2012 In Retrospect

January—I spent the month working on my thesis, “The Nine Lives of Snapdragon,” though I hadn’t yet decided on the title yet.  I took a look at the story of Puss in Boots with the idea of what really happened, without the magic and the talking animals, etc.  Puss became a young woman who had been an assassin, on the run from the mistakes she made.  She had such a strong voice, the story almost wrote itself.  I enjoyed the freedom of an entire month to work on this story.  I also spent time polishing my music and working on an article for a local magazine.  (The article didn’t really work out.)

February—Nothing very particular happened in this month, aside from beginning my final semester of college.  I had a lot of work to do, with both my thesis and my senior recital looming.  I was beginning to gather together several people to perform in my recital of original compositions in March—scheduling rehearsals, hunting down performers.  It was both stressful and stimulating to work with so many different people, to bring all the details together and plan for one moment.

March—My composition recital was March 13 at 7:30.  I had written nine pieces of music—three voice-and-piano, one for woodwind trio, three for choir, and two for solo piano.  Thirteen performers helped me with the recital, friends and acquaintances and strangers alike.  They helped hold me together through the stressful last days before the recital.  On the morning of the event, I woke up in my sunshiny room and stretched, and then the realization of what I would have to do that day hit me like a ton of bricks.  I bought two dozen roses that morning to give to my performers, ate a sushi lunch in the five minutes before class, baked cookies and made punch and had my hair styled by a friend.  At 7:25, I was backstage in my blue gown and red shoes, panicking.  At 7:32, I walked out onstage and suddenly, all was right.  It was delightful to hear my music performed, and though it was far from perfect, I felt wonderful about it all.

April—Once the recital was done, I had time to relax.  I had been clever enough to schedule myself lightly for the end of college, taking only the classes that were absolutely necessary to finish up.  I had time to breathe, time to appreciate my wonderful, beautiful school and all the wonderful people in it.

May—I turned in my thesis, 525 pages and my proudest accomplishment.  A few days later I went to see the performance of my best friend’s play, Decision Height, for which I had written a few short themes of music.  And on the 20^th, I graduated second in my class from Hollins University, which will always be, to me, one of the best places in the world.

June, July, August—Here my calendar goes blank.  I had no plans, really, no prospects.  I went back home with my family, and for several weeks I camped out on the sofa.  There were a few different job opportunities I had, but not terribly many, and none of them panned out.  I spent the time writing, working, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with this period of my life, which I had always wanted to reach but never actually planned for.

September—Finally I screwed up my courage and made the jump.  With the help of my father and mother, I looked for and found an apartment in Roanoke, VA, the same town where my university is located.  I was familiar with the area and the people, and so by the second-to-last week in the month I had moved into a tiny studio apartment, basement level, one room, kitchen and bathroom.  It had white walls, brown carpets and old-fashioned green bathroom, and it was dim and ugly and to this day I absolutely love it.  I call it my foxhole.

October—For a frightening few weeks, I watched my savings disappearing to rent and bills and things that I had never really had to deal with before.  I tried a few places looking for a job, and finally I walked into a place where they were willing to take me, despite lack of experience.  Hired as a server at Ruby Tuesday, I had to admit that it was less than I had expected for myself, and probably less than others had expected of me.  But my family had the grace not to say anything, and so I started there with a light heart.

November—The primary focus of this month was a new writing project I began, part of the National Novel Writing Month movement which I had avoided for all four years of college.  I decided, however, that I couldn’t run forever, and so I chose one of my old stories and buckled down.  The novel I chose was one which I had tried several times to write, a complicated and detailed fantasy story involving a cursed princess, a long journey, and a young man who has no idea what he’s getting into.  The latter is an important element in any good story, I think.  NaNoWriMo was terribly helpful to me, in teaching good writing habits.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that I kept up with those habits after the month was over.

December—This month is always about Christmas, and it’s true in this case as well.  I had planned carefully to allow for as much time off as possible for the holidays, but it still was a bit of a shock to have only four days to spend with my family.  I suppose this is being an adult.  Despite all the time-crunching, all the most important traditions were accomplished, and I returned to my foxhole thinking of the years to come, when I might celebrate Christmas on my own, with new people whom I love.  That time, however, has not yet come.  I still look back to the blue mountains and the hills dotted with horses to find home.

It was a landmark year, full of firsts and lasts, and certainly the first year of a new chapter of my life.  Looking into the new year, I see nothing that is certain, and that is both exciting and terrifying.  I can’t wait to get into the rest of my life.  Happy New Year, everyone!

The Christmas Spirit

Right now, I’m listening to a song entitled, “The Atheist Christmas Carol.”  The description below the song is a disclaimer: “The message applies to everyone, regardless of religion.”  It’s a beautiful song, with love being the primary message.  It’s the season of grace coming out of the void, where man is saved by a voice in the distance…where hope is currency and age is welcomed home.

This got me to thinking—what does Christmas mean without Christ?  Many of my fellow Christians would immediately answer, nothing.  And that’s true, in a way.  But Christmas is more than religion now.  It’s been in our culture for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it’s evolved with that culture.  The entire world changes every year in preparation for Christmas.  We call it the Christmas spirit, that inexplicable feeling of well-being that seems to come over everyone (in some more strongly than others). 

Even without Christ now, Christmas is a force of good in the world.  People make journeys back to where they came from, reaching out to their families, speaking to people who they haven’t seen in months.  We remember how much we care about people, and what our lives really mean to us.  In this season, it’s easier to accept ourselves as we are, even if it’s only for a while.  And I think that's a wonderful thing.

Why does this happen?  Is it Christ moving in the world, or just a necessary once-a-year escape from the hardships of the world?  Both?  Neither?  I’m not going to try to answer that question.  It’s not important why it happens, but that it does.  So from that warm spirit inside me, whether it’s divine or purely human, I say, Merry Christmas to all.  Don’t forget I love you.

It's Not the Gun, But the Hand on the Trigger

On Friday, a young man went into an elementary school with a gun.  He killed twenty children and six adults before turning the gun on himself.  Twenty-eight people dead, most of them younger than ten years old.  Just stare at those words for a minute—nothing else I say can encompass the full horror of it all.

Sickening as this is, it’s becoming a familiar story.  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, and now Newtown are names which bring to mind violence and terror.  Thanks to the media, we know more than we ever wanted to know about what happened there and in other such places.

My interest is in people’s reactions.  Of course there is outrage and grief throughout the nation, and everyone has an idea of how to prevent this from happening again.  The most common suggestions involve gun control or mental health issues.  But a problem like this takes more than one solution to solve.

Take gun control, for instance.  Even before this happened, people were up in arms (pun intended) against any kind of regulation against guns.  And the constitution does say that we have a right to bear arms.  Personally, I wish the things had never been invented.  There’s something essentially terrible to me about being able to kill someone from one hundred feet away or more, with no more effort than the twitch of a finger.  But the fact is, the damage has been done.  Millions of people in America already own guns.  They are a part of our culture, and culture cannot be changed at will.  Love them or hate them, guns are here to stay.  Of course, I wouldn’t say no to a proper screening process for anyone wanting to buy a gun.  The fault lies not with the machine but with the operator.

That being said, we should focus on the person behind the gun.  Mental health is not something commonly talked about in the United States.  There aren’t many resources out there for those who have mental disabilities.  Families with mentally ill children struggle on their own to deal with them, living in fear that someday they will lose control.  And these children, who desperately need help and understanding, soon grow up to be the monsters that declare war on innocent people and the world at large.  (To read a testimony from a mother, click here.)

