Daphne and Laura and So Forth

Perhaps I Am Thinking Too Much of My Own Personal Experience Here

2011-08-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

One thing about being home-based is that one spends a lot of time alone and not having to do the whole Girly Presentation for strangers. I used to really like the Presentation. I pored over fashion magazines for style and makeup tips. I'd go through periods and fads ("We're Mod this week!") and generally just see beauty and fashion as a facet of self expression.

These days, showering is an accomplishment. I wear mismatched pants and tops and don torn sandals with everything. I cannot remember the last time I wore makeup. And on more than one occasion, I have sauntered down to the nearby market with a giant smear of something across my nose: sunscreen, dirt, bicycle grease. Since the checkout people know me, they will gently point it out.

If I cared what I looked like, I'd check a mirror more frequently; but as it is, I mostly don't bother. So the thought of this project baffles me more than anything. It just seems impractical. You could be parading about with spinach in your teeth or your shirt on backwards or inside out. Your eyebrows could be merging above your nose. Your lipstick could be escaping to Baby Jane territory. You could have those tiny goopy things in the corners of your eyes. How would you possibly be able to present as a normal human being in the professional world?

Motoring On, Motoring On, Motoring On . . .

2011-08-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get discouraged. Okay, not so much "starting to get" discouraged, since an ebbing and flowing level of discouragement has been my constant friend since I took this bold leap into the future and decided to shred my job security in the worst economy since the great depression while amassing loads of student debt. It's more like getting re-discouraged. We're reaching peak discouragement.

My latest phone interview, after some hoops and paper work, did not turn into even an in-person interview. Which is fair enough; I get that it's a matter of fit for both sides. When the unemployment rate guarantees a flood of good candidates, it behooves a smart hiring manager to pick and choose, keeping options open. It's just kind of a drag for those of us in limbo while all this weighing of options is going on. And okay, I'll be honest: I'd hoped my spectacular writing samples would seal the deal. Even if I didn't in past produce the exact type of writing desired, surely, surely my innate flexibility would be apparent? Persuasive skills, I get. Not everyone can polish some really beguiling copy. Descriptive text, though: what are the variables in that? Grammar? Decent word choice? Good flow? Is there some sort of corporate syntax? Are brevity and simple sentences the mainstays of business documents? It's kind of sad that I've been an office monkey my entire adult life, and I don't even know. My letters, emails, and whatnot all seemed to cover the bases well enough.

It comes back to the abundance of people in the market, I know. Why train people when you can find the exact thing that you're looking for? Generalists, as they say, are passe. Specialization, specialization, specialization is the rage. Working in a small office where you're a jack of all trades doesn't translate well into a specialized niche. It's quite maddening and hard to finesse. Nonprofit leaves you asea in corporate, because why take on someone who doesn't immediately know the culture, when you can hire someone who does? No longer working in publishing proper means that you're off a standard track, and there's no publishing here to speak of, anyway. It's not DC, so the nonprofit and interest groups aren't thick on the ground, and the ones that are here are working with no money. Communications and PR, which are relatively thick on the ground here and which I've done in teeny tiny doses, naturally want people experienced in same. I could do it, but again, why train when you can get the exact thing? I've done some development work, and I write, so: grant writer! Except I've never written grants. It's making me rethink my field study, I tell you what.

But it does no good to get bummed out and feel judged. (But, dude, I thought if there was anywhere I could sell myself, it was with a bit of writing. That's what hurts.) So all I can do is stay focused and try to keep thinking and planning, networking and communicating.

And now that I've got the freelance portfolio up and running, I can start hitting the ground hard to gin up new clients. All of this was not unexpected, but damn. I really hoped I'd be instantly recognizable as spectacular and be employed accordingly.

Things I'm Discovering (Maybe I Should Write a Book?)

2011-08-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

This job-hunt process has been . . . illuminating. For one thing, it's brought into sharp relief the differences between people who have their career paths mapped out and those who thought they did, lost it, and now find themselves struggling to resell or reinvent themselves. Personally, I don't think there's much separating the two apart from luck. But if you're from a certain socioeconomic strata and have accumulated a lifetime of being taken seriously and given opportunities, it's easy to rationalize that you'll always be okay. I know, I was there! After a relatively easy post-graduation transition into the job market in a down economy (nothing compared to today, but I did have to take a temp job that turned into a permanent one), I have motored every onward in the world of the gainfully employed. Not reaching great heights like some of my friends, mind you, but employed, in a gainful fashion.

Now it's a different world, and I'm in a different age and stage in my career. As such, I'm accumulating an assortment of blazing insights that I'm bestowing, in volume, on a friend of mine who is looking to change jobs. But I would like for her to save herself a lot of time that I wasted finding this stuff out.

Blazing insight #1: Sending in resumes to online job lists is like submitting to literary magazines. The competition is fierce, you're one of hundreds. The odds are, you're not going to get to the top of that anonymous stack.

Blazing insight #2: Like in the world of dating, hiring managers can smell desperation. They don't want desperation. They want confident, competent professionals who make their lives easier.

Blazing insight #3: If you don't know what you want to do and/or you're not able to communicate it, two things will happen (a) your network will have no idea how to help you and (b) employers will pass you over, because their priority is not to help you with your self-fulfillment journey, it is to hire people who will do the job well and who want to be there.

Blazing insight #4: Network, network, network. I've always hated it and avoided it like the plague. It's such an imposition! I don't know how to pay folks back! But the thing is, other people are networking too. And if a conversation can result in a trade that helps everybody, excellent! If the networking involves friends, your friends care what happens to you. If they had a magic wand, they would wave it for you, with fierceness, in order to materialize the perfect position. And because they are your friends, the time may indeed come when they need to rely on your knowledge/expertise/network/ability to toss them freelance work. So it's not something to get hung up about. Treat people with respect, reciprocate, be a good friend.

Blazing insight #5: Together with projecting confidence and avoiding desperation, know your worth. For instance, you know what? I'm mighty awesome at organizing things. I edit with care and detail. I'm a pretty decent writer. I'm an extremely hard worker. And any place that hires me will be lucky to have me in the mix.

Blazing insight #6: Social media, investigate it. LinkedIn groups, twitter. Resources abound.

How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin: Or, How Can We Spin Bunny-hood as Empowering!

2011-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

There's a new series coming out about the Playboy Club! But it's tricky, trying to market it, I guess. It's a soap-opera, you see, and not just fun and amusement for the dudes. Women like soap operas. They also no doubt will really want to see ladies who were blazing a path! Living life on their own terms! Making money on the sexxxxay-ness, as god meant them to do!

The panel struggled mightily to fit Bunnyhood into a modern vision of independence. On the one hand, stars Leah Renee and Jenna Dewan Tatum talked about how Bunnies were empowered in the sense that they were able to be financially independent "at a time when jobs for women were pretty limited." But on the other hand, they argued that anything is empowering if you're doing it by your own free choice. But if your options are limited, how free is that choice, really?

Hodge argued, in the end, that the interaction between a Bunny and a customer at a table was all about "buoying women up and giving them the power," because the men weren't allowed to touch the Bunnies. Now, remember — these women are waitresses. They're not prostitutes. They're strangers, unknown to the men, who are serving drinks. And he is arguing, in effect, that they have been buoyed up and given the power because they are granted the right, while tottering around in painful costumes and high heels for the gratification of their customers, not to be physically touched. They have all the power because the club tells patrons that they're not supposed to touch them. They don't really have the power of doing anything; just the power of withholding. Essentially, the argument is that for these women, the highest power they can possibly hold, and what truly elevates them, is the power to deny men the opportunity to touch them.
Do you touch waitresses, typically? Do you assume it's your right to touch waitresses? Or strangers? Or people in service occupations? What baseline assumptions have to be in place about who is otherwise naturally entitled to do what to whom for a "please don't touch this person" rule to grant anyone power over you? I'm just asking.

Ahh hahh hahh haahh hahhh. Sob. It's like those arguments where you get backed into a corner, and instead of just admitting that, okay, you were wrong, you double down and go for broke. But it is kind of funny that the concept of how to market this thing to women didn't get some thought in advance. Surely there was a less ridiculous way to spin it. Unless the goal is to slap a superficial label on it, in the way that Sarah Palin is "feminist." People who care will never watch in the first place, but people who don't want to feel too "un-PC" might just think: "Well, I read somewhere that the women were really independent and empowered and stuff."

This Is the Thing I Mock in Other People

2011-08-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

We're winding up day four in my quest to put together a freelance writing/editing portfolio, and I'm completely flummoxed, overwhelmed, technology-overloaded. I cannot decide what I'm doing. I do wild swings from certainty back to uncertainty, weighing options and coming down to a different solution and direction each time.

Oh my god. The technology is too much. I don't know how to upload clips, I don't know how to do "widgets" or "plug-ins." I get one decision made, try to implement it, and find I have a half-dozen more that just leave me at a loss.

And this doesn't even involve decisions about the content. What the hell am I going to blog about, pray tell? I have no idea. What clips do I use that don't look too sad and pathetic? Beats me.

So I sit here, googling, signing up for sites, starting profiles, then becoming paralyzed with indecision. Lather, rinse, repeat.

When do my student loans come due, again?

Pet Peeves: Clearly, Only the Ladies Dress Inappropriately in Professional Settings

2011-08-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I'm surprised to click links in search of some really shame-worthy wardrobe malfunctions (do I hear baseball caps? torn jeans? sneakers? really saggy, ugly chinos?), only to find . . . how the ladies are forever dressing ever-so slutty. The personal stories are especially touching. One "young lady" "pranced"! I was also unaware that black high heels are verboten. Damn it. They're pretty much a staple of my professional wardrobe. But I like the French HR rep who had the nerve to wear one of those "clingy wrap dresses." No wonder the "guys definitely had their minds on something aside from the presentation that day." Who can blame them with that kind of trollop running freely about?!

Clearly, we're airheads who can't quite manage to blend in, professionally speaking. And it's the same old problem since grade school, am I right, what with the girls and their short skirts screwing up productivity?

But at least I can learn these valuable lessons for my next job interview, right?

In Which I Create a PRESENCE for Myself

2011-08-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to ramp up my presence in the online world so that I may:

1. Create a portfolio and website for freelance purposes
2. Interact with job chats via the twitter
3. Support my various claims of social media experience by showing myself engaged in social media

The portfolio site will have a public blog component too, so that my writing may be out there, in real, concrete terms.

I take issue, however, with the woman with my same name, who has hit the interwebs hard and gotten everywhere before me. Searches for user names come up as already taken! She has a website too, which, I'm sorry to say, is riddled with typos. I fear the confusion, people.

