a new job

A Life’s Purpose


What if what I am supposed to be doing is exactly what I am doing?

I ask only because I read a blog entry of a friend who is searching for her direction in life. Or redirection. We can never assume, after all, that where we are, what we are doing or who we surround ourselves with is permanent.

Life is about change – at its core – not about permanence.

I was a teacher for twenty years. When I left, I can count on one hand the number of minutes it took for someone to ask,

“So what are you going to do now?”

As if emigrating to Canada, remarrying and focusing on my writing/blogging in addition to giving the stay at home mom thing a full-time go for the first time in the five years I’d been a mother wasn’t enough.

What are you going to do with your life?

So that it’s meaningful – in the eyes of the world – is the question behind that question.

But what if, maybe, I am doing what I am meant to do?

Given that nothing is permanent, and I can reasonably expect the circumstances of my life to change over the course of time, why couldn’t what I am doing … right now … be what I am meant to do? Right now.

And isn’t that enough?

Writing for blogs, studying yoga with an eye towards teaching a few classes – maybe having a studio one day – isn’t nothing. Though I recognize that like “having it all” or “having enough” it is an eye of the beholder thing.

Does anyone’s eye matter but mine in the assessment of what makes my life meaningful or gauging what I should be doing with my life?

I think not.

And a life’s “purpose” is more than what one does in terms of culture’s obsession with the idea of work and career (which, frankly, is the measuring stick in our Western world to an unhealthily large degree).

What if, what you are doing right now and where you are is “it”?

For now.

Staying Put in Canada


I’ve mentioned before that there was a possibility we’d be heading overseas to live for a while. Rob was pursuing a position on a project that would have taken us to the UK and then Saudi Arabia. It would have been a 4 or 5 year gig that would have allowed us to move on to the retirement/second career thing in the mountains a bit sooner than later.

But the job is off. I am not at liberty to go into details, but it had nothing to do with Rob’s suitability. He is, despite his ambivalence, a sought after commodity in his line of work. This was an employment case of “it’s not you, it’s us”. Literally.

So now that we know for sure we are staying put, things that have been on hold or plans that we discussed in only the vaguest of terms are suddenly wide open dreamscapes.

One of the most pressing issues is our home. Rob has been steadily renovating the house we live in for … ever. Or least as long as he’s lived here and that’s a decade plus of years.

And the house is not done. Not even close.

One might wonder that this has been a non-issue for me since moving here going on three years ago now. And it’s not that I am oblivious to my surroundings, though I come quite close to that sort of space blindness, it’s just that I am not a Better Homes and Gardens type. I have a serviceable kitchen, a comfy bed and a place to write. What else does a person need?

Rob thinks we need an addition. One that will attach a garage to the house, add a new master bedroom with en suite and provide us with a large kitchen area. This is not a small project that upends the house a room or so at a time. This is gutting the back yard, tearing out half of the back-end of the house and ripping up a deck that consumed the summer of 2008 and the cement sidewalks that consumed last summer.

On the plus side, an attached garage. I never had one until the last house I bought with Will. I’d lived in Des Moines for 15 years, parking vehicles on the street or driveway and dealing with the weather. The whole first year of Dee’s life was coping with baby carriers and rain or snow or bitter cold or blistering heat or whatever other plagues of Egypt came our way in terms of weather. I loved the attached garage. Somedays, especially after Will was nearly blind and precariously balanced, not having to load the two of them up after somehow getting them outside was the only thing I had to be thankful for all day.

A new master bedroom would give us three bedrooms upstairs and mean that Dee could have our old room, which is twice the size of her current room. We could ditch the playroom downstairs and contain all things child in her larger bedroom space. And she would have a walk-in closet. She would be in heaven although she would have serious en suite envy. She totally believes that she should have a bathroom of her own – attached to her room. Where does she get such ideas?

Aside from hearth and home, there is also employment to consider. Staying means looking for part-time work. I put working on hold for a variety of reasons, but one of them was not being sure we’d be around long enough for me to find and settle into a place before we’d pack up and be gone. Since I didn’t need a paycheck for our survival, it seemed unfair for me to take a job knowing I wasn’t going to be in it long.

My mother’s first words upon hearing we were staying was “Well, now you’ll be able to get a job.”

