Adulthood?

There is a running joke that I’ve shared with my friends several times.  Whenever we have a particularly productive day or accomplish a small task such as going to the bank or setting up an interview, we brag about being adults.  The concept of adulthood is often on my mind, since it’s a recent achievement for me.  I’m wondering, today, what it really means.  Merriam-Webster defines “adult” in the following ways: “fully grown and developed” and “mature and sensible; not childish.”  This is ironic to me, since the jokes we tell about it (“I made myself dinner—I’m an ADULT!”) are rather childish in tone.  They show a child’s pride in accomplishing something for themselves. 

The thing is, as children, we’re shown a certain standard of living for adults.  Most of our parents have stable homes, secure families, long-term jobs, and a place in the community.  They keep their houses clean, have pets and framed pictures and real furniture.  They usually don’t shop for their clothes in Goodwill, and they buy things at the grocery store that are not microwavable or frozen.   

Now, legally, I have been an adult for five years.  Biologically I’ve been one for much longer.  But culturally speaking, most people are not considered adults until they’ve completed college.  It’s the twenties, then, that begin our membership in the realm of adulthood, a time of life known for its uncertainty and reckless living.  I have been out of college for a year and a half now, and I’ve lived in two different apartments in that time, neither of which was particularly special.  I work as a waitress, and I typically try to dodge questions about what I’m doing to get out of that job.  I have friends who are in the same position—working the night shift, scrambling for freelance positions, or moving from city to city to find work.  Sometimes I think we’re more like children playing house than actual adults.

The trick of being an adult, of achieving that dream of stability we envision, is we have to build it from the bottom up.  If we really want to do it on our own, we have to take crap jobs, sleep on a mattress on the floor, pinch and scrape and save for years until we finally find the rhythm that gives us a steady uphill climb.  To be an adult means to do what needs to be done, to take care of yourself, and to keep at it and stick with your dreams.  That’s what I’m doing; that’s what my friends are doing. 

Come to think of it, the pride we take in that no longer seems quite so childish.

"No"

I’m going to tell you a story today.  Well, the beginning of a story, anyway.  The story is about one year of wishing and hoping, of plans and dreams and excitement.  It ends—I warn those of you who don’t like sad stories—with worry, panic, and finally, disappointment.

In the fall of 2012, I was beginning my adult life.  Fresh out of college, I had just moved into my new apartment and was getting started on my dream: to live my life lost in other worlds—and, naturally, taking note of what went on in those worlds and selling my adventures to publishers for lots of cash.  As does any young hero, I took a chance by sending a piece of my fledgling novel—hereafter dubbed “Snapdragon”—out to a big-name publisher which was part of a big-name corporation.  Now, I had confidence in Snapdragon.  I still do.  It had been my honors thesis, and it's a good book—strong characters, good writing (if I do say so myself), and an exciting story involving assassins, spies, sex, coming-of-age, true love and love that maybe isn’t so true.  I sent it out.  Five months, the submissions guidelines said.  Five months before I could reasonably expect a reply.

I didn’t hold my breath for those five months, literally or figuratively.  I knew it was a long shot—everything I’ve ever read about being a writer is that you fail, and you fail, and you epically fail, and you fail again, and then you fail some more, and then finally someone sees your true worth.  Persistence, right?  So I didn’t spend all my time waiting around.  I went out, found myself a day job, continued to send little things out for possible publication elsewhere (most of the time failing on those, too).  I lived my life.

Then, in March, just as I was beginning to think, huh, that’s my five months gone—I got the email.  An unassuming little note from a secretary, saying thanks for sending your excerpt, would you please send along the full manuscript?  I read it, read it again, stepped away from the computer to breathe for a second, and read it a third time.  That’s when I screamed.  I screamed, I danced, I laughed like a maniac.  And, of course, I sent Snapdragon along.

This time, I was holding my breath.  I knew this had to be good news.  They had recognized my skill and my talent, in just the first ten pages!  Surely they would read the book, love it, and contact me immediately with a lucrative contract.  I tried to hold myself back, and maybe I succeeded in public, but in my mind I was already talking to an editor—who loved the book just as it was, by the way, and didn’t want me to change a thing: a delusion if there ever was one—and seeing my book, colorful and in hardback, on Barnes & Noble’s shelf.

