Back to the Blog--and a Little Wiser, Too

The roller coaster hit me hard, and somehow I’ve managed to emerge on the other side happy, full of adrenaline, and somewhat whole.

I previously wrote how my job was making me unhappy. Not wanting to write is my worst nightmare. This job—sitting at a computer for hours typing in the same information—did just that. Even as I continued working there, I knew I had to leave. Soon. 

What else happened? In mid-August, my colitis flared up for the first time since I’d been diagnosed in July 2012. I can say now that it was a learning experience because I know what to expect next time it hits. The most difficult thing was that I could justify myself going to work. It wasn’t like my boss was in the dark about the subject, her daughter has colitis, but it’s who I am. When I was little and too sick to go to school, my mom would have to hold me back from running for the bus. I can honestly say, in that regard, nothing has changed.

So, when my job at the company ended, it was a huge relief. What I needed was rest and lots of it on my time away from working. I napped every day with Raven, my four month old kitten, and by the end of the week interviewed at another company, and landed the job. I would start Monday.

My new job is a breath of fresh air. It’s a small company with maybe seven people at most working there every day, compared to the large one I was at before. We talk, we laugh, we get work done, we say bless you when someone sneezes (which no one did at my other job, weird), we get to know each other. Most importantly, I do different things. I answer and make phone calls, I work with filing, I organize, and…GAH! Doing multiple things—scratch that, LEARNING multiple things at a job, about a local company, is a privilege. All of this I can take with me onto the next job, and the next, and the next.

Now, I’ve been wondering why my perceptions of jobs has changed. This job by no means is my dream job, but so far I’m not dreading going there (it’s only been a week, though, so we’ll have to see when that changes!). I think I’ve discovered that in order to find time to write, I have to force time to write, even if it’s in small patches. I’ve discovered that writing is my priority, but while I’m writing I can work, too, and gain more skills along the way.

Writing is what makes me happy, and adding it to my day is by no means a burden. I’m sure you can understand. It feels good to finally have answers to some questions bouncing around in my mind. But I’m still only 22, so there’s bound to be more—and soon!  

After School

 It is often portrayed in movies, or even through the words of adults (teachers, parents, friends, family) that being in high school and college will help better define you as a person, or who you’re going to be. Now this may be true for some, and I definitely discovered some things about myself during those 8 years, but this is most certainly not the truth for everyone.

High school was not too bad for me. I found my group of friends (all obsessed with Harry Potter, reading, drama club, or all of the above). I danced 15-20 hours a week, as well as joined the school plays to dance. I received good grades. My plan, all through those years as well as through middle school, was to go to college for creative writing. Honestly, there is nothing else that I want to do. If I am to go devote my time to something, I don’t want to be doing it just to make money or because it’s a popular profession. I wrote as often as I could, on short stories (that were failures) and a portal fantasy story, the one that I am revising today.

That’s who I was: dancer, friend, writer, good student.

In college, that changed. I was still a good student, and I did join ballroom dance, but after my sophomore year, I quit. I got a job in the Writing Center at school, peer tutoring. I devoted most of my time to my grades and my writing, when I was out of school. Most of the time, I pondered this: who was I now? What was my identity? Writer, reader, good student, girlfriend, and someone who happens to have colitis. Different, yes, but school was still there to ground me.

I just graduated college in December, and walked in May. School has been thrown out of the mix, tossed into the past until I decide (IF I decide) to go back to school and get my Masters. Once again, people are pressuring me to go into something that would make a lot of money. I can write on the side, they say, and this is true. I would love to go back to school, but to dive back in after I just left would mean that I still would have school to ground me.

I don’t want that.

I want to figure out who I am without school. I want to roll in the possibilities, to find new hobbies, to meet new people—except oh wait I’m an introvert. I have colitis, I write, I read, and I am a feminist. What else? What am I missing? What do I believe in? Discovering who I am without school—as well as pushing the fear that I will only be good at school and nothing else—is difficult. It wouldn't be worthwhile, though, if it wasn't. 