I start my yoga teacher training this weekend. My current instructor indicated that she would be agreeable to my teaching at her studio, once I am trained and that would be this summer, so yoga is a real possibility as part-time work. It is not a living by any means, but it’s somewhere to start. I want to someday have a studio, somewhere. Be a business owner. I think that is my upbringing. I love to write and blog, but they don’t feed my need for tangible employment. Probably seems silly to some, but I like the idea of going into work. Actually leaving the house kind of work.

We’ve talked about trading in the tent trailer for a holiday trailer, and using it for vacations. Rob wanted to travel the SouthWest U.S., but with the border as it is, I am less keen. And though Americans don’t seem to have any sense of impending doom, the news we get looks more and more dicey. In fact, this coming summer it seems it has never been a better time to stay out of the States.

I am only a tiny bit disappointed about not moving overseas. It could have been fun and interesting in a way that most people’s lives never get to be. But it would have been work and Dee would not have been as happy about it as we would have been. Our mothers were distraught, and the older girls, though they’ve put on brave faces, would have felt abandoned to varying degrees. It is not great for Rob. He gets to continue on as a workhorse and he deserves more. Everyone takes for granted that he will be there to fix things, give advice, loan money and generally make sure the trains run. I doubt that anyone but me really worries about his needs, or wants for him, when it comes to that. Having been in that thankless position, I know how long it can make a day seem.

Although Rob doesn’t think much of the place, there are far worse little towns than The Fort to call home. It will not be home forever, I don’t think, but it is good enough for now.

Funny, I just read a blog piece about “good enough” and how that kind of settling is a bad thing. I didn’t really agree.

On Becoming a Columnist


I can’t imagine a better job than writing a weekly newspaper column. Being paid to comment on life as it swirls around me?  Could employment be more intellectually and creatively stimulating?

Not in my opinion.

For my birthday, Rob gave me a book on the art of writing columns that a columnist I know recommended to me. It is one she uses in the writing course she teaches. I have read just the first few chapters and find it quite helpful.

This same writer friend also urged me to simply begin asking after writing opportunities via my local papers. This is a bit of a problem. There are two local papers. Both are free and more ad than news or other content. The Post is owned, written and published by one man. I have tried to submit to him before and was informed that he only takes letters to the editor. He does not need anyone to help him with content – of which there is precious little. The Post is the newspaper equivalent  of a vanity book. The only difference being that it is read. I think as many people read The Post as read The Record, which is the “official” newspaper of Fort Saskatchewan.

I prefer dealing with the editor of The Record. He is a nice kid. Always happy to get tips on feature stories and never ignores an email.

I needed to find out if The Record would be interested in running a story about my writing group’s anthology project and decided that since I was contacting the editor anyway, I would ask about column opportunities. Specifically I wanted to know how a person went about becoming a columnist.

The book I am reading is a wealth of information on what columnists do but makes the path to a regular column sound a bit like pulling a sword from a stone. Not one of the columnists the author interviewed, and she includes herself, could pinpoint the steps to achieving this lofty thing called “a weekly column”.

The editor responded to my query in less than an hour. They didn’t have money to pay columnists was the first thing he wrote. I wasn’t surprised. It’s a free newspaper. He also went on to inform me they weren’t looking to expand their stable of columnists at the moment but were always open to new ideas and pitches but – isn’t there always one? – they liked columns written by experts.

Experts. Sigh. I am not an expert in any field. Frankly, I don’t read that type of column unless I am in need of information. Usually it is just easier to google information than follow an advice column in the hopes he/she one day writes about what I need to know.

The Record’s columnists include a couple of ministers and a woman who I think works in the mental health field. She is always writing about depression. There are many, many forms of depression and just as many ways to write about it.  Somehow she manages to write nearly the same thing every time however. I don’t know what the holy men write about because neither are very good writers.  Oh, and I’m not holy inclined to waste the minutes required to find out what concerns them enough to write about. Okay, that was unkind.  They are “technically” good, can’t fault their mechanics, but they are boring and that is just wrong.

I am glad I included my query in the email. I am not at all surprised to be politely sent back to my own little corner.  Now I can check this possibility off my list and look for others.

I do think it is a little sad my own local paper errs on the side of informative rather than enlightening or entertaining but when you have only a tiny bit of space for local politics, news and sports between the ads, the stuff which makes people think or smile is often sacrificed.

Sometimes I am informative. Mostly I am just someone whose writing about life is something others can relate to and, in a world where people feel alone more than part of humanity at large, this is important too.