I firmly believe that violence only leads to more violence.  We may not be able to tie the shooter’s hands, but we might be able to convince him not to pull the trigger.  With the proper assistance and medical help, it’s possible that Adam Lanza and everyone like him may not have picked up the gun in the first place.

Photo credit http://smpalestine.com/2012/12/15/thoughts-on-the-newtown-shooting-from-halfway-around-the-world/.  To see an article about the victims, click here.

What Comes Next?

Today is the last day in my lifetime that the day, month and year will all be the same.  12/12/12.  According to some of my friends, this is a very big deal.  We got to talking last night about how it might be the end of the world, how something catastrophic may happen.  Never mind that a calendar is a human concept, the simple assignment of numbers and names to the passage of time.  Who knows if whatever spiritual power that controls beginnings and endings is on the same calendar as we are?

It did get me to thinking, though, about the world and about what comes after the world.  You can say what you like about religion and faith, but the truth is no one knows what happens after death.  Everything else we can—and probably have—studied, explored, explained, understood or at least begun to understand.  But this: not a clue.

Religion is our attempt to deal with this.  It’s comforting, isn’t it, for someone to say, “Don’t worry, when we die everything will be better.”  It’s reassuring to believe that there’s something greater than this sometimes humdrum life we live.  But every religious person fears a single question: what if you’re wrong?

I’m a Christian.  I believe very strongly in redemption and resurrection and heaven and hell and God’s love.  But I don’t think it’s a bad thing to question my beliefs.  What if I am wrong?  What if there is nothing after death, and all of my striving to be a good person was wasted?

In that case, I would argue that it wasn’t wasted.  Even if after death I go into a hole and stay there, and my consciousness is forever lost, my religion wasn’t pointless.  Religion serves not only as hope for after death, but also a philosophy for life.  Even if I am wrong, believing what I believe makes me a better person in this life.  It makes me more sympathetic, more thoughtful, and also more confident in myself.  Other religions do the same, teaching kindness, respect, balance, and harmony to their followers.  We are better people because of our beliefs.

So I maintain that it doesn’t matter what happens when the world ends, or in Whom we put our trust.  In the end, no one really knows what’s right or wrong, and every religion has its good points.  Our goal should be to make this world the best place we can, because it may be all we have, and if it isn’t, well, we can move on into the next with our consciences clear.

Namaste

I’m trying a new addition to my schedule today.  Schedules are good: they help me organize not only my day, but also my thoughts, and get myself ready for what’s about to happen.  In this case, it’s helping not only my mind, but my body as well.  I’ve decided to add a half hour of yoga to my mornings.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine describes yoga as “a mind and body practice in complementary medicine with origins in ancient Indian philosophy.”  We often think of yoga as this new thing—though not so new now: people in the United States have been doing it for years.  But yoga has been practiced for centuries in eastern countries, primarily India, and it provides a vital connection to their belief systems.  Patanjali was the one who originally put the practice into words, circa 200 A.D.  He wrote The Yoga Sutra, which emphasizes balance to bring peace and harmony into one’s life.  (For more information, see my source, http://www.expressionsofspirit.com/Yoga%20Philosophy.htm).  Much more than just a morning workout, yoga gives one an opportunity to find a connection between body, mind, and spirit.

This suits me, because I have a confession to make (one which I believe I’ve made before): I’m lazy.  I don’t want to work out, even if I know it’s good for me.  I’m relatively happy with my body the way it is, and I don’t really want to lose sleep or energy getting sweaty and looking like the clumsy fool that I am.  But I do like to think of myself as a spiritual person, and I don’t think it hurts my Christianity at all to look at the beliefs of others and incorporate the goodness of them into my own life.  Everybody could do with a bit more peace and harmony, I think. 

Ergo: yoga every morning, followed by writing in my blog.  I hope that I can stick to it, but usually once I make a commitment to do something, I will do it.  I have high hopes for yoga—for flexibility, for strength, for wisdom, for wellbeing.  We’ll just have to see where it goes.

P.S.--for a definition of "namaste", click here.

P.P.S.--this is almost unrelated, but it's such an inspirational video I wanted to share it.  Click here to see the story of a man who used yoga and a hell of a lot of courage to get his life back.

Credit photo http://aideabroad.org/yoga/

Nope

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is I tend to refuse apologies—the small ones, anyway.  Someone will bump into me, maybe, and say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and my reply will be “Nope.”  It’s not that I don’t think that person is actually sorry for what they did, although with small things often an apology is more of a reflex than a true expression of remorse.  But when I consider someone’s apology to be unnecessary, I turn it away.  It’s always “nope” too, never “no,”—a very quick, blithe refusal.

I find it interesting to listen to myself do this.  It happens without my thinking about it, and I haven’t gotten to the point of awareness at which I could do something about it.  I wonder how I started doing it, whether it was an unconscious thought process or if I considered it and found this to be the best way to handle little apologies.  I wonder whether it sometimes makes me sound sarcastic, which is not my intention at all.  “I promise, I believe you are sorry, I just don’t think you need to be.”  And most interesting to me is that I didn’t really know this about myself until just a while ago.  How very complex and strange the mind is.

Freedom of Expression

I envy young children.  This morning in church, a little girl in front of me had a cough.  I could see her out of the corner of my eye—she was curled in her mother’s lap, warm, comfortable…and yet she started to cry after coughing twice, as if that were the pinnacle of all misery.

How freeing, I thought.  How nice to be able to express yourself utterly without thought for whether it might embarrass or discomfort someone else.  To cry when you’re sad, to laugh when you’re happy, and to do so as loudly and as long as you like, to never worry that someone else might think your feelings foolish…it sounds incredible to me.

Society today teaches us at a very early age to be polite, to always consider others before we speak or act.  Some of us learn that lesson better than others; some of us, too well.  Politeness, consideration, restraint—these are wonderful things.  But there is something to be said for the freedom to express yourself exactly as you like.  I think that the urge to do this is what makes a creative being, and when one finds a way to do it without offending others (much), that is what makes an artist.

Poetry: Asking the Impossible Question

I don’t know what poetry is.  Speaking in terms of literature, it’s relatively simple.  The Oxford Dictionary calls a poem, “a metrical composition, usually concerned with feeling or imaginative description.”  A rather dry description, but accurate all the time.  Poetry is words built with rhythm, concerned with sound and feeling and imagery. 

But there’s so much more to it than that.  I don’t consider myself a poet, and yet sometimes I feel the words sliding through my mind like snakes, twisting restlessly.  Taking off my makeup after work, I think of my eyelashes melting, shifting shadows and then gone, leaving red shadows of weariness.  I look at a woman as I’m setting down her meal and decide she has a meek mouth, but strength in her bent fingers.  Poetry moves through me, a spark in the brain, a weakness in my limbs, stronger when it’s been a month or two since last I put my thoughts to the page in this way.  For others, those who define themselves by poetry, it must be a compulsion, the only way they can understand the world.

What is poetry?  What is it in us that drives us to anguish, to agony, if we can’t describe the world as it needs to be described?  I don’t know if I want to know the answer.  The power of poetry is in the seeking, finding the wrong words, but just the right wrong words—the providential mistake.  The power of poetry is in the almost knowing.