LATER. Seriously, the website for this person is for a writing class. She couldn't be a quilter, or a beekeeper, or a stamp enthusiast?

In Case You Were Wondering, No Word on That Job

2011-07-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

We are apparently in a world where a person can go through a second-round interview--after they reject you once, then call you back in--then hear absolutely nothing. I get that folks are busy, but if I'm covering all of my thank-you note bases and you are, presumably, down to your final candidates, can you not at least notify me? Just seems like courtesy to me. Sigh.

That's the job market today, though, apparently. I'm in the process of signing up for a temp agency (with two more on the horizon once I get my portfolio together). Dude told me that they don't have much, and, uh, where are my administrative skills, again? Seriously. I found myself doing what I hoped was a persuasive hard sell on the fact that I have administrative skills. After working in an office of some sort for a gazillion years, doing letters, mail merges, excel sheets, and overseeing publications dissemination and mailing house details, I'm apparently not qualified for low-pay, low-level administrative work.

I can't decide whether I'm naive or just deluded, but my experience of lower-level administrative positions is that when you're looking to fill them, you long for the folks who can think independently, follow instructions, and be smart about things. This has been the case for every person I've ever hired to help me, anyway. It was by no means a common trait.

I could manage plugging ever onward if I knew that it was just a matter of patience and targeting. But what's really getting me down are all the implicit judgments: idiots on facebook yammering about all the shiftless, money-sucking unemployed people taking all their hard-earned money; well-meaning folks wondering why shiftless money-sucking unemployed people don't just take any job (do you know how it's not a simple tier, at least for employers, and that you're competing with people with retail experience, restaurant experience, ahem, administrative experience?).

You'd think that it would be easier to find a job when you're focusing on your writing and just need income. Flexibility! I'll do whatever, I'm not picky. But why should any employer who has their pick of really dedicated, career-oriented people pick this person who--seemingly, but not in actual fact--has one foot out the door. And all of the career mistakes I've made up until this point really get hammered home. Yes, I stayed too long for the secure paycheck, and if I were really so smart, savvy, and talented, wouldn't someone else have hired me on? In a perfect universe, signs point to yes. And we loop back around to: "well, why are you XYZ? Clearly you weren't the very tippy top, so we don't have any interest in you."

This is all starting to get to me, big time. In some ways, it was easier out of the undergrad gate. I had a spiffy degree from a decent university and could write a persuasive letter. No tea-leaf dregs of my entire work history to scrutinize.

Clearly I just need to hit it big with my novel.

One Partial Fulfillment Component Down!

2011-07-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

I am, as we speak, formatting my long critical paper according to official specifications. Two days before my deadline for initial draft, I sent it off to my mentor, who turned it around in mere hours and called it good. My working theory is that, since he is not a human, he doesn't sleep. If I'm feeling like sprucing, I can make my opening a bit more compelling (I agree, that was something I intended to do once I got initial input), but the thing covers all appropriate bases. Woo! But . . . unexpectedly easy. On the basis of classmate horror stories, I hadn't anticipated this process to be wrapped up so quickly.

Thanks, alma mater! Apart from teaching me the hard lesson that I--former perfect student and class-superlative proclaimed Smartest Girl--could get a D, you taught me how to look at works of fiction. Here in MFA-land, I'm continually reminded how important that is.

I tell you, this English major stuff is like riding a bike.

Making Me Hopeful But Also Full of Despair

2011-07-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

This article. It's just a little close to where I am, at the present, what with the job picture. I also plug away at the novel and fear failure. But you can't really bitch if you're not doing the work in full faith, right?

So I plug away.

Here's What Not To Do When You're Keyed Up and Anxious

2011-07-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Drink lots of coffee. Seriously, that does nothing to help.

I hate it when a seemingly normal day takes a turn for the stressful. First, the cat appears to be veering uncomfortably close to her colitis-like experience again. I do not fancy an emergency vet trip or worries about dehydration (these kidney failin' kitties live life in a precarious balance). And oh my god, I do not have that in the budget right now.

Then, the hot-water tap on the shower--which has taken power-tool levels of effort to prevent from dripping at a constant stream--finally stopped turning off at all. So we did an emergency workaround that means we are sans hot water until the plumber can show up.

I want to focus and get stuff done, but it seems my day will involve worriedly hawkish observance of a cat.

Ready to Steam Ahead!

2011-07-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

I was so afraid of this project period, containing as it does the bulk of my field study and my long critical paper. In addition to which, my new mentor is THE guy for folks working on longer projects, so I'm wading into novel territory.

So a lot on my schoolwork plate right now. Happily, however, I did the heavy lifting of outlining my critical paper: topic, examples, references. And I just got the thumbs up from mentor that I may proceed. Woohoo! I'm not too unnerved by analytical papers, but I have some PTSD from undergrad that makes me cringe a bit. I wasn't the most diligent organizer of a paper, you might say. In the days when one had to sit in a computer lab to power through on 10-pager on Villette, for example, I tended to want to lackadaisically follow a mental thread and not spend too much time on revision. Stop oppressing my free thought and spontaneous creation!

But I managed to pull together a coherent proposal, so yay me. The novel I'm discussing is a mere 500 pages (!!) and currently stuffed with post-it notes. My goal is to bang this out in two weeks.

And this morning during my run, I had some good thoughts on what I want to do for my longer fiction project this term. I'm anxious to get the critical paper out of the way so I can start sketching it out.

I Am the Master of My Destiny

2011-07-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

According to the director of my program, writing is a "vocation." We do these things because we have to, we don't have a choice. Of course, the fact that one makes no money at this unless they have the good fortune to be a Stephen King means that there needs to be balance and gap-filling to live a life above poverty level.

So. Creative people come up with creative solutions, right? We are portable workers, this is a flexible economy, you see, where the 40-hour work week is becoming a thing of the past. (If you put any stock into the newsfeeds on yahoo, which seem to trend toward: "Economy on Rebound! Corporate Profits Up!" and "Good News! That Advanced Degree Won't Hurt You Anymore, Because Employers Can Aim High and Know You've Got No Better Jobs To Jump Ship To.")

I interviewed yesterday for a part-time job at a nonprofit. It would be 15-20 hours a week, with a eye-glazing commute. I think that it went well, and I really hope they offer it to me. I'm thinking of this in Holly Golightly terms: "I'll always keep the candy store; Sally Tomato, he's my candy store. I'll always have Sal, and that's why I'll be richer than she is." One solid segment, augmented with some freelancing (built up) and, if I can find it, some restaurant or evening retail work.

And, if this job pans out, it will give me a great opportunity to develop skills in grantwriting, which you may or may not know, are in very high demand. Good grantwriters can do decent freelance business.

Fingers crossed for me, peeps.

Things That Piss Me Off

2011-06-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, I'm coming off a 10-day stint of nonstop on-campus immersion. But I am in a literary state of mind and thinking in general about some of my favorite authors.

Jane Austen. Some love her, others hate her. Some adore swooning to film adaptations depicting handsome men and beautiful women finding their happy ending. Others think it's all drivel and pre-chick-lit. Fluffy, these people (often dudes) say! Completely trivial novels about marriage-obsessed women. Why bother reading this shit, when there's important Literature (with a capital "L") to read! This Literature, not incidentally, will very likely be written by men.

The thing, however, is that Austen wrote some exceedingly clever books exposing the hypocrisies and injustice of her society. All of these happy frothy weddings and marriage-obsessed ladies? Note, if you will, that if you were a lady of a certain station living at that time, it really wasn't an option to forge your own career path. A Jane Austen could become a governess, if she were very lucky. Or she could hope her male relatives or kind friends were generous in supporting her, her like-wise unmarried sister, and their mother (as was the case). Or, she could marry an appropriate man, of suitable birth and some means. Marriage, very frequently, was a matter of economic survival.

Through the lens of Pride and Prejudice, you could say that Elizabeth's exceedingly silly and vapid mother is the only one with some apprehension of consequence and a semblance of a plan. Mr. Bennet, amiable as he is, doesn't really see the totality of his mistakes and squandered opportunities until Lydia runs away. (Thus endangering the family's reputation and threatening the other four girls' chances of getting married--how are they supposed to live, exactly, when their father dies?)

Austen is enjoyable and fun to read, but no one should miss that she knew the stakes for the women she wrote about.

Still Living in Dude Nation

2011-06-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Anthony Weiner is really just a scamp who wants to be able to be his own man, find willing partners to enjoy some harmless online flirting, and generally enjoy his dudeness without all the moral scolds harshing his buzz. Let the person who has not accidentally emailed a picture of their dude bits or lady bits to the wrong business clients be the judge! Next, they'll be telling me that it's inappropriate to surf porn at work or something.

For my part, I find it more than a bit depressing that, should I be moved to do some political ranting or chatting with congress via their official communication channels, I can expect that potential for sexxyfun (only if I'm into it, of course! we're all adults here!) just by virtue of the fact that I'm a lady. Complaining to my representative, looking cute on a miniskirt on the bus, hanging out in a singles bar, it's all the same.

Also, can you identify which of these two images fails to adequately illustrate the concept being advertised?

A bad night of sleep always leaves me extra busty. I don't know about you.

My Project Has Officially Launched

2011-05-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

As part of my MFA program, I have to do a project of my own design. What kind of project, you ask? Does it seem odd, you may further inquire, that someone getting a degree in writing has to do more than just, um, write, and maybe read?

I'm glad you asked! In point of fact, I have to design and execute a project in which I engage in a community, develop/nurture/work with artists, and work toward social justice. It has to last for about 4 months. I am starting later than most people and later than I should. I have heard horror stories in which folks had their projects fall apart or completely fail the parameters of the timeframe, thus they had to start over the next term. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that I am now merely two terms away from completing the whole program. Do I want to be attempting round 2 of my field study when I am working on polishing my final manuscript? I do not.

It was scary getting this thing off the ground. I waited forever to get feedback and approval from the powers that be in the program. Then I got a vague thumbs up and was left to ponder how to make this unformed idea a concrete reality.

Somehow, though, and without realizing it, I've made incremental progress. It was amazingly easy to get the pieces in place: my IT friend offered up her website hosting and tech skills; another friend busily tapped her entire network for participants. And the initial response and enthusiasm for it has been stellar. My mentors have all been enthusiastic and responsive, eager to pay it forward and work with teens. I had hoped that I would draw in aspiring writers who would be excited to be mentored, and I did!

In the back of my head, I always think of myself, growing up in that cornfield and pondering all the things I could do with my life. If I had gotten some prodding earlier from an actual writer, I wonder how much I would have done sooner. I don't regret not having that, mind you. I'm happy with my more roundabout path; I think sometimes people need to be in the right head state/maturity level to do good work. But I sincerely hope that at least one of these kids is inspired and empowered to further pursue writing as a result of this program.