So I waited.  I waited, and I watched the calendar, and every time the phone rang with an unknown number, my heart jumped.  I waited, and I beamed whenever someone mentioned it, and I made plans for a companion book.  I waited, and checked my email more often.

I waited, and I began to wonder whether it would take more time to read a longer piece, or less because there were fewer pieces to wade through.  I waited, and people’s questions about it no longer excited me.  I tried to email back the secretary who had asked for the full manuscript, and when the email bounced my imagination—which had gotten me into this mess—ran off with a panicked scheme of fraud and scams and intellectual thievery. 

Finally, today I got up the courage to call the big publisher’s switchboard.  I delayed as much as I could—I expected it would take a long time to reach the people I was after, or I wanted to see if I could find a more direct number, or I was just plain too nervous to make the call.  But I did it today.  The call lasted maybe five minutes, and an operator informed me that the publishers contact within three months if there is any interest.

So that’s that.  I said thank you very much and hung up the phone, and my year of hoping and dreaming was over.

I really only have one problem with this whole deal.  I don’t mind them saying no—I expected it, after all, and it was my fault for letting myself get too excited over the first step in a very long process.  I believe in Snapdragon, and I’ll try again.  No, what I mind is the fact that they didn’t say no to me—that they didn’t say anything.

I’ve worked in a publishing house.  I know how easy it is to write refusal letters.  You hire an intern, and you get them to write five or six a day.  There's a technology that lets you fill in different names over the same letter.  You edit the letter slightly to suit the recipient, print it out, stick it in an envelope.  Done--took ten minutes max.  Now, the publisher I sent Snapdragon to is at least fifty times bigger than the college press where I worked for a month two years ago.  They obviously have a lot more submissions to deal with.  But in this day and age there has to be a way to do the same thing above with email.  Type a few corrections, hit send, and bam—you’ve ended your association, the writer has closure and can move on, and both parties are happy.  Well, maybe not happy, but at least capable of going to find another publisher.

Three months, the operator said.  Which means I’ve wasted the past two months in which I could have sent Snapdragon somewhere else.  Two months is a long time, forty percent of the time I’d have spent waiting on some other publisher.  Two months of hoping, of worrying, of wishing and dreaming.  Gone.

I’m okay with them saying no, I really am.  It’s part of what I am to be rejected, and to keep going despite that.  But I wish they had taken the time to actually say it, and let me move on with my life and my work.

Guts > Brains?

“That is a gutsy young woman.”

This observation was repeated to me this morning, and for a moment I wanted to ask who it was referring to.  The context of the conversation indicated that I was the young woman being described, but that didn’t quite make sense.  Me?  Gutsy?  Not the word I would have used.

I was talking to my friend Mary, who has adopted me into her family over the past year.  She brought me into her church family, too, where I have recently begun to play the piano for worship.  I accepted the job with much trepidation, for I don’t consider myself much of a pianist—it’s been five years at least since I had a piano lesson, and my practicing since then has been sporadic at best.  There was no one else, though, and so I took on the work.  And every week I have sat at the front of the church, stumbling over a bad keyboard and trying to make music.  This, apparently, earns me the title of “gutsy”. 

Maybe it’s my English major soul that makes me balk at this word.  There must be a better adjective to describe this situation, I tell myself.  What springs immediately to mind is the southern expression of amusement, pity, and faint scorn, “Bless her heart.”  But gutsy, no.  It’s been a long time since I considered myself to have the brash, confident courage that makes up “guts”.

That doesn’t mean that I’ve never had it.  My mother used to tell me when I was a child that I had more guts than brains.  Not necessarily a good thing, as you may guess.  It usually meant that I was willing to throw myself into situations without really considering the consequences.  I was proud of the description, though.  I wanted to be seen as brave, and of course, as a child consequences are so rarely a factor in decision-making.  Sometimes I wish it were still that way.

It does seem, however, that there is more of that brave child still in me than I thought.  After all, I am still stepping up to that keyboard every Sunday, and spending my days in practicing so that every week there will be less stumbling and more music.  And an unknown someone—the kind of person whose perception of you is occasionally more accurate than your perception of yourself—called me “gutsy”, and meant it kindly.  Maybe in time I can come to believe it.  As my mother used to tell me, if I can balance guts and brains, I will be much better off.