Long Road Home

I want to talk about roads today.  We don’t really spend very much time thinking about them, do we?  But they’re everywhere.  Anywhere you need to go, there will be a road to get you there, whether it’s a ten-lane interstate, or a gravel road that may or may not drive through a creek.

The business of roads has to be enormous.  First there’s building them, which can take years of literally blasting the way through the land.  Then there’s maintenance, including cleaning up roadkill, removing trees, fallen power lines, and gas and oil spills, salting in the winter, and making repairs.  Periodically roads have to be torn up and repaved.  Toll booths have to be manned, police have to patrol, signs have to be manufactured and put up—the point is, thousands of people go to work every day to make sure that the rest of us can get where we’re going with a minimum of inconvenience.

I’ve been thinking about this because for the past few days, my road has been under construction.  Now often this is a source of annoyance, especially when the workers take months to do what should take weeks.  But I’ve been paying attention, and I’ve noticed that every day there’s progress.  The road is being repaved (which is kind of cool to watch, honestly) and so it requires the road to go to one-lane for a while.  When I drove out, I noted where they were; on the way back an hour later, I noticed that people were driving on the section which had just been laid down, and the workers had moved on.  I’m impressed, aren’t you?  It was forty-seven degrees today, as cold as it’s been so far this year.  It may not sound terribly cold, but when you have to stand out in it all day, it’s pretty chilly.  And yet things were getting done. 

So here’s a little shout-out to everyone who helps lay down the path for us.  To those who lay down the path, who connect A and B and perform the work that isn’t noticed unless it’s done poorly…thanks.

Writer's War

Last week, I made a very unfortunate discovery.  I was walking to my car on the way out of work, and playing with my keys as I went (because how can you help but toy with a ring of keys in your hand?).  And somewhere between the restaurant and my car, I realized that there was something wrong.  I looked down at my keys, wondering why they felt so light.  Then I realized what it was, and my heart sank right down to hang out with my stomach.

Let me describe my keys to you as they should be.  There are four keys on my key ring: my house key, mailbox key, car key, and the key to a neighbor’s house, which I use when I go over to play her piano.  I have a rubber loop key ring which I use to hang them from a hook by my door, and of course the remote to lock and unlock my car.  All of these hang on a tiny caribiner, a clasp that lets me hook the keys to my purse when I’m away from home.  And there should be a pair of black, squarish flash drives on a separate ring.  But there aren’t.  Sometime in the past week or so, the flash drives were just so balanced on the caribiner that when I opened it to hook or unhook my keys from my purse, they made a bid for freedom.  I never heard them fall, and I didn’t notice they were gone for I don’t know how long.

This may not seem like such a terrible thing, and maybe it wasn’t.  But those flash drives were more than just plastic and software.  On them was stored the entire contents of my computer, the backups to all of my files.  Some of those files may be gone forever.  I haven’t had time to assess the full damage caused by the loss of the drives, but I know that I lost some things.

Such a thing a few years ago would have devastated me.  The loss of my precious work?  My ideas and my emotions, stored away, lost forever?  But I met the disappearance of my flash drives with a kind of dismayed resignation that surprised even me.  Where are the tears? I wondered.  Why am I not more upset about this?

The fact is that this has happened to me before—many times, I think I can say now.  The first time, I was fourteen or so, and I had been working on my first novel series.  I was so excited about it.  I’d made notes, drawn maps, written poems for the world I created.  I had one novel finished and another two-thirds done.  I was so proud of it.  Then our family computer crashed.  I had no back-ups, and the work was lost.  All that time, all that energy, wasted.  I cried for hours.  Since then it’s happened again: when my own laptop crashed in my sophomore year of college and just this year in January, and when a flash drive died on me and the files on it could not be saved. 

I thought I’d learned from this.  The two flash drives were updated (somewhat) regularly, and I kept them with me always.  I felt secure with them.  But this time the failure was human, not technological, and my files were gone again.

Finally now, I view this with acceptance.  It’s a sort of battle I’m fighting, struggling to preserve my stories, my thoughts and feelings.  These things are supposed to fade—it’s what they do, making room for the new.  And for writers these days, the loss of our work is a risk we always have to take.  Even paper can be soaked, torn, burned, lost.  What part of our work is visible is nothing but a record of our true calling, which is ethereal and transient.  If the record is lost, then the thoughts we wanted to preserve are long gone.

I’m still fighting the battle, of course.  I have new flash drives, new plans for greater care and security.  But I’m beginning to acknowledge that there will be casualties in the writer’s war.  My hope now is that my desire to write, my need to create, is never one of them.  

Obligatory Election Post

Whether or not they voted this week, I believe that every American with a pulse and the ability to speak has had something to say about this election.  I also believe that my heart is still beating and people could still understand me if I say “Enough already with this campaign &%*!”.  There is no one here to test that, which could lead me into a very interesting philosophical question, but that’s neither here nor there.

So I do have something to say about this election.  Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick.  What interests me is the actual act of voting.  This year was the first time I voted in person rather than by absentee ballot.  I went to the address given to me (several times) in the mail, a local middle school.  There I walked around following signs to come to the entrance.  Just outside, a gentleman handed me a sample Democratic ballot—and only a few steps beyond, another man handed me a sample Republican ballot.

It made me laugh.  How can people honestly think to influence anyone at that stage in the game?  By the time people walk into the building to vote, they know who they’re voting for.  If they didn’t, they might as well have stayed home, and I’m sure many people did for just that reason.  Yet there they were, the volunteers, braving the cold (well, it wasn’t that cold, but it wasn’t warm, either) to give it one last try.

I’ll come back to these volunteers later.  Inside the building (a gym, which reminded me that some things never change), I joined the curving line marked by caution tape and waited.  I was very glad that I’d brought a book along with me.  People were chatting idly, some about the election, others not.  Some people had brought their children.  I saw one woman leave the line early, as she couldn’t afford to wait; I heard her say she’d come back.  Despite the wait, the procedure went smoothly—at the front of the line, I showed my ID, received a ticket, and was shown to the first available booth.  The electronic ballot was self-explanatory and very quick.

All this made me think about what an enormous endeavor this must be.  Hold on, I’ll explain.  I’ve learned over the years that when events look effortless, they almost inevitably were not.  Events that run smoothly mean dozens—in this case thousands—of people working together towards the same goal of efficiency.  Those who designed the electronic voting booths, those who collect IDs, those who gather the information on voters, those who select the voting locations and notify voters where to go, those who tally the votes…it’s simply huge.  And yet after the campaign, voting is often just a relief, a thank-goodness-it’s-finally-over moment (at least it was for me).  But I would like to take  a moment to be thankful that voting is so very easy in our nation, and to appreciate the many, many people who make it so.

PS—when I left the building after voting, the same two volunteers handing out sample ballots were chatting and laughing with one another.  It was nice to see, after months of Republicans and Democrats at each other’s throats.  Our differing opinions don’t mean we can’t be friends.  Think about that for a while.

Photo credit: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/04/opinion/norden-voting-rights/index.html

Get To Work, Snowman Says

Yesterday was the first day of November, which isn’t any day particularly special, I suppose.  Unless you’re in the United States and you’re relieved that the end of this damn election is in sight.  Which I am.  But this is not why I marked the day.  The first of November began National Novel Writing Month, commonly referred to as NaNoWriMo.  And for the first time since I learned about it in 2008, I will be participating.

