Candidly Susan

2011-12-19T22:40:00.000-05:00

I'm almost afraid to say it aloud, but– I'm finished with my Christmas shopping! This is almostunprecedented. I am one of those people who is usually still pickingthings up on Christmas Eve. To have all my gifts bought by December19^th – and most of them wrapped – is a shock.

To be fair, we are buying for fewerpeople than a few years ago. Our goddaughter grew up. Sam is beyondthe age where we buy a bunch of teacher gifts. We have cut back onthe wretched excess that used to characterize my exchanges with mymom and sister. Etc.

But still, this amazes me. And mildlydisorients me.

We haven't sent Christmas cards since2004, I think, and we decided to send them again this year. But thenwe found that we cannot locate an old address list to start with, andwithout that starting point the task looms too large. So we may sendjust a few to out-of-town people whose addresses we can easily find,and leave it at that.

Similarly, I considered stepping up tomore holiday baking, since my mom and sister have become too infirmto do the amount they used to do. But the more I thought about it,the more I was convinced I would mainly only make the four residentsof my house a little fatter than we already are. Oh, certainly, wewould give some away. But I found it hard to believe we wouldn't eatthe lion's share of them. And that just seemed like a bad idea. SoI will stay with the very limited baking I have done the past fewyears, and I think we are all better off.

We have choir rehearsals the next twonights, then one night off before the holidays are here. And Ialready know what I'm wearing to the Christmas Eve Masses – yetanother stressor removed. Bob and I are leading the music at the6:30 overflow Mass in the parish hall, and then the choir does a30-minute prelude and sings at 10:00 Mass. Christmas Day we willspend with my mom and sister, then we get a week of playtime. I really want the season to be a time of rest and joy for all of us, not another excuse to stress out and overdo.

Finally, we go to Bob's hometown to finish up with his family's Christmasget-together, which falls on New Year's Eve this year. Bob's is a classic big, rollicking family, and I always LOVE Christmas with the Beasleys. It is the perfect way to end the season. We had hopedWarren could come with us for the Beasley Christmas and meet the extended family, buthe was fortunate enough to get Christmas off instead. I'm disappointed that hewon't be with us, but I think some quality holiday time with hisfamily is probably the best thing for him and thus, I'm happy even in my disappointment.

So that's what the holidays look likefor us. They seem less stressful than I remember, but I suspect it'sbecause my perspective is different than when I was younger. I am sograteful for the wonderful life we live and for the dear people whoshare it with me. I know that's what matters, and since I am blessedwith that life and those people 365 days a year, Christmas is justicing on the cake.

Here's wishing you and yours abeautiful, blessed Christmas that features just the amount of hububyou enjoy!

2011-12-03T17:30:00.001-05:00

I was surprised to see that it was twoweeks since I last posted. Since then we have been throughThanksgiving and definitely turned the corner into the Christmasseason. I can't believe how quickly the days pass! I'm notcomplaining, really, because I love having a full and busy life. Ijust marvel at how fast it moves!! The coming weeks – and evenmonths – show no sign of slowing down. We have so many excitingthings to look forward to.

The job alluded to in my last blog postdid not, in fact, pan out for Warren, but last night he got the goodnews that he has been hired as a clerk at the nearby UDF. (Fornon-local readers that stands for United Dairy Farmers and is acombination gas station/convenience store/ice cream parlor.) Thisjob has two big advantages, we believe. One, it does not involvecooking or kitchen work; and two, it is a comfortably short walk fromour house, so it does not involve coordinating the entire family'sschedule just to get him there and back each day. Please join me inpraying that it turns out to be a job that will work out for him fora nice long time. I feel strongly that he really needs to experiencethe stability of staying in the same job for a year or more, and begin to layer additional new experiences, like college classes, ontop of that base. My belief that Warren will go on to build asuccessful, productive, satisfying life has not wavered, nor has mycommitment to help him realize the many wonderful positive charactertraits I see inherent in him. But the five months he has lived herehave involved a lot of false starts and struggles and“two-steps-forward, one-step-back,” and for his sake I ache tosee him experience a period of unambiguous forward progress.

Sam, having completed his Eagle projectand submitted all his college applications, is in a bit of a lullthese days. He has nothing but school work to focus on, which issometimes a bit of a hazard for him. But so far he seems to bekeeping his grades where they need to be. I anticipate that afterthe first of the year he will have some acceptances, and will thenhave to focus on choosing which college will be The One. I keepreminding him that while money isn't the only factor, it is a factorin that decision process. And mostly, I keep praying ardently thatGod will give us clear guidance on which is the right choice. I don'tso much care which school he chooses, just that we have a strong,clear sense of which one is right - preferably, that he, Bob and I all get that same sense about the same school.

Today we started doing some Christmasdecorating. It will probably be another week before we are done, butit is nice to have some lights up and a few things to make us feellike the holidays are upon us. I have done some Christmas shopping –which is pretty early for me – and I have scheduled a vacation dayfor this Tuesday to try to knock out as much of it as I can while thestores are not jam-packed with people. Then we have some Christmasparties to attend, two Masses to sing at on Christmas Eve, andcelebrations with both the Emerson and Beasley families to lookforward to. The Christmas season usually moves even faster than therest of the year, and I hope to do everything in my power to savor itas it glides by.

So really, I'm just full ofanticipation: of sharing in Warren's new job experiences, of sharinga wonderful Christmas season with loved ones, of seeing where Samends up choosing to go to school, and of the many unforeseeablechanges, challenges and thrills that make our life so much fun. Nevera dull moment!

2011-11-18T14:50:00.001-05:00

Here I am at the beginning of a veryunusual weekend. There just seems to be a convergence of unusualactivities hitting. Let's see....

Last night one of Bob's brothers arrived to spend the weekend because this happens to be the weekend of the OSU game he drew in the lottery.

Today, everyone in my office had to pack up everything as they are reconfiguring the cubes this weekend. So I went in to work, struggled through working for a few hours while mayhem reigned around me, then packed my stuff and was home before 1:00. Working online since then.

At 5:00 this evening, Warren has what sounds like the final interview for a new job – already through one interview and a general comprehension test, so we're pretty sure tonight generates the actual job offer. (Fingers crossed!)

Since Dale is in town, we will be going to Otey's in Hilliard tonight for dinner because that's where Bob's local brother, Paul is playing and singing. As so often happens with this kind of situation, Paul plays somewhere almost every Friday night and therefore, Bob and I hardly ever see him play. Apparently it is true that familiarity breeds – well, if not contempt, certainly taking-for-granted. So it's cool that we are actually going to see him this week.

Tomorrow, I am singing in a wedding. Of someone I don't know. But I'm excited, because I'll be singing in a choir brought together for this one event. We meet tomorrow morning for our one and only rehearsal, then reconvene at 5:30 for the actual wedding. Which is actually my idea of a really fun recreational activity. (Yes, I guess I'm some sort of choir geek.)

Bob is working at a tailgate party at the OSU game as part of the St. Joan of Arc Men's Club. (This is a MAJOR fundraiser for them.) Which means he leaves early in the morning and will be gone until bedtime.

Dale spends tomorrow with old college friends enjoying the game and whatever they cook up for the rest of the day.

Sam cantors at 5:00 Mass. OK, this one is not unusual, but I include it because it is part of the general over-scheduled-ness of the weekend.

Then on Sunday, we get the real convergence of schedules. Bob and I are supposed to be singing in choir at 10:45 Mass, and then we have to be at our Boy Scout troop's Webelo's Open House from 1:00 to 5:00. (I actually speak at it, so I really, really have to be there.) This makes us unavailable for chauffeur service. Dale flies out about 1:30, so he has to be at the airport by about 12:30. Warren has a doctor's appointment at noon. So unbeknownst to Sam, I think he gets to experience the joy of being the driver on duty for both the doctor trip and the airport run. (Tee-hee. Some sort of karma at work there, I think.)

I'm pretty sure that after 5:00 on Sunday, we're all just going to collapse.

But of course, we only get to collapsefor a few hours. Then it's Thanksgiving week. Yee-haw! But I don't have the energy to think about that now.

2011-11-13T21:33:00.001-05:00

I am just exhausted, and though I did several chores and stayed pretty busy today, I don't think that is the reason. I believe the cause of my fatigue is the bizarre experience that started our day. It left me emotionally drained.

We have a long-time friend who has brain cancer and is, shall we say, in the final countdown. So this morning when Bob arrived at church to cantor 9:00 Mass, he was told that John had passed away last night. He called me, and I posted a little memorial on Facebook. Then I went to join Bob at 10:45 Mass, where the choir was to sing. John was a choir member, so the choir was all grieving, and prayed for John's soul at the end of our rehearsal. Then we went into the sanctuary and started the Mass. Just as it started, one of the ushers in the back started making huge arm signals not unlike air traffic control bringing in a 747, and in walks the grieving widow -- followed by the deceased!

What eventually came to light was that the parish had received a voice mail message that someone else named John, with a surname one letter different from John's, had died. Since the church was well aware of John's fragile state, they heard John's name, and thus the misunderstanding began. So it was all an understandable series of events, and no one really did anything stupid or malicious. But wow! We came home from Mass feeling like we had been through the ringer. First there was the very genuine grief, tempered with just a hint of relief that his suffering was at an end. Then the shock of seeing him, followed by anger that someone could make such a dreadful mistake, and finally the gradually dawning realization that it was just an unfortunate but blameless mistake. And now that I've recovered from all that, I realize that my dread of the day when I really get that news has increased. Now I sort of know how much it will hurt!

2011-10-31T22:39:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe we are at the end of October already. Where has the time gone? And now, as the calendar turns to November, we can count on time moving at a dead run from here to the first of the new year.

Every part of my life feels like it is just vibrating with change. Sam is in his senior year, desperately finishing up the paperwork to earn his Eagle Scout rank and filling out college applications, all while trying to keep his grades up enough to have some hope of scholarships. It's a lot to juggle, but I feel he is doing a better job at it than ever before. He turns 18 at the end of the week and I can hardly fathom that my baby will be, in the eyes of society, an adult. And frankly, in many ways he is beginning to think like one!

Warren lost a week of his life to oral surgery and is still not feeling normal yet. But once he recovers, he will continue to be in constant change. He is just at a point in his life where there sort of is no status quo. He is in a part-time job with no future; he will either move to a better job, or start school, or both, but there's no possibility that he will ride on as things are for very long.

Bob has applied for a new job in his same company. I can't tell yet how big a probability there is that he will actually make a change -- but it feels like it's been a while since he even went so far as to post for another job, so it feels significant to me. Whether it is this opportunity or another, I feel there is change in his future.

And today at my day job, my "new" boss (of five month's tenure) announced that she is leaving. So we are back in a state of uncertainty. And they are about to reconfigure the entire work space, squeezing in something like 6 more work stations in the existing space and moving everyone around. So there will be a certain level of discomfort for everyone.

In my volunteer life, too, there is change. With Sam wrapping up his Boy Scout career I have announced that I will serve out this year as Troop Committee Chair then I plan to step down. And at church, things have felt unsettled ever since Father Larussa joined us in the summer of 2009. We are on our second choir director since he started (though it feels like Matthew will be with us for a while) and most of our old traditions and comfort zones have been swept away. It isn't so bad, really, but it has certainly taken away any illusion that church is a place you go for the comfort of the familiar.

I had an interesting talk with my 87-year-old mother on Sunday. She told me not to apologize for being busy, even when it makes me miss calling her occasionally, because being busy is a good thing. "And as you get older," she cautioned, "Make sure you stay busy! That is one of the most important things you can do for yourself."

So that's my insight for the week: busy-ness can be a good thing. And when it isn't, it's probably because of the choices I have made about which things to be busy with.

2011-10-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

Read a really good column in the WallStreet Journal by Peggy Noonan this morning. In it,she citesresearch that polled women in Orlando and Des Moines who wereselected on the basis of “having shopped at Wal-Mart at least oncein the past month.” She said one group was in their 30's and 40's,the other in their 40's and 50's. They were strikingly consistent intheir opinions. Things they agreed upon included:

Unemployment is definitely worse than the official government numbers make it sound.
The recession doesn't feel like it's getting any better.
They all resent the bank bailouts when they feel the banks were huge contributors to the problem.
Obama hasn't done a good job, but they get angrier when they talk about Congress.
Both parties are equally responsible.
They feel their elected leaders have no sense of how they live, and don't care.

I would qualify for one of thosegroups, and I'm surprised to find how mainstream I must be. I canpretty much agree with those points. I came from a working classfamily, got an education, rose pretty high in my career and thenslowed down off the fast track, but remained in a professionalposition. So I have experienced some times in my life when moneyflowed pretty freely, and some where money was tighter. But todayfeels different.

This feels like the first time in mylife that everyone I know is affected by the adverse economy, and noone has any sense of when there might be an end in sight. I actuallythink that my son's standard of living will be affected forever bythe tough economic times in which he came of age. We have saved somefor college, but are counting on some financial aid, too. Moneywould always have been a factor in the final choice of school, but itwill be a bigger factor than I would have imagined. And he's one ofthe lucky ones.

Our other pseudo-son, Warren, who isnot typical in many ways, is perhaps more typical in this way. As ayoung man with only a high school diploma, his opportunities to builda life for himself are far more restricted than they would have beenjust five years ago. Like many kids in his situation he doesn't meanto be without an education forever, and has a general plan ofworking, taking classes at Columbus State Community College, andeventually attaining a degree. But unlike a few years ago, evenentry level jobs are scarce, sources of public aid are tighter, andhe will have to work harder and do without more to attain thosegoals. I believe a kid like him faces greater challenges today thanever. And living at home is almost the only way they can make it. Left to fully support oneself on minimum wage in today's economy is beyond difficult -- it is virtually impossible.

Among our friends, it almost feels likeeveryone has dropped one socioeconomic level. Those who I alwaysconsidered affluent now live more like upper middle class. Uppermiddle class has tightened its belt to the standards of lower middleclass. Lower middle class is slipping into the paycheck-to-paycheckpatterns that characterized the working class, and working classfamilies struggle to stay employed at all and out of poverty. No oneI know buys cars as frequently or travels as often as they used to. For a lot of us, eating out has slipped from a routine item to aluxury. Children who went off to college and maybe even have that first post-college job are still living at home because it's too risky to try to get out on their own. Grown offspring with children and sometimes spouses are moving back in because it is the only way they can provide a decent life experience for the kids.

So we plug away, seeking silver liningswhere we can. I know that my values have changed for the betterthrough this. I appreciate what I have more and judge others'choices less. I am learning greater patience and flexibility. I havereally internalized the reality that people matter, things don't. These are all good things. But the future still looks really scary, and I would be delighted to take these good lessons and apply them in a somewhat less stressful future. I'm just sayin', in case anyone out there in the universe is listening.......

2011-10-04T21:58:00.000-04:00

I have been trying to post for days, but Blogger and my browser seem to be having a disagreement. If you can see this post, it means that I found a workaround that allowed me to post.