Quite Simply, I Fell in Love

On top, the VHS I got when I was 9.
All the way to the right, the Sorcerer's Stone book
that I destroyed in my love. 

The sight of the move trailer on the television sparked my interest. Wide-eyed, I told my mom later that movie, and, of course, she repeated her mantra: “You have to read the book, first.” It was okay, though, because she had a copy of it in the classroom she worked in at the local school.

that I wanted to see

She handed me the copy, and I ran my fingers over the strange, golden letters of the title. I looked at the cover that showed a boy flying: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was eight years old, and by the time I was done reading it, the book cover was so destroyed with the pleasure of reading that my mom told me I could keep it and she’d buy another one for the classroom.

There are many stories in my life connected with the Harry Potter series. At my ninth birthday party, for example, as I blew out the candles I wished for the Sorcerer’s Stone VHS. Guess what was in the first present I opened from my grandparents? When I was ten, I received a magazine with the new film’s details on the inside spread. Those pages were so destroyed that I ended up tearing them from the magazine, and I still have them in a binder. I remember waiting in line for Prisoner of Azkaban that stretched across the parking lot, and some man stepped out of line at the front and shouted, “DUDE HARRY POTTER IS SOLD OUT!” Or receiving my copy of Half Blood Prince at a midnight party after taking an eerie, nighttime walk, and on the way home I took my book light out to read in the car. (“Don’t stay up all night reading!” Mom told me.)

I am so grateful for this series, and I wouldn’t know where I would be without it. It might not have begun my journey into reading and writing, but it definitely enhanced it. Not only that, but it also enhanced my life. I read the first book when I was eight years old and saw the final movie at age eighteen. Ten Years.

Pretty much.

In high school, that’s what drew us together. I met a friend in gym class over the love of Harry Potter, one girl I befriended in Spanish class over our love of writing and the series, another I met freshmen year in science—I am still friends with them today. We talked about the upcoming films, planned our Deathly Hallows Part 2 midnight showing, laughed about the Starkid musicals…

I suppose I came here to say that when I started reading that first Harry Potter book in 2001, I didn’t expect to fall in love. And I wouldn’t have dreamed that fourteen years later, I would still be just as obsessed and in love (probably a teensy bit more obsessed).

I JUST LOVE HARRY POTTER OKAY. *cuddles with books and films and tshirts and posters and ties and wands and magazine articles and…*

The Greatest Expectation

A few days ago, someone my brother and I knew, a mom of kids we went to school with, started working with him in a bakery. And she asked after me. Not after what I was doing with my career, or what I was doing with school, however. She asked if I was married or not.

My brother passed it off as silly, laughing as he closed the door to my bedroom, where I had been sitting with a whiteboard, plotting my fantasy work in progress. The marker hung in my hand. So strange to hear after this woman since I hadn’t seen her daughter since 8^th grade. So strange that her daughters are married already. So strange that she would assume I was married…and not bother asking anything else about me at all.*

Strange? The more I thought about it, not so much.

Marriage is not for everyone—women or men, but it is pushed onto women more often than men. Men can be independent without judgment, and if someone asks about them, odds are it won’t be about marriage. After all, how often are they asked who they’re wearing at the academy awards?

I hate the idea that women are viewed as having to want or having to be married. News flash! Not everyone wants the same thing, and if a woman wants to do it single then she should do so without judgment. She should be able to—but she’s not. This is the 21^st century, people. How often are we going to pretend we’re in the Middle Ages? No, she doesn’t have to be married to accomplish everything she needs to succeed in life. No, she doesn’t have to be attached to a man, either. She can do what she dreams, with or without a husband.

Even if she wants to be married, she can still fulfill her dreams. There should be nothing standing in her way. In anyone’s way.

“Did she go to school? Where? What is she doing now?” are all questions that could have been asked from this Mom who blasted to the bakery from 2007. Instead, they all fell to the ground, only to be trampled by strangers in passing.

