I refer to myself as a writer. It may seem a highfalutin conceit to do so, in light of the fact that I have (thus far) one "published," as in print-on-demand book (which has raked in a grand total of $42,) a second completed manuscript which is floating around the house hoping to garner enough positive feedback that I'll have the heart to send it forth into the unkind abyss of editorial slush piles, and a hard drive full of silly columns, written for a variety of silly purposes.
So, I'm not Michael Crichton. Or Lemony Snicket. Or even Barbara Cartland(...pant pant...oh. Maybe you've never read her.)
But here's what it boils down to.
If I'm not working on a writing project I am miserable and anxious.
If I am working on a writing project, I feel grounded and sane.
Those are the facts, and, believe me, I've tested them.
If my compulsion was to apply acrylic paint to canvas, and I persisted in doing so without hope of compensation, could I call myself an artist?
If I tootled my whistle every Tuesday night with my friends in a rousing and jovial session, could I call myself a musician?
If my metabolic system didn't function without the regular addition of synthetic insulin, could I call myself a type 1 diabetic?
So, if I must write to keep my mood and sensibility stable, can I call myself a writer?
I think so anyway.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Dumber than average
I’m taking Spanish classes. Three cheers for geekdom. Have completed Le Fantome de l’Opera, and am reading Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers. (Four cheers for geekdom.) Might even take German in the Fall (will hold off on that fifth cheer until then.) Turns out I don’t have a sincere need for meaning in my life, merely a sincere need to be busy. Guess I’m shallow that way.
True to form, I managed to put my foot in my mouth at, literally, the first opportunity, in Spanish class. The weather had turned wintry foul, people were drifting in, chatting a bit. La profesor walks in 30 seconds late, and I say, (in a manner intended to be light and bantery,) “We thought we were going to have to elect a teacher!” It’s possible that I imagined she spent the next hour and a quarter glaring at me...I don’t know. Perhaps I can redeem myself through abject obsequiousness--I understand college teachers tend to appreciate we aged students. But sometimes I can’t tell whether they see me as an aged student, or as an ugly kid who hasn’t slept in 5 years.
‘Twas interesting that, at Gabe’s last two Kung Fu classes, I sat near another kid’s French au pair who was reading a novel in English while referring frequently to her Dictionnaire Francaise/Anglaise, as I read Harry Potter while referring with even greater frequency to my French/English Dictionary. Perhaps what I’m really doing is preparing for my next incarnation in which I will actually be fairly bright.
True to form, I managed to put my foot in my mouth at, literally, the first opportunity, in Spanish class. The weather had turned wintry foul, people were drifting in, chatting a bit. La profesor walks in 30 seconds late, and I say, (in a manner intended to be light and bantery,) “We thought we were going to have to elect a teacher!” It’s possible that I imagined she spent the next hour and a quarter glaring at me...I don’t know. Perhaps I can redeem myself through abject obsequiousness--I understand college teachers tend to appreciate we aged students. But sometimes I can’t tell whether they see me as an aged student, or as an ugly kid who hasn’t slept in 5 years.
‘Twas interesting that, at Gabe’s last two Kung Fu classes, I sat near another kid’s French au pair who was reading a novel in English while referring frequently to her Dictionnaire Francaise/Anglaise, as I read Harry Potter while referring with even greater frequency to my French/English Dictionary. Perhaps what I’m really doing is preparing for my next incarnation in which I will actually be fairly bright.
Friday, January 14, 2005
You do What?
So...what do you do?
The correct answer could be something like: “I run a muffler franchise,” or “I’m the scary desk person at a behemoth law firm,” or--my personal favorite, for its vagueness if for no other reason--”I’m a consultant.” (You have to say that with a confidant nod.)
I’m toying with a variety of other ways to fill the loaded silence that follows the well-meaning stranger’s query. It could be entertaining to lie.
“That depends on my next placement in the witness protection program--I can’t tell you yet.”
“I’m an assassin. Let me give you my card and some references.”
“I paint the boomerangs on laminate countertops. Business has been slow lately.”