Now, you might say, But Eileen, you’re a writer.  Wouldn’t you have done it before?  And you would be right.  I should have taken part in this event long before now.  My craft is writing, and my medium is novels.  To teach myself how to write a novel in a month would have been very useful for my career and for my process.  And the very essence of NaNo is to help writers get work done, without worrying about editing.  Editing comes later—this month is for the pure flow of ideas onto paper.

The reason I haven’t done it before is because I believed I didn’t have time.  November was always the last full month of the semester, the time for pulling together final projects and thinking about studying for exams.  (I never actually did study.  Well, maybe once—it didn’t help.)  Added to that I had work and extracurriculars, and I always had to spend some time wishing it were December already.  So I didn’t set aside time to write.

But I’ve realized something—something that should have been obvious to me all along.  I’m always going to be busy.  This year I’m out of school, and I'm working thirty-five hours a week—more this week—and my free time is taken up with music and errands.  If I wait until I have time to write, I’ll be waiting years.  I might be waiting forever.  And I do need to write, in more than just snatched moments on my off days.  I need to make room for it in my life.

Therefore there is a note on my wall now that reads, “Did you write today?  No?  NO SLEEP” and in the corner of it, a snowman with drawn-on evil eyebrows laughs at me.  And I mean to enforce this law religiously.  At least 2,000 words a day, or the day isn’t over.  Because if I don’t write, I don’t have a right to call myself a writer, and if I’m not a writer, what am I?

Doomed If You're Different

Yesterday at work, I served a small family, just a mother and her son.  As soon as I took their orders, I noticed something strange about the boy—he sat rocking in his seat with his hands in his lap, he would not meet my eyes, and he spoke rather loudly when telling me his order.  I had my answer to the puzzle when the mother held up a sign behind the menu which said, “My son has autism.  He may behave strangely, please be patient.”  She looked very tired, and she fervently requested a glass of wine.  Later she pulled me aside to explain in a rather apologetic tone.

This made me angry, and very sad.  Why should something as simple as lunch at a restaurant be so difficult to handle?  According to autismspeaks.org, one in every eighty-eight children are on the autism spectrum, and it affects tens of millions of people worldwide.  But those of us who have no connection to it don’t bother to know anything about it.  I’m as guilty as anyone, of course—I only knew a very little about autism before this morning, and I never really understood it.  At some point, I may have been one of those people criticizing this mother behind her back for not controlling her son, or thinking that this kid is “weird” or “off.” 

People can be very unforgiving of the smallest things.  A child who doesn’t communicate well or behaves strangely, or an old man who stutters, or even a man with a prosthetic leg, can be judged immediately and cruelly for how they are different.  In the past four days I’ve served all of these people, and I’ve had to remind myself as I walked up to the table not to show any difference in my behavior towards them.  It was the autistic boy and his mother, however, who made me realize that I wasn’t doing enough.  My brother has Asperger Syndrome, which is closely related to autism.  I love him dearly, and nothing infuriates me more than when people make fun of him or judge him.  But I do the same—make snap judgments based on my first impression, and even if I don’t show it, I often have a great deal of impatience with people who are different.

When I learned about this boy, and saw the weariness in his mother’s eyes, I was determined that I would give them a break.  Every time I went back to the table, I spoke to the boy—he called me “Miss Eileen”—and when I brought them their check, I wrote a note on it saying how much of a pleasure it was to serve them.  The note was sincere: I was glad to help in some small way.  It wasn’t enough, of course, but it was a start.  Now I look forward to the opportunity to make myself more sincere in my thoughts as well as my actions, and to remember that everyone who is different, who behaves strangely or even badly—every single person—has someone, somewhere, who loves them the way I love my brother.  They deserve to be treated well, as people with thoughts and loves and dreams just like mine.

For more information on autism, please visit http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism.  

No More Tears

I messed up at work today.  Big time.  It was bad enough that our manager had to give out a free meal to five people.  I was so embarrassed and miserable, I was fighting back tears the whole rest of the night.

That’s one of the things I absolutely hate about myself—how easily the waterworks come on.  I know very well that one of the words people use most frequently to describe me is “cute.”  I’m five feet tall, with a round face, long blonde hair and baby blue eyes.  With all this, I don’t need anything else to prevent people from taking me seriously.  Yet, to make the cuteness total overkill, I have a problem with tears.

What makes it worse is when people are nice to me about it.  I realize that it sounds terribly ungrateful to complain about this, but it’s so true.  When I’ve messed up, I take it out on myself hard.  I have very high standards for myself and making dumb mistakes is not to be tolerated.  Thus, tears.  I can't help them.  When people are kind about my mistakes, it makes me feel worse.  I don’t feel that I deserve their kindness.  The best way for me to recover my composure is to not look anyone in the eye, to not say anything, and at best disappear and just breathe for a little while.

I fought against this impulse all night, and I managed not to cry.  It was a near thing once or twice, but I was bound and determined that I was not going to make myself more of a liability.  I do NOT want people to cater to me or feel sorry for me, and I certainly don’t want them to feel like they have to comfort me.  So from now on, I will take my lumps, put them behind me, and come back with one hundred and ten percent, and I will not shed one single tear over anything that doesn’t deserve it.

Wishes to Spare

My college roommate taught me about 11:11 in freshman year.  She explained that since the numbers look like birthday candles, you get a wish if you catch them on the clock.  This wish is apparently stronger on the eleventh of November.  Some people also believe that you get a wish at 1:11, but I would imagine that would be less likely to come true. 

I’ve never put much stock in this kind of thing, but I played along, making little wishes to amuse myself.  For several months now, though, I’ve had a wish in mind immediately every single time: “let me get a good apartment” or “let me get a job.”  My wishes were not playful, but desperate.  I needed all the help I could get.

This morning, I was in the kitchen when I happened to look up and see 11:11 on the microwave display.  I went to make a wish, and realized that I had to think a minute to come up with something I need.  I have my apartment and my job—my big wishes have come true.  Now, when I see 11:11 or 1:11, I’ll smile and wish for little things again, or even give my wish for the sake of someone else.  I’m back to a place in my life where I am in control, and this is enormously uplifting.  

Life Lessons from the Service Industry

When I took this job, I knew that I would learn a great deal about people, but I didn’t expect the lessons to come so quickly.  I haven’t been a waitress for a week yet—I haven’t even begun to take my own tables—and already I’m learning.

Working here is making me step out of my own experience.  When you’re young—and despite myself, I am still very young—you tend to think of everyone else as just like yourself.  You do it automatically (or at least I do) and on some level you’re surprised when they make choices that you would never make.  People are vastly different, and I’m only beginning to understand the sheer range of personalities out there. 

Of course, it’s only little things I’m spotting now.  I never use straws at restaurants—I just don’t like it.  But other people do, and they certainly remind me when I forget to bring them.  And whenever I go out to eat with someone, I go, I eat, and I leave.  I see no appeal in sitting at a dirty table, talking on into the night.  If I want to spend more time with that person, I’ll find somewhere else to do it.  But there are some people who just sit and sit and sit for ages.  (These people are not-so-affectionately dubbed “campers” and they are not a good thing, especially for a server who would otherwise be off shift by now.)  I can’t see the appeal, but there you are.

Like I said, small differences; but these differences are enough.  The small things lead to the big things, and they get me to thinking.  I really do look forward to learning more about others in this job—it will be interesting to see what other ways people can surprise me.

Time to Spare?

Every morning at 10:30 AM, I'm supposed to sit down at my computer to write something for my blog.  Whether or not that something ends up on my blog usually depends on the clarity of my thoughts at the time, but I always write something.  I have found that this is the best way for me to keep up with my work.