My life has been almost frenetic lately. I think this was the pace at which my life moved routinely some years ago, but at some point it slowed down and I got used to that more leisurely pace. But lately, with two teenagers in the house, two significant volunteer commitments, a full time job plus freelance work, and Bob busy with multiple volunteer commitments and work travel, the tempo of my life has accelerated. So far, it hasn't been unpleasant. I seem to remember reaching a point of burn-out, where I didn't want to do all that anymore. But so far, this time around, it has felt OK. If anything, it has felt energizing.

I am so enjoying having these two teenagers in my life. Sam is working on his Eagle project, trying to keep his grades up, applying to colleges. That all sounds so mainstream, so straight arrow. But anyone who has known us all over the years knows that Sam is anything but mainstream. I count it a huge success that he is on the path he is on. And while there is some stress to it, he seems to be handling it well. He isn't having much of a social life, but I don't think it is significant -- I just think he's spread too thin to add that right now. In fact, since I drafted this the first time he has made noises about asking a girl out -- after his Eagle project is done.

Warren struggled mightily to find a new job, and has now landed one at Otani Sushi Bar & Japanese Restaurant. But I still feel like he is struggling with believing that things will work out -- his self-confidence is shaken, and he's having a hard time seeing his way from today to tomorrow. On the other hand, I remain extremely positive about his future. He is a hard worker and a survivor. We just need to keep his spirits up, so he doesn't lose faith in himself. Warren also has a social life -- possibly too much so. It seems that girls go for him in a big way, often to his detriment. I hope that while I am in a position of influence in his life, I can help him learn better coping mechanisms for girls, and to set his sites higher than he has in the past.

I know that next year, when Sam heads off to college, our life will become quite different. I can't predict at this point whether Warren will still be here with us then or not (though I hope so). But whatever the configuration of our life then, I know it will be something new, totally unexperienced. And it might be just as wonderful. But for today, I am savoring the life we are living. Oh, it has its stresses and bumps in the road, but then, it wouldn't be life otherwise, would it? And it is, indeed, a wonderful life.

2011-09-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

It’s been an interesting week or so for me. In addition to the ongoing fun/drama/challenges/rewards of living with two late teen-age young men, there’s been the following:

· My dear hubby was away from Thursday morning until Sunday night near bedtime. He re-packed, slept, and left again early Monday morning to return late this Thursday night. We believe this makes our longest period apart in the entire 26 years we have known each other!

· One of my co-workers absolutely cannot get along with our new boss, and the situation is near the breaking point. It has been a simmering drama since June, and it is pretty much boiling over now. There will certainly be resolution of some kind soon, but for now every day is filled with the conflict. I can’t even find words to describe how much I prefer my work environment to be drama-free.

· In my role as Committee Chair of my son’s Boy Scout troop, there’s been a big issue involving a set of angry parents that has dragged on for the past two weeks. It finally reached its denouement last night, with a formal meeting with them. There will still be some additional chapters before the story completely wraps up, but I think we are on the downhill side now. It’s one of those situations where mistakes were made by many parties, and I have been in the position of trying to apologize for my part and mediate among the others. That is to say, pretty much in a no-win position.

Then of course there is the drama surrounding the young guys. Not to put too fine a point on it, out of respect for their privacy, but their lives are, shall we say, never boring. They are on somewhat different paths at this point, but both struggle on a daily basis with making peace with where they are today, finding their right path to the future, and just figuring out how to be their best selves and function in the world. Oh, and girls. The perpetual struggle of girls. I never cease to be amazed at the power of girls, as evidence by the havoc they can wreak on my young guys.

When I was younger, the point of telling all this would have been a complaint. Today, I have come to realize that this litany of dramas and struggles is the stuff of life. If I get hit by a Mack truck one day, people will care that I loved my husband deeply, tried to mediate conflicts, and was there for Sam and Warren. They probably won’t care so much about my professional resume, my never-quite-clean-enough house, my depleted savings account, or my unfulfilled ambitions. That doesn’t stop me from obsessing over any of those things occasionally. But I realize that it is the people in my life, and how I relate to them, that make life worth living. And a sweet life it is!

2011-09-13T21:23:00.000-04:00

Bob and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary yesterday and today. (Yesterday was the actual date, but our life was so hectic with mundane routines that we waited and went out to dinner tonight.) I usually write about both the boys and my work more than I do about Bob, but this seems like the moment to change that. As I said on my Facebook post yesterday, every good thing in my life is either directly because of Bob, or is better because it is shared with him. He is the source of most of the joy and laughter in my life, and keeps me in the headspace that makes me laugh rather than cry in the vicissitudes and quirks of daily life. I have always described Bob as a funny combination of class clown and Eagle Scout -- he's an irreverent cutup, but when the chips are down, he's the one people call. He is smart, funny, affectionate, stable, generous, sexy......in other words, he rocks my world!

Those who have been reading me for a while may notice that I spent a little time cleaning up the appearance of my blog. I had been using an out-of-date template, and everything just looked a little off. I think I have fixed that, as well as making it easy to like my blog on Facebook if one is so motivated. I have been putting out some feelers for new freelance writing (could use both the income and the challenge!) and it seemed like a good idea to make my blog look like I know what I'm doing. Next, I need to put some attention into my website. I figure it's like the old story of the shoemaker's children always needing shoes.

2011-09-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

One of the more surprising effects ofliving with an almost 18-year-old and an almost 19-year-old in thehouse is that it makes me think about Big Topics that I used tothink about a lot, but put on a shelf somewhere along the way. Iremember being their age and a little older and having long,meaningful discussions about philosophy and theology and politics. Iremember the intellectual thrill of exploring all those various ideasand constructs, about sorting through them for myself and debatingthem with other intelligent, articulate thinkers who were exploringthem for the first time, too. Over time, though, I kind of settledinto what I chose to believe in those arenas, and got caught up inthe business – and busyness – of daily life.

So now I find myself sitting acrossfrom either one of them and they launch into their opinions on one ofthese Big Topics, and I feel at such a disadvantage! They are bothvery deep thinkers and very articulate, so both are apt to launchinto one of these discussions. One day this week Sam expounded oncapitalism vs. socialism vs. communism vs. fascism; with Warren itwas recently existentialism and nihilism. Either one is likely tolaunch into comparative religions at any time. I really, really enjoytalking with them and hearing their views, but I haven't read thesupporting literature in 30 years and in many cases, have only avague, partial recall of the definitions of all the terms. So I havethis sense that I am not really holding up my end of the discussion!

These discussions are also a wonderfulcounterpoint to the lunacy that also accompanies having two teenagersin the house. Both are so very smart and in many ways, responsible. They are gaining mastery of the big things. But the little things inlife can still totally mess them up. Like keeping track of a cellphone. Or a credit card. Or getting themselves to where they aresupposed to be on time, with everything they need, without parentalassistance. Somehow, I think this crazy dichotomy – Big Ideas onemoment, lost shoes the next – is what is unique and wonderful aboutthis age. They are both socially conscious and totallyself-absorbed; generous and selfish; hopeful and cynical; up anddown, fast and slow, wise and stupid..... They are a crazy mix ofthe child they were and the man they will be.

And so the fun continues. This weekendhas been a very full one. It has included calling hours at a funeralhome, a problem with Sam's Eagle project, a financial setback for Boband me, a flare-up of the drama between Warren and hisparents...There have definitely been some not so good moments, andyet I stand by my recent statement that my life is so sweet I am awedby it. I come home every day to one wonderful mature man who lovesme and fills my life with joy, and two young men finding their way to fulfilling their potentialfor wonderful. Life is not only never boring, it is inspiring andchallenging and downright fun!

2011-07-13T22:14:00.001-04:00

As my Facebook friends are already aware, there's been a change in my personal life recently. My son's good friend Warren graduated from high school this spring and by last week found himself homeless, with only a bad part-time job. So we invited him to live with us for a while, and now there are four at the dinner table in the evening instead of three.

Warren has led a very difficult life, abused by his birth parents and then knocking around the foster system, including a couple stays in orphanages. Out of respect for his privacy I won't go into any more detail. But I will say this: with all he has been through, it would be understandable if he were bitter, rebellious, angry -- but he isn't any of those things. He has an indomitable spirit, a great sense of humor and a strong, healthy sense of self. He is sage beyond his years and willing to work hard. Sure, he's also a little scarred around the edges, but less so than I would expect. I admire the kid, and I anticipate that eventually, he will build a happy, fulfilling life. He and Sam were talking yesterday about how to respond to certain aggravations and Warren said, "I figure being really happy is the sweetest revenge..."

I was surprised by the reaction on Facebook when I posted that he had come to live with us. It was very positive -- too positive, almost. If I thought people were going to react that strongly, I probably wouldn't have posted it. I felt like someone was about to put me up for canonization. My perspective when Bob and I made the call was simply this: I had to either take him in, or stop saying I believe the things I've always said I believe. It was just that clear cut.

My perspective now is, it might just end up that in the long run, I get more from this act than I give. Oh, I realize he's been here less than a week, so we're still in the honeymoon period. Maybe it will all blow up in our faces at some point. But I don't think so.

2011-06-18T13:45:00.000-04:00

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down..... Not completely true, but such a compelling lyric from my youth that I couldn't stop myself from using it.

It is pouring rain, and I am a little bit down. Not full bore, hide the sleeping pills down, but a little contemplative. I find myself ruminating on things gained and lost over the course of my life, on people with whom I regret having lost touch, with the fascinating/painful/beneficial/confusing process of aging.

I've become quite the Facebook junkie over the past few years, and recently I indulged in spending an evening going through the screen after screen of possible friends it suggested. I identified quite a few names that I hadn't spoken with since high school, and sent friend requests to many of them. That probably added to my general disquiet. I think about all that has happened to me since high school, what a different person I am today than I was then, and I wonder about the lives of those other people I've just invited to be my "friend." It's weird to think that soon many of them might be seeing my random posts on Facebook, drawing their own conclusions about the me I have become. There have been a few high school friends or acquaintances who have become really good Facebook friends, and in many cases they are not people I was really close to in the day. So it is always a question mark to me as to how these things will play out.

Equally disturbing was how few college friends I found. I married my college sweetheart and divorced him six years later, which tended to have the effect of my losing track of most of my college friends. I was saddened that I couldn't find the same kind of wealth of lost friends from that era that I did from my high school years. There were definitely friends from that time that I would love to catch up with.

I will be getting a new boss this Wednesday, and perhaps that is disquieting, too. Those who know me will recall that I was unemployed, with little temporary blips, for two years, and am now in a job that pays substantially less and is much lower on the org chart than I those I had in the years before. I was very grateful to get this job, and have been treated extremely well. In spite of the negatives I just mentioned, I actually love the organization, love my coworkers, love the actual tasks that fill my day, and love the feeling that my work is appreciated and makes a difference. Though money is a perpetual problem, in every other way I am probably happier in this job than I had been in my work life in years. So at some level I guess I fear the unknown with a new boss. Will she continue to treat me with the respect and freedom my former boss did? Will she appreciate my work? Will she acknowledge the lifetime of experience I bring to bear? Will my work life continue to feel so positive?

I remember reading when I was younger that middle-aged and older women complained that they become invisible. Younger people, even professionals like doctors and dentists and the like, tend to not really notice you in the room, not give you the same eye contact and attention that you used to get. Now at 52, I will attest that it is somewhat true. In fact I have told friends that sometimes, I find it is an advantage. If I have a morning where I can't get my hair to lay right or I'm not thrilled with how I look, I sometimes remind myself that really, nobody is looking anyway. It's OK -- there's no pressure. And often, I find that strangely comforting. But at other times, I understand the complaint. I have always had strong opinions and the ability to articulate them well, and I still do. As such, when I feel overlooked I can usually make myself known. But it is easy for me to see that for those who are not as bold by nature, it could be really difficult.

Another aspect of aging that I find a mixed blessing is the whole "perspective" thing. On the one hand, it is definitely a blessing that every little thing doesn't set me off like it did when I was young. Many little indignities or disappointments come up and I find I can shrug them off: "Really?" I ask myself, "Is this really worth getting all worked up about?" On the other hand, I sometimes miss the passion. It seems that along with letting go of the little things that annoy me, I have also lost some of the ability to get really, really jazzed about new interests. It's almost like I'm on too high a dose of antidepressants -- except I'm not on any meds at all! But I feel the way friends have described when they have been. I enjoy some things, but I don't feel the same burning passion about external subjects that I once did. And sometimes I really miss it. I hold onto the hope that I am just in a transitional stage right now, and someday soon I will find some new outside interests that fire a passion.

But my rainy day has stopped raining, and I think it is time to move on. This is probably as much navel gazing as I or my readers can take for one sitting!

2011-05-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if this entry will make any sense to my readers who are not in the Columbus area. But perhaps it will, because even though I use specific names of neighborhoods and surrounding towns, the concepts are general. And I think the post is more about the concepts than the specifics.

Today I attended a training session in downtown Columbus and as I was walking back to the correct entry to the Statehouse garage, I looked around and had this huge flashback. When I was in high school and college, my vision of success was to work in a tall office building in the downtown of a big city -- preferably Chicago-type big, but Columbus wasn't ruled out. I worked some temp jobs downtown while in college and grad school, and I can remember being so enchanted by the cosmopolitan flavor of it all. I have a vivid recollection of this vision I used to have of myself coming out of a skycraper in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and getting into a convertible sports car and driving out of the city for the weekend, home to a place on the outskirts where I envisioned life sort of like the Connecticut homes some New Yorkers keep. I never lived that situation in real life, but it had seemed so real in my dreams that standing downtown like that, I could still recall it as if I had actually lived it.

Then I got my car and drove out of the garage and up High Street past the Short North before cutting over to pick up the freeway. As I drove through the Short North, I flashed back to some really good times Bob and I have had there, of dinners and drinks in trendy restaurants, gallery hops, and soaking up the overall aura of coolness. There was a time in my life, around the 1990's, when I thought living in an urban chic neighborhood like that would be so much fun. Life never presented a good opportunity to make that one come true, either, and I have since grown to the opinion that it is a neighborhood I'd rather visit than live in. But I still enjoy it immensely for visits!

That made me reflect on what other living situations I had wanted over the years, how my tastes had changed or stayed the same. When I wanted to do the whole skyscraper/country home thing, I lived first in Bexley and then in Newark. I never had a huge desire to live in Newark, though I had good times there. Then my job took us to Mansfield and while we had very good times there, many sweet memories, I would have to say that Bob and I never really liked living in Mansfield. Once Sam was born, we proactively decided that we wanted to raise him in a bigger, more diverse city, and came back to Columbus.

When we moved back, we chose the Worthington area. Over the years I might have liked to have been just one price-point higher in suburbia, but overall, this house we bought in 1995 has worked out well for us. I am sort of locked into the idea that a suburb is the right place ot raise kids, so we chose this one and life has been good. Somewhere along the way I came to the conclusion that we really have too much house, but that is a better problem to have than the opposite. It just takes a lot of work to maintain.