Call me a goody two-shoes if that’s your inclination, or just leave my shoes out of it and scoff...but I’m a bad lier.
What I usually say is: “aaahhm...I kind of...do some...what did you say you do?” (This works best if you can suddenly drop your napkin on the floor, laugh lightly at your silliness, and duck under the table.)
The problem arises when there are no napkins. A truthful answer is the only way out.
“I’m a jill-of-all-trades, but strictly on a volunteer basis.”
“I put the home fires out.”
“I’m working my way out of a stressful but ultimately rewarding career in the multi-faceted field of child maintenance.”
“I’m a writer in the sense that I intrinsically believe myself to be a writer, much in the same way that someone with an painting habit might intrinsically believe herself to be an artist, due to the fact that she, does, in fact, creates works of art. Oh, whoopsie, did you drop your napkin?”
Perhaps the floor would stay cleaner if I just called myself a consultant.
The correct answer could be something like: “I run a muffler franchise,” or “I’m the scary desk person at a behemoth law firm,” or--my personal favorite, for its vagueness if for no other reason--”I’m a consultant.” (You have to say that with a confidant nod.)
I’m toying with a variety of other ways to fill the loaded silence that follows the well-meaning stranger’s query. It could be entertaining to lie.
“That depends on my next placement in the witness protection program--I can’t tell you yet.”
“I’m an assassin. Let me give you my card and some references.”
“I paint the boomerangs on laminate countertops. Business has been slow lately.”
Call me a goody two-shoes if that’s your inclination, or just leave my shoes out of it and scoff...but I’m a bad lier.
What I usually say is: “aaahhm...I kind of...do some...what did you say you do?” (This works best if you can suddenly drop your napkin on the floor, laugh lightly at your silliness, and duck under the table.)
The problem arises when there are no napkins. A truthful answer is the only way out.
“I’m a jill-of-all-trades, but strictly on a volunteer basis.”
“I put the home fires out.”
“I’m working my way out of a stressful but ultimately rewarding career in the multi-faceted field of child maintenance.”
“I’m a writer in the sense that I intrinsically believe myself to be a writer, much in the same way that someone with an painting habit might intrinsically believe herself to be an artist, due to the fact that she, does, in fact, creates works of art. Oh, whoopsie, did you drop your napkin?”
Perhaps the floor would stay cleaner if I just called myself a consultant.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
How to Not Know
The offsprings’ lives get bigger every day. More draws them into the world. Less compels them to say home. If they are with me, it’s for lack of a better offer, but the rolling snowball of independence is picking up speed and diameter. The writing is on the wall--or at least on the bumper of the car--and it gets straight to the point: I will, within a handful of years, have worked myself out of a job.
Initially, I was tickled and excited by the possibilities. But my wonderment at the opening doors has been muted a bit by the coincidental shrinking of my partner’s ability to wonder with me. (edit: this is improving...I think it is.)
I feel a lot of ways--ways that roll around and trip each other so that no single way of feeling can rise to an important enough position to demand attention.
I have no creditable career or function. Is it ok to become nothing more than a student of my own interests, or should I feel obligated to ferret out a useful position in society, even if such a forced search might lead to absolutely nothing?
Is it fair and honorable to live off the resources we have acquired over a couple decades, retire in effect, when the actual paid portion of the joint effort was carried out by the other? To be sure, I reared children through some mighty unpleasant conditions--conditions which might have been intolerable to many women--in order to facilitate both the earning of wages and the morphing of some abysmal real estate into lovely, inhabitable houses (while my own remained abysmal until recently.) It’s easy to forget, as the physical environment improves, that I did work long, hard, and patiently. (And there’s always the uncertainty of whether one’s “resources” are even stable, or whether they’ll be washed away like major portions of the southeast Asian coastline--and if that happened--oh well, at least necessity would dispatch confusion.)