These Are Lovely

2011-04-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

Vintage travel posters.

Because We Love Some Good Navel Gazing on Process

2011-04-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

Daily routines of writers and other creative sorts. I'm partial to Collette's approach of physical fitness and blood transfusions via a young donor (one step removed from Helen Mirren's bathing in the blood of virgins).

But, oh! Am I feeling Kafka's pain:

It is rare that writers of fiction sit behind their desks, actually writing, for more than a few hours a day. Had Kafka been able to use his time efficiently, the work schedule at the Institute would have left him with enough free time for writing. As he recognized, the truth was that he wasted time.

The truth was that he wasted time! The writer's equivalent of the dater's revelation: He's just not that into you. "Having the Institute and the conditions at his parents' apartment to blame for the long fallow periods when he couldn't write gave Kafka cover: it enabled him to preserve some of his self-esteem."

Well, That Was Actually Kind of Genius

2011-04-15T11:56:00.001-07:00

I left two-and-a-half hours before my networking event . . . and got there five minutes before the shindig started. Dear god, that was the most horrifying commute ever (by contrast: the ride home took 45 minutes).

But it was worth it, I think. It's actually kind of brilliant to set up an event whose sole purpose is professional networking. We all hit the ground running, equally new to one another, and passed out a flurry of business cards. The only down side for me was that, although I thought I had registered, I actually hadn't. So my experience was way more random than everyone else's (who got placed at tables, by courses, according to their industries, undergrad majors, and graduation year). It would have been helpful to corral all the publications-related people in one location.

The amusing thing was, the other accidentally unregistered person was also a writer, freelance. So he had some good tips as we bounced, randomly, from table to table and begged and bartered for meal tickets. I'll be following up.

Meanwhile, I've got a sense of the county's job market (13 percent unemployment!!), thanks to the speaker. I've also got a stack of cards, some vaguely promised work, and new Facebook and Linked In contacts.

I'm a Networking Fool

2011-04-14T14:34:00.002-07:00

I'm heading out in a bit to go mingle with some fellow undergrad alums at a dinner geared toward NETWORKING! It should be all kinds of fun (she said, while gnawing her fingernails down to the quick). I'm especially looking forward to the 2-hour drive, north of the city, in rush-hour traffic. I told B where it was, and what time, and his eyes got huge. That's not a good sign.

The Beauty of the Weekend Project

2011-04-11T11:43:00.002-07:00

We have accomplished the following in home renovations/updates:

1. Replaced the cracked, stained, and old plastic panels covering the kitchen lights. In conjunction, the dead light has been replaced, and while the kitchen isn't something that you want to see in the full glare of light, you really have that full glare, from which nothing--animal, vegetable, or dirt-related--can hide. Incremental steps. And now I can really see what I'm cooking.

2. Actually chosen paint colors for a bathroom redo and conceived some easy updates to tone some of the seventies fabulousness of it all and get incrementally more storage.

I'm kind of psyched to get painting.

Here's a Dude Who's a Keeper

2011-04-09T17:30:00.002-07:00

Quick, snap him up before someone else does:

If you’re reasonably tall (5’6-6’, no more than that because, while I don’t mind being eye to eye with you, I won’t ever be looking up to you), you’re passionate and intelligent so as to be good company, sexually liberated, and attractive - really attractive, fat chics need not apply (hehe, I’m so self-amusing). Capable of holding a steady job but without making it your #1 priority - since it could interfere with our sexual activities. Family oriented but not anytime soon, rather when you are 30+ at least, open to spontaneous sexual activities (you know, outdoors sex, the odd 3-some with a cutie we pick up somewhere or one of your girlfriends), likes the outdoors (nudity optional), and doesn’t complain when I go fishing with the guys.

And it goes on from there. In case he didn't mention it four or five times, no fatties need apply.

I'm Here To Tell You, We Get Spring Here Too

2011-04-04T12:03:00.002-07:00

Let me go on record to say how amazed I am that there are actual weather fluctuations here in paradise. I expected it to be an even seventy degrees all year round. That's somewhat the case, but also in the mix are stretches of HOT (summer) and stretches of cold, overcast, and rainy (winter, with "cold" being redefined here to resemble the cusp of Midwestern winter, where you haven't quite turned on your heater but you probably should since you're running out of blankets).

So now it is gorgeous, sunny, and warm. And I and the other eighty billion people discovering that it's spring are out on the path, running like maniacs in our t-shirts and shorts. Nice.

It's Awesome That I Made It to the Final Four, Right?

2011-04-01T14:31:00.002-07:00

Got the official notice that I did not, in fact, get the job I interviewed for last weekend. Sigh. The good news is, I made it to the last round of 4 candidates, out of 200. And the other good news is that it seems like a recipe for failure for whoever does have the job.

I tell you what, it is a crazy competitive market out there. You can be sure that for every job you're tossing your hat in for, there are--I'm just estimating here--approximately one zillion others in the mix who are more qualified than you.

In Case You Were Wondering (And Maybe You Were and Maybe You Weren't)

2011-03-29T11:27:00.002-07:00

So, I managed to make it through the second-round interview on Saturday. How did it go, you ask? I felt pretty confident once I left that I really nailed it. Strangely (for me), I was in a good conversational groove and teeing off questions and observations. I even had them laughing at one point as I told them the gripping tale of errant authors and a process I had to mediate and problem solve. And it ended happily, on time, and on budget! In short, I think I had a narrative that I reinforced and that was compelling.

I'm not sure I had good answers to specific questions, though. I wish I could go back and re-do/re-frame/re-address. I think I missed a couple of really easy lobs that would have underscored my broader skill set. It's much easier to give a litany of accomplishments that directly transfer to the job in question, rather than having to elide gaps and contextualize things in ways not immediately obvious. I think it will come down to the mix of skills and traits that they value for this--I have a sneaking suspicion that all the candidates involve trade-offs and that none of us are an exact 100 percent fit.

It's funny. I went into it fairly ambivalent. It seemed, in many ways, like a recipe for failure for the person in the job (you better show concrete results), as well as for the organization (hey! we'll save money by getting a person who will learn as they go!). But I got really excited after meeting the people and thinking about the challenges involved in such a new direction. God help me if I'm not a wee bit energized by people, sometimes. It could be a fascinating to have to be persuasive.

We'll see. The decision is out of my hands.

These Are Quite Funny

2011-03-24T12:35:00.002-07:00

Damn you auto correct, indeed.

Pssst. You're Not Supposed to Notice These Things, People

2011-03-21T16:13:00.003-07:00

On Saturday, I have a second-round job interview (horrifyingly, I have to give a presentation on my development plans for this nonprofit; yes, they are clearly trying to ensure minimal salary requirements by getting candidates who don't have much experience in development).

And, allegedly, I will be volunteering this week for a couple of PR events. It's a quasi-internship, you see, wherein I will work, observe, see how things are done, and ascertain whether PR is something I might want to do. (Preliminary thought: I think I can do it; I have spent most of my professional career cajoling, soothing, and otherwise dealing with people, but the very thought of having my entire job be about being friendly friendly friendly makes me exhausted). There are connections to be made, and for that, I am very grateful.

Since all of this came up suddenly, I started panicking about my presentation; that is, one who spends lots of time alone and/or shuffling to various errands in workout gear tends to be in a constant state of, um, un-poshness. Of course the degree to which one has gone to seed can be rationalized: "Well, the first event is no big deal, I'll just wear my hair back. Who notices gray roots except me?"

Alas, having a random dork on your run shout out how you're Rogue will puncture any rationalizations. I should learn from the restaurant guy, who kindly offered up, unsolicited, that I was too young to be gray. Or from my classmate: "Oh, you're letting your gray grow out too?" Yeah. Clearly, I'm past the point of fooling anyone.

Too Much Reality Television

2011-03-19T11:37:00.001-07:00

Cordelia: "You're really campaigning for bitch-of-the-year, aren't you?"
Buffy: "As defending champion, you nervous?"
Cordelia: "I can hold my own. You know, we've never really been close, which is nice 'cause I don't really like you that much, but you have on occasion saved the world and stuff, so I'm gonna do you a favor."
Buffy: "And this great favor is?"
Cordelia: "I'm gonna give you some advice. Get over it."
Buffy: "Excuse me?"
Cordelia: "Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it.'Cause pretty soon you're not even gonna have the loser friends you've got now."

I Think There's Wisdom We Can All Learn From Here

2011-03-15T14:40:00.002-07:00

Don't complain to the cops if your cocaine dealer shorts you.

How Did I Miss This?

2011-03-11T15:53:00.001-08:00

I guess I haven't been cynical and paranoid enough. Shock doctrine, indeed.

Risotto: Very Tasty. That Is All.

2011-03-10T14:42:00.002-08:00

I made this stuff. And it was delicious and, if I do say so myself, perfectly done. The tougher vegetable critics in the place even gave the asparagus a thumbs up.

Tonight, however, we have reservations at our favorite splurgy restaurant. Accordingly, we have been scouring their wine list, feverishly refreshing their online menu, and calling for the daily specials.

Where We Tenderly Worry About the Children, Until They're Born

2011-03-08T18:48:00.002-08:00

Fetuses are sacred. But once the kidlets are sturdy and able to work, they should work, damnit. None of this mollycoddling. We look toward Missouri to lead the way in repealing those ridiculous child labor laws.

I don't know about you, but I personally know some elementary schoolers with a little too much time on their hands.

I sometimes wonder if folks are sincerely mistaken about the past, or if they are hellbent on repeating it, secure in the knowledge that they, personally, will be among the haves, as opposed to the have nots. I guess if your worldview is that what you have is directly a result of virtue (as opposed to luck and the privilege of being born where, when, and to whom you were born), it's all cool. People get what they deserve, see.

Well. This Discussion Could Be Awkward

2011-03-07T18:17:00.002-08:00

I've read my novels for this month! I'm prepped and ready for discussion, notes, and everything else I need to document to show that I'm on top of things, synthesizing, and doing the work.

This month, however, the novel that we're reading and discussing is . . . by our teacher. AWKward. Further awkwardness: Said novel stars a Mary Sue. Yes, friends, a Mary Sue. By the end of the book, I was smacking my head against the back of the couch (in lieu of smacking the character) and thinking to myself, "Of course she won the Grammy and started a fund for children! She's just that perfect. Her only flaw is being loved too much."