I haven’t done this for the past few days.  That’s because I wasn’t here at 10:30 AM.  On Friday I was on my way to work; on Saturday I was driving to Richmond for a baby shower, and this morning I was out the door to go to church.  But I have cracked down on myself again now—it is currently 10:39 PM.  Now at one time or the other, I will get my work done.

I’ve had it easy for the past few months.  The implementation of my work schedule was surprising to me, though it shouldn’t be.  I never realized just how much time a busy schedule can take up.  It’s only now that I realize I wasn’t just hanging out here in this apartment while I was still unemployed.  I was writing, working on music, organizing my home, etc.  Of course there was plenty of the unmotivated loitering going on too, but now I don’t have nearly as much time for any of that. 

So this is easy, Eileen, you might say.  Just cut out the unmotivated loitering.  Unfortunately, that isn’t possible.  I know myself pretty well, or at least I know what happens when I am required to have constant output of mental energy.  It isn’t pretty.  I need some time to just relax and not have to think for a while.  

This means, then, that I will have to use my time wisely again.  No big deal--I did it for four years at Hollins, and I will be able to do it again.  But I know there will be times that I miss those aimless days of mental wandering.  

Strange Sleep

This morning I experienced a very curious phenomenon.  I woke up to my alarm, of course, and went back to sleep.  I have several alarms, you see, to wake me up in stages.  Little did I know that I had forgotten to set my last alarm, the one that requires me to get out of bed to turn off.  So there I was, lying in bed, half-aware, and eventually it occurred to me that I should probably be awake.  I rolled over to check my phone, and it was 9:18.  I closed my eyes.  One alarm at eight o’clock, I told myself, one alarm at eight thirty, and now it’s past nine.  I should be up by now.  I could swear that no time passed by at all except the time it took me to think that.  But I opened my eyes again and checked the clock, and it was 9:35.

Sleep is a funny thing.  Sometimes I sleep so deeply nothing can wake me up (though I do that less often now since the occurrence of an embarrassing incident at camp three years ago).  Other times I can’t sleep at all and stay up until at least four o’clock in the morning just waiting to feel tired.  (This latter happening is unfailingly accompanied by an intense desire for pancakes.)  I dream in the mornings, just before I wake up, and often I become aware that I’m dreaming for brief moments, but then fall easily back into the dream.  Sometimes I remember my dreams in vivid detail; other times only a few snippets remain (a choir concert and hot pink shirts, and I was late, I think).  And that’s just me—there are so many other quirky sleep habits that people have.

It’s interesting, isn’t it?  And it’s one of those things that can’t really be explained by someone outside of your head.  I mean, scientists have many theories about sleep and dreaming, and they can fabricate ways to test these theories, but in the end how do you really know what’s going on in someone’s head?  And if we can’t do it when people are asleep, how can we hope to understand people when they’re awake?

Dream Job (?)

Today is my last day of freedom.  Don’t worry, I’m not eloping or being sold into slavery.  I’m just getting a job.  I start training at Ruby Tuesday’s tomorrow, and within a week I will officially be a waitress.

Now, I’ve noticed a trend among the reactions people have when I tell them where I’m working.  Some people are very good at hiding their surprise, but I can see it in the slight widening of their eyes, or even in the absolute changelessness of their expression.  Some people nod sympathetically and say something along the lines of, “well, a job is a job.”  A few times, I’ve gotten the “oh” with implied dismayed “really?”  And my neighbor was very open with his opinion when I told him—“Well, that sucks,” he informed me.

I admit this job wasn’t exactly what I was thinking of when I was toiling through four years of a difficult undergraduate program.  And often now when I’m telling people of what I’m doing now, I feel the need to defend myself.  “I’m just taking a year off school, so I just need something that will pay the bills.”  “Anything’s better than being unemployed, right?”  I’m sure when I say these things that people will say that I sold out or gave up, or at best, that I’m a victim of the tortuous job market.

But honestly, I don’t feel very victimized.  I think this job could be very good for me—perhaps just what I’m looking for.  See, what I really want to do is write, with some time to compose on the side.  Working in a restaurant may not leave me any more time to do that than any other full-time job would, but since I’ll be working night shifts most of the time, it will feel like I have more time.  Meanwhile, the job itself looks very promising for me.  It will teach me how to deal with people, and I’m sure that I’ll pick up several story ideas from my interactions with staff and customers.  My manager already likes me, and frankly, he’s thrilled to have me, which is nice for anyone anywhere. 

So I’m going to try not to be defensive anymore.  Who cares if waiting tables makes me look like a victim?  The fact is, I’m not.  A job is a job, and a life is a life, and this is mine.  Right now, I feel very good about it.

In Loving Memory of a Sci-Fi Character

We all like to watch TV.  Even I, who has maybe a hundred channels on my economy television plan (and interest in about ten percent of them), have a handful of shows which I follow with avid interest.  Bones, Downton Abbey, and Merlin are the most recent attractions, though I also enjoy going back to watch old favorites.  For the past few weeks now I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1, a great sci-fi show from the nineties, and I noticed something very interesting.

Very basically, the story follows a team of explorers who travel through a machine called a Stargate that can send them almost anywhere in the galaxy.  They explore and gather information about what’s out there and how they can protect Earth.  I like the show because it has marvelous detail, good characterization, and exciting story lines with humor thrown in.  And the special effects are better than most, at least for the time.  But (spoiler alert!) at the end of season five, one of the main characters was killed off, and I was surprised by how much this affected me.

Of the four members of the team, Daniel Jackson was always the one kind of in the background.  He’s the quiet one, the nerd, the one who doesn’t throw himself into the action.  He’s not witty and commanding like Jack O’Neill, or a brilliant scientist like Samantha Carter, nor does he have the interest of being a stone-faced alien warrior like Teal’c.  Probably of the four of them, Daniel was the one who had the fewest episodes devoted to his concerns.  But when he was gone, to me the whole show seemed somehow diminished, and I wondered why that was.

The answer came to me when I was talking to a friend about another television show, Downton Abbey.  We were discussing our favorite characters, and I began to notice something about my choice Mr. Bates.  Bates is quiet, self-effacing, but strong when he needs to be, loyal to his friends and not petty—rather like Daniel Jackson, in fact.

It seems that in most shows that I watch, I’m drawn to the character who provides the moral background, the one who speaks up only when the others are making bad choices, the one who sticks to his beliefs even when things get very hard.  Agent Booth from Bones, Merlin from the show of the same name…Richard Cypher from Legend of the Seeker and Kyle from Kyle XY—all of my favorite characters have these traits in common.  Often it’s the hero I’m drawn to, but not always, as my first two examples show.  In fact, I’m more drawn to the characters who aren’t the hero, but rather stand behind him and support him.

I think I connect with these characters because that’s how I like to see myself.  I don’t really know if I’m like that, but I hope I am.  And I don’t have to be the hero in every episode of my life.  I just want to be the person who can be depended upon to do the right thing. 

Repartee is Something We Think of Twenty-four Hours Too Late

I love repartee.  Being a smartass myself, I appreciate sharp wit in others, and I have entire books of smart comments from people who think on their toes.  I especially appreciate it because too often I am that person who comes up with a delightful response to a smart remark ten minutes after the delivery of that remark.  So this morning, I’m simply going to share some of my favorite gems from my memory, for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy!

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:  “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.  If you have one.”

Churchill’s response: “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second…if there is one.”