I went through a phase where I used to say that as soon as Sam was off to college, I wanted to move into a condo and be done with yardwork and the other responsibilities of home owning. But I've watched too many friends have mixed experiences with condos, so I've backed off of that theory. And I used to think I might finally indulge my taste for urban living when we became empty nesters, but I've had another realization: almost all our friends are in the suburbs, ranging from Hilliard and Dublin and Powell to Worthington and Lewis Center and Westerville. Most of our activities are centered around our church in Powell or Bob's Boy Scout commitments, in the Lewis Center area. So really, it would be silly to move into the center of the city only to commute back out to the suburbs for our entire social life. My new plan is to take our time but within a few years of Sam's departure for college, we will probably downsize to a smaller home in one of the more modest neighborhoods in the West Worthington or Powell area. That way we can hire out the yardwork and other duties we don't want to do, have plenty of room for the two of us and Sam to visit, and be close to the people whose company we enjoy.

So there you have it, ruminations on one of the most fundamental life choices, where to live. High powered urbanite and trendy urban chic dweller were dreams of my youth that never came to be and I've lost my taste for them. Small town dweller was the card life dealt me and though we had a good run, it was never a comfortable fit. Suburbanite still sounds shallow to me, and vaguely like something I should apologize for, and yet it seems to be where I found happiness. I don't find my own life here shallow, nor those of my many friends. Perhaps that's because we never did chase the building booms and live in whatever was "the" suburb of the era, or perhaps it's just because suburbs get an unfair rap. But it is what it is, and I am who I am. And who I am is someone who lives in a comfortable suburb and has a good life. Funny how things work out, huh?

2011-05-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

Gratitude.

I have been keenly aware of a sense of gratitude lately. I don’t know where it’s coming from, exactly, but I experience it as a grace from God.

For example, yesterday at church when I went to communion, the person who gave me the cup was a friend, the husband of someone I sing in the choir with. He has battled lung cancer for several years now and honestly, there was a time when we never thought he’d be standing there, hale and healthy, in 2011. As he handed me the cup I just felt such a rush of gratitude that Geoff is still here to be a part of my life.

There was a day last week when I was feeling kind of out of sorts and grousing about how much I was having to run – activities every night but one, work all day, when does one catch a breath? Then I stopped and thought, “What am I saying? I was unemployed for two years, with w-a-a-y too much time sitting in this house. This busy-ness is all good!”

As the mother of an only child, I know I have a bit of a tendency to do the “helicopter mother” thing – I worry about his stuff way more than I should. I agonize over his successes and defeats, I fret about where he will go to college and how he will survive when he does. But lately I have had several occasions to just stop and appreciate that whatever peripheral things might concern me, at 17 ½ I can now see that he has turned out to be a young man of good character. I no longer have to worry about him making good decisions about the big things in life, because I can see that he is, essentially, a good person. WOW! Talk about your causes for gratitude!

So as I said, I don't really know what brought on this increased sense of gratitude, but I feel it is a great gift. Life experience suggests that in time, it will pass. I'll get distracted by other concerns and gratitude will fade to the background. But while it is here, for however long it lasts, I am going to enjoy it!

2011-04-26T22:29:00.001-04:00

I have generally stayed away from politics in my blogging. This is partly because politics in this country have become so very divisive -- we seem to have lost the ability to have friendly give and take. I always thought of myself as a moderate, and increasingly I find myself largely alienated from both parties.

But I have to say, I am horrified by what's going on in Ohio. It's not only the actions that are being taken -- though they are pretty shocking -- it's the whole mindset behind them. There seems to be this assumption that teachers and firefighters and cops and other public employees are greedy, overpaid people who are to blame for the financial woes of the state. While I agree that there were excesses that needed to be corrected, I see them as a result of a collective bargaining process where apparently, the bargainers on the side of the state and other government bodies didn't do their job very well. There were two sides to those negotiations, so how is it all the fault of one side?

Further, there is the assumption that those people are overcompensated. Maybe a few civil servants are, I don't know. But I think teachers and firefighters and cops are -- corny as it sounds -- heros. I'll grant you, not every public employee falls into that category, but those categories and probably others do. I hear complaints that firefighters and cops get to retire too young, and it's bankrupting us. OK, so we need to find a new way to finance it. But seriously, do you want 60 year old firefighters answering the call when your house is on fire? I don't think so.

In February, the Kasich administration passed a regulation prohibiting school districts from requiring that contractors pay the prevailing wage. So moving forward, very few school building projects will go to union employers, as there is always a non-union shop that can bid a job lower using sub-standard labor, or standard labor so desperate they are willling to take any work at any price. I figure it's the school buildings today, other state projects tomorrow.

Kasich has also told people that if their school district asks for an increase in local taxes to offset the loss of state funds, they should turn it down -- they aren't cutting anybody by more than 8% to 10%, and anybody ought to be able to trim 10% from their budget. But there aren't very many discretionary expenditures in a school district budget, so about the only things they can do is pay teachers less, increase class sizes, and cut out the arts and elective classes.

So the future I see is that the quality of our education goes down. Currently, we measure right around the middle of the pack in things like percent of 8th graders taking algebra, percent of high school students scoring well on AP tests, scoring on standardized math tests, etc. But if the norm becomes larger class sizes and fewer of the enhancements that make school bearable for kids, I predict that performance will fall.

I also predict that over time, we will see a decrease in teacher quality. When I was in college, lo those 30 years ago, teachers were not as well paid as most other professional positions. So if a kid was an education major who really shone in their subject matter discipline, they were usually lured away with the promise of more money. Over time, a lot of effort went into raising the pay and the standards to ensure that teaching was a respected profession that attracted the brightest and the best, and compensated accordingly. If we do away with the schedules that guarantee experienced teachers get more money, worsen working conditions, and generally treat them like leeches draining American productivity, we will stop attracting top students, and the talent pool will drift down to the new, lower level of compensation and conditions. Oh, there will always be some people who teach because they experience it as a calling, thank God. And some who maybe go into it for wrong reasons or general mediocrity when they're young, and mature into good teachers along the way. Some will still choose it even with its limitations because it offers summers home with their own kids. But I don't think that will provide enough high quality teachers.

But that's not all. Since public entities cannot require prevailing wage contracts, all public projects will get bid down to lower prices. That will eventually bid down wages on non-public projects, which will lower the prevailing wage. So all the citizens out there paying taxes to support the schools and other government entities will earn less, thus pay less taxes, so the fiscal crisis will just get worse. With less tax revenue, schools will have to cut further. Education gets worse, and the cycle spirals downward.

And as I understand it, the rationale for all this is that it is supposed to make us more attractive to business. But don't businesses want an educated work force? Don't they want a good infrastructure (which we won't be able to afford as everyone's wages drop?) Isn't it better for most businesses to be in a community with pretty low unemployment, so the public has more buying power?

I just don't see how lowering the earning power of the citizenry, demonizing public servants, lowering the quality of public education, and eventually shrinking the tax base can be a good thing. I look forward and I see an inevitable decline in the quality of life in Ohio. I hope like everything that I am wrong, that I'm overreacting and it really isn't as bad as it looks. But I'm not optimistic.

2011-04-23T10:55:00.001-04:00

It's been a whole year since I posted here! Wow! But I did resume blogging through Lent at my Lenten Daily Meditations blog, and it felt good to be back at it. So I have decided to try to revive this blog.

The problem I have always had, I realize, is that in spite of the title Candidly Susan, I have found it difficult to be open and candid here. It's because I have always shown a somewhat different side of myself to people in different parts of my life. With a blog post, there's no telling which part of my life the reader might be from, so it's hard to know how to spin it. But I'm 52 years old, for Pete's sake. I think it's high time to re-integrate all the various parts of me, acknowledge that I am who I am, and live with a little more integrity. You'd think by now I'd understand that I can't please all the people all the time, and give my friends and colleagues credit for being able to disagree with something I write and still like me.

The other issue with this blog was always that I have eclectic interests and I never wanted it to be just a political blog or just a mommy blog or just a book discussion blog or just any one topic. I still feel that way, but I realize that having the whole world open as a source of topics can sometimes be less liberating than overwhelming. In the past, I have too often defaulted to kind of using it as a public diary. And really, my life isn't that interesting, that anyone else would want to read my diary.

So my new goal is to post two or three times a week, and to make those posts interesting as self-contained pieces. Sometimes, I might brag about my kid or lament some home situation. Others, I might comment on politics or culture or arts and entertainment. No doubt I will sometimes discuss books and authors, a favorite subject of mine. Religion is a big part of my life, so no doubt those topics will turn up, too. But I will try to always make it more than just a diary -- an actual piece of thoughtful writing on the topic.

By the way, one of the things I have been doing in place of blogging for the past year has been becoming really active on Facebook. I know different people have different feelings about social media, but I gotta tell you, my experiences with Facebook have been overwhelmingly positive. In particular, I have enjoyed the ability it gives me to reconnect with people from various times in my life. I have frequent exchanges with people from high school and from various employers and cities that were my home over the years, with whom I had lost touch.

An interesting insight that has been bubbling up for me is this: when I was a child, my family was rather nomadic. When I entered 9th grade, it was my 10th school. I was a good student and always able to make friends, so I never thought it really hurt me any. But the one legacy that peripatetic childhood did leave was that it was all too easy for me to move away from people I had loved and truly leave them behind. Not having a rootedness in my childhood translated into not maintaining ties with people as I moved from one to another of the natural steps and moves of adulthood. I think that's why I am finding it so rewarding to go back and renew some of those connections now, as an adult, on Facebook.

So to anyone reading this, thank you for coming back. I would really appreciate comments, if only because they let me know someone is reading. Please keep checking back in. I hope to provide something worth reading and selfishly, knowing you are coming back gives me a lot stronger motivation to write.

2010-03-23T14:33:00.002-04:00

I'm kind of reeling. We learned on Sunday night that a member of our extended family to whom we are very close is currently in jail, having had his third DUI arrest on St. Patrick's Day. I'm not mentioning a name to protect the privacy of his close family members, but it is someone I care a lot about and know well. I know that he is an alcoholic and I know that the addiction has him totally consumed. This development isn't surprising at all -- so, I keep asking myself, why do I feel like my heart is breaking?

As I understand Ohio law, this is almost certain to result in an extended stay in jail. A full year seems likely. And in many ways, I can see that this is a good thing. Certainly he isn't out there putting himself and the innocent driving public at risk for that time. Moreover, I would think that he will have no choice but to get sober and stay that way for the duration of his term. If so, I know that will be his longest period of sobriety in many years. And since his alcoholism has made it hard for him to work steadily, ruined his credit and generally made him poor, a year in jail means a year of a guaranteed roof over his head and three square meals a day. I can see that these are all positive things.

But I am full of fear for him. I am fearful that he will attempt suicide as he sobers up and realizes the enormity of his situation. (He has never tried it before, but there have been times when the family has feared he would -- he showed signs.) And I am fearful about how vulnerable he will be in jail. I think that for him, getting sober is going to leave his psyche and self-esteem really, really fragile. I am tremendously worried about him just holding it together. And assuming that he does pull himself together and gets through his incarceration, I am very frightened about how it will be when he gets out. He has always felt unworthy -- it seems to be at the root of his addiction -- and I could see him turning away from his loving family because he couldn't accept how much we love him and want the best for him, couldn't believe that we welcome him back with open arms.

I just can't get him out of my mind. I keep imagining the agony of detox that he must be going through right now, and trying to imagine what it feels like to be locked in a cell and to know that this is no joke, this isn't temporary, but that this is your new reality. I want to send him some kind of a care package, but don't yet know what he is allowed to receive. So all I can do, so far, is to pray. No small thing, I agree, but right now it feels pretty impotent. I know in my heart, though, that prayer is NOT impotent -- in fact, I know that it is powerful. I just have to believe that.

If you are reading this, and you are a person who prays, I ask you to add this loved one to your prayers, too. He is a family member who has messed up big time. He doesn't especially deserve a break -- in fact, he has brought on most of his own problems. But I believe that there but for the grace of God go all of us. Maybe if we all lift him up to God, somehow God will be able to channel our good wishes to him and provide him some kind of comfort. Not the comfort he has earned, but the comfort he deserves as a child of God. Maybe he will be able to feel the love so much that when he finally comes out, he will have the strength to follow a new path.

Hopeless optimism? Most likely. But that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

2010-03-06T11:41:00.003-05:00

I have opted not to do a Lenten blog this year. Somehow, it felt like it had become self-serving and thus not an appropriate Lenten discipline. So I have opted for a more private discipline, and it is proving challenging. It is surprising how motivational I found it to know that there might be readers out there noticing whether I posted daily or not. I ask myself, "What, it isn't as important if only God knows when you failed?"

Today my husband is at the Catholic Men's Conference at the Ohio State Fairgrounds. This is his second year of attendance and by all accounts, it is a moving, highly inspirational event. There was a women's conference last week that I did not attend. What I am about to say feels unfair, but it is how I feel. (And the title of the blog IS Candidly Susan, after all.) To me, the descriptions of what's going to happen at the men's conference always sound inspiring and uplifting and like I'd come away feeling renewed and stronger. The descriptions of the speakers and topics at the women's conference always leave me feeling like I'd come away drained and saddened or guilt-induced. Maybe next year I will force myself to go to the women's conference and experience it for myself, to at least give it a fair chance.

I should probably acknowledge that it has been a long time since I posted. I'm simply going to claim seasonal affective disorder and leave it at that. I found the month of February extremely trying and I'm glad it is over!

I continue to be woefully underemployed and seeking more fulfilling and rewarding work. I have actually thought recently that I ought to start playing the lottery again -- financially a stupid plan, I know, but as my oldest brother once said, that dollar buys you the privilege of a dream. My dream recently has been that if money didn't matter, if we didn't need my income, I could be happy being a full-time volunteer for organizations I care about. I actually know that I have a lot of skills and abilities that could benefit my church and scouts and the food bank and other organizations. If I applied the same level of professional focus to projects for them that I am used to applying to an employer, I could do some awesome things. But I am currently afraid to bite off anything very big because we so need for me to improve my income, and I need to use my time pursuing that.

I also continue to escape from my worries in reading, and I appreciate the suggestions I received in response to my posting about new authors. I just completed Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear and it was as good as promised! The next one in the series is currently on reserve for me, waiting to be picked up at the library. I also just finished a novel by an author I had never read before, Jane Stanton Hitchcock. The title was Mortal Friends and one of the things I most enjoyed about it was that it seemed like a cross between a murder mystery and a traditional novel -- the mystery initially hooked me, but the character development carried the plot way beyond just "who done it" to the point that near the end, I was completely captivated by the characters and what whas going to happen in their lives. I am eager to read another of hers to see if all her books are as strong.

Keep those book recommendations coming -- my reading really is a lifeline through this difficult time!

2010-01-16T13:05:00.004-05:00

I'm looking for recommendations of good books. I decided the best way to do that is to make some recommendations of my own. It will help readers understand what constitutes a good book from my perspective, and maybe it will give someone else the pleasure of finding a new author he or she really enjoys.

I was a voracious reader as a kid and even young adult, but in the middle of my life I got distracted with the everyday busy-ness of life and stopped reading for pleasure for a decade or two. Now I've rediscovered this source of joy and am always on the prowl for new authors.