Return Your Angers

I got angry today.  I don’t get angry often; usually I call it “upset” or “irritated.”  My temper, I flatter myself, is relatively cool.  But today, I was absolutely furious, and what’s even rarer, the direct object of my fury was not a concept or a situation, but a person.  He’s a coworker of mine, and most of our fellow coworkers find him difficult to deal with.  He is brash, self-centered, and conceited.  I say this with full honesty, though also out of pique.  Anyway, normally I have no problem dealing with this guy.  Sometimes I even feel sorry for him, because he seems to have no idea why other people don’t like him.  Today, however, I wanted nothing more than to get him out of my sight. 

I brought a book with me to work this morning, which will surprise no one who really knows me—whenever I can get away with it, I bring a book with me wherever I go.  Today’s selection was an old classic, a Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer.  Called “The Foundling”, it is a story set in early 19^th century England, with style and plot much owing to Jane Austen--all in all, a classy book.  My errant coworker, however, took one look and exclaimed, “The Fondling?  That sounds like a dirty book.”  He later found the word “ejaculated” in the book, and try as I might to explain that this was an old usage referring to speech and not semen, he loudly teased me for reading a dirty book at work.  The embarrassment and the idiocy I could have forgiven; what threw me into a rage was that he picked up the book while I was away and highlighted the “dirty” word in bright yellow.

I’m sure I surprised him with my reaction.  I carried the book up to him and thrust it in his face, demanding to know what he’d done.  He tried to deny it at first, which only made me angrier, and I told him not to talk to me for the rest of the day.  I spent a good ten minutes stomping around the restaurant and complaining to my coworkers, most of whom were gratifyingly sympathetic.  And though the culprit apologized and ordered me a new copy of the book, I didn’t even look at him for the rest of the day.

The interesting—and slightly alarming—thing is, everything that happened only made me more angry.  The apology and attempts to make amends infuriated me even more—“as if that makes it better!” I snapped to a friend.  Now that I’m finally cooling off, I can admit that it wasn’t so very terrible, that yes, I am a bit irrational when it comes to my books, and that it should be possible for me to forgive him.  Even so, I doubt that I will be able to forget so easily or quickly.

Anger is a force, like magnetism or gravity, that keeps dragging you back.  It takes time and distance to fight free of it, and while certain people have more difficulty with this than others—no comment as to which side I’m on—we all have trouble with it.  In my case, rationality often comes too quickly for me.  While my intellect tells me it’s not good to still be muttering under my breath, my fists and teeth still want to clench and my face still wants to scowl.  In a strange way, anger feels good sometimes.

I think that everyone has a right to anger once in a while.  It’s inevitable, after all, and it’s better to release it at once than to suppress it where it festers.  But we have to be careful to put it away again when it’s time.  In the end, however good it might feel to be angry, it does very little good in our lives or relationships and is better off as a short spark than a blaze that burns us out.

Photo credit: http://chugginmonkeys.com/here_is_your_pick_me_up/6904

Simply Amazing

I am watching Dreamworks’ “The Prince of Egypt” for perhaps the twenty-seventh time.  It is a marvelous movie, full of beautiful artwork and some of the best music anywhere.  Currently I’m at the scene with the burning bush, and it makes me think.  God introduces Himself to Moses as “I Am.”  That’s always been a confusing statement from God, at least for me.  Every time I heard this story, my impulse after hearing that statement was to ask, “You are what?”  I didn’t expect the God of the universe to introduce Himself in such a simple way.

But now that I think about it, there is no better way to do it.  That simple statement is the summary of self-awareness.  To say “I am” is to say that you know of your own existence.  This is something that we take for granted, but if you think of it, there are millions of living things in this world, which is one of millions of worlds in one of millions of galaxies in a universe too big for comprehension.  And only one species we know of has truly realized where we are.  That, in the words of John Green, is “the miracle of human consciousness,” and it really is rather miraculous, whether or not you believe in a God who gave it to us.

I’m not really trying to figure out this miracle, or answer any big life questions.  I just think it needs to be said more often.  I am.  And it’s amazing.