An exchange between Muhammad Ali and a flight attendant asking him to put on his seatbelt:

“Superman don’t need no seatbelt.”

“Superman don’t need no airplane, either.”

William Faulkner on Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

Ernest Hemingway on Faulkner: “Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

Lemony Snicket, in response to a video of a woman destroying his books:  “It has always been my belief that people who spend too much time with my work end up as lost souls, drained of reason, who lead lives of raging emptiness and occasional lunatic violence.  What a relief it is to see this documented.”

And though I can’t remember the exact names of the ladies who said this, it’s too good not to include.  Back in the days when ladies wore gloves, one of them expressed disgust at the kidskin her friend was wearing: “Skin of a beast!”

Her companion politely asked what then the other lady wore.  When she answered “silk”, the lady in kidskin gloves declared in horror, “Entrails of a worm!”

For more smart replies, take a look at “Viva La Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History’s Great Wits and Wordsmiths” by Mardy Grothe, a very delightful book and the source of most of these quotes.  If sometime in my life my name and my words appear in a book like this, I will not have lived in vain.

Photo credit: http://www.drmardy.com/repartee/vivalarepartee.shtml

Title is a quote by Mark Twain, borrowed from the front of this book.

To Fail is Epic

Today was a momentous occasion for me.  I confirmed that I did not, in fact, win a competition to which I submitted my writing.  I didn’t actually receive a rejection (which complaint is another blog post entirely) but I have failed, and therefore I have taken another step closer to the honored society of true writers.

This sounds a little sad, but it’s true: writers fail.  All the time.  There are all sorts of stories out there about famous authors who sent out their now-famous works—Harry Potter, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.—to six or seven or twenty-seven publishers before finally receiving an answer.  And there are hundreds, I’m sure, whose stories don’t have that happy ending, who give up after they have enough rejections to paper their walls.  Rejections and failures are the marks of a writer.

I, however, hope to show off my rejections like cool scars, because a failure means I tried.  At the very least, I’m out there and I’m putting my writing out there, and I have a chance to learn from every mistake I make.  So in my “submissions” spreadsheet, under the column of success, I have proudly written “epic fail” next to the contest I entered.  I hope to see many, many more such entries in the future.

Hope is Hard to Kill

The other day, I saw a picture in a magazine of a young boy under the heading “MISSING.”  Usually—though I’m sorry to say it—I don’t pay very much attention to these advertisements, but this picture caught my eye.  It was tinted faintly yellowish, and the boy’s hairstyle was odd.  I realized why a moment later, when I saw the photo next to it of the boy artificially aged to what he would look like today.  The boy has been missing since 1984.

How sad, and how sweet.  For twenty-eight years this family has been missing one of their own, and still they haven’t given up.  They must know the chances of ever finding him, and even if they did there would be so many problems to cope with—if he’s alive, by now he has his own life, his own family.  He could be anywhere in the world, maybe not even knowing or wanting to know the family he was taken from.  But still they keep searching, keep hoping.  To me, that shows a marvelous strength of heart.  I applaud them, and I hope for a happy ending to their search, as impossible as it may seem.

"Self-Evident" Means "Obvious": Protecting the Pursuit of Happiness

There’s so much buzz in the air these days about gay rights.  It’s one of the primary concerns of the presidential candidates—some people consider it the only reason for their choice between Romney and Obama.  And whoever you ask seems to have a very strong opinion about it.  But I can’t help but wonder if our government has a right to control this.

I see articles and images all the time talking about “the sanctity of marriage.”  It seems strange to me in today’s culture, where so little is considered to be sacred.  Religion is not a powerful force in society, at least not openly—it’s one of those things most people don’t normally discuss outside of their own circle of friends.  And where the government is concerned, it’s something that shouldn’t be discussed.  I quote word for word from Amendment I—as in, the first and arguably most important amendment—to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  (View a transcript of the Bill of Rights here.)  Therefore, if we consider marriage to fall under the domain of religion—as the word “sanctity” implies—it is unconstitutional for the government to pass any laws about it.

On the other hand, marriage is also a civil concern, as the joining of two people to form a family unit (from Merriam-Webster: “a contractual and consensual relationship recognized by law”).  Marriage gives the married couple certain rights, including next-of-kin, release of medical information, shared assets, etc.  Okay.  Surely this is fair game for the government to regulate?  I’m not so sure.  Certainly the first amendment has nothing to say about this side of marriage, but something about the suggested marriage laws still sits wrong with me.  Removing the religious concerns, what reason do we have to prohibit gays from getting married?  If a marriage as a civil union is “a contractual and consensual relationship”, why should the law not recognize it between two people of the same sex?  Remember, we've already knocked out the religious element, so you can't say anything about what the Bible says.  The only arguments that remain (that I can think of) are these: first, that marriage in the past has always been between a man and a woman; and second, that marriage is meant for the creation of children.  Well, the latter doesn't hold much water when you think of how many children are in foster care: more than 400,000 last month according to www.childwelfare.gov.  If same-sex couples can offer children like that a stable home, why should they not be able to?  As for the concern of "traditional" marriage, while it's hard sometimes to argue against tradition, tradition alone is not a very logical or convincing argument.  

Having gone through the reasons in support of marriage regulation, now I'd like to take a look at the reasons against it, or at least the one most pressing reason, which is this: if we do prohibit gays from getting married, are we taking rights from them that they otherwise deserve to have?  Let’s head back to the words of the founding fathers, who in fact were very smart men in my opinion.  Maybe there’s nothing in the constitution that speaks one way or the other about same-sex marriage, but what about the Declaration of Independence?  Again I quote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  (View a transcript of the Declaration of Independence here.)

If choosing to tie your life to that of someone you love is not the pursuit of happiness, what on earth is?

So here we have, in the very first words of the first document that made this nation what it is, a promise to its people that their most basic rights will not be taken away—that it is the duty of the government to protect those rights.  Similarly, in the first amendment of the document on which we base all of our laws and government regulations, there is a promise that we will not be ruled by a religion not our own through the government.  So how in the world can anyone claim that federal regulations on marriage are right and just?

If there’s even one thing that is sacred to our government, it should be the freedom of the people.  The minute we start taking freedom from our people, we cease to be the nation that our founders hoped we would be.

This Bridge Will Only Take You Halfway There

I got a skype call from a friend of mine last night.  She’s recently decided that she can no longer live in her current home and is moving out by Friday.  I was surprised to hear of how quickly this decision had been made—I talked to her just last week and she gave no indication of this.  But it was almost immediately clear to me that she’d made the right choice.  It was also deeply evident that she was absolutely terrified at the prospect of the change.

I can understand that feeling.  At this point in my life, I’m in a situation that I’ve never once before had to deal with, and that is having no options except those that I make myself.  All through school and college, I had decisions of my own to make, but they were ruled by the expectations and requirements of others.  Go to school, go to college, get a job for the summer, figure out something to do for the holidays…  I always was aware of what I needed to do, and I had plenty of people more than happy to help me do it.  Now, however, I’ve reached the end of the path laid out for me, and my parents and teachers and friends have left me with a few tools and a bucket of cement to build the rest of it myself.  And I look at what I have and what I still have to do and I think, oh no.