My personal "comfort food" genre of books is the mystery series. I love authors who write a series of mysteries where each is a free-standing story with a mystery to be solved, but over the course of the series the characters are well developed into living, breathing people with whole lives that I care about. Here are a few of my favorites in that genre, with a few words about each:

Elizabeth George - She writes the Inspector Lynley series. If you've seen the PBS Mystery film version of any of them, you don't know Elizabeth George. While I usually like the PBS adaptations, they didn't capture the backstories of the key characters in this one. The sergeant, Barbara Havers, is a wonderfully flawed, tragic, lovable character. In the PBS version she's just mildly quirky.

Deborah Crombie -- Hers are the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma Jones mysteries. In this one they begin as a boss/subordinate team and over many novels become lovers and colleagues who do NOT work directly together.

Ann Granger -- Yet another British series. In this one he's a small-town cop and she works for the foreign service.

Margaret Maron -- Possibly my favorite of them all, her series featuring Judge Deborah Knott gradually sucked me into her whole extended Southern family. I really care about the characters Maron has created!

Ann George -- Her Southern Sisters books are great if you like a little humor mixed with your mystery. The protagonists are sisters in their 60's and their interactions are a hoot!

Andrew Greeley -- He's a practicing Roman Catholic priest and his longtime protagonist is, too. (He has other series out now, too, but his Blackie Ryan series is my favorite.) His writing is good but not great, but he weaves in a lot of theology that happens to mesh very nicely with my personal beliefs (God as a passionate lover, not a punisher, for instance) so I always enjoy his digressions and mini-sermons. If you aren't Catholic, or if you are and really think the whole church hierarchy is doing a good job, then these probably wouldn't appeal to you.

I am less excited about the "thriller" genre, though I occasionally enjoy one. Tami Hoag has written a few that I think are called thrillers that still have great characters. Shoot the Messenger and Dark Horse are really marvels of character development! There's another thriller-type author named Randy Wayne White whom I inexplicably like -- his protagonist is a marine biologist/secret ops killing machine, but he is mostly "retired" from the special ops work and his best friend is a new age hippie, which makes for some great interaction and gives the author an opportunity to argue two sides of moral questions. These books are a little testosterone-intensive, but I still enjoyed them. The two best to sample would probably be Shark River or Mangrove Coast. And yeah, like everyone else, I did enjoy all Dan Brown's stuff. Wouldn't like a steady diet of it, but it was fun.

Another author I have really enjoyed who I don't know how to categorize is Alice Hoffman. She writes these novels set in contemporary time but there's always some touch of magic in them. But somehow, she makes it seem believable and I can accept it. They also have a lovely life-affirming feel to them, over all. They are probably the most mainstream-novel-like of any books I can think of that I have liked lately. I find many mainstream novels kind of depressing, or I just don't like the characters, or I feel at the end that I didn't gain anything from reading them.

I have dabbled in science fantasy/dragons and swords type stuff and have liked some of it. I just hate to try new ones without a recommendation because I feel there's a lot of bad writing in the genre. I would strongly recommend the works of Stephen R. Donaldson if this kind of thing holds any allure to you. He has several multi-book works out -- the Thomas Covenant trilogies and the Through The Glass series are both very good.

So, does anyone out there have any inspirations of books you think I'd like? I'm always on the prowl for good reading material!

2010-01-15T16:20:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I am gripped with the whole TGIF vibe. I am looking forward to a largely uncommitted weekend and it feel so good! And we get a bonus day on Monday -- it feels like such a treat!

My poor son, on the other hand, has a very full weekend of studying. First semester finals are next week and he is taking an extremely full load. So he has a lot to get through. Unfortunately earlier in the term he had a flare-up of his depression and since it sort of immobilized him for several weeks, during which he didn't turn in any work, damage had been done to his grades. So this term we are not looking for his usual strong grade performance -- just getting through all the classes with a passing grade will be enough. The tide has definitely turned, though,and I believe he will be back to good grades for second semester. I am concerned about what this one semester of bombing will do to his GPA and therefore to his college options, but I am trying to let go of it and just live one day at a time. We can't change what we can't change, after all, and at least he is back on track now. It's like having a different kid in the house -- one whose company is a lot more enjoyable!

We don't even sing in the choir this Sunday. For reasons unclear to me the director scheduled this as a week off. Sam is the cantor (song leader, for those of you unfamiliar with Catholic customs) at 12:30 Mass, so I'll just wait and go to that one with him.

We have been a family divided for Masses for a couple years now. When Sam hit adolescence we went through the predictable fights about going to Mass. Except once he started singing in the then-offered teen choir at 12:30, I found out we had not actually been fighting about Mass at all. We had been arguing about getting up in time for Mom and Dad to sing at 9:00 Mass. Once I realized the time was the big issue, I capitulated and now he worships at 12:30 almost every week, while Bob and I go at 9:00. In a perfect world I'd like us all to worship together, but I'd rather have a son willingly worshipping at 12:30 than grudgingly at 9:00, and it is lovely to NOT have every Sunday morning filled with conflict. In my heart, I am just grateful that at 16 he still willingly worships.

Well, I have to run. I hear my flannel pajama pants calling my name, and who can resist a call like that?

One last thing -- if I have readers out there, I'd love to hear from you!

2010-01-13T08:08:00.003-05:00

Once again I am finding it difficult to stay with the discipline of blogging. Thus I am writing a short entry this morning before I leave for work just to keep it fresh.

One of the big realizations I had the day I decided to return to blogging was that for most of my life, I've had a certain chameleon-like quality. I mean, I think I was true to my core values, to those things that are truly most important to me. But on a more superficial level I was really good at blending into whatever group I was with.

I think this was actually learned as a coping mechanism when I was a kid. We moved a bunch of times in my childhood, so I became really good at quickly assessing each new classroom and how to fit in. In high school I used to take pride in the fact that I was welcome among several different "cliques", though not really quite a member of most of them. Even in adulthood, it has often served me well.

But at the same time, I think it holds me back sometimes. It has certainly been one of the challenges of blogging -- it's hard to know what to put out there where God only knows who might find it and read it. And sometimes it makes me feel -- not a lack of integrity, exactly, but maybe a lack of integratedness. Generally speaking, it has not been my way to say "Here I am, take me or leave me." It has been my way to always try to present the side of me that they were going to want to take.

So when I decided to revive my blog, I also decided to work on really finding my own voice -- unashamedly writing what's important to me, what I feel, without always weighing who might be reading it. That's a lot scarier than it sounds -- I'm a woman still in a career crisis, who might have prospective employers checking out my web presence. Even as I write this I am totally tempted to hedge my bets, soften my stance, choose my words cautiously.

But I am not going to. I'm trying to take my inspiration from Popeye, that noted philosopher: "I am what I am." So now I guess my challenge is to make sure I know who that is!

2010-01-09T12:09:00.002-05:00

Today's Columbus Dispatch solicited readers to send in a letter of 200 words or less expressing what you wish you could tell your teenage self. (It's inspired by Brad Paisley's hit song Letter to Me.) This request spoke to me, so I sent in this letter:

Dear teenage self:

Here are three points that I think will make your life easier, richer, and a lot more fun:

1. Control is an illusion. Sure, it’s good to make plans for your life – but remember, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”

2. It’s good to pay some attention to how you are going to pay the bills, but beyond that don’t get too caught up in it. Chances are if you pursue something you feel passionate about, money will follow. Even if it doesn’t, it’s better to be broke and fulfilled than broke and unfulfilled. (There’s no guarantee the “sensible” career path will work out, either, especially if your heart isn’t in it.)

3. Life is a lot less about rules than you think. There are many different paths to happiness and fulfillment in life, and no one path is right for everybody. Allow yourself the freedom to pursue paths other than the one you know, and be really accepting of other people’s life choices. Some of the best people you will ever meet march to a very different drummer.

Susan at age 51

2010-01-08T10:03:00.002-05:00

This morning I watched the Today Show and saw an interview with Gretchen Rubin, the woman who wrote the book The Happiness Project. I had not been familiar with her work before, but I found it very interesting and motivational. (If you want to check her out, her blog can be found at http://www.happiness-project.com/.) In fact, she's the reason I've picked up my blog after a five month hiatus. (More on that in a second.) The aha-moment I had as I listened to her was that I am wasting a lot of time in my life while I try to fix my career, or whatever else I'm focusing on. Every day is precious and I need to live in the moment. Not that I'm going to stop working on my career, it's just an attitude adjustment.

Today, I'm going to briefly catch up the blogosphere on what I was doing the five months I was silent. Then I'm going to commit to writing a lot more frequently as I try to focus on what I'm actually living each day.

Here's the missing five month scoop: The new sales position I wrote about with such satisfaction in August has turned South on me. In October, the company did away with the guaranteed draw program, so it is a 100% commission job now. In that same time frame, the rates on annuities started moving downward again. So I found myself in the position that I was generating a steady trickle of absolutely new business, but virtually no rollover business. And as I got to understand the industry more, I learned that rollover business is where one actually makes a living. Usually, that's fine, because every few years there are newer, better products that clients can actually benefit by moving to. In today's strange economy, that's not always as true.

In addition to that I had a sale where the client's spouse asked for a divorce between the purchase of the annuity and the end of the "free look" period. The client cancelled the purchase in spite of all my efforts to show that taking a loan against the annuity actually served him better, so that commission was reversed. That put me in the unenviable position of owing back more commission than I was now earning. And I had been warned that business would come to a near standstill between Thanksgiving and New Year's even in the best of years. By November things got to looking so dire that I went to a temp agency and sought a temporary office gig to provide us cash flow into the holidays. I ended up being assigned to the Girl Scouts, where I worked for six weeks. Though it was low paying office work, it felt good to be actually productive every day, and to see some kind of money flowing in each week. That ended just before Christmas, and I was able to enjoy some thoroughly satisfying time with my husband and son over the holidays.

Now the new year has started and I have to figure out what to do next. I haven't given up on the sales job, but I'll admit I'm deeply discouraged. I'm not sure I can build it to the point it generates a living within a timeframe that my family can afford. On the bright side, though, the temp agency called yesterday to say that the Girl Scouts have requested me back for 20 to 25 hours a week to work on a project for the next three months. I accepted, which means we at least have some sure cash flow to look forward to.

Thus I have the luxury of a little breathing room while I figure out my future. When I was younger I was very driven and very plan-oriented, but at this point in my life I feel more like I need to see where the universe leads me. My only "plan" is to concurrently work on the sales job and keep my eyes open for something else out there that seems like a good match for me. I know that I no longer want a volatile, executive level position. I like to work hard, produce well, and feel I've made an important contribution, but I'm no longer interested in 60+ hour weeks and sacrificing everything else in my life to the job. I know I'm an excellent communicator and planner, but I also know I need some administrative support if I'm to juggle a lot of detail-oriented projects. I can build rapport with a wide range of people and am almost always well-liked and well-respected in the workplace. I dislike office politics and game playing and am usually seen as a candid person with caring and integrity. And if I leave this sales position, I will never, ever take a commission sales job again.

I have always loved to write, so I am going to resume a regular blogging discipline. I have some other ideas about how I'm going to live this year, too, and I'll save those for future entries!

2009-08-05T15:25:00.003-04:00

So much has happened since I last blogged! The thing on the top of my mind is that I have begun my new job. While I don't think I have really experienced what the routine will be yet, I do begin to feel confident that I made a good choice and that I can be successful.

So far, I have mainly been contacting people who already have a tax sheltered annuity and offering to do an account review with them. I wasn't clear on how that would make me any money, but in fact I have found that many people either want to increase the amount they are putting in, or there are new and better products available now so that they benefit from rolling over their existing product into a new one. So I have, in fact, made sales at a relatively high percentage of my appointments.

The problem, of course, is that it's summer and that makes teachers hard to reach. Even when I reach them, a significant number just don't want to think about things like this until they are back in the school routine. So I have a growing list of follow up calls to make next month and beyond.

Since I apparently missed the entire month of July, I haven't written anything since Bob's mother and sister who live in Bryan, his brother from Texas, and his brother in Michigan and his family all came for Red, White & Boom. We had some company in the house for over a week, with the big concentration of them for 4th of July weekend. We had a wonderful time! I wish we had the chance to get together with big groups of the family like that more often. We did, really, when we were younger, but everyone is geographically scattered now and many of us have kids in school, so scheduling is tougher than it used to be. But it sure was worth it.

My sister's health problems remain undiagnosed, though she is now seeing a neruo-ophthamologist at OSU who is apparently somewhat "House"-like. Not in his temperament, fortunately, but in his ability to get to the root of problems other doctors haven't been able to diagnose. So we are pinning some hope on Dr. Katz actually diagnosing her problem and then solving it. She is nearly at the end of her sick pay from Kroger. She has filed paperwork to look into getting back on permanent disability (which it never made sense for her to be off of!) but so far all her doctors haven't responded to the requests for information, so that application is in limbo until they do. I worry about her physical and financial health, both. Anybody reading this who prays, your prayers would be appreciated.

Sam successfully completed Phys Ed and Health in summer school with an A in each. He is still finishing up his independent study in Algebra II, but he has been getting A's on all the tests in that, too. I couldn't be more proud of how hard he has worked this summer and the success he has accomplished. Now he's applying himself to trying to finish two merit badges for Scouts, which are the last requirements he needs to attain Life Scout rank. That is the last rank before Eagle, to which he still aspires. If he gets to Life by the end of the summer, then he will have about two years available to him to complete the very challenging Eagle Scout requirements. I believe he will make it.

So in general, life is good here at our house. I am once again gainfully and happily employed, Bob clips along in his usual sunny, successful manner, and Sam's life seems to be on a very positive trajectory. I will try not to let two months pass between posts next time!

2009-06-19T10:18:00.004-04:00

Last night I had dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends, and she scolded me gently for not posting. So here I am, contrite.

But I have been busy in very positive ways while I've been away. I have landed full-time employment, which will begin on July 15th. I will be selling retirement products to teachers and school employees. It is, essentially, self-employment, but I am affiliated with an existing agency that will provide marketing support, all the back-office servicing, etc. As I researched them I became convinced that this is a really good opportunity for me. The fact that they are behind me providing leads and other services makes me a lot less frightened about self-employment, but I still get the parts of it that are highly appealing to me. I set my own hours, I don't have to waste time every day in commuting or meaningless office "face time", and I can control my own success or failure pretty directly.

The first step in the process is getting the necessary licenses. I must have a life insurance license to start, and will eventually need a Series 6 securities license. I took an on-line insurance course and passed the live, proctored exam for it yesterday and have an appointment to take the licensing test early next week. Then I plan to start right in on the securities license. Even though I don't have to have it to start, I am convinced that I will feel a lot more comfortable talking with prospects if I know I can handle all their questions.

So for the past few weeks I've been spending my time sort of schizophrenically. I am still drawing unemployment and hope to do so until the new job actually starts, so I still have to comply with all its requirements. Every day I still search the job boards and make sure I apply for at least two jobs a week, as required. (It's not like doing so brought me a bunch of offers before -- I doubt it will do so in the remaining three weeks!) I'm also still writing for that subscription website, so several days a week I am working on those articles, too. Then finally, those two obligations fulfilled, I studied.

I should say, I studied when family obligations didn't impinge. My sister's search for a diagnosis continues and we average a trip to a different specialist every other week or so. Next week we see a neuro-opthamologist because the previous specialist suspects it is something in the major nerve of the eye at the root of the problem. Remember her in your thoughts and prayers, please.

