Thoughts from a Reluctant (New) Freelancer

When the temp job that I kept thinking would turn into a perm job abruptly ended in November, my first panicky thought was, "Unemployment again? Crap." Of course, a natural thought for anyone asked to clean out their desk this afternoon. Now, in fact. While your cup of coffee you just poured is still warm. But in the back of my mind I thought, "Hmm. Can I do it without getting another data entry job?"

A few weeks after I rode the T home with a big bag full of random office supplies (my own, I swear), I contacted Patch Somerville at the suggestion of my amazing freelance writer friend, Kristin Offiler and they offered me a story to cover almost immediately. Then, another friend who I met at Diesel, of all places, hooked me up with a social marketing firm. Suddenly this "no full-time job" thing looked like a distinct possibility. 

So since I started playing the freelance do-si-do, mainly coasting on leftover Christmas money at the moment, I've had some random thoughts. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Six cups on the coffee carafe doesn't actually equal six cups, right? Three at the most. It only fills up my mug twice.
• I love Joel and all, but I'm quite sick of him getting gourmet cooked lunch catered to his office every day while I sit at my desk eating cottage cheese.
• I cashed in my coins at a Coinstar a couple of weeks ago and made the best purchase ever: my very own oscillating, remote-control space heater. It's my new best friend.
• Just because I work at home doesn't mean I'm the de-facto housekeeper. But it does mean that I'm around more often to get annoyed with the state of things. I should start charging my roommates.
• I am running out of Pandora hours quicker than Fat Free Half and Half, and every month think harder about giving them their measly $1. 
• Writing corporate Facebook statuses is kind of like talking to a kindergarten class. And what do you think, kids?
• My evening activities are more precious to me than ever. It's writing group night, you say? THANK GOD, GET ME OUT OF HERE.
• Taking a shower by 11AM is early for me.

And finally...

• I don't think I would like to work at an office for 40 hours a week ever again. 20, maybe. 30 at the most. Maybe. If the pay is good.

And what do you think, kids?

The 21st Century and Relationships Revisited

Last year, I wrote this post about relationships and how we define them in the modern world. This year, I've been thinking about how we might regain friendships, and kindle new relationships, via social media.

A friend was recently contacted by his ex-girlfriend; they broke up almost two years ago. Although he'd emailed her several times about some of the things she left at his house, she'd not responded until a couple of days ago. But it wasn't via email: it was via Facebook friend request.

He was understandably confused. Why now? Why this way? Without knowing why, I knew the answer: because that's the way we get back in touch with people who have left our lives.

It's happened to me several times with people of my past. We'll make a conscious or subconscious choice not to talk for a while, and then out of the blue one day he posts something on my Facebook wall, or comments on my blog. Without addressing him directly, I'll comment back. He'll probably respond. Eventually, one of us will send a message or email to the other, still under the pretense of the blog or Facebook posting subject, but that's really all it takes. Now we're talking again.

I laid this pattern out for my friend, and sure enough, soon after she sent her friend request (and he accepted it), she posted a video on his Facebook wall. He responded with another video, a conversation ensued, and very soon after that she commented on another of his Facebook statuses, this time suggesting that he visit her. He just told me that he's "upping the stakes" by "Liking" her current Facebook status.

It's the same pattern that emerges when we start liking someone new, but don't want to be too forward: we inch into their social media world, make ourselves more known over time, and eventually try to jump the gap into IRL conversations. It's an obvious pattern, but it still works.

Who knows if my friend will visit his ex. Who knows if they will maintain any sort of friendship outside of Facebook or relegate everything to walls and statuses and comments. But my prediction of the evolution of this development is significant, I think, and showed that real patterns of relationship development emerge online. The question is that will these patterns lead to more, significant, offline connection? Or will they simply lead to more excuses to stay inside on Facebook on beautiful days?

Think about how you might have stayed in touch with old flames (or new flames) over the years, if that's your style. Do you think that coming up with patterns like this (and following them) could help us strengthen or rekindle friendships and relationships, or might we just be deepening our dependence on social media and the internet to keep track of our relationships for us?

Public Service Announcement on Dating

So you've been out with a new fella/lady. He/she seems quite nice: a good personality, cute smile, interesting things to say. But it's not the right fit for you. You've given it a couple dates and would rather not take the time out of your busy schedule to meet again to pursue something that doesn't rev your engine.

You must choose, but choose wisely.

Option 1 Easy, but Cruel: Do a Disappearing Act
"..."
Option 2 Moderately Difficult, and Slightly Less Cruel: Notify, but Lie
"I really had a great time tonight Martha, but I'm really just not ready for another relationship since my heart was broken by my last girlfriend who just joined the Peace Corps and is now fighting for truth and justice."
Option 3 Hard, but Humane: Notify with the Truth
"I had a really great time tonight Martha, but your inability to get my jokes really bugs me. We're just not a good fit, I'm sorry."