I love me my female characters: I write them all the time. Mine are generally flawed specimens, but I like heroic: Buffy rocks! And it is entirely possible that my perceptions of commercial fiction are skewed. I'm a pretty omnivorous reader, but it's been a while since I've read your basic plot-driven page turner. I realize it's all about what happens and getting bogged down with the finer notes of character development on this locomotive is somewhat beside the point.

But I submit that when your central character is beloved by all--even by violent people who have reason to be pissed off by said character--and all your other characters exist to revolve around, tend to, talk about, and rescue your central character, you have a Mary Sue on your hands.

Today's Story Moment

2011-03-03T11:50:00.002-08:00

Brought to you by Aimee Bender, "Fell This Girl" (in the Girl in the Flammable Skirt):

I remember, especially in high school, I was so good at this kind of fake-out. I rehearsed thoughtfulness, I appeared carefree--and how many guys did I trick? As I sat there, hair tucked behind my ear, supposedly lost in a book, thinking this exact monologue, rereading and rereading the same paragraph, waiting for them to see me and want me, caught in this image of myself as a reader. What about staring at ants, wanting to see close to nature and whimsical? What about staring into space, wanting to seem expansive, trying to find the thoughts that would fit my self-portrait? I fooled so many guys! I was found mysterious so many times, oh that girl, we don't know what that Susie thinks, and all I'm thinking is what do I look like, and all I'm thinking is that I own their thoughts.

Oh Fox News. At Least You Keep in Interesting

2011-03-02T13:42:00.003-08:00

Crazy and wild protests in Wisconsin! Shouty demonstrators! Out-of-control teachers!

This, of course, is my favorite part of Wisconsin: The Mediterranean Coast. Warm breezes, swaying palm trees. I'm planning on retiring there.

Note: DRAMATIC REENACTMENT. Stock video for illustration purposes only.

Critical Paper Wisdom

2011-03-01T15:41:00.002-08:00

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. when you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. when you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there’s no flow, stay still. if you resist the flow, everything dries up.

— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Are They Having a Fire Sale on Crazy?

2011-02-25T18:55:00.002-08:00

Pennsylvania's governor jumps into the fray, suspending pollution controls.

Bread, The Next Frontier

2011-02-23T17:01:00.003-08:00

The rye bread was mostly successful, apart from some tomfoolery with the second rising. There's no need to point fingers or try to assess blame over who did or didn't properly cover the loaves with the right kind of plastic.

Whole-wheat is the new frontier. Intriguingly, it requires additives and techniques, since whole grain flours lack the proper gluten to make this whole rising thing happen. (See, this is what's so fascinating about the whole bread-making process: It's science!)

It's probably overly ambitious, given how I haven't mastered the half-white/half-wheat loaves I've tried in past, but I am undaunted. And I have lots and lots of backup yeast and flour.

What We Have

2011-02-22T16:58:00.002-08:00

A new kitchen faucet that looks lovely and modern and no longer leaks.

Bikes, on a bike path, here in warm weather. Did we kick some butt this weekend, zipping past all those wee young tots on skateboards and Huffys? Did we leave those four-seater surrey-type deals in the dust? Yes, yes, we did. To the accompaniment of our own Jackie Stewart-style commentary ("She's coming around the motor track. . .")

Soon-to-be-painted kitchen walls.

A writing nook for me, with hummingbird feeder and ocean view.

Tax refunds! (This one is huge, since next year for me will likely not be pretty vis-a-vis freelancing income.)

More wine than most normal humans can drink, with my own special supply of my favorite $9 Spanish red.

A cat who is admittedly in her dotage, with predictable symptoms on the horizon, but doing her thing. This thing involves actually being cuddly and purring nonstop.

Once you stop freaking out about what might happen or all the scary uncertainty, it's possible to see and enjoy the good stuff. It's also possible to put your own productivity into perspective and see how much you've done.

I swear, I can see the movie made from my memoir already.

These Are the Accommodations One Gets in One's Dotage

2011-02-13T13:57:00.002-08:00

It's not quite shuffleboard in Boca Raton or golf-course-adjacent living in Arizona, but it is the best $5 ever spent.

Is It a Mode We Shift Into?

2011-02-11T18:25:00.003-08:00

I don't know what it is, but I seem to be in Pontificating Know-It-All phase on my writing. Which is a good thing, since I'm doing some freelance writing and working on a critical paper for school.

The bullshit's flowing, people. I actually wrote a piece authoritatively laying out how to make money off of facebook. HAH HAH HAH HAH!

I'm Not Saying I'm Betty Draper, Exactly. Just That I Feel Her Pain. A Bit.

2011-02-07T17:47:00.002-08:00

You know what sounds like all kinds of fantastic? Quitting a job that you've been stagnant in for a while, but that was safe, moving across the country, enrolling in an MFA program, and generally getting to have an interlude of intense writing focus. Many people dream of that, let me tell you. Many more dream of living in a gorgeous locale and not having to worry about how one will be feeding the cat or figuring out how one would set up a vinyl tarp next to the woman on the beach-walk bench. (Should I, god forbid, become homeless, that's where I'm heading. Mild weather, close bathrooms.)

I'm so fortunate! I realize that, truly. And I didn't think my stagnant job was any great shakes. Enhancing my future job prospects? Hah! More like sending me toward mental breakdown.

But, but. Dropping out of the "what do you do," even for a moment, even to be a student, is a bit of an identity void at my age and stage in life. I've never been one deeply invested in my career, such as it's been. But I've taken great pride in being a hard worker, a good thinker, one who contributes. And I've also taken great pride in having supported myself successfully since graduating college. There was a brief moment back in the day when I was terrified that I would fail, and that any moment, I would have to move into my parents' basement. Or find kind relatives who wanted to take me in. It took me years to get past that primal fear of failure and dependency.

Instead, I've been taking care of myself for a long, long time. I've been able to take vacations, buy a house, and keep the cat in premium chow. Not that I've been awash in the money, just that I've been okay. And able to save, choose, and spend on--for example--organic produce, if I want to.

Losing that thing you've been doing every day for years is hard. Waking up and knowing it's all on you to write, do your homework, or hammer out that freelance job is hard. No longer being that person who can cover her own bases, take care of herself, keep the cat in premium chow, is really hard.

You don't realize how much your identity is tied up in what you do and what you present to the world until you drop off that standard grid. And the world motors on while you fight your own inertia and attempt to instill structure and meaning into your day.

Best Christmas Present Ever?

2011-01-27T13:38:00.002-08:00

The Dyson vacuum, my friends, is a lovely bit of technology, which fosters geeky exploration of all its bells and whistles. We have vacuumed: the refrigerator coils, behind the refrigerator, the bathroom vents, under the couch, under the bed, in nooks and crannies in the kitchen, ad infinitum. It is quite likely that we have extracted from the carpet all the cat's shedded fur, along with the fur of the previous owner's cat.

We have also wish-listed attachments such as this.

It's sad, but if it brings joy, it can't be wrong, right?

DIY, Biking, Returning to Research, and Contemplating Novels

2011-01-26T14:51:00.006-08:00

Well do I remember back when I thought working at home would be a grand adventure. Never having to change out of pajamas! Makeup a distant memory! Deciding to break up the monotony with a run on the beach!

Of course, the flip side to all of that is never changing out of your pajamas, never wearing makeup or real-person clothes, and, um, spending your time on the bike trail or various other procrastinating activities rather than on the fiction or the billable tasks or the job letters. It's a strange and difficult balance, and whereas I was once dying for this interim time, I'm now longing for the prospect of a normal nine-to-five gig, with structured days--and not just for the steady money, although that's a huge benefit too.

Of course, say that I hit the jackpot and was able to write for a living, publishing novels people wanted to read, or elegant short stories and essays published in well-respected magazines. I would have to face down my days and attempt to manage some structure! I would have to work toward deadlines in a way that didn't involve spending the three days beforehand frantically finishing up something new before resorting to a further-along draft of something else.

But I want to take full advantage of this interim time, scary as it is to be floating out and space and not knowing where the next check is coming from. So I'm contemplating the novel I want to write. That is, I know I want to write one, but what is it? What will it be about? I should perhaps take a poll. But I have been noodling around with a character from an older story, whom I felt had more going on in her life than just the one story I wrote. I don't know. I can't seem to figure out what I want to do, even though I want to be chipping away on that big picture.

I'm also, in small ways, returning to my roots as a researcher of facts. Yes, I'm writing a critical paper. But I'm also tapping into my experience looking up congressional activities (for genealogical research). Exciting! Well do I remember that satisfaction of a job well done, an elusive fact sussed out.

And to balance all the thinking, thinking, baking continues apace (moving on to rye bread this time, at the behest of others who are declaring an intent to help with the process). And this weekend, B joins me in biking fun. Or, we hope he does, if the ordered and arrived bike lives up to expectations. Why, yes, it's 75 degrees here. Perfect weather for biking!

Oh, and I'm also trying my hand with home repair. If you read about the tragic flooding incident online, please know that I tried my best.

You Know Those Squirrels Trying to Get to the Nuts?

2011-01-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

I may or may not have mentioned that I'm on a mission to bake my own yeast bread from scratch. It seems economical! I've had The Bread Bible for ages and never ventured out of the quick breads. When you're being student frugal, are awaiting the arrival of the next freelance job, and have access to the whole new world of food processors, it seems like there's no time like the present. So I jumped in! This is how it went.

Friday, first attempt.
Mixed ingredients, per directed, in food processor. Extracted powdery unmixed blob that I proceeded to try to knead/mix by hand. Set it on the counter in a bowl to rise for the directed "at least 2 hours." Realized after 3 hours of nonrising that I forgot to add the sugar. Ditched dough.

Friday, second attempt.
Got new ingredients. Mixed ingredients, exactly as directed, in same order as specified, in food processor. Dough was proper consistency. Trying to account for potential temperature variables (i.e., cold condo), put dough in unheated oven for rising. Waited approximately 3 hours. No rising whatsoever. Ditched dough. Tested remaining yeast packets. Results inconclusive.

Saturday, third attempt.
Got new ingredients. Mixed ingredients, this time with white flour (whole wheat combo takes much longer to rise). Pretty dough ball. Put in unheated oven to rise. Again, after 3-4 hours, nothing. Read yeast packet. Realized yeast isn't "instant," as called for in recipe, but "fast rising" and requires procedure I didn't follow. Left loaf in unheated oven, figuring I'd throw the damn thing out later.

But lo! I came back hours later to discover . . . risen bread dough!!! It's a post-Christmas miracle!!! So I started at 9:30 pm with the "second rise," and after much waiting, shaping (FUN!), and baking, I had a loaf of very tasty bread. Which I triumphantly tucked into at 1 a.m.