Last week my mother went for a routine visit with her cardiologist, who sent her for a stress test. They called shortly thereafter and scheduled her for a cardiac catheterization. It occurred Wednesday, and they found two arteries blocked more than 80%. They immediately brought in another doctor who did angioplasty and placed a total of three stents in the two arteries. It was very serious, but less stressful than it might sound because it all happened so quickly. Mom is at home recovering nicely and she says she can definitely feel an improvement in her overall health. Amazing what blood circulating through the system will do!

This had the feel of more diary entry than blog post, but there has been so much going on that I felt the need to post it. Perhaps I can get here a little more often in the weeks ahead!

2009-05-21T14:51:00.005-04:00

Boy has it been embarrassingly long since I posted here! I have no wonderful excuse to share, either. It just happens.

Since the last time I wrote, we attended the college graduation of my niece and goddaughter, Heather. It was a wonderful experience and we were so very proud of her. Her parents divorced when she was quite young and I was thrilled that her father was able to join us, too. He couldn’t have been more gracious or more proud of his little girl. I know it meant the world to her that he was there.

Of course, she graduated into difficult times. She had hoped to go to graduate school but the only programs that accepted her were out of her price range. Her short-term plan is to stay for the summer at her state-funded job at a local museum. She expects funding to completely dry up by the end of September, and I honestly don’t think she has a clue what she is doing after that. I know she’s frightened about that, but she wasn’t saying much.

I shared with her the story of my graduation from college, just because I thought it might give her some comfort. I graduated in 1980 and the economy was in pretty sorry shape then, too. Inflation was high and so was unemployment. I earned a 3.8 GPA and couldn’t land a job to save my soul. I got so depressed, and so dreaded having to tell people I couldn’t find a job, that I virtually hid in the house all summer. Eventually I took a full-time clerical job at the hospital where I’d worked part-time in college. It was two years of menial, mind-numbing clerical work before my life began to take a turn for the better. After that things picked up dramatically; I have had a very fulfilling life and career since. I hope she can draw some hope from that.

I continue to seek that elusive new full-time position myself, but I have had at least a little new progress on my freelance business. For a few weeks now I’ve been writing one article a week for a subscription-based marketing website. It’s such a small gig that the income, though fair for the job, is insignificant. But it has had the beneficial effect of giving me at least one writing task to focus on with normal pressure to please an editor and meet a deadline. That has been very good for me. Not surprisingly, I’m beginning to get more ideas to pitch as articles elsewhere now that I have my juices flowing.

There are many changes afoot in our church, too. As most of my readers probably know, our church is an important part of Bob’s and my life. Both our Pastor (of 12 years) and our Director of Music Ministry (of 11 years) are leaving next month. So I’ve been involved in planning going away parties for both, and serving on the search committee for the new Director of Music Ministry. On the one hand, I’m not freaked out about this. It is completely normal within the ebb and flow of the life of any parish, and I’m really not alarmed or unduly concerned. On the other, the two moves together constitute a lot of change. With so much career uncertainty, there is a part of me that wishes church could remain a comfort zone. I guess I just have to rely on the Holy Spirit and believe that while things may feel different when we resume the normal schedule in the fall, they will be securely in the hands of the One who knows what we need.

I had an interesting interaction yesterday. I was at the high school helping with a PTA project and saw our neighbor, Rachel. Rachel was all over the news two years ago when some ill-adjusted guy thought she and her friends had trespassed on his property and responded by shooting their car. The girls had not trespassed nor done anything more than drive past the house a couple of times. Rachel was shot in the head and it was a miracle she survived. Two years later, she is still struggling to recover her mobility and memory. I saw her stepmother outside later in the day and though we don't really know each other, I stopped to tell her how uplifting it was to see Rachel at school and doing so well.

I could tell she really, really appreciated the comment. She shared that Rachel's dad is still struggling with letting go of the hopes and dreams he and Rachel had shared for her future. She went on to say that Rachel had always had a sweet, sunny disposition, and this injury did not rob her of that. Rachel continues to be optimistic about the future and generally look for the silver lining in the whole experience.

All that Rachel has overcome already is very inspiring, but to me that was the most inspiring of all. I always want to know what's coming, to be prepared, to be in control. That's why it was so hard for me to be unable to get a job right out of college, why the job hunt/freelance business development balance is so hard for me, and it's why the changes at my church are so unsettling. Rachel, on the other hand, is in a position where she truly has no control. And instead of fighting that, she manages to seek the beauty in each day. Now THAT's inspiration!

2009-04-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

I’m suffering the attack of the killer allergies, and boy do I have the lethargy to prove it!

Central Ohio is generally known as allergy central. I have known many people whose doctors told them the best treatment for their allergies would be to simply move away. But I have lived almost my entire life in this area, and I didn’t really suffer any allergy symptoms until I was in my forties. Then I started having mild hay fever symptoms – nothing a little Claritin couldn’t handle.

Last spring, my body upped the ante. When the spring trees bloomed, so did my eyes. They swelled, turned a lovely shade of red and began to water profusely. I would wake in the morning unable to open them because of the thick layer of goop that had accumulated overnight. I went to the doctor and stepped up to Zyrtec. It took care of the other increased allergy symptoms, but didn’t seem to touch the eyes. Eventually my doctor prescribed both antihistamine eye drops and an antihistamine nasal spray, and using both of those with the Zyrtec I managed to get through the few weeks when the tree pollen was thick. Afterward, it seemed my base level had ratcheted up a notch. Claritin didn’t touch even my low-level symptoms. But as long as I took my daily Zyrtec, I was OK.

Well it’s tree pollen time again, and my eyes are at it again. I have worn contact lenses for 36 years and these two springtime allergy events are the only things that have ever kept me out of them. (My eye doctor always comments on what surprisingly healthy eyes I have for such a long-time contact wearer.) Today I wore my glasses all day. In the morning my eyes were literally running like a faucet, but it rained today and I think the pollen count improved when it did. Now my eyes don’t feel too bad, except that I have to pay attention or I will find myself rubbing them. They have just that low-level itch that makes me want to dig in them, but experience has taught me that they fell so much worse when I do!

The thing I’ve noticed – and the real reason I thought all this might be of interest to someone else – is that when one’s eyes are swollen and itchy, it is very difficult to feel one’s normal energy level and conduct one’s normal daily functions. I mean, it is really only one little part of my anatomy that is in discomfort, but WOW does it affect my overall productivity! I have had a hard time getting even the most basic chores done today. I think it’s because that whole itchy eye thing is a lot like what it feels like when I’m sleep-deprived, and my mind misinterprets it. Like it says, “Hmm, the sandman came through. Must be time for some shut-eye.”

Or at least, that’s my story – and I’m sticking to it!

2009-04-21T13:42:00.002-04:00

I’ve been having this strangely disorienting feeling about the “green movement” lately. Or, I guess more precisely, about where I am in life, and how this movement makes me feel.

I am 50 years old. (I still react like an alcoholic standing in front of the AA meeting every time I say that so bluntly. Take a deep breath and lay it out there, and then smile a little at the realization it’s OK to say!) When I was in the seventh grade, which would have been about 1972, I had a social studies teacher named Miss Sigfreid who made a big impression on me. She taught about ecology and the interdependence of everything on earth. She taught zero population growth. (I still don’t quite know how she got away with that in a public school!) She taught us to recycle and really imbedded in me the idea that taking care of the planet is just what the good guys do.

Over the years that message was reinforced in other places, and it really took root. I’m sure it didn’t hurt any that the energy crisis occurred during my senior year in high school, disrupting classes because they couldn’t heat our building. I remember learning about alternate energy sources in college, and forming the opinion around that same time that gas-guzzling cars were just icky. So as an adult, all that was always a part of my psyche. Even in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when the economy was booming and energy was cheap and everyone in America except me, it seemed, fell in love with the SUV, that whole recycle-reuse-conserve consciousness was part of who I was.

Now, I was never flashy about it. You would have had to actually watch us to realize things were different at our house. My husband and I needed two bins to put out our recycling each week while most of our neighbors didn’t fill the one that they were provided, while our garbage can was half empty until neighbors would fill it with their overflow on collection night. We never owned an SUV or even a mini-van, and I tried to buy a hybrid in 2003 when I bought my most recent vehicle, though in the end I just couldn’t quite afford it. (I was coming off a car lease, so waiting while I saved a little more wasn’t an option.) We were using compact fluorescent light bulbs in our home years before the government decided to ruin a good idea by mandating it, and I wouldn’t know how to act in a house that was warmer than 65° overnight. We installed a programmable thermostat as soon as they became affordable and stopped heating our home much through the day when we were at work, too. And we run our air conditioner less than anyone in the neighborhood in the summer! It’s got to be pretty sticky before we turn it on. Day-in, day-out, lunches were carried in washable lunch boxes, gift boxes and bags were reused again and again…well, you get the idea.

And yeah, I did feel a wee bit smug about it. I’m entitled, aren’t I? After all, I wasn’t going to get any OTHER reward, so I might as well bask in a little self-satisfaction. It’s gratifying to do the right thing, and why not enjoy a little glow about it?

But today, I feel like I’ve been robbed of that reward. Suddenly it’s cool to be “green,” and I feel so unappreciated for my 35 or so years of good effort and commitment. The level of effort I put in during those long, lonely years when people mostly thought I was just odd is now merely the baseline. I mean, people are by-and-large embarrassed to do less than the things I’ve mentioned. The government is mandating the use of compact fluorescent bulbs even in places where they may not make sense; even those who love gas guzzling SUV’s are dumping them because gas prices went up to $4 a gallon last summer and we all know they will go there again. Programmable thermostats are commonplace, most of the neighbors now fill two bins of recycling, and reusable lunch boxes are more common than brown bags.

All those are really, really good things. I hate to sound like a whiner when talking about things that indicate our society is improving. There’s just this little, tiny voice in my head that says, “Hey, would it kill ‘em to give me an attagirl? A little tip of the hat to those of us who stayed faithful and slogged through the long years when ecology wasn’t cool?”

Sigh. I guess I have to let it go. And I have to let go of the umbrage I feel when I hear some of the more extreme “greenies” suggesting changes that are – well – extreme. (I’m pretty sure we should still bring babies into the world in spite of their carbon footprint, for example.) But hey, I’m 50 years old. The way I figure it, that means my life is probably around 60% over. Surely that buys me the right to be a little curmudgeonly, right?

2009-04-09T09:06:00.000-04:00

Those who have followed this blog know that I tried hard to apply myself to the disciplines of Lent. My efforts weren’t perfect, but I think back to something our priest said the first Sunday of Lent: “If you get to the end of Lent and you are unchanged, then it was not a successful Lent. You should be able to notice a difference by the end.” By that standard, I think this was a successful Lent. I improved my prayer life, and I think I made great strides in trying to let go of my need to be in control and truly put my trust in God. These are very uncertain times in my life, but I can see a lifelong pattern of God taking good care of me. I know He will continue to do so now and in the future.

And now here we are at the end of Lent! Today starts the series of worship services the Catholic Church calls the Triduum. They are supposed to be viewed as one service, continued in three parts. The traditions are quite ancient, going back to the very beginnings of the church. Our choir will sing at all three services, and I find them quite beautiful. In fact, I’d have to say they are one of my favorite things about Catholicism.

Tonight's service is joyous in nature. It commemorates the last supper, with Jesus instituting communion. There is a ceremonial washing of feet, and all the ministers who help with communion in the church are officially "commissioned" for another year. It's all about community. (This year will hold a special treat for me because Sam went through the training and will be commissioned this year, too.)

Friday's service is just the opposite. It remembers the crucifixion and is very melancholy. In fact, at times it is more than melancholy – downright anguishing. It can be a difficult one to get through, but as a musician I have to note that the music is absolutely gorgeous. And of course, if you don't acknowledge how horrendous the crucifixion was, you can't fully grasp how amazing the resurrection was. There is no “closing” to this service, it just ends in silence and people file out to reflect. It is not a service I enjoy, exactly, but let’s say I appreciate it.

Then at Saturday's service we celebrate the empty tomb. The Mass doesn't start until it's dark outside, this year set for 9:00. It starts out at a bonfire where the Easter Candle is blessed, then the congregation lights candles and processes into the dark church. There are several Bible readings and psalms before finally the resurrection story is read and the lights are all brought up and from then on, everything is celebratory. New members who have been studying to join the Catholic Church come in at this Mass, so there are always baptisms and confirmations at it. At our parish we have a nine-piece orchestra accompanying us, which makes all the music seem special, even the routine mass parts and hymns. But we do some awesome special pieces, too. It is a Mass full of joy. I always leave it feeling great.

I don’t know whether I will blog again before Easter, so just in case I don’t, I wish all who read this a blessed and wonderful holiday. I think we all need a good immersion in Easter joy!

2009-04-08T16:12:00.006-04:00

I've been having a great week so far! On Tuesday I took a vacation from being unemployed. Sam was away on his class trip to Chicago, and Bob took the day off work. We lazed around the house all morning, then went to the art museum in the afternoon. Late afternoon we watched a video at home, then we used a gift card we'd been keeping back for a special occasion to have a nice dinner out. It was a lot of fun -- kind of felt like playing hooky, which only made it more fun!

Today brought somewhat of a return to the mundane (sending out resumes), but I met my dear friend Jamie Sue for breakfast and we are going to begin lifting weights together a couple times a week. She is the most upbeat, energetic, positive person I have ever known, and I know it will be good for me to soak up some of her "Jamie Sue fairy dust" as I like to call it!

Then late tonight Sam returned home from his Chicago trip. He had a ball. I think the thing he enjoyed most was attending a performance of the Blue Man Group. It continues to be so satisfying to me to see him having such normal experiences. His middle school years were rough and we used to really wonder if he'd fit into society. Now, it's hard to imagine that we had those fears. He's a tad eccentric but not in any ways that are problematic.

One of Sam's eccentricities is that he wears his hair long. I don't mean soccer star long, I mean ZZ Top long. It currently reaches about the middle of his back. But he has recently agreed that in the interest of continuing to wear it long, it probably behooves him to get some inches trimmed off the bottom just to keep it healthy. So we have an appointment Thursday afternoon to get that done.

2009-04-02T13:49:00.001-04:00

In my most recent post, I promised something more upbeat next time around. As I sit down to write this I am looking out the window at a nearly perfect day with a blue sky and bright sunshine, so it certainly seems like I ought to be able to keep it cheery!

The thing that I’ve been most excited about lately is that my son, who is 15 years old and a Freshman in high school, has his first girlfriend. Friends have asked me if I like the young lady. It’s a little soon to say, really. I have only met her once, and that was before they became an item. I understand that she has had a pretty challenging life, with several stints in foster care, some abuse issues, a variety of different schools, etc. So on one level, she isn’t the girl I would have chosen for his first relationship. I just figure any kid who has been through all that stuff will have some issues, and in the best of all possible worlds I’d like him to have had a relationship without those challenges.

On the other hand, I am proud as can be of him because those things haven’t deterred him. I don’t think he likes her either because of her issues or in spite of them – I think he just likes her and accepts her exactly how she is. And he definitely DOES like her. It’s fun, as a mother, to see his face light up when he talks about her.