One should feel useful. A sense of purpose is an essential amino acid, except, perhaps, to Nirvana-bent demigods, and I’m not one of those. But a sense of purpose cannot be plucked from the cosmic void--it has to come, I suppose, with experiential living and time. And maybe that is the answer. The living and time outlay which must be experienced before I’ve earned my next sense of purpose have not yet happened. I’m not done with offspring. Not quite yet. If one of those Nirvana-bent demigods would just stop by from time to time and remind me of that, then, maybe, I could relax.
Initially, I was tickled and excited by the possibilities. But my wonderment at the opening doors has been muted a bit by the coincidental shrinking of my partner’s ability to wonder with me. (edit: this is improving...I think it is.)
I feel a lot of ways--ways that roll around and trip each other so that no single way of feeling can rise to an important enough position to demand attention.
I have no creditable career or function. Is it ok to become nothing more than a student of my own interests, or should I feel obligated to ferret out a useful position in society, even if such a forced search might lead to absolutely nothing?
Is it fair and honorable to live off the resources we have acquired over a couple decades, retire in effect, when the actual paid portion of the joint effort was carried out by the other? To be sure, I reared children through some mighty unpleasant conditions--conditions which might have been intolerable to many women--in order to facilitate both the earning of wages and the morphing of some abysmal real estate into lovely, inhabitable houses (while my own remained abysmal until recently.) It’s easy to forget, as the physical environment improves, that I did work long, hard, and patiently. (And there’s always the uncertainty of whether one’s “resources” are even stable, or whether they’ll be washed away like major portions of the southeast Asian coastline--and if that happened--oh well, at least necessity would dispatch confusion.)
One should feel useful. A sense of purpose is an essential amino acid, except, perhaps, to Nirvana-bent demigods, and I’m not one of those. But a sense of purpose cannot be plucked from the cosmic void--it has to come, I suppose, with experiential living and time. And maybe that is the answer. The living and time outlay which must be experienced before I’ve earned my next sense of purpose have not yet happened. I’m not done with offspring. Not quite yet. If one of those Nirvana-bent demigods would just stop by from time to time and remind me of that, then, maybe, I could relax.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Nonsense, of different sorts.
What next when you’ve just finished what is most likely the dumbest story you could ever write? Tossing it seems unfitting. I plan to revise, revise, and maybe revise a bit more...but since I really tend to edit myself all along, revision generally amounts to little more than some changes in phraseology. It may crisp up a bit, but a turn of phrase won’t change the underlying premise, which is an absurd trifle. But at least if I march forward laughing, eventually pitching my little manuscript through the doorways of the club with the big bouncers who remind me of that nasty game called “Red Rover” I had to play in first grade...well, maybe I’ll still be laughing when they snarl and toss it back out.
I've just polished off a little bag of cookies from the Korean grocery. I have no idea what they're called, but they look and taste like miniature vanilla wafers. The bag is decorated with what appears to be wiggling, winking, pigeon-toed gumdrops wearing eggshell helmets and licking their lips. There's something disorienting about a bag of cookies with writing, and subwriting, which might as well--from my pov--be written in Martian. I don't remember being as disturbed by meaningless characters when I was pre-literate, but now--to be faced with packaging that mocks me with its utter indecipherability--I lament my limited mind, which hasn't assimilated all existing forms of human script. I take small ...very small...comfort in the single comprehensible item on the bag--a trio of arrows in the recycling triangle, surrounding the word "other." At least I know these gumdrop babies go in the trashcan, not the yellow bin.
I've just polished off a little bag of cookies from the Korean grocery. I have no idea what they're called, but they look and taste like miniature vanilla wafers. The bag is decorated with what appears to be wiggling, winking, pigeon-toed gumdrops wearing eggshell helmets and licking their lips. There's something disorienting about a bag of cookies with writing, and subwriting, which might as well--from my pov--be written in Martian. I don't remember being as disturbed by meaningless characters when I was pre-literate, but now--to be faced with packaging that mocks me with its utter indecipherability--I lament my limited mind, which hasn't assimilated all existing forms of human script. I take small ...very small...comfort in the single comprehensible item on the bag--a trio of arrows in the recycling triangle, surrounding the word "other." At least I know these gumdrop babies go in the trashcan, not the yellow bin.
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