Of course I was excited to get out on my own.  Everyone is.  I’m still excited, though I’ve been in my apartment for three weeks now.  Everything is new and stimulating, even buying cooking supplies and groceries, even paying rent (though I’m sure the shine on that one will fade very quickly).  But I remember the weeks at the end of summer, when I still didn’t have an apartment, still needed to look online and make phone calls and plan trips to look at apartments.  And I remember how for days on end I avoided thinking about it, put it off, told myself I had plenty of time.  I was scared of taking that step.  In fact, I spent several nights lying awake, trying desperately not to think of how very terrified I was.  And sometimes I still feel some of that anxiety.

Shel Silverstein wrote a poem, “The Bridge” that explains this time of life beautifully.  It tells of a bridge that is only half-built, and to complete it, to reach “those mysterious lands you long to see,” you have to finish it alone.  This is exactly how I feel.  We who are starting our lives now, we are that small person standing alone at the end of the half-built bridge, staring out at the lands we want to reach, down at the long drop.  And while standing here is exciting, the beginning of our chance to prove ourselves to the world, it is also absolutely terrifying.  The sooner as we accept both of these feelings and learn to use them both to our advantage, the sooner we can get to work on the rest of that bridge.

Credit photo: http://shel96326.pixnet.net/blog/category/410776

Subtle Fiction

"Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet.” John Updike

There’s a lot of talk in the writing world about fiction and what it is—how much of it is true, how much of it relies on truth, whether or not it’s worthwhile, etc.  This quote caught my attention the other day, and I think it strikes closer to the truth than most of the other talk.  As a fiction writer, I spend a lot of time making up things, often to the point of leaving my entire world behind in favor of another.  Why do I bother?  The writing of stories doesn’t improve the economy or persuade anyone in favor of world peace.  My stories don’t teach anyone how to do anything, or help them understand how the world works, or give them any kind of useful information for their lives.  At best, it makes them think a little bit, but even that isn’t life-changing.  So what’s the point?

According to John Updike, writing fiction is done more for the sake of the writer than the reader.  Well, this is nothing new—there are dozens of quotes from authors that can testify to that.  What does interest me in this quote is the idea of subtlety: the proposal that we write to explore ourselves, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Now that I’m thinking about it, many of the things I believe, I’ve discovered through my writing.  Things like personal freedoms, political options, and questions of ethics are all explored in my alternate worlds, the stories that I write.  I put my characters through problems in their lives and always somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking, what would I do in this situation?  In most cases, the characters are doing what I would do in that situation, and so in a strange way, I gain experience through writing that I might never get in my own life.

But it’s not only self-examination that Updike talks about: he also mentions self-display.  The vast majority of writers are a private lot.  We don’t like to be out and about, making statements about who we are and what we want from the world.  But everyone at some point needs to declare themselves, to say what we believe and try to explain who we are.  The avenue of fiction is a very safe way of doing this.  We can say “oh, it’s just a story” but deep down we know better.  The stories we tell are our declarations of self to the world, and we don’t even have to know that we’re doing it.  It is through fiction that we make it known who we are.

Not All Poems are Poetry

Yesterday, I put together three poems to submit for a poetry prize this month.  I did so with a certain kind of rueful amusement, as if a part of me didn’t believe that anyone but myself could ever enjoy my poetry.  I’m proud of all three poems, and I think they’re well-written, but something tells me that no one else would ever agree.  When it comes to poetry, I’m braced for the careful, stiff compliments that people give when they’re trying to be kind about something that’s awful.

I’ve been writing poetry for years.  In my rambling journals, which I began when I was thirteen, a poem appears on the very first page—that is, if one can call it a poem.  But for me, poetry is not so much an art form as a way of thinking out loud, of playing with words as I put them on paper.  It’s also intensely personal, as I usually found the easiest way to deal with strong emotion was to write about it, and poetry made it more palatable for me.

When I got to Hollins, I was surprised and a little skeptical about the idea of submitting poetry for criticism in my writing classes.  As if poetry were serious writing!  Of course, I understand that as literature, it is very serious indeed—how could I not, with Yeats, Shakespeare, Frost, Oliver, Neruda, and so many others playing a vital role in my education?  But my poems were nothing, tidbits of words and thought cobbled together like a child’s collage.  They weren't for sharing.

I’ve slowly changed my tune over the years, but still I don’t give my poems the attention that I give to my novels and my short stories.  I think I’m a better poet than most people on the street, sure, but once I enter the honored company of true poets, I lower my head and step into the corner.  My father always says the operative question of life is “compared to what?”  And in comparison with the work of my peers, I don’t have any good things to say about my own poems.

I realize now, though, my own outlook is most likely what holds me back.  Who can take me seriously if I do not?  No one is ever going to take me by the throat, give me a good shake, and shout into my eyes, “If it’s so bad, then make it better, you idiot!”  So here I am, submitting my poetry to the same editing and revisions that I give to my longer works, and even more nerve-tingling, actually sending it off to be judged by others.  Who knows?  Maybe I am my own worst critic, and maybe when it comes to poetry, I know more that I think I do.  It would be a fitting irony if that were the case, don’t you think?

Train of Thought: Assessing an Assessment

I am currently stuck in the briar thicket of looking for a job.  This is my third career assessment in two weeks, and it certainly will not be the last.  You know, those tests where you answer what seem to be pointless questions with "agree, disagree" or sometimes "slightly agree, strongly agree" etc.  I was getting a little fed up.  So now, I give you a running commentary on a career assessment.

• First question is “Low pay can cause honest people to steal.”  Huh?  You really want to start out with that one, guys?  Okay.  Well, I disagree.  I think low pay causes honest people to look for another job…
• No one is never in a bad mood.
• “There are seven days in a week.”  What the hell kind of people fill these things out?
• “You like to look beyond the facts of a situation to see the underlying cause.”  Um, what.  This does not make sense to me.  The facts of a situation will lead you to the cause.  You can’t look beyond them.
• People should not have to understand that you can’t do all you said you would.  If you said it, then do it.
• I guess it’s true that there’s no point in trying to anticipate things before they happen, but damn is it fun.
• Doesn’t everyone make decisions sometimes that they later regret?
• I really hate these because they tend to state things in absolutes.  “Never”, “everyone” and “always” are all over the place.  No, I can’t say that “everyone” I know likes me, but then if I put “disagree” to that, it looks like nobody likes me.
• “Criticism never bothers you.”  Criticism bothers everyone, even if they are able to put it aside later.  Who writes these things, and for what kind of people?
• “At work, many people are up to no good.”  This makes me laugh.  Up to no good?  What are we, marauders?
• I think the writers of this thing are determined to catch the bitter, cynical people in the world before they come for an interview.  “Everyone lies.”  “Everyone is up to no good.”  “The world sucks.”  Well, that last one wasn’t in there, but I’m assuming it’s implied.
• They’re also trying to catch the arrogant.  “Everyone likes me.”  “All of my decisions were the right ones.”
• Hmm, do I err on the side of perfectionism, or carelessness?  Again, there seems to be no room for middle ground.
• I kinda wish there were a little meter in the corner that says “We’ll call you in ten minutes” on one side and on the other “Go back under your rock, scum of the earth.”  It would be nice to have an idea about how I’m doing.
• Welp, now they know I’m an introvert.  Inching over towards “scum of the earth” there.
• And no, folks, there are not fifty hours in a day.  Unless you’re speaking metaphorically, as in “I get so much done in a day that it feels like there are fifty hours”?  Well either way, it’s “disagree.”
• You know, listening to Train during this is deeply comforting.  “You make everything all right.”  Thank you, Train.  I’m glad to know that I do something right.
• Being nice to people is a sign of weakness?  Talk about ultimate paranoia.
• NO ONE NEVER LOSES STUFF.  NO ONE.
• They don’t expect me to know the number of days in a month, either.  Oy.
• Yes, seventeen years of education and I can count to ten.
• I agreed with “People who always follow the rules do not advance their careers” when I remembered the well-loved Hollins quote, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”  Of course, I would much rather make history than advance my career.
• These things tend to repeat themselves, too, with different wording.  I see what you’re trying to do there, guys, and I promise my answer hasn’t changed.  I still don’t really care what people think of me.  Well, I do a little.  But you don’t allow “a little”, do you?  DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY.
• Oh, excuse me, I have to rock out to “If It’s Love.”  Okay, now I’m back.
• Why do people assume that emotions “get in the way” of important decisions?  To me, emotions are a big part of every decision I make.
• MORE “NEVER” RAHHHHHRRRRRRR.
• “You can read well enough to complete this survey.”  If I couldn’t, think I would have made it to question 88?
• Now this one is interesting.  I think I am indeed the type of person who makes others feel like talking.  Maybe I just put out a “listener” kind of vibe.  I like that; I like to listen for people.
• No, I do not take the time to check my work, because usually I am confident in the quality of my first effort.  But do you have a “fill-in-the-blank” section where I can explain that?  Noooo.
• Hahaha.  “How do you feel about a job where you will be asked to develop an extensive knowledge of wine so you can educate our guests?”  Why, I “would do it and enjoy it.”  Most honest response I’ve given all through this thing.
• Ooh, role play, this is interesting.  Okay, a group of guests say they had bad service.  Should I tattle on their server, run for the manager, ask them to fill out a survey (SURVEYS ARE FUN), or ask them to give the place another chance, despite the reams of restaurants in the area?  Tough choice.
• Next question: on a busy day, should I be obnoxious, point out the obvious, cause confusion, or be helpful?  Again, tough choice.
• Apparently, “smile and have great eye contact” is not a request, thank you.