They haven’t had much opportunity to spend time together away from school yet. They just decided to “be girlfriend and boyfriend” a week ago, and kids’ lives are so structured and full that there hasn’t been any time for them other than telephone conversations since. But his spring break is about to begin, and I anticipate I will see more of her then.

On a completely different note, my mother-in-law returns from six weeks in Phoenix tonight. She has been staying with Bob’s brother Ric and attending the Cleveland Indians spring training games. We are all thrilled that she is finally getting to have some of those retirement experiences we all dream of. When she retired Bob’s dad was in bad health and she nursed him at home far longer than she should. Then when she finally moved him to a nursing home, she was there almost all the time. After he passed away it took another good year, I’d say, to get basic stuff caught up around the house and things cleaned out and to just get to the point where she finally feels like her time is her own. So at 80 years old, after a lifetime as an Indians fan, she finally got to go out to sunny Phoenix and be a bleacher bum for a while.

After six weeks on the road I had assumed that she would want to get right home and pick up the pieces of her life. I assumed wrong. Bob’s nice Paige turns 7 tomorrow, and Mom Beasley is sticking around Columbus through the weekend to celebrate Paige’s birthday. I don’t really know what all the plans are, but it looks like it is going to be a very Beasley weekend for me!

2009-03-31T15:15:00.004-04:00

I spent most of last week running around ferrying my sister and mother to various doctor's appointments. The good news is, we think we have a diagnosis for Patty! It appears that she is suffering from temporal arteritis. That means that the big artery that comes off the carotid artery, up her left temple and on across to various parts of her head, has become inflamed and stopped pumping the blood correctly. Thus the places it serves, which includes the optic nerve, are not getting proper bloodflow, and it is the oxygen deprivation this causes that is causing the pain. She had a biopsy done on the temporal artery on Thursday and we are still waiting for the formal results to come back. But we really, really expect it to confirm the diagnosis. They went ahead and started her on steroids, which is the treatment, and she is experiencing some relief already.

She is really fortunate because if left untreated, this could have caused permanent blindness in her left eye. I wonder how long it has to go untreated for that to happen, though -- she had this headache with increasing frequency over a period of months and then constantly, without a minute'e relief, for over three weeks.

Of course, devoting a couple of weeks primarily to these extended family concerns has completely upset the delicate balance I had struck in how I spend my days and how I manage my job search and my emotional state. I still find very few viable opportunities to pursue. That said, though, I went on a job interview yesterday. It was the first one I've had since January. The job isn't one I would normally have pursued, but after interviewing with them I am still interested if they are. (I don't have extremely high hopes because it is outside my real area of experience. I have to suspect they can find better qualified candidates out there. But if they are interested in taking a chance on me, I'm still interested!)

I had this weird, awkward, sort of painful interaction with my sister on Friday. I have always wanted to write and in fact have always written, just not for paid publication. Looking back, probably my greatest regret in life is that I let myself become convinced during college that I couldn't afford to pursue writing as a career, and went off to study other more "marketable" things. My sister, on the other hand, was always interested in arts and crafts and animals and lots of non-bookish things. She is dyslexic and therefore did badly in school, so her focus was just completely different.

Now, she's developed an interest in writing. She's joined a little writers' group there in Zanesville and writes stories for fun. She's imaginative and thinks up cute ideas, but the whole dyslexia thing comes to play in the process of translating them to writing. So her clever ideas get sort of drowned in a sea of bad spelling and syntax errors. This development has always made me uncomfortable. Not that she's writing, just when she talks with me about it. I can tell she has no idea how much I've wanted to write and how disappointed I am in myself that I haven't written more, and been published. So Friday, she tells me while I'm unemployed I ought to write a book.

There I stood with my sick sister, knowing she has just spent the better part of a month in constant pain. I know she means this as an encouraging statement. I know her motives are purely positive. And yet it took all my strength not to burst into tears. I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut. Does she think I haven't thought of that? Does she think I don't feel like the biggest failure in the world because during this period where I've had huge blocks of available time I feel like every ounce of creativity I ever had has escaped? I haven't even been able to thumbnail a plot for a short story. I can't even come up with the core kernel of a plotline. There are days it takes all my discipline just to write something, anything for this blog!

And even though I know this is irrational and unfair, I also had a bit of a feeling of "How dare she?" How dare she talk to me about writing a book like she knows more about it than I do? How dare she imply that she and I are on the same plane about this? I'm ashamed of myself for feeling that way, but in all honesty, I do. It was one of the most awkward, difficult moments I've ever had with her. I just sort of froze up and didn't say anything, and after a few minutes she sort of got the hint and moved on to another subject. But I know she has no idea why I reacted the way I did, or what I was really feeling. I didn't feel like I could explain it to her, even after some time had passed, because there's no way to do so without admitting that I don't have much respect for the stuff she writes. And while I don't have respect for the writing, I have a great deal of respect for the fact that she puts herself out there. I just don't want her to do it in front of me, or to try to tell me how I should be going about it.

So there's my sad and sordid tale of family life. Tomorrow, I write about something more upbeat!

2009-03-16T14:58:00.002-04:00

I'm continuing in my Lenten theme. As some of you know, I used to do a daily meditation blog in Lent and I guess I still feel a strong motivation in that direction.

Yesterday, the sermon I heard was based on the Ten Commandments. The Pastor talked about how it's too bad we've come to view discipline as a negative word, when in fact it is very positive. He talked about how parents of small children have to discipline them to protect them from exploring things that would hurt them, and indeed it is a LACK of discipline that is the unloving response.

As he went on about the positive nature of discipline in our lives, and how we tend to be much happier when there is discipline in our life than when there is not, I had one of those "aha" moments. I have always been a person who has to struggle with her weight -- it fluctuates as much as 15 pounds, and hardly ever stays where I want it for very long at a time. My moment of insight was that I should learn to pay better attention to what's happening with my weight not out of vanity or concern about my weight per se, but because my weight going up almost always signals an overall loss of discipline in my life.

When I am exercising properly and being mindful about what I eat (not dieting, just paying attention and self-monitoring) I am usually also praying on a regular basis, reaching out to other people, taking appropriate steps for my career -- in general, living a disciplined existence. But usually by the time I realize I have put on 10 or 15 pounds, I look around and realize that I have fallen into self-indulgence and inertia in other areas of my life, too. For example, though I didn't lose my job until the beginning of October, I realize now that I started putting on weight around July or August. Realistically, I think there were signs that things were going badly at that time, and since I didn't know how to fix them, I reacted in a general breakdown of good habits.

I hope I can hang onto this insight! I see it as beneficial in two ways. First, it is another great motivator to not allow myself to wander off the straight and narrow of exercise and eating right. Second, I really believe that if I pay attention, this will be an early warning signal that allows me to turn the tide before things really go wrong.

It is an interesting Lent for me. I have been continuing to read the books about prayer that I mentioned, and I feel like they are helping me focus my efforts. I am not increasing my prayer time as much as I'd like, but I have definitely increased it some, and increased the quality. I think I have a greater awareness of the need for prayer and the little opportunities that present themselves every day.

On the other hand, I am constantly running, helping my mother and sister while keeping my family running. And the lack of a job remains a spiritual struggle as well as an economic one. God is generously providing for us and I have no reason to fear that we will really suffer for months yet, if ever. And I believe that when the time is right, God will lead me to the right opportunity. I know that I just need to stay open to the possibilities and eventually, the right thing will fall in place. But I have moments -- OK, sometimes days -- where it is very difficult to keep that faith. I fall into fret and worry and what-if and why-didn't-I and all the rest of those boogeymen of the mind.

Tonight I travel to Zanesville to stay at least two nights, as my mom has her second cataract surgery tomorrow, with a follow-up visit to the surgeon Wednesday morning. And by now, my sister's neurologist should have the results of Friday's MRI, so I hope we can get an appointment scheduled to follow up on that. So I don't know how many days it will be before I can post again. I just ask that if you read this, please send out a little prayer for my mom and sis and for my safe travels.

2009-03-09T15:29:00.000-04:00

My mother has lived with my sister, who is single, for a little over 20 years. My mom is now 84 years old and her health and strength are slipping, so Patty has increasingly taken on the role of caregiver for our mother. I have tried to help out here and there, but clearly, the largest burden has fallen to her.

The weekend before last, my sister thought she had a migraine headache. She didn’t have a history of them, though she had been having more routine headaches a lot for about the past three months. Over a few days time, the headache didn’t get better, but became much more localized around her eyes. She also found that her balance is off, and fell down at home several times. Once she realized she could not safely go to work (in the deli at Kroger) she called her doctor. He was on vacation, but she was seen by someone else in his office.

My sister has a long history of health problems of her own. In a way, I always believed that was one reason she and my mother living together worked out so well. Mom didn’t feel like she was being a burden because often my sister needed her help, too. I mention that because it explains why she was already the patient of a neurologist.

Jumping forward to spare all the tedious details, an MRI was run that may or may not have shown a spot on her brain; we don’t know because they ran it without color contrast, which is apparently pretty essential in a brain scan. She has been sent to an ophthalmologist, who has determined that her eyes are not the cause of the problem. He said her eyes themselves are fine and he can tell her that there is not an increase of pressure on her brain, as he would have been able to detect that. Her neurologist is waiting for the color contrast version of the MRI to figure out what it tells us about her brain. And Patty is at home, unable to drive and barely able to walk around without falling into a wall.

Thus it is that this morning I drove to Zanesville (a little over an hour’s drive from my home) to take her to one doctor’s appointment and expect to be back there on Wednesday to take my mom to a doctor and on Friday to take Patty to have the MRI done. Unless someone cancels and they can schedule her MRI sooner, or something else changes.

I’m really worried about my sister. She looks very ill. Her eyes have that sunken look people get when they dehydrate, and the left one seems partially closed. She literally cannot walk down a hall without staggering. I also noticed that her short-term memory seemed worse than usual, and she had trouble coming up with the word she wanted as she talked. She reports that when the episodes of headache get bad (which occurs more than once daily now) she often sees flashes of colored light. She is very light sensitive, too.

I hate even putting this fear into words, but I am so afraid that we are dealing with a brain tumor! She is a breast cancer survivor. About ten years later it metastasized into her bones, but they were able to beat it into remission with radiation. It has been about another ten years since then, so I feel like a tumor is not an unreasonable thought.

Of course, she has had a seizure disorder for years, too, which is somewhat of a wildcard. We never really knew what caused that. Whatever it is could be at the root of these episodes, too. And as always in these medical situations, the not-knowing is the very worst part. Without information, we tend to imagine the worst.

The fact that Patty is our mother’s caregiver makes it particularly problematic. Even a few years ago, it wouldn’t have been so dire because they had a circle of close friends like most of us do who would have provided some transportation and support. But in just the last two years, probably, they have been plagued with the deaths and moves to warmer climates of many of their closest neighbors and friends. At this point, they are feeling pretty alone in the city of Zanesville.

It is fortuitous, really, that I am unemployed at this moment and can make frequent trips down there to help them. But they both feel bad about it and I can’t seem to completely convince them to look at it as a blessing of timing. And I suspect that if I stay on this frequent a commuting schedule, I may begin to have trouble seeing the blessing in it, too, after a while. That said, though, I am at the moment very grateful that I am able to be of some help.

I ask my readers to pray for Patty and for the whole family. Prayer makes a difference – and we need it right now!

2009-03-05T18:13:00.001-05:00

I don’t mean to turn my blog into just a book review, but I have been sitting down to it each day after my period of reading and prayer, so it has been leaning in that direction. Let me just share three key quotes from the chapter I read today:

“The formative power of God within us urges us to form ourselves in his likeness. We are impelled by this Divine Form to seek wholeness and holiness of life. Peace-filled joy, the blessed life, is the birthright of the Christian.”

“Each of us is called to be a unique manifestation of the glory of God, unique and yet in harmony with the overall divine direction of universe and history.”

“Peace of mind is the healthy and natural state God created humanity to enjoy.”

I found all three of those statements deeply comforting and inspiring. And somehow, they just seem true. I don’t think God means for us to be miserable all the time, to be consumed by hustle and bustle and the shallow pursuits of the world. I think – no, I feel – that he really does want us each to be a manifestation of his glory.

It was a well-timed reading for me, because I have been ruminating on how I feel I have lost something essential about myself in recent years. There were quite a few years where I had a strong sense of identity and purpose. Looking back I think it may have been a little too tied up in my professional life, but at least back then I didn’t doubt who I was. For the past decade or so it feels like my time has been so compressed, the various roles of my life so demanding, that I have been feeling less “whole” than I used to. But at some level I think this is a growth period for me, and there’s something I’m supposed to learn from where I am at this very moment. So I’ll keep plugging away at the reading and the prayer and the blogging and see where it leads!

2009-03-04T15:53:00.002-05:00

Today I started reading Practicing the Prayer of Presence. There was one passage in the preface that really spoke to me: “Prayer is many things, yet it is one: It is the soaring of the human spirit to meet and be with the Spirit of God.”

I think maybe the reason that really touched me was that it ties together all the different things that we can mean when we talk about prayer. As the author had just covered in the book, we know prayer to be petitioning God for help for ourselves for others, we know it as just talking to God as we live our lives, we know it as reciting poetic words that we have been taught to communicate with God, we know it as sitting in silence and as experiencing God in nature. The word prayer can cover all those different things and more – and that definition makes it all make sense. Anything is prayer if it evokes the soaring of our spirit to be with the Spirit of God.

To some extent, I’ve always been a prayerful person. I don’t mean that as any kind of boast – it is just something I have always felt drawn to. When I was very young, when my family wasn’t really active in a church, I found my mother’s prayer book she had received at Confirmation and was fascinated by it. I used to pray those prayers all by myself when I was 9 or 10 years old. I tend to do a lot of “talking to God as I do my daily tasks,” and over the years I developed a strong discipline of praying for those around me. People who know me well always give me prayer requests because they know I actually do something about them. But I had never understood it in this way before.

Yet as soon as I read that passage, it rang true. That’s why I have always liked to pray – because I love that feeling of my spirit meeting with the Spirit of God.

I figure it is no coincidence that I found this Lenten discipline this year. Being unemployed, I am filled with a confusing array of emotions about life in general. I really don't know where I will land or how I will hold up my end of providing for my family if I haven't found something by the time the unemployment runs out. When I allow myself, I can become quite frightened and worry a lot. I know that when one is job hunting one should exude confidence and hope, but instead I find myself riddled with self-doubt. What a blessing it is to do something every day that lifts me up, draws me closer to God and affirms me.

The Lord works in mysterious ways; blessed are the ways of the Lord!

2009-03-03T16:11:00.002-05:00

I think it was a good choice to follow a different discipline this Lent. I don't have the same sense of drudgery I had begun to develop about the daily lectionary, which I had done annually for several years.

I ended up starting with the book Finding Grace at the Center -- The Beginning of Centering Prayer. It was a good choice. It's a small book -- just a collection of four essays with a little forward and summary, really. But it spells out how to go about a Christian form of prayer that is similar to Transcendental Meditation.

