spends most of her days sunbathing in her bikini and sipping pina coladas. She can’t be bothered with the whole inspiration thing too often.

I write nearly every day, but rarely in a “omigod I think I was just struck by lightning bolt” manner. And so the deadlines are met and fiction projects move forward. I try not to worry when the inspiration just isn’t there, like . . . last week.

Last week was one of the scheduling nightmare weeks which involved running all over creation. While I was getting interviews and plenty of other “pre-writing” activities done, I certainly wasn’t generating much of a word count last. Whenever I sat down to get a little writing work done, it felt like each sentence was a gigantic beach ball I could barely wrap my arms around, let alone manage to somehow shove it into my laptop and coax to nicely sit still in a Word document. Ugh!

But some weeks days of the writing life are like that. That’s when I remember one of the helpful things I heard in the writing class I took last fall. When describing his typical writing day, the instructor said: “I write until I get stupid.”

When the words really aren’t coming one little bit, it’s time for a mug of hot cocoa, a shower, a good book, or a stroll outside. The muse seems to respond well to a wee bit of pampering.

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Bake or Buy: Be Happy

By all intents and purposes, the females of my generation – the Millennials – and of my socioeconomic and racial profile – middle class, Caucasian – came into this world a pretty privileged lot. Women had gotten the vote 65 years before I was born and by the time I was toddling around, the Feminist movement was on its last legs (be that good or bad). In fact, females my age sometimes take the idea of “equal opportunity” so for granted that we often treat the word “feminist” like a profanity. We didn’t have a whole lot to prove: we were accepted for who we were.

But as the first generation of women who have basically gotten whatever we wanted, we might be just a tad spoiled. We forget how hard other women fought to get us where we are today. We forget that at its heart, feminism is about equality. More than that, we forget that equality and getting whatever you want are two different things entirely. And we forget that we have feminism to thank for several general ideals we use to navigate through life.

Ideals? Well, like the fact that we can do whatever we want to do, but with that comes an obligation to find some sense of purpose in life and to live up to your full potential. It’s fine to have kids, if you want them, but we were taught that being a mother is meant to be a small part of a larger context. And also, you better be really, really into being a homemaker if that’s the path you decide to head down, young lady.

Often it seems as though I’m in a strange power struggle with feminism. I never know who’s winning and I don’t understand why we can’t just be friends. Try as I might, my inner career woman is always picking battles with my inner homemaker.

Which is why I threw a fit when I discovered we were out of bread yesterday morning. (We’ve been out of butter for ages too.)

Lately, it’s seemed like the gears are finally turning and I’m starting to slowly chug down the tracks towards my career goals. It’s exciting and fun and it means long hours and having to eat store bread while your house falls into an increasingly chaotic mess. In general, I try to keep homemade bread on hand – when there’s time -- but that’s not to say that we don’t eat a fair amount of store bread too. For the last month, we’ve been buying a loaf of bread every now and then to tide us through until I have time to bake. But instead of me finding time to make bread, mostly we’ve just been running out of bread on a pretty consistent basis.

Yesterday, when I opened the fridge door to grab the sandwich makings for my bag lunch and spied only a flat bread bag holding a single crust of bread, I felt as though something in the big scheme of things had failed me. After all: does having it all mean we’re so busy we don’t have time to stock basic food stuffs?

So today I made Betty Friedan roll over in her grave. I baked bread and brownies and attempted to make sense of the piles of crap that had accumulated around the cabin. I realized what a lot of work it is to be a homemaker. For sure, it’s a full time job (I’m exhausted), yet we largely poo-poo homemaking because we fear the great merit of homemaking – comfort – is synonymous with complacency. That’s not really fair.

Maybe the secret to being a female in 2010 is to stop feeling like you’re letting someone down. I don’t want to have to eat store bread just because I have a busy work life. I don’t want to feel like Betty Friedan is glaring at me every time I take a loaf of bread out of the oven either.

I have yet to strike the perfect balance between, well, everything. It’s tricky business determining how to best live life as a privileged female, without squandering or taking our advantages for granted. And at its heart, being a female in 2010 isn’t really about choosing one way to live your life. Rather it’s about mixing together all the life lessons from previous generations of women who taught us to be independent and determined and who reminded us that baking should be a pleasure, not a stressful obligation

So the moral of the story is this: Bake your bread when there’s time. Buy enough to last when there isn’t. Above all else, be happy. After all, we’re a pretty spoiled lot.

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