Deep and Wide

Tonight I attended a recital by a good friend of mine.  She was part of my student recital last year, and so I felt I should be there, but more I wanted to go and support her.  And she was playing Debussy, and I’m always up for some Debussy.  She did very well, a beautiful performance.  Afterwards, I spoke to one of our teachers for a while, and she mentioned just how much work goes into such things.  I remember it well—the practicing, the scheduling and the decorating and reception-ing.  With this in mind, I looked around and I saw just how many people there were helping with the recital.  Someone had brought lights, and someone was turning pages, and someone was reading the French poetry, and someone had made the food.  So many people were there to help and support my friend on her night.

Thinking back to my recital, I remember that I did most of the work myself.  I bought and prepared the food for the reception, wrote the notes for the program, purchased flowers and arranged the stage.  I had a pair of friends to help me with what I absolutely could not do alone, but for the most part it was me.  Now, part of the reason it happened this way was that I am a bit of a perfectionist (gasp!) and I wanted to make sure everything was just the way I wanted it, but the other part was that when it was suggested that I get a few helpers that evening, I couldn’t think of many options.  On a night that was special to me, in a tide of emotion that was all mine, there were very few I wanted to share in what I was feeling.

This makes me think about the friendships I have with others, and the nature of those friendships.  I think of them in two ways: their width, or in how many a person is able to welcome into her heart, and their depth, or how far these people can penetrate.  Some people, like my friend from this evening, have the gift of friendships that are both, and they allow many, many people deep into their hearts.  My friendships tend to be one or the other.  I care for a lot of people—friends from work, friends from high school and college, friends from church—and I want them to be happy and am concerned when they are not.  But when it comes to my unhappiness, my needs and desires and loves, I keep these people out, hiding what I think behind a smile or a few half-true words.  There are precious few friends who truly share that with me, who have worked their way into my guarded heart.  I can probably count them on one hand.  Well, maybe two. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to love the wide world.  But I do hope that when I do love, I love deeply, and that those I love know just how precious they are.

When Conscience Bites

Sometimes I really don’t like being a good person.

At work, the servers tend to hang out by the bar in slow moments.  There are three high-top tables where we can sit and take a short break, get a drink of water, etc.  I was sitting there this afternoon, only a little while before going off the clock, caught between running one table’s food and waiting for another to finish eating.  There’s a reason we’re called “waiters”—there’s a lot of sitting around involved in my profession, especially when the restaurant isn’t busy.

Just down the way, one of the bartender’s tables had been seated, and three women were perusing their menus.  I thought nothing of it—my attention was elsewhere, thinking about my tables or maybe my break, I can’t remember.  So I didn’t notice when the women set their menus down, when they started to glance around impatiently, when they probably looked pointedly at me, sitting close by and obviously a server.  The hostess had just buzzed by, asking if the bartender knew she had a table, when the women got up and left the restaurant.  One of them snapped at me as she went out, “Thanks for the great service.”

Now, this was not my fault.  These women were not my responsibility.  I had just come from taking care of my own tables, had hardly been sitting for five minutes.  And yet, when that woman said that to me, the nasty words sank right down into the pit of my stomach and stayed there.  I felt guilty, and I started thinking of all the things that I could’ve done—maybe I should have gotten the women’s drink order, or at least found the errant bartender and told her to cut her cigarette break short.  The thought that these women blame me for their poor experience, that they think I’m lazy or bad at my job, bothers me, and it bothers me that it bothers me.  Why should I care?

Without a strong conscience, I wouldn’t have worried about that woman’s comment at all.  I wouldn’t have had to spend ten minutes rationalizing why she was wrong in her sentiment, and I wouldn’t have spent a further twenty minutes wishing I could explain to her why I hadn’t helped her and her friends.  Thirty good minutes of emotional energy, wasted.  What was the point?

When they teach you in school how good it is to think about others, how impressive it is to have compassion and empathy and conscience, they never tell you how hard it can be.  It would be so much easier for me if I didn’t care what others thought of me, if they were angry or disappointed with me.  But I do care, sometimes too much, and I’m still learning to deal with the disappointment or anger of people who may never learn otherwise of me. 

I don’t want to spend my life regretting silly little things like this.  I want to be a good person, and I want to understand and appreciate the feelings of others, but I hope I always know my own self-worth enough to know when I truly deserve their censure, and in all other cases, to let it slide off me and away.