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I have been working 2 or 3 jobs for the past 11 years. I have gone back and forth between being okay with it, and feeling like it’s killing me. Right now, I’m at two jobs…. and I’m over it.
I have been at my second job for 8 years. For a long time, it was a labor of love. But for the last year or so, I have been wanting to quit. It kept me going when I was unemployed, so I was glad I didn’t quit before I got laid off. It has been helpful in buying the house, and the extra income made little luxuries (like maybe plane tickets) possible. Last year, when I thought we were going to go away this year, I was so relieved to think that I wouldn’t have to do the job for another year. Well, as I’ve said before, life’s what happens when you’re making other plans.
These days, I feel like I’m just not doing a good job at this job. I let things slide. I got (another) lecture from my boss last night about it. And these days, even though we’re friends, I feel like sometimes he’s judgemental of me in ways that I don’t need or agree with.
Then I think that maybe I still need that extra income. The job has been really flexible from a time perspective, which another part-time job might not offer. But I almost dread going to work. I am so aware that I’m not doing a good job that it’s becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I keep thinking I just need to be more disciplined, more organized, more dedicated, but nothing seems to work to motivate me.
I don’t know what to do. I would prefer to go out on a high note, like John Elway leaving the Broncos after two Super Bowl wins, but I think it’s too late for that. I don’t want to admit that I can’t do it – and I don’t think that’s the problem. It’s that I’m burned out and don’t want to do it anymore. I love my full-time job. The pay is decent. I’m motivated to go to work, so it’s not like I don’t want to work. The commute adds a lot of time and energy to my day, and if I didn’t have the second job hanging over my head, I would be okay with that.
The bottom line is, I don’t want to do the job anymore, but I am scared to let it go – afraid I’ll need the extra money – and I don’t want to admit defeat. I don’t want to admit that I can’t do it.
So what do I do, readers? When is it time to let go?
It’s almost spring, which is wonderful. Just to give you a quick update on where things stand (and remember it’s all about me today, so every sentence will start with “I”):
I am jumping through hoops for the house, and it’s still touch and go. If I close, I close on Friday. I haven’t said anything to my landlords yet, and will probably stay at the Cottage for a month longer as there is much to get done in the new house. Which, by the way, needs a name. Any ideas?
I continue to be frustrated by a temperamental hot water heater. I DO NOT LIKE COLD SHOWERS IN THE MORNING. Serious boo.
I still have not figured out how to juggle everything with this commute. The Cottage needs cleaning, the recycle needs dropping off, the oil needs changing, the bank needs visiting, the taxes need to get to the accountant, my body needs working out. I need some “me” time, other than on the bus, I need some Kelsea time, and I need some social life. Hopefully, I’ll get the hang of this stuff soon. Other people can do it – so can I!
I am thrilled that Spring is almost here.
I have this awful bruise on my arm that I have no idea how I got. Why does that happen?
I love my job. My brain is just so engaged all the time! And I’m really improving my editing skills.
I dislike the fact that my landlords are running the sprinklers all the time. It’s like walking through a downpour to get to the Cottage.
I am sad to report that my hot flashes are returning. It seems that stress = hot flashes.
I am going to go find the spot to watch the Supermoon rise tonight. I think I know just the place. If any pictures come out, I’ll share them.
Well, today was my first day at my new grown-up job in Denver. It was good – I think I’ll enjoy the job. I sense that it will really refine my writing skills and add to my abilities. The people are wonderful. It will be challenging. In short, it’s all exciting.
The weirdest thing is being alone in this. I have never before gotten a job, started a job, without having my parents around to share in that experience, to be my “boosters”. It’s been years and years since I’ve had a job and not had someone to come home to, or at least share my day with on the phone. It really emphasizes my sense of loneliness.
I couldn’t sleep last night – I was nervous, excited, my stomach was in turmoil, I was missing my parents. I had a weepy few hours, and wished there was someone I could call in the darkness when I couldn’t sleep. I miss that. I guess I was kind of hoping….well, it just would have been nice.