I want to rush right out and do it again. Food processor plus squishy dough is absurdly compelling.

It Occurs to Me That Everything I'm Doing These Days Is The Hard Slog

2011-01-06T20:31:00.003-08:00

Not to be a whiner, but it requires a certain amount of fortitude to power through the long haul, eschewing the immediate reward and working toward the ultimate payoff. Job hunt? Check. Writing? Double and triple check. Particularly if I veer toward the longer work that I'm contemplating (how in the world do people do these things??). All other school components, such as research papers and field studies? Oh, yes. These aren't things I can check off quickly and be done with. Even exercise is something that you have to power through the unpleasantness on to get to where it's actually fun (yes, illness plus holidays means that I'm an asthmatic wheezy mess and starting from scratch).

Obviously, I need to balance all this out with immediate gratification that doesn't cost me a fortune and/or set me back on personal goals. I need a low-stress hobby. I hear crossword puzzles are relaxing.

There's Still Time to Get Your Festivus Poles

2010-12-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

Oh, Yes. I Do Love Me Some Surprise Holiday Gifts

2010-12-21T19:29:00.001-08:00

Thanks to lovely relatives (you know who you are), I've been digging into some good Magnetic Fields tune-age. Ahhhhhhh. . . .

Done, and Done.

2010-12-20T10:55:00.002-08:00

Residency number two has come to an end. Once again, I failed to find the kool-aid that everyone else was drinking. ("It's been life changing, this whole experience!! I love each and every one of you in this room. Yes, even you. The person in the back whose hair I mocked behind your back to my friends in the lounge.")

It was less inspiring for me this time than last, because the faculty punted on the literary analysis lectures in favor of panels on craft. Which is fine, it's just that I'm more jazzed to dissect what Faulkner does than to muse philosophically over "how much of myself" is going into my work.

My new mentor appears to be very smart, engaged, and helpful in terms of feedback. And she's already read some of my stuff, so she's had a preview of where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to do.

Alas, this term I have to cover all sorts of bases (come up with a field study, write a critical paper, do an intensive two-week online conference), so I'm going to have to hit the ground running. The sooner I knock this other crap out, the sooner I can concentrate on the writing.

I'm musing on whether I want to write a novel, though, for my final project. Everyone seems to leap into that direction because, of course, it's marketable. I'm not burning to do that, just yet. We shall see, though. Next term, I want to work with one of the ass-kicking mentors, who's pushed along folks from "Eh, don't care about novels" to "Um, okay, I'll get your a draft of my 300-page novel by that date."

We crank along toward MFA-ness.

Mad Cramming

2010-12-08T20:18:00.004-08:00

School starts the day after tomorrow, and I am trying to wrap up (1) paid work and deadlines (hah! which allegedly runs out at the end of this month, although no one has actually discussed this with me); (2) coursepack readings; (3) workshop piece comments; and (4) any other life-related do-dads that will go out the window for the next ten days.

The nice part is that, for this stint, I'm local and have my own car.

This is Awesome

2010-12-08T09:28:00.003-08:00

The Penmonkey's Paean:

This book is not the boss of my shit.

These characters dance when I tell them to dance. They leap, cackle, fuck and punch because I jolly well told them to and if they don’t do as I say I will have them nibbled to death by marmots.
This plot is knotted tight in the configuration I demand. With it I shall tie a noose, and with that noose I shall hang my fears and uncertainties by the neck until they void their bowels and their legs quit kickin’.
These words march in the order I choose. They are my little bitches, cobbled together of letters and made to carry heavy notions and lofty ideas and character motivations and bad-ass non-stop mad ninja action. In this way they are like ants, carrying more than they should rightfully be able to carry.

The whole thing is awesome.

This Is the Stuff We Live For

2010-12-03T16:56:00.004-08:00

I see on weather.com that about 4 inches of snow are about to fall in Bungalow-ville . . . and I do not have to shovel it. It's a liberating feeling, even if I am chilly right now (imagine fall, before you turn on your heater; no, I'm not looking for your sympathy). And also, it's super-duper foggy out right now.

A Theory on Social Networking

2010-12-01T20:08:00.002-08:00

People are trying to collect complete sets ("Marge! I found the last woman I used to work with at Dunder Mifflin Inc.!"). How else to explain the sheer volume of friend requests from random people I went to high school with, who were not friends and who, indeed, in some cases never even spoke to me? Does the fact that we rode a school bus together in the seventh grade really warrant continued updates into your child's hockey team/husband's beer making/baby's potty training progress or my snack-food preferences/celebrity hate watch/cat's barf status? I think not.

I'd ditch the whole thing, but for the ten people I genuinely know and like, who post pithy things, using the word "yule" as an adjective. Some people really excel in the medium.

One of Those Mysteries of Human Constitution?

2010-11-11T19:33:00.003-08:00

Here in the House of Random Illness, all occupants--human and feline alike--have cycled through being sick the past couple of weeks. The cat and I, unfortunately, are on illness #2: The Cold That Kicked Our Asses.

Strangely, although I'm coughing, congested, and scratchy throated (sounds like a species of warbler, doesn't it?), I actually feel energetic and otherwise fine. Whereas yesterday, I could barely get up off the couch, today I'm running errands! Sweeping floors! Baking bread! Washing dishes! Logging major hours for work! Revising a piece to move toward submission! It's like a switch somewhere got turned on.

Of course, I expect that tomorrow I delve into the next stage of the cold and toss all my good energy out the window.

Finally, Seeing the Work of Peers

2010-11-01T12:56:00.004-07:00

I've finally shipped off my last packet of writing to my mentor! And in the mix this month is a reading conference centered around our own work: I and the other handful of people assigned to my current mentor are submitting pieces and reading and responding to them.

I was curious, since the only time I've read others' work so far in this program was during the last residency. And that wasn't exactly a warm-and-fuzzy experience. I submitted a story that I'd been working on for a while, had received feedback from two of my teachers, and basically thought was in decent shape, even if the structure was unorthodox. Alas, my workshop group was a pile-on, with everyone weighing in on its many shortcomings and the ways that I could go back to the drawing board. One helpful soul opined that it was "melodrama" and had an unlikable, immature narrator. One guy who did start off with some positive comments and got drowned out by the group came up to me later to say that he didn't know what that was all about, and that he liked it.

If the works of the group had been brilliant and envy-inducing, I would have felt terrible and completely out of my depth. But they were just . . . okay. Problems with point of view, character, scene, and the standard laundry list you get with writing students at my old school or anywhere else. So the whole experience just baffled me and underscored that I was definitely not on the same reservation as these folks.

I definitely don't need universal praise, of course, though the opposite--the back-to-drawing-board-for-you and personal attacks--is unhelpful as well. I've always been of the viewpoint that most everyone has an interesting story to tell, and if they do that authentically, without trying to make it be something else, they generally get in the ballpark, even if technique needs some fine-tuning, from a reader perspective. As a reader, your job is to give that reader perspective, not tell someone how to write their own story. And you do it gently and constructively, because it's not a personal affront that someone else chose first person when the OBVIOUS solution, to you, is third.

So, we did the reader swap of our works in my tiny little online group. And I read all of their works! Which ranged from very nice (if done in a way I would have done differently) to okay but in need of some writing 101 skills to please-tell-me-this-is-a-satire-and-not-a-laundry-list-of-every-action-cliche-ever-seen. Not that I'm all that and a bag of chips. Hell no. I just expected another level among MFA students, the kind of writing that scared me away from my first class back in 2007. (Yeah, I'm a wee bit further along than I was then, but those people were objectively "Oh, I give up!" talented.)

And they have had pretty universally negative things to say about my piece. Not mean things, but more confused and tepid. (One woman actually apologized for being too critical.) The only thing I took serious umbrage at was the guy who couldn't bother to look up the literary term on teh Google to understand what I was even trying to do. In contrast, the works that are obviously in need of a lot of work are receiving effusive, almost ridiculous praise.

Again, I'm mostly scratching my head. It's an early draft that I meant to do more wholesale tweaking on after getting my mentor's perspective (she liked it as it wasn't and didn't have large edits to suggest). I get that tastes vary, and if you don't understand what someone is doing, it makes it hard to understand the piece.

But, still. Do I theorize over peoples' personal vendettas? Or do I say, as the dude did who came up to me after the first workshop experience: "When people are reacting that strongly, you must be doing something right."

And here I thought I was doing fun stuff for the masses.

Do You Think I Can Arrange Someone Singing My Writerly Praises Every Day? It's Such a Boost to Efficiency.

2010-10-18T12:15:00.004-07:00

If you are interested at all in how my MFA program is progressing, let me give you an update. Unbelievably, I am nearly through the first semester of the program, with one more packet of writing to send to my current menor. The way it works is that once a month, I send off 20 pages or so to my assigned mentor, along with a book-report-type writeup of something I've chosen to read. (The writeup is supposed to analyze the craft tools that I'm trying to extract from my chosen reading.)

Our mentor then reads our submissions and writes up detailed responses, depending on what where we are with the piece and what type of feedback we tell her we want. If, for example, something is far along, she might look at it more for language than structure. If it's a first draft of a story, she might give ideas on how the ending does or doesn't work, or how the characters' motivations aren't really laid out.

It's been a strange setup, because one can (I'm not saying I do this, mind you) procrastinate all month until the days before the due date. In a regularly meet-once-or-twice-a-week class, one needs to crank out a certain number of pages a week, so there's not a lot of room for procrastination. Here, however, I find myself noodling around on three of four things I may or may not submit; then, hours before deadline, I realize I need to focus on one thing. So I crank until I have the one thing to turn in. It's mostly been new stories, which is great, because that's sort of the whole purpose of the effort here. But on the flip side, it also means that you begin lots of things and don't really get around to completing anything. Particularly if you're me and find the hard part to be powering through revisions, long after you've lost your love of the people and the story.

As much as I feel like I've been turning in first drafts that I've barely cleaned up for typos, I've been gratified by my mentor's responses to them. She gets what I'm doing with them, points out components that give me pause, and makes suggestions that simplify things that I've made too convoluted by overthinking. Excellent, and it makes me think that I'm pursuing a good path for myself and developing my own voice.

But I don't want to get too smug about my Absolute Genius when she tells me my things are more developed than I led her to believe by my "first draft" hand waving. (Oh my god!!! I'm a natural!! I'm like Mozart! First draft and done!!!)

I Am Given Leave To Officially Blog Athletic Accomplishments

2010-10-01T11:19:00.002-07:00

You may have heard that la vida Laura is beachside these days. Awesome! And the beach contains a very lovely combo bike/pedestrian path that goes for miles and miles. If you're living somewhere that's mild all year round (and where no one ever bloody walks), this is an amazingly good thing.