Whew, that was rough.  But in its own way, amusing.  Making fun of something frustrating is cleansing, somehow.  I suppose I have a little bit of cynicism in myself, too.  Maybe a little.  Stay tuned, sports fans, to find out whether or not I am the scum of the earth.

Everyone Takes Something for Granted

I am sick this week.  My head is stuffed up, and today I’ve left my sore throat behind for a dry, gritty cough.  It’s not serious, just enough to be irritating.  But then, I don’t usually get sick.  My immune system is one of those expensive programs that downloads updates all the time and can catch almost anything before it causes trouble.  So when I get sick, I tend to notice it.  A lot.

I’ve actually been running at less than one hundred percent for a while now.  Last week, before I became infected with viral plague, I was recovering from the removal of my wisdom teeth.  I’m told by my dentist mother that I healed very quickly and cleanly, but it didn’t entirely feel like that to me.  It didn’t help, I suppose, that usually I believe that medicine is for the weak, so once I was taking pain pills and antibiotics three times a day, my body was thrown off its normal rhythms.

I was complaining about this to a very good friend of mine last week.  She has a long-term illness that makes it hard for her to function sometimes, a fact I had forgotten in my need to whine.  When I remembered, I felt bad about it, but she waved it off.  “Everyone takes something for granted,” she said.

It was a simple statement, but it caught at me.  Everyone takes something for granted.  We’re human, and we don’t always focus on the important things.  Even when we do, sometimes something else important slips through the cracks.  Obviously, one of the things I take for granted is good health.  I expect it from myself, and when I do get sick I resent it and complain about it, probably more than I deserve to.  Whereas my friend, who is currently in the hospital, takes serious illness like this in stride and appreciates the days when she can be up and walking around.  Who has the greater level of grace?

Now I know I’m only thinking along these lines because I am currently sick.  Once I’m healthy again, I will probably go on my merry way without even remembering this post.  I’m human.  But for now, I will do what I can to not take my health for granted.  I will let this little head cold—and the memory of my friend’s wisdom—remind me that hey, it could be a whole hell of a lot worse, and I will be grateful that it isn’t.

PS--this was the first link on my dashboard, and was too providential a coincidence for me not to include it.  Read here for someone else who exaggerates the anguish of a bad cold.

A Slacker's Confession

Well, here I am.  The young writer slinking back to her keyboard in shame.  Excuse me while I blow off the dust.  That’s a metaphor—my keyboard has been used more than once in the past month, but not in a way that makes me any less guilty.  I’ll explain that in a moment, but first I have to confess a truth about myself that I haven’t wanted to admit:

I, Eileen Michelle O’Connor, am lazy.

I’ve been very good at rationalizing this.  I’m an excellent worker, I tell myself.  Once I’ve made the decision to do something, I do it, and do it well.  For example, when I moved into my apartment, I decided that Saturday would be my cleaning day.  Having made the decision, I held to it.  Saturday I woke up early, unpacked some of my boxes, cleaned my kitchen and my living room, and put things where they belonged.  It took me a couple hours, but I did it.  Now, however, there is more to be done—I have new furniture now and more places to put things.  But Saturday is my cleaning day, and so I’ve decided that I don’t have to clean now.

Continue rationalization, aka making excuses.  But in school, I protest, I never ever sent in an assignment late, and most of the time it was longer than the requirement.  Yeah, whatever.  So maybe some of the time it was longer than the requirement.  I was a college student, and yes, I did that thing where the five-to-eight-page requirement has me writing a five-page paper.  We’ve all done it.  And my assignments in college were different from my own writing.  Those, I had to do.  I did them not for myself, but for others, so it was easier to get my butt in gear and get down to work.

Now, however, there is no one to tell me what to do.  There’s only myself, and as I sit here thinking about what I’ve done in the past ten days since moving here, I have to concede defeat.  I haven’t done what I should be doing.  I haven’t worked on the writing projects I should, only on the ones I feel like working on, the ones that are easy to write.  I haven’t worked as hard as I should on finding a job (though trust me, the pressure on that one is building).  And let’s not go into how long it’s been since I touched this blog.  What I have done is tool around on Facebook or on Stumbleupon or on Pinterest, all virtual tourist traps if I ever saw them.  Oh, and I'm three seasons into an old sci-fi show I used to love.  Not exactly accomplishments of which to be proud.

Self-discipline is hard.  It’s really hard.  Whenever I don’t really want to do something, I’m really good at coming up with excuses to put it off.  Some of it is fear—I’m uncomfortable with strangers, and just the idea of looking for a job is frightening.  But some of it is just plain old laziness.  Let’s see, I could work on some music, or write my blog, or edit my novel…or I could watch videos online.  ‘Stargate SG-1’ it is.  I’m sure many of you have been in the same position.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten to know myself over the past few years.  There are some things that will help.  For me, the most difficult thing is getting started.  Therefore, if I plan something in advance, I’m much more likely to do it.  Saturday is cleaning; Monday is laundry; Wednesday is errands.  I also find that if you space work with play, the former is less mentally draining, and the latter is less guilt-inducing.  I’ll spend an hour writing this morning while a video loads up online.  Then I’ll watch it, and probably at the same time I’ll flip through my recipe book to decide what I’m going to make on Sunday: multitasking is great, too. 

These tricks are useful, but in the end it comes down to knowing what has to be done and just doing it.  To borrow from the endless wisdom of the internet, I have to “quit slackin’ and make shit happen.”  Because after all, I’m on my own now, almost entirely.  Who’s going to make my day if not me?