As I said, I had a really good day, but I was weepy again going home. Sigh. I know I am moving forward – no, upward. But I am still sad. And still hurt. And still kind of lonely.
Tomorrow, I’m going to take the bus! It may not sound exactly thrilling, but I’m excited – something else I’ve never done before.
I feel like I’m a little kid starting school again.
The Cottage is great.
The Cottage has the following components:
Living Room
Study
Kitchen
Bathroom
Bedroom #1
Bedroom #2
Little terrace outdoors
Just enough room for two – maybe even 2 1/2. But there is one problem.
The Cottage has NO closets. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero.
Oh, it has a space that holds the furnace, and next to that are a few hooks and 3 shelves. I guess a purist could call that a closet. It holds the toolbox, laundry soap, one unusable suitcase with which I cannot bear to part, the sewing basket, and a collapsible cooler. That’s it.
In other words, this would be the perfect house for a nudist (except for the large windows that look out onto the Christian Church across the Open Space). But it is a big problem for a woman and a teenage girl.
I mean, seriously. Who builds a house without closets??
I never considered myself a clothes horse. I’m certainly not on the scale of 90% of the women I know who have multiple closets for their own stuff. And I’ve been getting rid of things. A few things are still at Pat’s, but I could part with most of them. Those things I can’t part with will just have to stay there until I move. Because clothes space in the Cottage is out of control. The previous occupant left me a wardrobe, the top half of which can be used for hanging things, the bottom half of which has two shelves. The rod in the wardrobe is about 3 1/2 feet long. That’s it. That’s where clothes can be hung. And it’s packed. I did hang hooks on the backs of every available door to make a little more space, and those hooks are now overflowing due to my pajama menagerie and 1940s movie star lingerie fetish. So it’s making me look at my wardrobe a little differently these days.
I hadn’t really updated my work wardrobe for a couple of years, and when I left the last full-time job, I didn’t think I’d be getting another one. As we know, life’s what happens when you’re making other plans, and so I find myself very much hoping for another full-time job just now. Which leads me to feel the need for work clothes again – or at least interview clothes. Which I don’t have room for. Because I have NO closets.
I do have some nice clothes, but they’re casual and frankly, they’re designed for the Caribbean, not for Colorado. So changes will have to be made.
When the house comes through, I will have not only closets (4 of them!), but a garage, where I can put things like toolboxes and Christmas Tree stands. I swear I will feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. There’s even an attic! I know this because the attic window is clearly visible. However, the entrance to said attic is invisible. It doesn’t seem to exist within the house – not in the ceilings of any of the rooms (or closets). I’ll have to leave that discovery to my inspection person when the time comes.
But that hasn’t happened yet. And neither has the need for a major wardrobe shift. No house yet, no job yet. I’m just waiting as patiently as possible, and planning ahead. I can feel that it’s all going to come together somehow soon. I’m on the precipice. On the verge.
In the meantime, the best thing to do, I’ve decided, is clean out the wardrobe. Some of those nice Caribbean things will need to go. Others may need to go into a trunk, which will go who knows where. Maybe into the office, once I rearrange it. (I’ve always wanted one of those old antique trunks.) And I’m sure I have a lot of pieces that aren’t exactly classic (read, completely out of date.)
So I guess as long as everything else is changing, my “look” (gag) might as well change too.
It’s really just a shame that I hate to shop.
Every writer is on a quest for the perfect pen.
It doesn’t matter if I use a keyboard for 95% of my writing. I’m still seeking that one instrument that will add magic to my words, that will be a direct conduit to the muse. Anyone who writes has been through this, I think. Even as a child, I was particular. My crayons had to have some kind of point. I mean, we all know that AMAZING feeling when you open a brand-new box of crayons, right? It’s like a world of perfect, pristine rainbows with endless possibilities. (If only we could view every day that way – except it’s a little over-the-top bedazzled unicorn-y.)