I'm loving it. I've spent nearly every afternoon out there, actually jogging. In fact, I'm out there so much, it's doing really unpleasant things to my knees (no worries, I'm dialing back the intensity a little bit). Can't wait to get my bike.

Last weekend, we both got new shoes, which have made all the difference for my knees. And B showed me up this morning by heading to the path while I was still in my jammies and watching Castaway. We have shoes. We have a plan to step things up. I'm even considering (just considering, mind you) trying the swimming thing again. Flunking beginning swimming is not a propitious start to swimming as an enjoyable hobby. But then, I used to hate jogging too.

Signs Your Fake Job Is Stressing You Out

2010-09-29T10:48:00.004-07:00

You dream that you are trying to get to the office, via CTA, and you're in line at the farecard machine behind John Cusack. But you don't care so much that John Cusack is in front of you, because you're too busy discussing your non-job ("You do realize I'm not actually getting paid, right?") with your faux boss ("Yes, yes, that's terrible. Now about this thing you have to do by 2 p.m. . . "), who is also in line with you at the machine.

I believe there is a forest-for-the-trees lesson in here somewhere.

More of a Roller Coaster Than I Thought

2010-09-22T15:20:00.008-07:00

Yes, I'm hanging in, settling down, and trying to get into some kind of routine. After spending years and years taking care of myself and having a plan, I'm having a bit of difficulty rolling with things, but instead, am ping-ponging between various worries. Will I have money coming in for a couple more months, will I get paid for any of the super-human efforts I've put into working so far? It remains to be seen, and I'm starting to think I may have set myself up in a bad position, since bureaucracies can foot drag better than anything else. Whereas that scenario worked in my favor when it seemed like the status quo of full employment was in effect, the flip side of having nothing but the expectation that I work and I will get paid . . . somehow, "we'll work out the details, don't worry about it" does not.

What am I writing, how am I writing, where am I writing? What's the schedule that someone can get into who sits at home all day? I miss the calm feeling that I got when I stood in my kitchen: "Oh, hello yoga space! Your rock. Never change. Writing desk, with my little organizers I tidied up before sitting down to crank something out. I love ya!" I've never really thought about how tied my physical space is to my head space, particularly when those spaces are delineated for functions that require specific frames of mind: yoga, writing, to a less degree, cooking. (I'm sure it isn't the same for everyone, but for me, cooking is an emotional experience, delivering satisfaction, challenge, and sometimes comfort. Some people build a shelf, I try a new recipe or experiment with eggplant preparation). My old office space could have been any which way: ancient tea cups, trash not taken out, crumbs on the chair, piles of paper collecting dust on every surface. I never hung a picture, I had boxes that weren't unpacked for 8 years. And it just didn't matter to me because I just didn't derive any emotional investment from the space--it was just a place for me to knock out tasks that didn't matter and to wait for the clock to strike five. My home space, on the other hand, has always been more about me, driving and reflecting what's going on in my head.

All of this lack of control and worry is causing me to fluctuate between OCD girl--who will control every last element of controllable anything in my immediate environment--and "oh, I give up" chick, who would rather crawl under the covers all day, worry about writing and money tomorrow, and not wash dishes for three days.

But the whole purpose of this endeavor was to give myself a chance to explore this avenue and see where it leads me. Not many people get the chance, and it seems silly to squander it by being distracted and not actually writing. I expressly knew that I was taking a leap of faith, with someone who believes in what I'm doing getting my back (with reciprocation to come in future).

So I'm trying. It's hard, though. I'm finding it helps to exercise in the afternoons. I can exert myself for thirty minutes or so, running, walking, whatever, and not think about anything except how my body feels. Then, on the slow walk back, I can just feel the breeze and contemplate how gorgeous the ocean looks.

Living Beach-Side. Who Knew?

2010-08-31T16:56:00.003-07:00

It's so bizarre to be done, to have gone through all the appropriate hurdles to light here in the land of sun, light breezes, low humidity, and no snow. I felt for sure that the transition phase would last forever, that I'd never get through to the end of the purging and the awful real estate contortions.

In retrospect, the awful real estate contortions were not so awful, and I was very very lucky to be able to sell at all, let alone sell for what I paid for it. Okay, slightly less. And I'm now untethered! Able to watch zillow with dispassionate interest! I'll miss the space and the hardwood and the character. And I will mourn my kitchen for years to come.

But we are here! Settling into a routine, of sorts. The cat has adapted marvelously and has spent precisely zero time hiding in fear. Instead, she's kept up a steady food lobbying effort and has availed herself of the napping opportunities the new place affords her. Who doesn't want to nap in the sunbeam while a cool breeze comes in the patio door, I ask?

And I'm finding it a strange adjustment to no longer be an urban commuter. I've worked out a transitional telecommuting relationship with my employer until they figure out what they want to do with the position I've left. It would be nice to just keep on in this capacity, but I will enjoy it all while I have it and set up the contingency plans for when I don't. But I see where one might tend away from wearing pants in these types of working situations. And the fact that I'm not living alone anymore is the one thread of civilization keeping up the shower frequency.

Now I just have to hammer out my writing and exercise routines. I've been so far out of both for so long, I feel like all I want to do is wontonly web surf and nap on the couch.

The Key Is Not to Obsessively Watch Zillow

2010-08-07T12:15:00.002-07:00

Getting whiplash here, but we've cleared the most-recent hurdle by me sucking up the bulk of the difference. I loooooove being a seller in a buyer's market. When it's all over and the dust settles, I'll be pleased to walk away with anything. (And I'm not celebrating until we leave the closing.)

So, planning forward on how to unload nearly everything I own and get the ten things I want to take out to California. We're still hashing. I'm contemplating sorting and hauling out to the trash, but I'm so wiped from heroic lawn mowing that I may start tomorrow morning instead, before things get too stifling. I'm also making lists upon lists upon lists of people to call, things to do, things to cancel (useless weed-control service? check.), items to stockpile in advance on the other side (hint: elderly high-maintenance kitties need a lot of shit).

Meanwhile, C has had her intro to the carrier of terror, which will haul her along Southwest's friendly skies. She was pretty cool about it, mostly because all we did was sit on the porch and gape at the neighbors.

Spoke Too Soon

2010-08-01T15:42:00.001-07:00

The appraisal came in $9K below the agreed-upon price. So we shall see if the deal can be salvaged.

I so wish I didn't have real estate in this market.

I Am a Master Negotiator

2010-07-24T10:05:00.003-07:00

Crisis averted on the real estate front. I cagily countered their $4,000 demand with a $200 credit. They accepted it, and we are now moving forward on all fronts. Woohoo! Feel free to set up your visits to come help me throw shit away. There's lots of good stuff to be had, I assure you.

But I will say, as excited as I am to be moving on, I am so going to miss this house. I hadn't realized how much work I put into making it juuuuust so. My little writing corner (the realtor gushed over that), my cooking space, my feng shui-ful bedroom are all very happy making for me.

Possibly Too Good to Be True

2010-07-14T19:16:00.003-07:00

Contract on the house may be falling through, with the buyers asking for an additional $4000 in a credit, on top of almost $5K in closing costs.

I really wish I'd never bought real estate.

Who Do You Write Like?

2010-07-14T17:39:00.003-07:00

If you're me:

I write like
P. G. Wodehouse

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Never read him, but! But! "Acknowledged as a master of English prose"!

Or, with a different story:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

PTSD

2010-07-13T05:27:00.003-07:00

I find it really traumatic that I'm doing these goddamned city inspections on my house, again. Paint my house? Didn't I just do this? Why???? Why do I get to deal with the headache both buying and selling?? Isn't it enough that I scraped up the hideous linoleum in the kitchen???

The Countdown Begins in Earnest

2010-07-07T16:38:00.002-07:00

I've started my MFA program! Soon after I finish typing my inane musings here, I'm going to do some homework and shit. Can you believe that? Homework??

The residency was an interesting experience. I can't say it was "fun," exactly, but it was thought provoking. I'd like to connect more with the people in the program, but at this point, we're still in our own orbits (except the people who are getting everybody's facebook pages). The seminar sessions were very broad, topic-wise, and worthwhile from a craft perspective. It seems like the perfect follow up to my class experiences thus far.

And just before I left for my residency, I acquired a real estate agent, who suggested that we start showing the house while I was out of town. Ergo, I kicked it into gear and spent a day staging and cleaning my house like nobody's business. All the things I meant to do--carrying out furniture and so forth--went by the wayside. But the end results were pretty spectacular, even if I had to stuff some things in my basement, in a tidy fashion.

Three showings later (well, four, if you count a consolidated tour of two parties), I have a contract on the house. The price is a sad reminder of what I could have gotten, had I sold before the crash. But considering the carnage of the housing market around me--short sales, foreclosures, houses on the market for months unto months, price drops following price drops--it's a very respectable deal that gives me a bit of money for the transition to the next job in a newer, sunnier location. Don't tell the cat.

We close on August 15. Oh my god!

Contemplating Class Offerings

2010-04-27T17:23:00.002-07:00

So I got the schedule of seminars offered for the first residency (we're talking the low-residency option here, as opposed to the traditional residency program that never, um, seemed to get around to their rejection letters). And what fun it is to consider options! Do I want to learn how to write a sex scene or approach the business aspects of promoting one's self and of being a writer in a thoughtful and organized manner? Or do I want to leap into some good old literary theory and do a nostalgic view of Faulkner and Light in August? It all feels like some unholy union of Montessori and military school.

Beyond that, we are motoring through the official crazy busy, in which there is a lot to do in a short amount of time. In addition to which, we have to hope that, in short order, some well-appointed buyer wants to pay handsomely for a gorgeous bungalow.

Why Oh Why Have I Never Made Curry?

2010-03-28T09:27:00.002-07:00

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a crock-pot vegetable curry recipe. I made it last night, and lo! It was so very very delicious! And also a wee bit spicy (glad I got the sweet curry powder rather than the hot), but in a good way. Look at me, learning to dig spicy things, mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes! Vegetarianism has been a real boon to expanding my food palate, especially once I got past the "um, mac and cheese doesn't have any meat in it!" phase.

Has anyone else been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? It's making me really want to cook in earnest (and dear god, I can never look at a chicken nugget again). It's also making me glad that my generation wasn't quite so saturated in fast and processed, pre-packaged food.

Nancy Pelosi Rocks!

2010-03-22T08:08:00.002-07:00

Can she get it done, or can she get it done?

It's a whole new freaking world. I'm just sad for all the people whom it's too late to help.

Gahhh! The Panic Sets In: Displacement Activity!