Since Joel and I have been dating openly, I've been on the giving and receiving end of this choice a few times in the last year. I always consider Options 1 and 2, but always go with 3. It makes my skin crawl to think that I might be hurting someone's feelings, but at the same time I've been hurt by the disappearing act and the dump-and-lie worse.


So as a friendly public service announcement, please consider Option 3. You'll feel better in the long run!

Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth

By now, all of you know that I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in much besides vampires (the non-sparkly kind), zombies (everyone really should be preparing for the apocolypse), fairies, love, goodwill, and chocolate. So in prepping for my fall course on American Mythology, it's been interesting to think about how I am going to approach the topic of faith.

In his series with Bill Moyers (that was turned into the book I am now reading), Joseph Campbell discusses why we should all read myths. He suggests that there's a lack of spirituality in our day-to-day lives, now that we're constantly gaining new information that enriches our brains but not our souls. Normally I would be mentally checking out after a comment like this, but reading on I see that Campbell isn't talking about religion. Myths, he argued, offer "life models," but the problem with major religions now is that they aren't "appropriate to the time in which [we] are living." He goes on to say that the "virtues of the past are the vices of today," and obviously, visa-versa. So what does he argue myths do that religion can't do?

Myths are fluid. Myths give guide-posts for the stages of our lives. Myths teach us lessons that we can apply to problems we are facing. And he wasn't saying that Christianity doesn't do that, he's just suggesting that by taking the myths within the Bible as a hard and fast rulebook for daily life isn't possible anymore, just as it's not possible to follow "rules" of ancient Greece. The Bible doesn't offer much wiggle room, which is why, he claims, many today are turning outward for their sources of stability.

I haven't done much research outside of reading a few chapters of The Power of Myth, but the kind of spirituality Campbell claims we all need is the kind I can get behind. I've always said that I like the basic moral lessons that religion teaches: be kind to your neighbor, don't steal, be humble, etc. And these are archetypal moral lessons we can find in almost all kinds of myths. Buddhism preaches following the Middle Path, and poor Icarus learned this same lesson the hard way. We are constantly trying to avoid melting our own wings by maintainting moderation in television, internet, work, play and yes, sadly, chocolate. I get Campbell's message that we are more stable and grounded when we have model stories to which we can compare our lives and, religious or not, I can appreciate reading myths.

Campbell also asserts that this role of myths can also be filled by novels and other forms of creative writing. I think this means I can assert that literature is my religion. Literature, definitely, is something I can believe in. And this, I think, can be something I teach my freshmen with quite a passion indeed.

Stuff I've Learned as I'm Pushing 30

Okay, so 28 isn't EXACTLY "pushing" 30, but it's more than "just over 25."

I've been thinking lately about all the things that I have learned or changed my opinion on in the last ten years or so. I don't think I've necessarily grown up, per say, but I've definitely decided that some things I thought were a big deal are, well, not so much, and visa versa. Here are some of them:

-Bottled water is a ripoff. Unless there isn't a tap with potable water around at all, it's much cheaper (and better to the environment) to carry around a reusable bottle and refill it, or just order tap water. I don't always follow my own advice, but it's something I definitely think about more than I used to.

-Recycling is important! I used to think nothing at all about throwing away cans and bottles, especially if they had food waste in them. I used to be a huge baby about touching food waste. I still don't really like it (I would probably try to be an escort before a dishwasher) but thinking about the giant amount of trash sitting around, not decomposing, is kind of depressing. Sure, sometimes I still throw away paper. But I feel bad about it now.

-Doing housework is a lot faster than sitting around for weeks and dreading doing housework.

-Pets are awesome, but pets are expensive. And time-consuming. Make friends with pets, and petsit.

-I used to think I was sooo uncool when my mom would make me wear a helmet while riding my bike, but now I fear looking uncool without a helmet. Uncool and suicidal.

-Healthy food actually makes me feel better. Huh. Who woulda' thought?

-Caffeine does absolutely nothing to me, while alcohol knocks me out cold. So much for a lunchtime martini!

-Knowing about all the finances, whether combined with a partner's or not, is sooo important. I realize now that I couldn't count on one hand the amount of times I took interest in our finances when I was married. I would buy books, go to the coffee shop, and annoy Tom to death for something I didn't even fully grok doing. Bad Kate.

-The freedom from not having a television is worth the hours spent online. Most of the time.

-Walking a mile in the city is shorter than walking a mile in the country. Try it sometime and you'll see what I mean.