Graduating to pencils, I was still particular. #2 Eberhard Fabers or Ticonderogas were the standard. Remember how we always had to fill in the little circles (completely) on our standardized tests using a #2 pencil? The computerized reader would be unable to read a #1 or #3. I hated #3 pencils. Far too light. As if you weren’t committed to your words. I loved #1 pencils – dark, firm, strong, but we could almost never find them in the stores, and when we did, well, they weren’t the requisite #2′s, so we didn’t buy them. And I was enchanted by those pens that had about a dozen little points that you could push through from top-to-bottom – but they were expensive, and so not in the family budget. I was truly envious of the girls in fourth grade who had them.
Pens are generally kept far away from children. I could be the poster child for why this is the case. At the tender age of about 3, I accessed one of my Dad’s ubiquitous Flair Pens – a red one – and wrote my numbers, 1 through 10, on the pale green living room wall right above the couch early one morning before anyone else was up. I did my three backwards but I was so proud. I went to wake up my Mom to show her. She was great – she could see how thrilled I was to have achieved this accomplishment. I vaguely remember her shock, and some very slight praise. I do not remember being scolded or punished, though knowing my Mom, I’m sure she explained the error of my ways to me. After that, the pens then were eternally out of reach. I guess everyone learned a lesson that morning. And the numbers stayed there on the wall for perhaps seven years, until the living room was repainted.
Back in the 1960s, pens were experiencing an evolution. They were moving from the fountain pen era to the ball point pen era, with Flair pens being the latest and greatest. Of course, now we have gel pens, rollerballs, stick pens, click pens. And that’s where the writer’s dilemma occurs. What is the pen for my hand, and mine alone?
I’ve found some that I like. Unfortunately, the ones that I like the most have been displaying a tendency to leak. While having ink stains on my fingers makes me feel more like a writer, I don’t like it. They take forever to come off and having ink leakages in purses and backpacks is a true pain. They’ve certainly given my backpack some character, but if I get caught in a rainstorm, I find that the ink stains get wet and leap onto my hips where my backpack rests, like a shipwreck victim straining for dry land.
Pens seem to have a mind of their own, which means that have the ability to independently decide where they want to go – which means they mysteriously vanish. When I was gainfully employed, I would buy nice pens for myself for work. If they made it home, I know that Pat was the vehicle for their disappearance, even though he rarely wrote anything down.
I was the proud owner of a Mont Blanc pen for a short while. It was a gift, and I’d had it about a month, when my boss asked me about it, because she had lost an identical Mont Blanc pen. She didn’t come out and say it, but she clearly thought I had stolen hers. And sure enough, it vanished about a week later. Ah, well. It was a lovely pen, but a little fat for my fingers.
I am still searching for the perfect pen for me. Since pens continue to evolve, when I find one I like, I have to buy in bulk because it will morph into something different sooner rather than later. I have five pen pots in the house, and they get emptier and emptier daily (I was noticing this yesterday) as the pens emigrate to who-knows-where.
And I will continue my quest, which may take me from quill pen to astronaut pen, until I find the one, the one that is so connected to me that the ink is just my own cerebral fluid flowing from the nib.
(And FYI, this last photo is one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.)
I feel like I am at a fork in the road.
Yes, I’m having to regroup, to forge new dreams, or decide on pursuing my long-standing dreams on my own – or both. I need a few winter clothes – I had made a point of not buying any because I had in my head that I wouldn’t really be hanging around for much more cold weather. Well, looks like I’m here for another season, so might as well stay warm.
But I digress…
I would LOVE to make my own freelancing business work. I haven’t put any heart into it. Zip. Zilch. Zero. I’ve been writing a lot, and loving it, but I haven’t been doing business writing. Just working on the novel, and a chapbook. And those things are going to pay off. But for right now, I am wondering if I need to do something different – which translates into a real-life, full-time job.
I’m not adverse to the idea – not wholly. I am usually emotionally better the busier I am. And I’ve been pretty isolated since I left full-time work. I was just really hoping NOT to have to work for anyone again. So I guess I’m thinking out loud here, about the different tines on the fork that is in my way.
Tine #1: I can really set down to find freelance writing work. That means talking to everyone I know on LinkedIn, doing the whole Business After Hours networking with the Chamber of Commerce, and….cold calling, the thing I hate the most in the universe.