2010-03-14T09:01:00.003-07:00

While I furiously bake brownies, refresh my favorite blogs, and do my yoga and cardio workout, I make mental lists of everything I see in my house that requires my attention (that window cord; my god, those lights in the garage that haven't worked since the first month I lived here; shit, has that woodwork always had such huge holes?). Of course, I will have to get the city to do an inspection then and fix anything that needs to be fixed before I put the house on the market. And I will be out of vacation time, so I'm seriously wondering how I'll be accomplishing all this in tidy weekend intervals. And while I frantically bake brownies, etc., I panic more about the now-smaller weekend windows I have. . . . It's a vicious circle.

So I'm accepted into one program and awaiting word on the second. But since they're both in the same place, I know where I'm moving and can plan accordingly. Yay! Can I outsource the logistical things? Not only am I not emotionally and financially capable, I lack the physical strength to, say, move every piece of furniture I have into my kitchen so that the floor guy can sand and work his miracles.

And I'm Officially Accepted into an MFA Program!

2010-03-09T16:35:00.003-08:00

In the space of two days, one acceptance, one rejection. One more to go and, I hope, a decision. But either way, I'm going to grad school!

Now That the Plates Are Spinning, We Just Need to Work in Juggling the Chainsaws

2010-02-23T10:10:00.004-08:00

Wisdom gleaned: It turns out that after you take a two-week sabbatical from exercise on account of illness, it is possible to dive back into it without having lost much endurance. Yay! And not only that, but whatever you did to your legs and feet by being overzealous and not wearing proper footwear can be healed in that time.

Which is all to say that I'm getting back into a routine of regular exercise and healthful eating. On the latter, I will pass along to you more wisdom gleaned. A salad can be so dreary, can't it? Iceberg lettuce or something equally bland and uninspiring, topped with some watery tomatoes and maybe a cucumber, all drenched in some salad dressing to give it all some flavor. Today, I discovered the secret to a Laura-Concocted Ultimate Tasty Salad. Take spinach (or whatever else you like that is not iceberg lettuce), then add to it a massive amount of random vegetables and other goodies left in your fridge from other recipes: peppers, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and hard-boiled egg, in today's example. Then add the eensiest bit of the lightest salad dressing you have. Shake the mix up in your tupperware or other container. Sprinkle lots of fresh ground pepper on top. Yum.

The chainsaw we need to add to this life juggling is the writing discipline, which has gone out the window with all of my revision and application fervor. So this is a nice bit of inspiration: writers listing their ten rules for writing fiction. Margaret Atwood demonstrates why she is my favorite writer--living, at any rate.

This Is Helpful

2010-02-21T11:05:00.002-08:00

If you want to find local sources for various fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other items. Online sources, farms, co-ops, restaurants, and markets are represented.

Also, eggs are good for you; research shows that consumption of eggs isn't related to higher levels of cholesterol and that they may provide other health benefits.

I'm also liking this place for workout tips and videos and nutrition and meal suggestions. The whole concept of nutritional content gets decoupled from calorie content and "bad" elements like fat, so it's nice to get away from the simplistic "hey, here's some diet-friendly low-calorie processed snacks off the shelf" in favor of a more holistic approach. I used to have a pull-out nutrition guide from a magazine, which featured gorgeous photographs of sample meals and portions for a week. It hit all major food groups and proper allotments of them over X span of time. It was great inspiration for nutrient-rich combos to try and also useful for measuring how much I was eating and why. (Appropriate portion of cheese for a protein boost of a meal: the size of your thumb.) And seeing the food look so yummy and lovely fed the virtuous cycle of how good eating well made me feel.

It pisses me off that we live in such an unhealthful food environment and that we blame individuals for what it does to them to eat poor diets. Based on my own experiences, I honestly think that we are so conditioned to crave high-fat, high-sodium, high-calorie processed food that it's like physical withdrawal to get away from it. Every single time I have, for example, potato chips, it's never a one-off deal. I crave and want to eat more every single day, for lunch or what have you. So I buy them and eat them--snarfing, say, half a can of pringles in an afternoon, until my stomach hurts--each time telling myself I'll moderate or stop. Eventually, I have to go cold turkey and not buy the stuff at all. And it's like hell waiting for the cravings to subside.

So I think I'm bucking the system by preparing my own foods and choosing healthful ingredients, raised responsibly. But as a solution, it's only sustainable so long as you have the income to do it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-13T13:37:00.002-08:00

Hug 'em if you got 'em. Or boycott, which is perfectly respectable. At the very least, I suggest clearance chocolate after the fact. B and I are celebrating remote cupcakery.

I am also coughing my way through day ten of my creeping illness and prepping outfit scenarios for Oprah. Set your DVR's people. I'll be applauding with great zest.

The Day in Productivity

2010-01-30T15:05:00.002-08:00

Got up at reasonable time.
Filed taxes, both state and federal.
Completed and confirmed financial aid forms (absent late-discovered correction that must now wait a week, so as to allow prior changes to go through).
Investigated certificates of deposit.
Exercised.
Bought foodstuffs.
Bought cheapie additional exercise gear so as to facilitate future exercise.
Worked on languishing story.

Now I just have to clean the house and unpack all of my luggage from, um, holiday travels.

Frantic Displacement Activity?

2010-01-27T12:48:00.002-08:00

I am sitting at my desk and fantasizing. Not about vegging on the couch, watching movies, writing, eating ice cream, or drinking an amazing wine, but about exercising. Specifically, running. I hate running. I have exercise-induced asthma, I have flat feet, and I get side stitches. I also have crippling childhood memories of forced running in gym class. Everybody else would be done, and I would still be puffing through my ten-and-a-half-minute mile. There are old ladies who can walk faster than that.

Nevertheless, I'm really really wishing it weren't 20 degrees out and/or that I had a treadmill.

For the Love of All That's Holy

2010-01-21T08:09:00.002-08:00

I'm So Bored . . .

2010-01-12T13:20:00.001-08:00

I may be slipping into a coma.

Counting Down

2009-12-29T14:23:00.001-08:00

She's Weary from All This Effort Too

2009-12-13T10:11:00.001-08:00

Do you know how exhausting it is to listen to me read essays and stories aloud, over and over again?

It Is An Important Day in Application History

2009-12-12T16:50:00.002-08:00

I have completed all of my applications, I have submitted all of my writing samples, I have ordered all of my transcripts. My final letter writer is getting his recommendations out next week.

I am done done done. Now I start the financial aid begging and the long, scary wait.

Observed, by Someone Much Wiser Than Me, and with a Better Wine Selection

2009-12-08T12:40:00.001-08:00

We are all suffering from brain clouds.

What Does it Mean When the Time Capsule Looks a Lot Like Your Current Life?

2009-12-05T12:00:00.008-08:00

So as you all know, since I talk about it ad nauseum, I'm applying for MFA programs. The list is rather short and centered around geographical and cost considerations. That is, I am happy to endure some geographical contortions if the school in question is not only a top-ten school, but if they also offer waiver of tuition and a living stipend. I'm less inclined to dive into debt for fifty grand a year at a program that may do nothing more for me than give me a community to write among for a couple of years. Having an MFA shows that you're serious about your writing and helps you polish your craft. A top program can also provide networking possibilities and the opportunity to learn from the best writers. It can also open doors for teaching, if that's a course you'd like to take. (And it's something I'm interested in, from the viewpoint that I feel strongly about what I've learned this far about approaching writing as a craft and also from the viewpoint that writers have to earn a living if they're not publishing best-sellers. Focusing on helping others improve their craft allows me to immerse in creativity as a vocation, which is much more conducive to what I want to accomplish than copyediting.)

In short, it's a tension between getting into the best school I can and balancing realistic considerations like age, debt worries, partner aspirations and career goals, and what I'm likely to get from the whole endeavor. It's a lot to consider, and I worry a lot that I'm selling myself short, or dreaming too big, or wasting time on the schoolin' when I should be writin'.

In a lot of ways, I wish I had thought to follow this course when I first graduated. I would have been on a more traditional track, with fewer detours. I think about the time when I was flopping around for a direction, terrified to just find a job. I sent our resumes, I researched graduate programs. I liked the cocoon where I was, so I determined to apply for library school at my alma mater. I knew people in the program, I liked books, I worked in a library, it seemed sensible. I took the GRE, I collected my paperwork, I filled everything out. Then I lost the application right before the deadline. I never found it. I took that to be the ultimate sign of ambivalence and gave up on library school.

So in my current endeavor, I am similarly busily filling out online applications. However, I found myself flummoxed trying to remember my GPA and credits earned as an undergrad. I have my transcript requests at the ready, with a request for my own unofficial copy. Alas, this solution doesn't do you much good when you're trying to save you hard data-entry work on screen seven and fill in the crucial information later.

While I cursed and fruitlessly beat my desk, it occurred to me that I have a filing cabinet in my attic, which I've been lugging around with me every since I graduated college. It represents my earliest attempts to put my life on some sort of track--each goal and aspect is represented by tidily labeled hanging folders. Thus I could label, categorize, and slide things into their appropriate folder. Soothing order amid the chaos of a life that I had to, for the first time in my life, direct the course of.

So I climbed into my attic and unearthed it from amid the dust and shingle debris from my re-roofing. Here are some of the folder categories: "short-term job search" ("How do I not starve while I figure out what I want to do?"); "long-term job search" ("What do I want to do as, like, a career?"); "bills" (Attempt to assert financial control as a Real Life Adult); "writing," in which I had stuffed the one good piece I had written thus far and hoped to collect more; and "grad school." When I dug through the grad school folder, the only thing I found was a copy of my unofficial transcript from college. Brilliant! So very helpful in the current circumstances and exactly what I was looking for.

In this case, I take it as a good Freudian turn that I could remember enough to actually locate something I stored so many years ago. It's like my brain is onboard with the ultimate plan as opposed to sabotaging it. But I can't help but be a bit humbled and disturbed that my categories haven't changed all that much. I have a career that I'm not enamored of or growing in. I can open the want ads and apply to be an "X" with the following skill set. But I'm still trying to touch base on the same goals, still trying to figure out how to earn a living, figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and figure out how to write things I'm proud of. I just hope that some of this is converging.

We Begin the Final Countdown to Turkey Fest 2009

2009-11-25T07:23:00.002-08:00

Hope your preparations, if you are doing any, are progressing well. We did the final pre-prep checklist last night, and I think we're good to go with ingredients and accessories. We reiterated menus, we ascertained cooking times and temperatures, we set up a schedule of food-preparation. So tonight is the first round of cooking and baking, plus the house prep. Then tomorrow, we launch Mr. Turkey on his voyage to, we hope, carnivorous splendor.

