writing skills/profession

Going Back to Work or School


Lately I find myself looking at the job opportunities that I see listed in the local paper and The Globe and Mail. A pointless exercise because I am still waiting on my permanent residency application to be approved, but I do it anyway. There was a job at the local museum listed last week that sounded like fun. The director needed a temporary assistant to help coordinate school visits, plan activities and lead tours. A love of history and an education background were the two biggest requirements. Aside from the fact that the hours wouldn’t work for me until Katy is in school full-time, it sounded like a great job. Note that I did not say “career”. I am not interested in a career. I have one and that’s writing. Being a writer is where my heart and soul lies and I am not going to forget that again. However, I do miss the day to day that goes along with a “real” job sometimes and it would be nice to bring in a little extra cash to off-set expenses since we are talking again about building a house. And when I am not looking at want ads, I think about taking classes. I grabbed the Continuing Education Guide for MacEwan College today as I was leaving the Safeway. They have a professional writing degree program there that has a few classes that would help me out with my writing career – copyediting, magazine writing, creative non-fiction and web designing. Valuable skills all.

 

So why don’t I just work on my writing and not worry about getting a job or going back to school? Partly because I am in a rut again. I have a lot of work currently out and haven’t heard back on anything yet. While this is frustrating, the other side of the coin is my fear that by having work out I am breaking some sort of rule. I don’t think I am because no one is going to pay me money even if they do want to use my work. The magazines I have targeted tend to pay you in subscriptions or copies of the edition you are published in. It is one of those resume-building things that writers do. Trade pay for writing credits that you can use to get more serious publications, agents and publishers to take you seriously. And there is the fact that at ten months I am well over past the longest stint I have gone without working since I was 14 years old. One would think that after thirty years of working for someone else, being self-employed would be a nice change, but that just goes to show you how ingrained work ethic and self-sufficiency can be. I am a product of my generation – the Joneses (1954 -1964) not Boomers or GenXer’s, we are the stable middle that keeps those two groups from exploding on each other. I learned my lessons too well, as my generation is wont to do and know I feel a bit untethered. Not that I am not nearly always busy. I have much to do and the days fly by. But I miss beng around people who are not my family on a my regular basis than writing group or yoga class.

 

Despite my dilemma, teaching is not calling loudly in my ear. I should be able to obtain an Alberta license sometime this spring and knowing what I do about education, I could easily sub next year. I don’t find that as interesting however as working in a museum. Or maybe studying to become a yogini. Yes, there is a yoga studio that I am going to switch to that offers training and certification for yoga instruction. How cool would that be?

 

“So what do you do?”

 

“I’m a writer and I teach yoga.”

 

Or.

“I write primarily but I also work part-time at the local museum designing educational programs for elementary and secondary students.”

 

Yeah, substitute teacher just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

 

Of course there is also Rob’s dream of building green houses.

 

“I write and I maintain the website for my husband’s company. He designs and builds green homes.”

 

Maybe I just want to be trendy? Not like most SAHM who venture back into employment by getting their realtor’s license or open up dayhomes. I don’t want to be anymore of a cliché than I am – teacher turn writer. Though in my case, it has always been writer with teaching being my side tracking.

 

I think that both employment and school probably represent nothing more than my frustration. I am hemmed in by a child who isn’t in full day school yet, a lack of status that keeps me from trying out jobs or classes and the interminable waiting that goes along with submitting writing pieces. The last is just a matter of finding that elusive audience for the things I like to write.

 

Probably what I really need is just a vacation.

 

 

Writing and Marriage


Rob discovered another blogger for me to add to my blogroll for you – my sporadic audience – because I don’t maintain the blogroll for me people. I surf blogs when Rob clues me to new ones that are interesting or funny or really out there in the zone of WTF and then if they seem worth the effort, I link them. But I seldom go back unless I have some sort of personal connection and even that won’t hold me if the blogger is one of those who only writes when they have something to say. The point of blogging is to say something regularly. Even if it is dumb and poorly written (okay, I don’t mean the last part really – try to be well-written). The blogger is a woman who makes a real living blogging and is now inches away from being a published author. Her name is Heather and the blog is called Dooce. If you think of me as being embarrassingly TMI, then you will be truly appalled by her. Personally, I am in awe of such fearless writing and self-exposure. You can’t be a blogger of note and not be willing and able to do this, which is why I am not a blogger of note. That and the fact that I don’t think I am as left of center as she is. Again, total awe of people who can live their lives in such a manner, but my Chinese astrological sign rules me in regards to such things. It will simply not allow my Greek nature to get out of control. Water rabbits absolutely trump Archers every day of the week. Besides even when my life was most like a soap opera, I was still more “normal” by white people suburban standards than Heather seems to have been. But go and read about her for yourself.