*For the record, yes, I do want to eventually get married. But my writing, at this point in my life, is more important, as is my career. 

Mudding Along in My Career: Working for Coin

“Haven’t you liked doing the work?”
“Of course I have. I just wish I could go slower in order to enjoy selecting the glass more, to feed myself with each beautiful swirl, to linger over the nuances building up. If I don’t love the feelings I have while creating those windows, I’m only working for coin and not from soul.” (Clara and Mr. Tiffany, Susan Vreeland, 53)

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my job lately. Despite my perpetual hatred for its tedious nature and few interactions with humans, I am trying to remind myself it is only a stepping stone. I will not be entering data into Microsoft Access forever; this will lead me to better things. Only, doing that is difficult when every day I go to work hating my job.

The other day, my grandparents came to drop something off at my house. Since I got the job entering data, my grandfather has taken it upon himself to check the newspaper’s classifieds every day for a job I might like.

“He’s still looking!” my grandmother laughed, “But I approve the jobs! I know you want to get a job doing something you like.”

My internship at the historical society. I was looking through
old documents on this day. THIS was working for the soul. 

Then, the saddest words I have come to hear reached my ears. Grandpa said, “I never did the job I always wanted to do…a mechanic, working with cars. Instead, I drove a truck around delivering newspapers. I went for the money.”

“No, that’s now how it is for kids today,” Grandma intervened, “They want to do what they enjoy and not for the money!” (At least, for me it’s this case. For others it is completely different, of course.)

This brings my back to the quote from Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland that began this post: “I’m only working for coin and not from soul.” Working for money is not the direction I want my career goals to take. I’d rather be happy working with my writing and whatever else strays across my path then being comfortable with a job that makes me unhappy. Ever since I was little, that was my goal: To have a job that makes me happy to go into work, excited. 40 hours a week is, after all, a long time to waste time doing something you hate.

I have worked four jobs, including my internships. Both actual jobs I got paid for I enjoyed, including the grocery store cashier. My internships, however, were not challenging enough and I always finished my writing much sooner than my supervisors expected. 

Last year, during my internship at the historical society, the day came when I absolutely loved what I was doing and that was looking through old letters and newspaper clippings in a box. I remember organizing what was in the box according to a list that was provided and reading the recipes that were there while typing them up. (To see the finished product, go here.) I thought about including this in my possible job searches, yet no ideas have come up yet. 

And so the search continues to discover where my career passions lie. I am determined find happiness, whether it be in one job or a mixture of them that I find as the years pass. Each experience working will bring me a better idea of what I need to make me both happy and inspire my writing. Unfortunately, punching data into Access does not fulfill those requirements. 

Just like Clara says in the quote, I am going to work for soul and not for money. In the end, that’s what will make my life worthwhile, and until I have reached that point in my career, my writing will suffice in keeping me sane in between breaks from the database.  

Have Wheels, Will Tumble

Growing up, some of my favorite books to read were TheAmazing Days of Abby Hayes, written by Anne Mazer, in which ten year old Abby navigates the world and her seemingly perfect family by writing in her journal. Book number five I pulled from my shelf less than five minutes ago, and it is called Have Wheels, Will Travel. In it, Abby decides to save up her money and buy herself a new pair of roller blades, so she can go out with her friends. 

Middle of Nowhere, New England is a place not friendly for roller blading. Rocks cover the driveway to my house, and there are no sidewalks; there was nowhere for me to roller blade. It’s always been a small dream, never fulfilled.

Until few weeks ago, when I sat at the table in my friend's house eating, when he blurted out, "Do you know how to roller blade?" 

Well, I thought, I can roller skate and I can ice skate so it shouldn't be too hard. "Yeah," I replied, the spontaneous offer already making me nervous, "Why?"

"I think my mom's skates will fit you." He dashed away and returned with them in his hands. They fit me perfectly. "Let's go!" I trailed behind him in my socks, making time just to grab my phone. 