So today, for the first time, I tried to actually apply it. My success was limited. The book recommends that you set aside at least 20 minutes for this type of prayer. In fact, it says "Less than this hardly gives one a chance to get fully into the prayer and be wholly refreshed." But I found at the end of my first attempt that it had consumed all of five minutes. Still, I did feel that for a period there, I had brought my mind to a more relaxed, peaceful state. So I assume the rest will come gradually, with practice. I suspect I got the beginning and end right and shortchanged the middle. (Arguably, the most important part.)

I reviewed the rest of the books again this afternoon, deciding which one to read next. I think I'm going to turn next to Practicing the Prayer of Presence, though I think I will intersperse it with The World According to Mister Rogers. I think the former will be more of the kind of thing I found in the first book, while I think the Mister Rogers book will be stimulating in a whole different way.

I'm not sure if I will ever get around to the other books I had pulled out. The more I look at them, the more academic they seem. I can sort of remember being the cerebral, grad-school kinda girl who got heavily into that sort of deep philosophical navel-gazing, but I don't know that they actually speak to me now. I find at age 50 I am less cerebral but also less arrogant; there have been a lot of trade-offs in how how I view the world, and I don't think I want to work as hard as those books would make me work when I'm not convinced the benefit is there.

As my readers mostly know, I have a son who is 15 years old. At times now I hear him wrestling with philosophical, cosmological and theological issues that used to interest me. My first instinct is to sort of brush it off, to tell him it's not worth the energy he is putting into it. But I have to stop and remind myself that at 15 (and 20 and 25, even) one must work through some of those things. I can't expect him to view the world from my 50-year-old perspective. I have become increasingly a conflict-avoider; I've learned to make ideological compromises that let me sleep at night. He's still ready to fight the universe over inequities and injustices and to rail against inconsistencies in logic and belief. And that is exactly as it should be.

2009-02-28T12:39:00.001-05:00

So far, this is proving to be a different and interesting Lent for me. As I said in an earlier post, I am abandoning my practice in recent years of studying the lectionary and doing a daily blog post on that. Instead, I am doing some focused reading, trying to improve my prayer life, and doing some volunteer work.

Yesterday, I started the volunteer work with a shift at the soup kitchen at Holy Family Parish in downtown Columbus. It was an interesting experience, somewhat different than I had anticipated.

One thing that made it different than my expectations was that they had PLENTY of volunteers. One of the area Catholic high schools had a group there, a college sorority had sent girls, and there were some confirmation students from a local Catholic elementary school. I didn’t serve food to anyone. Instead, I spent my time with a dishtowel in my hand, drying cookware and serving trays as they were emptied and then washed by another lady who had come from our church.

In some ways, I think that worked out very well. It’s hard to self-aggrandize as you’re drying dishes. There was no opportunity to pat myself on the back or feel better than I deserved to about what I was doing. I just kept drying things and putting them away.

About 200 guests were served lunch. The food was mostly donated by area restaurants, and while it certainly represented an interesting mish-mash of dishes, for the most part it looked appetizing. The guests ranged from looking like one’s stereotype of homeless street people to looking pretty much like me.

For my Lenten reading, I decided to start with Finding Grace at the Center -- The Beginning of Centering Prayer by M. Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating and Thomas E. Clarke. It is pretty interesting so far. It teaches a method of praying that is very similar to Transcendental Meditation and similar Eastern traditions, but is deeply founded in Catholic prayer tradition. I haven’t tried actually applying it yet. By the time I was home with the time to try it yesterday, I was pretty sure I’d fall asleep if I got into the relaxed state it requires. So I read some more, but have not yet actually tried it.

All in all, I continue to work on living in the present and finding the right balance of actively seeking work without allowing the pursuit to consume me. This was a good week. Let’s hope for more of those!

2009-02-26T13:49:00.002-05:00

Here it is, Lent again. For several years now I have done a separate blog through Lent, focusing on the daily readings. But I've decided to take this year off from that. I was finding that with each passing year, it was less of a spiritual exercise and more of an exercise in endurance . That was certainly not the point, so I think I'm better off pursuing a different Lenten discipline this time.

I had already committed to some quiet prayer time each day, but I wanted to do some reading, too. So I went to the web to search for suggestions. I found many, but not many that appealed to me. Then I suppose the Spirit must have spoken to me -- because I realized I have some very good books on my own bookshelf that I have either never read or haven't read in a long time. I pulled out the following five books (most of them small) and hope to read some or all of them this Lent.

Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson
Finding Grace at the Center -- The Beginning of Centering Prayer by M. Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating and Thomas E. Clarke
Practicing the Prayer of Presence by Susan Muto and Adrian van Kaam
The Other Side of Silence - A Guide to Christian Meditation by Morton T. Kelsey
The World According to Mister Rogers -- Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers

OK, I notice that the fifth entry seems a little different. But somehow, it spoke to me just like the first four did.

Perhaps reading these will provide me with some fodder for blog posts, as well. But even if they don't, I figure they should provide some nourishment for both my brain and my soul. I really want to use this time well this year!

2009-02-20T15:08:00.006-05:00

This sounds a tiny bit silly to my own ears, but I have come to realize that the biggest problem with my no-longer-employed-fulltime life is that I'm lonely! I send my husband and son off in the morning and I have enough of a routine that I usually stay marching through things up until lunchtime, but from about 12:30 until my son's bus brings him back at 3:30, I really struggle with loneliness!

I'm pretty sure this is a self-induced injury. After all, I know there are tons of other people out there out of work, so it's not like there is no one I can call. Or for that matter, there are probably many at work who wouldn't mind my call. But somehow, I feel that I've lost the art of the casual, friendly call to chat. I am reminded of the scene in one of the last episodes of The West Wing where the character C.J. Craig opines that she has missed the window for buildng a relationship. I have that significant relationship, but I feel as though I've forgotten how to have or be a friend. There were so many years where fulfilling my obligations as employee, wife and mother consumed all my time that I got out of practice at just being a friend.

A friend of mine who called me the other day suggested that I take on some sort of volunteer activity while I'm unemployed. My first reaction was not enthusiastic. I believe strongly in volunteering and have done so in many capapacities over the years, but my first reaction was that volunteering never seems to actually be free. There always seem to be meetings where you are expected to buy your breakfast or lunch, or things where you need to drive all over town burning your gas, or something like that. And right now we are watching pennies that closely.

But upon further reflection, I think Ann (the friend on the phone) may have been onto something. I saw the other day that our church is sending a group of workers to an inner city soup kitchen to work the lunch shift every Friday for Lent. I'm thinking I may try to go join that effort. I figure it would have the double benefit of getting me out interacting with humans AND reminding me that I'm really not that bad off. And obviously, the work would be worthwhile. I also figure if a group is carpooling down there, the financial cost to me to participate really would be darned close to zero!

I haven't posted in a while, I know. I think it is safe to say that for a while there I put too much pressure on myself to write something really, really good and worthwhile, and thus ended up blocked from writing at all. I still hope to raise the bar and make this less a personal journal and more a collection of essays and reflections worthy of publishing. But in the interim, I think writing is healthier than not writing.

My 84-year old mother had a cataract removed earlier this week. The surgery was blissfully uneventful and she is recovering nicely, but surgery day did start with some drama. She was due at the surgery center at 7:00, so I went and stayed the night with her and my sister. We got up that morning and walked out the door at 6:30. I wanted to grab a pencil out of my car for use on crossword puzzles in the waiting room. As I sat in my car sifting through the collection of writing instruments, I thought I heard my sister yell. But I sort of doubted my own ears. After all, it was 6:30 a.m. What's to yell about?

I got out of the car and immediately saw the answer. She was kneeling by my mother on the ground. Mom had somehow fallen on the short was from the front porch to the carport where my sister's car was waiting. She hit her head pretty hard, and her glasses were forced into her right eye with enough force that it opened a gouge on her eyelid. Of course, the eye she landed on was the one she was scheduled to have surgery on. We got her into the car and drove to the surgery center, all three silently fearing that they would cancel the surgery.

As we got out of the car we realized she had scraped up her hands pretty badly in the fall, too. We signed her in and explained the situation. The nurses there were very kind, and immediately took us to an examining room where one of them cleaned up her scraped hands and put gauze bandages on them. She expressed doubt about whether the doctor would want to go on with the surgery, too. But as soon as he arrived in the building they sent him in, and after looking at her eyelid he said, "Sure, we can still do it. And if she gets a little black and blue around the eye, we can blame it on the fall instead of on me this time."

We were very relieved, and as I said, the surgery went like clockwork after that. She has been back to him for her first post-operative exam already, and she goes again next week. My sister tells me the bruises have bloomed into full technicolor glory, but there is obviously no real harm done.

I must say, it feels good to be writing again!

2009-02-02T16:01:00.001-05:00

It has been far too long since I’ve posted here. I’m trying to make a fresh start, and to post things that aren’t just diary entries but truly musings about the world at large. Of course, right now the world at large is looking pretty interesting.

As a 50-year-old woman, I’ve lived through a few things. I graduated from college with highest a 3.8 GPA in 1980 and couldn’t find a job to save my life because the economy was in such bad shape. I remember hiding in my house because I was embarrassed to go out and run into people and have to confess that no, I still didn’t have a job using my degree. I worked in dead-end jobs until the fall of 1982, when I entered graduate school. I earned my Master’s degree in 1984 and my career took a much brighter turn thereafter – thanks in no small part to the recovery of the economy.

In the 1990’s I changed jobs several times, convinced by the prevailing ethos that this was the way smart people leveraged their successes. And to some extent, it worked – by the end of the 1990’s I was earning a really good salary and our prospects looked bright. But the company with which I was earning that salary was a technology firm, and when the tech bubble burst in early 2001, I was one of those left unemployed. It took me six months to find a new job, and it was at about 20% less money.

But like most people, we made the adjustments we had to make and got on with the business of living. We wised up and decided not to keep buying larger houses, but to settle into the one we had and call it both home and investment for the time being. We were able to refinance for lower interest rates a couple times, so even now we are paying a very affordable mortgage.

During the period since our last refi, I have been offered even lower rates at times, but they were always variable rate mortgages. When I would demur, explaining that I remembered when mortgage rates were in the double digits, the friendly telemarketers always seemed surprised. One even asked me, “You don’t actually think we will ever see high rates like that again, do you?” Well, yes. I did think so and I still think so, though admittedly the current crisis does mean we won’t see them anytime soon. Still, I am grateful that I didn’t fall into that trap. We are very happy with our 5 3/8% interest rate and our substantial equity, thank you very much.

Now, I am unemployed again. On the one hand, I will confess that I am truly frightened – as I said, I’ve seen a lot in my life, but I have never seen an economic situation quite like this one. Every day the papers carry announcements of thousands of job losses. Where will we all find new work? I have interviewed for some positions I would be thrilled to get that constitute ANOTHER 20% pay cut. I would be thrilled to get them because the work is agreeable, the companies stable and well respected, and it would mean I could count on drawing a paycheck every week. Stability looks very, very appealing to me just now. And while the pay cut hurts, I know we could make the necessary adjustments. It beats continuing to live on unemployment!

On the other hand, when I set my personal unemployment issues aside, I am not as fearful for the overall economy as some seem to be. I know we are in very difficult times, and I know that it is devastating for some individuals. (Hence my fears for myself.) But I believe overall, we will come through this with the economy and standard of living in the country largely intact. I think we are creating some new headaches that will plague our children and grandchildren, but I don’t think they will be insurmountable.

So that’s where I sit right now. Personally, pretty scared. Globally, cautiously optimistic. I hope the two parties eventually come together to try to make the economic stimulus plan the best it can be. I don’t think it is there yet. And then, I hope it works. And in the meantime, I hope I can return to full-time employment to watch it all play out from a less fearful vantage point!

2009-01-05T10:15:00.002-05:00

If anyone had told me that one of the nicest vacations in my life would occur
a.) when I was unemployed, thus with nothing to actually take a vacation from; and
b.) almost exclusively in my own home;
I would have said they were crazy.

But that is exactly what happened! I just had two of the most pleasant weeks of my life. I scaled back my job search efforts to the minimum required to maintain unemployment compensation, my son was out of school and my husband took the time off work. We just hung out together and did a lot of nothing, and it was GREAT!

I have spent the last three months working to get my freelance writing business off the ground and simultaneously looking for a new full-time position. (At first I thought I'd try to transition into full-time freelancing and just did the job searching to maintain my unemployment eligibility. Over time, though, I came to realize that until my son graduates from college -- and he's only a high school freshman today -- I need the stable cash flow that full-time employment provides. So my mission has evolved to developing a healthy freelancing business as a second-income that I can grow to a primary income a decade or so down the road.) I actually work very hard every day at both endeavors -- the job search and trying to build my freelance business -- but I have to admit, in retrospect, I was doing all that hard work under the cloud of depression. Now, I think I have shaken that off.

I'm sure it didn't hurt any that the day before this "vacation" began, I had a job interview for a position that I am still very hopeful about. It was encouraging just to be called in, of course, but I actually think I would like the job a lot. The interviewer made it clear that after that interview, she would be taking some time off for the holidays, so I didn't expect to hear anything until this week at the very earliest. That allowed me to savor the positive feeling of hope about future employment through the whole vacation.

The first week was largely full of the hustle and bustle of our family's Christmas traditions. No one had done any early shopping to speak of, so we all were finishing that through December 23rd. Then on Christmas Eve my son sang in a teen choir at one Mass while Bob and I sang at two others, so there was a lot of energy in all that. And while some years I might find my mind wandering or feel exhausted by it or whatever, I found the services really uplifting this year. Then Christmas day involved a trip to my mother's home in Zanesville, followed by a trip to Bob's family home in Bryan, Ohio the 26th through the 28th. He has a large family and their holiday observation almost always gives me a lift. Even for them, though, this year's gathering was especially drama-free. (And that's definitely a good thing! Where there are eight siblings with spouses and children and now grandchildren, there is lots of opportunity for drama!)

The second week was even better, as unlikely as that seems! We slept in blissfully late every day, puttered around the house, and watched DVDs we had received for Christmas. (I got a set of the early seasons of the British TV series Midsomer Murders, which used to be shown here on A&E and the Biography Channel. Imagine our delight when we found that the episodes we had seen here in the US had been edited for length, so every single one contains scenes we've never seen before!)

Kind of our last hurrah was a trip to the Lennox Cinema to see Frost/Nixon. First of all, I was proud and pleased that I have a 15-year-old who chose that movie. (A sad observation: there were almost NO young people in the theater, though it was as packed as any I've been in for a long time. The audience members mostly looked like they had lived through the real events, as Bob and I had.) The movie is WONDERFUL. It is almost creepy how well Frank Langella channels Richard Nixon. So we've had numerous historical discussions in which we tried to put the Nixon presidency into some kind of perspective for Sam. What fun.

Today, Bob is back to work, Sam is back to school, and I am back to searching for job opportunities, both full-time and freelance. But I definitely come back to it feeling energized, renewed, and with a fresh outlook. No matter how rough 2008 was, we ended it in good health and still much better off than many people. All three of us truly enjoy each other's company and if that isn't something to celebrate, I don't know what is! I am filled with hope that 2009 will continue the positive trends in our lives and bring the financial stability we need, as well.