Tine #2: I can look for a grown-up job in my field. That has some advantages: benefits (especially health insurance, which is going to run out in August), consistent income, socialization. It could lead to me being able to buy a house. And it would give me some more writing experience, albeit of a different sort, since that’s what I would try to get – a job in the marketing/writing field. But wouldn’t I be giving up on my dream? Or would I just be postponing it?
Tine #3: I can find a second part-time job. Between two part-time jobs, I could have a semi-decent income. I could do something different, like be a barista, work in a bookstore, a gallery, or any one of the many things I’ve always wanted to try. Life would be juggling schedules, and wouldn’t give me much time to travel. But there would be variety. I like variety in my work.
Tine #4: I can start working on articles for publication and just (appropriately) flood the market to get some things published. I can start looking for an agent for my novel. This tine takes me most directly towards my future.
Tine #5: I can go back to school – more specifically, nursing school. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. That would require taking out a student loan, and…studying. At least Kelsea and I could keep each other company while doing homework.
Tine #6: I could join the Peace Corps. Seriously! They do take people my age. And it’s the closest I can get to running off and joining the French Foreign Legion, like heartbroken romantics used to do in the last century. OK, they were men, but you get the picture. It would be a good thing for me, doing something socially conscious.
Tine #7 (yes, it’s a big fork): I can keep things as is, status quo. I can keep going like I am right now, with one part-time job, for another year. I can travel. I’d have to make some more decisions when my lease is up, about not having a place and just travelling all the time, finding a new place, or staying in this place.
I have a lot of options. As I said in my New Year’s post, I’m visualizing my future as it already exists. These choices are avenues to the same place; it’s just a matter of which will make me happiest and most comfortable. It may not be a matter of choosing one option, either. It may be a combination of all of them. And any of them will take some time to develop – it’s not as if I expect to walk out the door tomorrow and have to dodge job offers like I have to dodge birds attacking the Cottage.
This is the sort of thinking and writing I was hoping to do while I was at the Hot Springs last week, and it’s the only writing and thinking that I didn’t get around to, which means that I wasn’t meant to do it there and then. But I do need to get in motion. It will be fun, whatever it is.
But I do rather wish it was a spoon in the road. I have rather a penchant for spoons.
Having finished Natalie Goldberg’s first book, Writing Down the Bones, I am looking at her second book. I say looking because that’s exactly what I’m doing. Thumbing through, reading snippets and trying to re-mobilize my writing self.
One of the things that struck me last night that I read was an exercise she suggested about writing down what you would miss when you died. Last night, I was thinking about the big things, like Kelsea. I suppose in some ways I don’t think I will miss anything because once I die, I sense that I will have access to everything, just in a different way. Though will I still be ME thinking, knowing, feeling, sensing it all? That I of course cannot say.
So what will be missed? Instead of thinking about my own memories, I started thinking about how the world has changed in the last fifty years.
Then I got to thinking about how people used to dress up for air travel. I admit that I started flying very shortly after this era ended. But back then, flying was an event, an occasion, something special, and they treated you as if it was. Men wore suits. Women wore suits and gloves and hats and stockings and heels. Stewardesses wore little hats and were solicitous, giving you pillows, blankets, food, drink, whatever they could do for your comfort. Now the message is literally stated on the PA, “Our flight attendants are here for your comfort but are PRIMARILY here for your safety.” Meaning comfort can go down those little metal toilets as far as the flight attendants are (instructed to be) concerned. And people show up looking like they’re ready for bed. Literally.
On my last flight, I was reaching for a pillow in the overhead bin next to my seat, when the flight attendant reached ahead of me and snatched it out. “That’s not supposed to be here,” she said. “Well, can I use it?” I asked her nicely as she held it pinioned to her chest. “No,” she replied, “People in coach aren’t allowed to get pillows.” I didn’t bother to reply to this, and I’m sure the pillow sat unused for the duration of the flight. Coach. Doesn’t it sound like a rich thing? Royalty ride in coaches. They should call it cattle class or steerage or peon class or mass class. Something else. I’ll work on it. And then of course, there’s business class. Excuse me? 5 inches of legroom for the business man or woman. And that implies that the rest of us are just bums.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant about the airlines here – although it is a good idea for a post and will likely emerge from my fingertips someday.