Once we arrived, I felt like Abby Hayes. Before she has her own, new pair of roller blades, she has to wear her sister's old pair and the buckles stick. Putting on my pair, I realized I had no idea how to do it.  After some fumbling and help, they were on tight.

My legs were wobbly when I started off. "I'll get the hang of it," I tell him as he glided without effort over the pavement, a walking path near his house. "Once I get going, I'll be fine."

Funny enough, I did do fine. Not good, since he was trying to show me the correct way of skating without breathing like I just ran a marathon, but still, I was steady on my feet. As we reached the hill, I squealed in glee, ready to take on the challenge and climb up it--except I did not account for going down. 

A walking path I saw once that represents what the
walking path near my house looks like--not suitable for
anything with wheels!

The left side of the walking path has a bit of sand, for horses when they walk. For most of the hill, I was swerving a little, not too much, though; however, I was afraid to stop and fall because of my speed. I could see it as it happened. I started drifting to the left, towards the sand. It must have been a spectacular fall to see. At the other end of it, I was laying on the ground with sand sticking to my sweaty skin. Glancing up, I saw my friend had skated far down the hill and did not know I fell; he swerved around as I was standing up to brush myself off. 

"What happened?" he called, grinning like a fool. "You should have stopped yourself." The scrapes on my legs weren't too bad, so we continued on, discussing the story I was writing along the way. 

It wasn't until he stopped to grab his phone that I tried to stop too, flailing my arms around to find what little balance left me long ago. Down I went, on my knee. Sitting on the ground, I saw it was a huge scrape and blood was already starting to drip down. "I have something to tell you," I said, "I don't think I know how to roller blade." (Later, my mom confirmed it with a dumbfounded expression as she said, "You have never roller bladed in your life!") 

"Okay, we'll turn around and go home," he reaching his hand to help me up, grinning again. The trek back was too long; it was a relief to flop into his car and tear the skates from my feet.

Realization spread over me. I asked him why we didn't put on knee pads, and he said it was because I told him I knew how to roller blade.

Next time, I’ll stick to walking.

Writing, Jobs, and Happiness

The past two weeks have not been productive for my writing at all. Besides a few thoughts that pass through my head on a regular basis (always the same thought), besides jotting these thoughts down in my notebook, and besides reading?

No words.

No plotting.

Just questions, which is good, don't get me wrong, but how is it good when I don't even feel like starting to answer them?

It was a revelation when I discovered my writing productivity, i.e. my happiness, was related to the job I was doing. About a month ago, I was temporarily hired to a company and my job is to put data from emails I am sent into a database. The schedule was much better than my previous schedule at the grocery store, always shifting and changing. After the initial excitement of the job wore down, I realized something was wrong. Was it me? My attitude?

This week, I recognized what it was: The Job. 

I wasn't sure what picture to put here.
I took this laying down on my back on
the deck, in summer. 

This job (that I am unsure of when it is ending) is not challenging, I don't talk to anyone, it doesn't involve something I like doing (such as organizing or writing), and I sit there all day, typing. It kills me that I am doing it just for the money--not that I have a choice, really, since I have debt to pay off from school and am saving for a new vehicle. Doing something for the money, not for my happiness, is my worst nightmare.

Happiness is what matters the most to me in my lifetime, and to everyone. Through all this, I have reached a conclusion: The type of job I have will affect the writing I do in my free time. 

Having a job that destroys what I want to do most in the world, writing fantasy, is...Unfathomable. As said in Kerri Majors' This is Not A Writing Manual, anything that kills my (or your!) writing is not worth doing. But discovering what job I enjoy and feeds my writing is another task in itself. Discovering a job that keeps me healthy sounds impossible.

And yet, I find myself up for this task. If my happiness is at stake, if my writing is at stake, then I am willing to go as far as I can to gain it.

What about you? Do you find a particular job feeds your writing and your health?