Fingers crossed that it all comes off well, but if anything does fail, we have at least twenty bottles of wine, some beer, some champagne, and port to carry us through. (Yes, my wine rack has actually been pressed into use and been allowed to accumulate.)

When I Am Rich and Famous, I Will Never Forget You Little People. Yes, You. You Made It All Possible.

2009-11-23T12:19:00.004-08:00

So I'm furiously revising my stories for MFA applications, and they're coming along pretty well. I don't want to speak too precipitously, but I believe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've completed the actual application for one school, am gearing up for the other two (one started), and am following all that up with a flurry of transcript ordering and mailings to departments.

I was perusing through some old drafts of one of them on Saturday, looking for things I had cut in past versions, and I was surprised at just how much revision I had done on the piece in question. I think of myself as noodling around the edges and making superficial changes, but it's been a long evolution on this story. It's heartening, really. One of my references, a former teacher, showed me a draft of his letter of recommendation, and he noted that I grasped the importance of revision. It reinforces a view of myself as hardworking, looking to improve, and taking in constructive criticism. I like that view a lot.

The part about this whole endeavor that really runs contrary to my makeup, though, is the schizophrenic melding of the solitary artist with the self-promotion machine. You can write the most beautiful pieces in the world, but unless you send them out in the world and work toward getting published, you might as well leave them in a dusty drawer.

So, it behooves writers to network, promote, send things out, withstand rejection. I had a couple of offputting classmates in previous classes who pelted everyone with their myspace pages and facebook fan sites, all promoting their work. It's uncomfortable to get blatantly networked for someone else's career aspirations. I'm supportive of other people's work and am happy to spread the word if I think it's worthwhile, but at the same time, there's a line between cultivating relationships that enhance your ability to spread news about your writing and treating people like their sole purpose is to help you.

Which brings me to friend X, whom I met about fifteen years ago. We both loved books, talked about writing, and followed a similar trajectory from our unsatisfying technical jobs to editing and academia. After I moved away, she kept me posted for a while on stories she was getting published (which I would diligently and mostly unsuccessfully try to look up), but we lost touch a couple of years ago, at the time her first novel came out. At her exhortation, I bought the novel, told all my friends, mindful that sales figures would determine the fate of the book itself and her eventual career. After that, I sent her emails, to which I never got replies. I figured she had changed email addresses. From other sources, I learned that her press was good, and she's launched what appears to be a great career, for which I'm very happy. I know she worked really hard for it and is very talented.

Recently, she friended me on facebook, which was awesome--I was excited to see how she was and tell her what was new in my life, on the cusp, as I am, of new frontiers. I sent her a quick email commenting on her kids (one more than last I spoke to her), effusing over her successful and good work. And I heard nothing back. And what was initially a personal page when she friended me has morphed into a professional promotion page, pictures and personal details gone.

So I kind of feel like I've been used to up the facebook promotion footprint, and that she really doesn't give a shit what's going on in my life anymore. Which is, to say the least, depressing.

Ergo, I vow to not be one of those power-hungry, fame-hungry people who will only trade personal banalities with you if you promise to sell ten copies of my Great American Novel. (The one that I'm writing right this very second. Um. Yeah.)

And Today I Am Somewhat Charged and Creatively Energized

2009-11-05T09:27:00.002-08:00

I got some boosting feedback from one of my old writing teachers, who is writing a letter of recommendation for me. Not that it's helpful to have only praise singing (he did offer concrete fixes to the stories I sent him), but damn, it helps buck you up for the ego-slamming of applications and writing in general. Plus, seeing yourself as hard-working as reflected by others helps to affirm that, yes! I'm working, improving, and hopefully going to produce better and better things. It's also helpful that he harangues me to send things out, for that is the bane. I wish I could outsource that dreary research and administrative work to someone else.

But, as a result of the confidence infusion, I rode in the train this morning jotting notes to myself on the various pieces I'm working on.

It's tough to stay on track. That picture up there is my work desk and provides an uncanny depiction of my schizophrenic life at present: I'm celebrating! Happy! Great things! contrasted with "Oh, my god, don't make me push this thing again, it's just going to come back down and squash me."

Cranky R Us

2009-11-04T13:50:00.007-08:00

You know the feeling, when you want to gnaw carrot sticks, not because you're hungry, but because the sound and the crushing of your teeth on the tender carrot fiber is so satisfyingly forceful.

I swear that I've not spoken to a human being all day, apart from the guy at the DMV, who was not amused at my jokes about spending years of your life stuck with a bad driver's license photo. Possibly this was because as I was working my feeble attempts at mood-lightening, he was looking at my new photo, in which I look like a hypnotized soccer mom. Which is not to say that soccer moms are bad, it's just that when you've been carrying a ten-year-old photo around, it's a bit jarring to see yourself looking like you should be in a mini-van commercial.

Also, this day may never end. Notwithstanding that a paycheck is important these days especially, it's irritating sometimes to spend the bulk of your day-to-day running in useless little hamster-wheel circles.

Hmmmmmm...

2009-10-30T14:45:00.003-07:00

I've figured out how to do everything on my spiffy new BlackBerry . . . except make a phone call on it.

The Holidays Are Fast Approaching

2009-10-25T10:30:00.004-07:00

It's had to believe it's almost Halloween, isn't it? Doesn't it feel like summer was just starting a second ago? Then of course we'll have Thanksgiving festivities coming up soon. On that last, I'm kind of excited because I'm hosting my first official holiday in ten years. Yay! I'm pondering exciting mashed potato recipes and all the variables in cooking a turkey. I'm ill prepared to be in turkey-land on account of being a vegetarian, but I hear they have help lines and everything. Plus, B is a knowledgeable carnivore and thus will be helping to game things out. It shall all be fine and fun, if for no other reason than we'll make sure to have plenty of alcohol flowing all around.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I'm running at top speed through fog. There's so much to do that I can barely keep track of it.

In other news, I'm in happy technology land. Here are things that are way fun: slingboxes and Blackberries.

You Get What You Give

2009-10-16T13:12:00.001-07:00

Contemplating Writing and Cupcakery

2009-10-08T10:26:00.002-07:00

I declare it to be a universal good to be away from the daily routine of ineptitude to lounge, beach adjacent, watch hummingbirds flit from nearby palm trees, and think about your day's adventures. To write? To wander down to nearby shopping and cupcake bakery? To nap? To do all of the above? Why, yes!

Man, the only thing I miss is my cat. If she packed up tidier, you'd all get that "no forwarding address" sticker tout suite.

Saturday, however, we explore new grad school horizons. I'm very excited.

Ah, Higher Learning

2009-10-05T12:28:00.003-07:00

I have my first information session at an MFA program on Saturday. I like them already for speedily answering my battery of application information, though they need to do a better job of providing directions, like where recommendations should be mailed besides, "directly to the college."

I feel like a wee young lass of eighteen again.

The Referendum

2009-09-23T09:40:00.002-07:00

Measuring your life choices against other roads not taken (and other people who chose those roads), mid-life style, amid the economic downturn.

Yes: the Referendum gets unattractively self-righteous and judgmental. Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.
The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own.

Why I Will Never Be a Vegan

2009-09-22T14:34:00.003-07:00

I made this really fantastic vegetable stew (Enchanted Broccoli Forest; I am a dedicated Moosewood adherent) that featured an interesting blend of Greek and Mexican flavor influences. A day later, my house was still fragrant with the delicious combination of cumin, cinnamon, and garlic. Yum.

Alas, within two hours of snarfing a good quantity of the delicious vegetable concoction, I am starving again. Like I will never be able to eat enough to fill the void.

It's like eating Chinese food.

It Is Friday, Allowing Us to Focus on Our Inner Selves

2009-09-18T09:38:00.002-07:00

Random music, peeps, gets you through the day.

1. if she wants me, belle & sebastian
2. quiche lorraine, the b-52's (damn, I'm hungry)
3. when my baby's beside me, big star (see Sound Opinions!)
4. that's entertainment, the jam
5. bank holiday, blur
6. one chord wonders, the adverts
7. the happy birthday song, andrew bird
8. round the hairpin, the long blondes
9. loaded gun, the dead 60's
10. the new face of zero and one, the new pornographers

And random music random question: Who is this Dylan in the movies, of which Belle & Sebastian speak?

Wherein We Learn to Keep Our Mouths Shut, Smile, and Just Let Things Happen

2009-09-16T16:07:00.005-07:00

Pursuant to the usual craziness at work, I piped up about my stress--in a dispassionate, productive way--such that management might be inclined to consider my views, weigh my worth to the enterprise and my years of service, and do something to address the concrete problem raised. Alas, not so. I think there's a file on me and my many attitude problems.

I'm not quite sure how I got to this point as a problem child, but I guess this is the way things work in offices--it kind of snowballs when you're unhappy, and complainers are a downer. I've had such positive experiences in work environments and am so used to being hypercompetent and a people pleaser, though, that it's odd for me to contemplate anyone not thinking I'm a total asset.

It's a learning experience, to be sure. I would handle things differently, just in professional terms. I'm too emotionally invested in most things, and take conflict personally. I do tend to let things build, then flip out. When you're in flip-out mode over a pattern of behavior, you tend to make generalizations that can be picked apart.

And it's all about the big picture and the people--i.e., my big picture and people. Grad school, baby! God willing.

'Tis a shame, though, because I obviously stayed way too long. Personally, I like these people, but I've lost a lot of respect professionally.

Architecture Tours

2009-09-15T16:33:00.002-07:00

They are a great deal of fun, particularly when they end in a drink. However, I recommend, when considering signing up for a two-and-a-half-hour-long walking tour, that you do not wear uncomfortable shoes or visit a museum--wherein you do a lot of walking--beforehand.

Possibly, the lingering effects of all this explain why, despite driving to work and doing no walking at lunch, I can barely contemplate getting off the couch.

Things I've Learned This Weekend

2009-09-14T08:22:00.003-07:00

That whereas I, as a young tot, wrote epic poems of broken bones and swingsets, others wrote odes to their mothers' roast beef.
That there exists a school whose sports teams are known as the "Pretzels." The sports metaphors write themselves, and the marching-band configurations take on an added dimension of difficulty. If, for instance, their signature formations involved dimmed stadium lighting and colored hat lights, imagine the possibility of collision and injury! (Although this risk would possibly bring higher rewards at state competitions.)
That floating along in a tank of saline solution can involve zen-like peace, but also salt in one's ears.
That brunch is, by far, the best meal of the day.

And It's Almost the Weekend, No?

2009-09-10T09:49:00.001-07:00