What I was thinking about is how the past dies. Think about the bombing of London by the Nazis in World War II. Few remember it. There are books and movies but you could literally count them. People Kelsea’s age will never hear someone tell a story about it. But there are those few who do remember it, who can recall the blackout drapes, the sound of the sirens or the planes, their fear, their parents responses, the smell after a bombing.
To take a less dramatic example, no one remembers what the air smelled like before cars and other pollutants started contaminating the atmosphere. When you could drink from a stream without having to purify the water. What the plains looked like when there were millions of buffalo roaming. What it felt like to wear 20 pounds of dresses during a hot Georgia summer – and how you didn’t complain.
When Kelsea and I took the EAR and she wanted me to give her a tour of my life in Durham, I told her stories about school, work, growing up. Things I might not have remembered had we not been right there. I’m glad I did this. Someone knows some of my stories now. (Not that I am ever shy about telling her anything.) She, like E-Bro (and like me, once upon a time) has the memory of an elephant, and I know she will remember. Maybe she’ll tell her daughter my stories someday, as I have told her some of my Mother’s. Writing them down in a way that evokes a sense of place, of time, of feeling, is a great start – and sometimes the only option. But the verbal telling of a tale holds so much more power than the written word – your voice as you share your story imbues it with an emotion that is richer than any printed page could ever convey.
There are so many stories we have that we do not recall except in flashes and that we never share, perhaps because they would really mean nothing to someone else. They are memories more than stories, snippets of our lives. I think we remember everything that has ever happened to us, we just don’t have access to all those thoughts, images and memories with the x% of our brain that we actually use. But that y% of our brain must be doing something back in there. I choose to believe that storing all our lives (and perhaps beyond) is what it’s doing.
But no one will remember the things I do in the ways I do, even if someone else was present at the time. That person will remember it through their own eyes. So I suppose what I will miss when I am gone is the ability to share those memories. Or perhaps I will miss the memories themselves.
Due to a few influencing factors, I seem to be writing more poetry lately. As readers know, I’ve been doing the Weekly Wednesday Poem here for about a year – that being a post every Wednesday in which I select a poem that I like from an author (9 times out of 10 who isn’t me) and share it with the blogosphere. I’ve enjoyed doing that, and I expect I’ll continue doing so. It helps me learn about poets with whom I was previously unfamiliar, and, more importantly, inspires me to write my own poetry.
Back in my teens, poetry was my big form of self-expression. I would write pages and pages and pages of poetry almost every night. I still have those notebooks and look back at them only rarely. Once I hit college, I started journaling and writing poetry about equally. But once I was out of college, the muse fled. I still journaled, but I almost never wrote poetry. After a number of years, I stopped journaling. I guess there wasn’t much going on in my life other than work, and I certainly didn’t want to write about that.
Since the divorce, I have found myself writing more poetry. I’ve posted some of it here, and some of it elsewhere. With the wonderful Thursday Poet’s Rally, I have gotten lots of encouraging feedback on my work. So, since my characters in the novel are stilling lolling around on a beach, awaiting rescue, I’ve been thinking of putting together a chapbook.
A chapbook is basically a booklet of 24 or 36 poems that you can submit to contests, literary magazines, etc. It has a “story” to it, meaning the poems carry the reader through a series of feelings or events, though that story does not need to be known specifically to anyone but the author. It’s the author’s guide for building a cohesive collection. That makes sense to me - it would be odd to have a serio-comic poem about fish, followed by a poem about heartbreak. See what I mean?
Chapbooks were a common vehicle for poets and authors in the previous centuries. They are inexpensive to produce, can be self-published and are an easy way to promote your work – you can afford to give them away or sell them very at a very reasonable price. For me, as I say, I’m interested in submitting them somewhere (anywhere).