-I wear glasses. Holy crap I wear glasses!

-I have curly hair. Where was it hiding all those years? Oh yeah, up in my ponytail. Dur.

-Writing fiction is a hell of a lot harder than it used to be, when I would get lost for hours at a time writing complicated (and horrible) plot lines out on yellow legal pads in the back of my parents' minivan.

-Owning the "cute" car does not equal owning a good car.

-Geeks/Nerds are my people.

And age, of course, is relative, and I don't know if it becomes more relative the older you get, or the farther along we get into the new millennium, where 40 is the new 30, 60 is the new 40, and 21 is far too early to get married.

What have you learned since you've become an "adult"?

A New Story

The first Saturday after graduation, Kate woke after a blissful 10 hours of sleep, put on the coffee, and stared at an empty page.

She had forgotten how to start a story.

She hadn't written a new one since November, due to thesis revisions. That one, inspired by a conversation with a friend, came out of almost nowhere. This time, there's no one to talk to but the coffee.

It wasn't as though interesting things hadn't happened in the last couple of months. It was just that those interesting things hadn't sparked any narrative for Kate, who was generally a "write-when-inspiration-strikes" girl and not a "write-every-morning" girl. She got ideas sometimes, and put them on post-its, or in little notebooks, or as a memo in her fancy phone.

There was a post-it right now, in fact, that pale institutional yellow, tacked to the bulletin board over the desk. On it was an idea for a story about Wonderland, that end-of-the-blue-line disappointment that must sound like heaven to a naive child. But the note was partially obscured by another, this one cheerfully purple, that read, "Your mountain adventure awaits!" -- her graduation present from Joel.

She ignored both notes and pulled a few small notebooks out of her bag. This would normally be the time she would give up, journal, and write a blog post about how being a writer is hard. But now that she's graduated, she no longer has the excuse of "in-progress." She no longer has the luxury of deadline inspiration. This was work, now, albeit a work she generally enjoyed. And she didn't just leave the office every time she became frustrated with filing or updating the database, did she? So she must now not leave her desk. It was Saturday morning, and she was still in her pajamas, but it was still work.

So she opened her little notebooks, found a scrap of something she'd written a while ago, and try it out. If not this, something else. Then something else. Something, sometime, had to stick.

Reflection on a Low-Res MFA

As I sit here writing out an itinerary for my family for next week's MFA graduation festivities, I am choking up a little. This is it. I don't want to end this journey, as much as I want to start the next step of it. So for your reading pleasure, I give you a re-press of a posting I wrote for my old Wordpress blog, on June 28th, 2008:

It’s equally as difficult to capture the soul of a low-residency MFA program in a short explanation as it is to draw a concrete picture of the concept “dream.” But I’ll try.

The short of it is that for the past nine days, I’ve been sitting in class. Some of these “classes” are very traditional in the sense that an instructor with a prepared lecture speaks on a topic illustrated by assigned readings. In these seminars, we have learned about the body (i.e. scene and sentence) and the soul (i.e. character and conflict) of our writing. Other “classes” are actually workshops – small groups of students who have read each other’s writing and have commented on what works in the piece and what doesn’t. At night, we have been attending entertaining and poignant readings by both published authors and students.

The long of it is that this experience has been completely different than anything I’ve ever done. My classmates and professors have ranged in age from their early twenties to their seventies, work their day jobs in everything from art to oncology, and hail from all over the the world. This diversity lends itself to learning about writing and writers in more ways than I ever imagined.  I’ve been in and out of creative writing courses and workshops since high school, but in their nature they have been one tentative toe in the water. This past week I was immersed - all the way to the bottom, in the deep end of the pool.

Writing is breathing while we’re here. Even in the cafeteria after seminar, even in the bar at night, even in our dorm rooms at unreasonable hours after the bar – we are writers and we are talking about our craft. And we are similar to each other in this aspect, which is something that a lot of us don’t get in the “real world.” We are building up our writing stores for the six months we are cast off on our own.
For “low-residency” means autodidactic. We are given a map and some peripheral direction but beyond that are on our own. The lessons we have learned here we must take back to our own writing desks, to our couches, to our offices, to hold us over until January. It’s scary to be cast off back into the real world, but I don’t think that I can retreat back into the writing vacuum I inhabited a week ago. I’ve learned too much.

So put simply, I’ve been taking classes and gathering reading and writing assignments that I will complete, in four different submission packets, throughout the semester. But really I have been submersed in writing, learning how to breathe in this sometimes alien environment, and how to occasionally come up for air in order to be able to go back down for longer periods. I know I will eventually be ready to graduate, once I’ve experienced this grueling week three more times, but for now, two years seems far too short for this life-altering experience.