 

The post I have linked to is about her publishing – of which I am in envy and her analogy for her marriage. I don’t know that I have given my marriage enough thought as of yet to find some cultural analogy that epitomizes it. I am pretty sure that it would not be an MTV reality show about a too rich kid and his bodyguard, but that is just how I don’t roll. Though I often compare myself to Scarlet O’Hara the truth is that while I can completely empathize with her exasperation at the silly morays of society when it comes to women’s behaviour in particular and I get her abhorrence of those who would rather wallow than help themselves, I am not as swallow or blinkered about myself. Her lack of depth is the whim of her creator. Margaret Mitchell cleverly made Scarlet the persona of the Southerner of her times. But for me it is her feelings of imprisonment and constraint that ring most true. Rhett is my Rob and when I told him this he was a bit surprised “Why? He walks out on her in the end.” Which is true but not what I see in the character that reminds me of my husband. Rhett is the realist. He is amused by Scarlet’s impatience and her lack of understanding that while society can have all the rules it likes when it comes to personal choices and behaviors, the bottom line is that they are personal. We are in control of ourselves – reactions and decisions. We can’t be caged without our consent. Furthermore, it is pointless to rant about things we can’t control. There is do or do not. Accept or decline. In the end we sleep with ourselves and the ones we love most and best. My Rob has is moments but for the most part he is not worried about what others think or about societal rules that exist for the many and are indifferent to the few. He is unflappable and has an acerbic take on much of passes for civilization. Not that I think that one literary couple can serve as an analogy for a real flesh and bones relationship. There are too many aspects of a person and that multiples when you join with another. The ways we complement each other. Our love. Our lust. Our friendship. I don’t even know where to begin. How to find tangibles that could explain “us” to us let alone to people who know us only through me and my writing.

 

Rob and I were talking about the puzzle that is marriage as we walked earlier this evening. How some people grow and learn the give and take and others just don’t seem to get it. It can’t just be love. Can it? There has to be more to the fact that some people can see to the heart of who they are individually and as a team while it escapes so many of the rest. Maybe it is as easy as being able to see yourself and your mate in the antics of a TV characters or the lovers in the pages of a novel written before either of you was born. 

 

Letters Between Lovers


I was tag surfing and discovered a blog entry on Nicole Shannon’s Making Waves around the Reservoir about a joint venture between the U.S. Postal Service and HBO to promote letter writing. HBO is showing (or about to show – I don’t know ’cause I don’t watch TV) a mini-series on John Adams. The series is based on the book by David McCullough – who is a fabulous historian by the way and I love, love, loved him best of all the narrators involved in Ken Burn’s Civil War extravaganza (I could, and have, watched that series for hours at a time). The only other person who comes close is Shelby Foote (I love the stories he told about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a pretty heinous person overall but a great horse soldier), he has southern drawl that just melts your earlobes. Anyway, the John Adams biography by McCullough was based largely on the letters that John and his wife Abigail wrote to each other over the course of their courtship and marriage. One letter I remember has Abigail reminding her husband to press harder for women’s rights during the spring of 1776.

“…remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” 

 Something I didn’t know until recently was that women in Colonial times possessed the right to vote in most colonies so long as they were property owners. Voting was a privilege reserved to those holding property and gender didn’t matter. It wasn’t until after the Revolution that women were specifically stripped of this right by the new states as they crafted their individual constitutions. The oppression of women is never an accident. HBO is just looking for publicity but the Postal Service is hoping to revive the lost art of letter writing, which has been lost to the phone – land and cell, texting and email/messaging. John and Abigail wrote 1,100 letters back and forth over 56 years. Wow. She called him “dearest friend” and he addressed her as “Miss Adorable”. Do you suppose Bill and Hillary send each other missives with their special pet names for each other? Okay, maybe not. But Rob and I did have quite the exchange of emails going on during the long distance phase of our romance. That and IM sessions that stretched into the wee hours and phone conversations that surpassed even them. But, I have written about this before and I bring it up now only because I am moving my archived posts from my .mac blog to this one and was rereading entries from last spring and up almost up to our wedding last June. I have forgotten many of those pieces. It’s like reading someone else but it’s me. 

I told Rob about my topic for tonight after he wondered why I needed to know the name of a famous Southern Civil War Calvary general (and I asked him because I knew he would know or probably know. It’s nice to be able to ask obscure and out of the blue American history questions of one’s life mate and be assured they will have little trouble catching your train of thought). He rolled his eyes a bit. I think he gets a bit embarrassed about the way I gush about him. A lot. What’s the point of keeping his wonderfulness a secret though, I ask you? Even as I type this, he is rubbing my foot and reading me snippets of the latest Johnny Virgil. What an awesome man. My husband that is though I am sure JV is a nice guy too.

It’s been almost a year since our trip to Arkansas and our engagement. I was telling the story to Kathy and Susan at writing group Wednesday night and instead of being shocked at the brief span of our courtship; they both agreed that when you know, you just know. And we knew. Still do. We don’t write those long letters anymore. Hardly email at all, but so many other things have replaced those early expressions of love. Like foot rubs and reading to each other from the newspaper and blogs and books we are currently reading.