It’s interesting to me how the muse has come and gone, come and gone. I think I wrote my first poem when I was in first grade. I missed the muse during her long sleep. Now, especially sometimes when I am drifting off to sleep, especially if I am not alone (which is oh-so-very-rare), lines or entire verses just come flowing in like sparkling seafoam across the rocks and waters of the Bubbly Pool, lovely and unstoppable.
I am happy she is back.
I wonder if horses feel like this after winning a race?
I’m having a letdown day! I’m actually quite surprised, but when I got to thinking about it, I realized that I’d been really driving myself towards the November 30 – 50,000 words – NaNoWriMo goal. And now that I’ve achieved it, after my hyper-happiness and self-congratulatory bath last night, I’m a bit sluggish. (And I’m cold but that has nothing to do with it.)
I don’t want to leave the house today. I just want to lie around and watch old movies. Thank the gods there’s no chocolate in the house. If there were, there soon wouldn’t be.
But I do have to go to work this afternoon, and I do have to go to the grocery store as there is no food in the house. So leaving the sanctuary is inevitable. To give you an idea of the strength of my desire to snug myself away here, I actually looked out the window today and wished for deep snow. Yes, you read right. ME wishing for snow and cold. Sheer madness, I tell you.
In examining my feelings this morning, what I really want is a turkey sandwich. No, just kidding. What I really want is to keep working on my novel. I’ve been happy writing it. So, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “OK, so? Why not just go work on your novel? If that’s what makes you happy, and what you want to do, go! Who’s stopping you? Not me! So quit yer bitchin’ and go! GO!” You might say it a little bit nicer than that, but you’d be right.
It’s an odd feeling when you’ve been working for a goal that was communal and not specifically self-imposed, and you have to shift to a goal that IS self-imposed. In other words, when you have to become more self-driven, self-motivated. As I am pondering this from the Red Couch this morning, I am realizing that self-motivation for achievements is one of those key elements in my life that many of my dreams have revolved around – and one that sits in the garden of my soul like an untended flower. This novel, and this realization, may be just what I need to break through what I now see as a barrier that has blocked the flow of my success for most of my life. I suspect that at its core is laziness and fear. But I think that’s a therapy session for another day.
When I started out this morning, I was thinking that I was depressed – again. But as I’ve been “writing it out” here, I realize that I’m not depressed. I just need a little break.
I need to do what makes me happy and be kind to myself. Sometimes, after you’ve worked very hard, it’s okay to take a break and watch Virginia Mayo movies for a while. Soon, I’ll get up and go do things.
Like have a turkey sandwich.
NaNoWriMo word count for today: 2243, for a total word count of 4239.
So, I finished Chapter 1. Yes, I actually did. It’s such a strange and wonderful feeling!
I started this whole thing saying, “I’m not a fiction writer.” And I’m surprising myself. My characters, several of whom are actual historical people, are talking to me and taking on lives of their own. It’s as if I’ve opened a door for these people. As if I’m seeing and feeling and sensing through their eyes and hands and spirits. My main character is telling the story herself. I’m just channeling it. I’m her hollow bone.
I started with a brief outline of an idea that was born on a trip to the islands, noted cryptically in a journal. The night before NaNoWriMo started, I realized there were some serious logistical flaws in my story. So things started shifting and changing. I found more of the things and places I love weaving their way into the tale. The outline grew and evolved.
Once I started writing, as I say, it started pouring out of me. It takes me about 3 hours to write 2000 words, including time that I stop to research certain points. I begin each day with a picture pulled from Google Images that shows where my main character is in the story as I start to write. It seems to help me keep focused. So far, I haven’t reread what I’ve written in its entirety. I’ve read pieces, and when I read those pieces, it doesn’t feel like my writing, even though I know it is. It’s a little disjointed. Hmm, maybe it’s even bad.
But it’s all I want to think of. I play with the characters in my head, with the “what ifs..”. I let it flow. And I resent other things, like paying work, or doing dishes or laundry, interfering with the world inside my head.
And look! I’ve finished the first chapter of a novel!!