2008-12-16T10:11:00.004-05:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth again, I have just contracted a bad cold. I hope yesterday was the peak of my discomfort. I could barely walk from room to room without sneezing, and my sinuses seemed to be in constant-drip mode. I actually braved the outside world to go buy some over the counter meds, hoping to beat the symptoms into submission, but they didn't seem to do that much good.

I kept reminding myself that a cold is really nothing serious. If it becomes the flu then yes, there are complications to worry about. But really, a cold is a very minor thing. So how can something that really isn't that serious make you feel this bad?!?!

Of course, as a member of a family, I am fraught with fear that I will spread it around, too. And I am the cook in the family, providing me lots of opportunity to share my germs. All I can say is that I tried to be extra vigilant about my cleanliness as I cooked yesterday. I hope it is enough. My son gets a two-week vacation from school starting next Monday, and I'll feel awful if he spends it all sneezing and miserable. Likewise for my husband.

Today seems a tiny bit better -- at least the over the counter meds seem to be making a difference. So with any luck, I'll become truly human again in a day or two, and feel capable of writing about something beyond my own misery. Heaven knows this isn't what I want to be talking about anytime, but especially not during the holiday season.

2008-12-11T07:41:00.003-05:00

I have been wondering lately whether the current recession might result in a giant leap forward in an evolution away from the traditional employer/employee relationship.

For years now, there have been more entrepreneurial businesses starting. In addition, there have been displaced workers who, by choice or by default, become independent contractors. Those two things were indisputably trends before this recession hit. But as we look at the massive numbers of traditional jobs that are beign eliminated, I can't help but suspect that we will never see similar numbers of traditional jobs created to replace them.

Maybe by the time my 15-year-old son is my age, going to work in an office or a factory or a lab where you have to clock in and out at the same time every day will be the exception rather than the rule. I could see the economy evolving to one where most people are free agents. Maybe we will all -- or at least most of us -- work in an environment where we go where the work is, when there's work to be done.

That would be especially new and challenging, I think, to those in the manufacturing sector. My husband's sister and her sons all work in factories, as did my oldest brother until his retirement. My observation of factory work traditionally has been a deal that said, more or less: "I will come in and do mind-numbing and physically difficult work that provides no inherent satisfaction. I will do that faithfully and in return, you will provide me a secure and predictable income." To go from that model to a free agency one looks like a loss to those employees. And maybe the evolution will be such that there remains a core team that is guaranteed stability in return for their stability. (After all, someone has to keep the place running.) But I see there being a large pool of workers who are called when there's work and not paid when there is not.

My personal experience is more in the corporate world. It's a little easier to imagine that world working on a freelance model. Again, you'd probably have a core of management that works its manic 60-hour weeks just like now, but a lot more of the employees would be free agents. They would be contracted to get things done, not to sit at desks or attend meetings. There would be a lot more flexibility about getting that work done wherever it makes the most sense. This is all easier for me to imagine because I think the corporate world has been moving in that direction already anyway. Many big corporations have embraced flex-time and alternate work environments and job-sharing and telecommuting, at least in certain situations. It's only a small leap to envision those things becoming the more dominant model.

Of course, for any of these things to be more than pie in the sky, there needs to be a solution to the problem of benefits. An awful lot of American workers work where they do in order to maintain major medical coverage, access to a pension plan or 401(k) plan, and some kind of income protection in case they become ill or disabled. In today's world, someone who is self-employed does without those protections, or purchases them at a high cost. That's why I think the current recession might help move us along this continuum: when you are talking about millions of Americans with these needs, there will be an incentive to come up with a solution.

Well, that's my deep thought for the day. We have a big family birthday party this weekend, so I'm off to shop for birthday presents.

2008-12-10T09:31:00.002-05:00

I owe a big thank-you to my friend Shannon. She follows my blog and sent me an e-mail yesterday asking me where the heck I have been. That was just the nudge I needed. Somehow, since I came back from visiting relatives over Thanksgiving I have been unable to get back into any of the rhythms I had developed before. I'm not only not writing in my blog, but I haven't been doing my morning journal, either. About all I have been doing, in fact, is applying online for jobs I don't really want.

Cliche as it sounds, I think I am partly the victim of a fear of failure. Let me tell you how I got to this point.

When I was a kid, writing came as naturally to me as breathing. It was clearly my calling, but in college I decided I wanted the life of a briefcase and a commute and a big office and what appeared then to be security. So I turned my back on writing except as a supporting skill and earned degrees that led me into business.

Life kept pulling me back to writing. When I graduated with a Masters degree in Economics, I followed my (then) husband to a small rural community. The first job I was able to get was as a radio copywriter. The job literally sought me out. From there, I transitioned into a marketing job at a bank, which felt more like the business thing I so wanted. But the fact that I could write well was always what gave me an edge.

So I followed the "career path" for about 15 years. Somewhere along in there, I had a baby and began to be aware of a tension between the values I wanted to live out for him, and the pressures of putting career first. For the last seven or so years, I have been trying to find work that on the one hand built on those skills I acquired earlier in my life, but on the other hand allowed a lifestyle more consistent with what I want now. I moved to the not-for-profit world.

But now, I find myself unemployed and realizing that in a perfect world, I'd rather not work in a 9 to 5 setting at all. I'd like to work from home, for myself, managing my time based upon the demands of the work and never again having to play politics or be there just because of "face time". So I'm looking back at the opportunity I walked away from as a young adult, thinking, "Hmm, maybe I should try to earn a living as a writer. I could be my own boss that way, and do work that I find meaningful."

So here's the rub: after about 30 years of thinking of writing as my fallback position, as something I walked away from but could always return to, I think I am really scared to fail. If, after all this, it turns out I can't do it, what's left?

Like so many people in our world, my whole self-worth is tied up in my job. I really liked the identity of being a business executive. Truth be told, even though I don't miss the work at all, I miss that identity. I felt important then. Working in non-profits was more fun, but I didn't feel as much ego gratification. Then losing a job at a non-profit was a real kick in the ego! Now, if it turns out after all this time that my writing isn't really that good, either, that no one is out there just dying to pay for my beautifully written prose, then what's left? I'm just an unemployed middle-aged nobody. Ouch!

In the end, money may be the driving force. Without my income, our family budget is pinched. If I don't start generating some money with writing soon, the whole emotional side of it won't matter. I will have to go take a day job. Even now, I've reached the point that if one came along that looked pretty well within acceptable parameters, I'd take it. I have college tuition coming up in a few years, and I owe it to my son to be responsible. But I'm not yet to the point where I'll take just anything, and I know I should be using whatever few precious months I have here to really give the writing my best shot.

So this blog entry is step one in shaking off the fear. This afternoon, I'm going to research some magazine titles to try to determine where my writing would be a good fit, and then I'll put together some queries. Then, we'll have to figure out what makes sense as a next step.

Thanks, Shannon, for the kick in the seat. You helped me more than you know!

2008-11-25T08:49:00.002-05:00

I keep saying this isn't going to be a mommy blog, but then I keep posting about my son. Oh well, they say you should write about what you feel passionate about -- and this is definitely what I feel passionate about.

I am so happy this morning I feel like popping champagne corks or something. (Except that I didn't get to bed until late last night, so I'd probably doze off in my champagne. ) My son, a high school freshman, had a two-page personal narrative due in English yesterday morning, an oral presentation for Latin class that had to be ready by yesterday morning, and a five page research paper in Science due today.

In previous years, having three big projects due at the beginning of this one week would have been a sure recipe for disaster. This is exactly the kind of situation where his executive function issues usually trip him up. He can't seem to manage his time, he gets into a big approach/avoidance procrastination game, and eventually melts down. Extensions are requested and even then, it is like a torturous nightmare finally getting everything done and turned in.

So we did not approach this week with great eagerness. But I am delighted -- thrilled, even -- to say that Sam completed all three projects on time! When he left here Monday morning the personal narrative had already been turned in, via e-mail, the night before. (And by the way, though it was only required to be two pages, his turned out to be five or six pages long, and extremely compelling!) He was ready for his oral presentation, though he did not get called on to deliver his yesterday.

Last night my son was up until midnight, but when he went to bed the paper was done, with hard copy printed and in his binder and electronic copy already sent, as per this teacher's preferences. The research paper isn't wonderful, but it isn't bad, either. If I were grading it, I'd give it a B, probably. In light of the two other big projects and the fact that he met all deadlines, I'm actually more than OK with that!

I am so happy! He has shown so much progress this year, and meeting these three big deadlines just seems to me like the perfect illustration of how far he has come.

We leave tomorrow morning for a few days in Michigan, at the rural home of one of my husband's brothers and his family. It's a place we all enjoy, and I am so gratified to think that Sam can go and enjoy these few days of relaxation in the warm glow of success, rather than having some big thing hanging over his head. Right now, in this moment, I just feel like it doesn't get any better than this!

2008-11-21T11:07:00.002-05:00

OK, I had sort of decided not to use this blog to write about my own writing efforts. But since I have exactly one follower so far, I still feel pretty free to change my mind. So I've decided to post here what I wrote in my journal this morning. Somehow, posting it in this more public way, where people might actually see it and read it, feels like I'm making a commitment.

Here goes:

OK, this morning I broke all my little self-imposed “rules.” I went back to bed for an hour after the guys left. Then after my shower, I sat down at the computer and started job-hunting right away, without doing my free-writing first.

But you know what? It’s OK, because I actually think I just had a flash of insight. I need to stop worrying so much about bringing in money, or I am never going to bring in any money by writing. Buried within me, underneath many years of accumulated suppression, there’s a lot of creativity. If I can just tap into it, and start writing things that are creative, I can sell some of them. I just know it. But instead, I spend most of my time at the computer looking for writing gigs that will generate a little short-term cash flow. Of course, I’m competing with every other unemployed, wannabe writer out there for those gigs. And there’s no money to speak of in the ones I see any way.

When I was a kid, I used to sit down and write stories. I did it for the fun of it, because it came naturally. And they were good. But I made a decision in college that I wanted a nine-to-five life with benefits and security, and I made a series of choices that took me that direction. Along the way, I worked hard to suppress the creativity and instead learned to be a translator. I’d take complex boring financial or technical concepts and translate them into understandable English. Creative flourishes were always discouraged.

Now, I need to spend some quality hours at my computer just writing made up stories for the fun of it. I need to know that they won’t all work out; some will have to be abandoned completely and others will have to be attempted many times before they turn into something. But I believe if I do this, I can eventually write something worth reading – and when I do that, I can sell it.

I also need to start churning out magazine queries. They take a long time to generate money, but the writing would be more enjoyable. I just need to let go and let God. I need to trust that somehow, he will provide the money we need.

It’s funny that I’m saying all this today, because just yesterday I sat and did a detailed cash flow analysis and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can’t afford to do what I’m doing beyond the end of March. Unless I start bringing in income, I mean. Living off the unemployment and savings will stretch me until the end of March, and when the April mortgage payment comes due, I won’t have it. Now, my husband is employed and with his help we can probably scrabble through a few more months, but I don’t want him and Sam to suffer for my choices. And I do believe the cuts we’d have to make at that point would involves some suffering.

So I guess here’s what I have to do. I have to keep applying for full-time jobs that look not-awful to me, in part because I have to do that anyway to stay eligible for unemployment. If one of those materializes, I will probably accept it and take that as a sign from God. I’ll keep building my writing business on the side, replenish my savings, and watch for a sign that it is the right time to go to writing full time.

I will focus more on generating proposals for magazine writing or any other writing that actually captures my imagination. I’ll set some kind of goals about sending out some number of query letters per week.

And then, most importantly of all, I think, I will set aside some time every day for creative writing. I will try to generate short stories and/or a novel. And marketable essays. But I will write things that give me joy, that use the talents God gave me and that make me feel like I am fulfilling my destiny. I will adjust my schedule so that a lot more of my daytime hours are spent actually sitting and WRITING!!

There you have it. Those are the thoughts I wrote in the privacy of my journal this morning, that I am now posting out on the web for all the world to see. I have committed!

2008-11-19T08:39:00.005-05:00

It feels like I haven't written forever! I had to report to federal jury duty the past two days, so I've been offline.

I had rather dreaded jury duty, though my husband and some of my friends who have served on juries had tried to convince me it wasn't that bad. In a way they were right, but I am still grateful that I didn't actually get seated on a jury.

It's the bureacracy that makes it such a hassle. We were told to report by 7:45 promptly, but we didn't actually start the jury selection process until 3:30. In the end, it turned out our judge was hearing the federal elections case about allowing the provisional ballots, though we didn't find that out until much later. We just got a series of short delays. We watched a movie and a half, most of us shared pizza ordered in, and after what felt like forever, it got to be about 2:25. The woman who had mothered us all day came in and announced that we would all be released. The judge wanted to talk to us, and he said he would be down to the jury room at 2:30.

Of course, 2:30 came and went and around 2:45 she announced a change in plans. We were going up to the courtroom and he'd talk to us there. We filed in and sat down and waited a few minutes, and then they announced there had been a change and the case was, indeed, going to trial! (People felt way worse at that point. Hearing that we were going home and having it yanked back a few minutes later was very difficult!)

We were marched out of the courtroom, lined up by juror number, and marched back into the courtroom. The process of selecting jurors finally began at 3:30. At 5:25 it was obvious they could not complete the task that day, so we were sent home. Twelve jurors were released and the remaining 50 of us were told to come back the next morning. (A few had been released throughout the course of the day.) The process would begin at 8:30, we were told, but be there by 8:00.

We were actually ushered back into the courtroom about 9:30 the second morning. Finally, at 10:20, the judge announced that it would take them about 30 minutes to finalize the jury selection. We were to be gathered in the hall at 10:50 to hear the selection.

We were gathered at 10:50, and we had a lovely time to socialize, since they didn't come out to announce the jury until 11:30. After some last minute escape efforts by one of the selected and a thank you from the judge, we left for the day at about 11:50.

Citizens are compensated $40 a day for jury duty. While that doesn't cover what most people make in a day, it still seems like a lot of money to me when I consider that there were about 70 of us the first day and 50 the second. The federal court had around $4,800 invested before the jury was even seated! And that doesn't include reimbursements for mileage, parking and hotels!

I understand the importance of juries in maintaining the American justice system. And, I genuinely believe they did all they could to make us comfortable and to reduce the strain. Yet I think most of the people called on that jury panel would say it was not a very positive experience. It's a shame, really. Oh, and a federal jury draws from a 30-county area, so some of these people had driven far or were having to stay in hotels. I guess the second morning there were 3 inches of snow on the ground over in Eastern Ohio, and some jurors had to make the second drive in through that!

The jury room offered an interesting cross-section of the population, as well it should. I found it interesting how open and friendly most people were. I wonder if that would be true in a federal jury in another part of the country? I had chats with several fellow jurors where I came away with a pretty good understanding of that person's life. In all honesty, I didn't open up to them nearly as much.

OK, I hope this has purged the jury selection experience and that tomorrow, I'll feel free to write something that is less of a complaint!

Oh, one bright note on another subject. My friend's son was accepted at the special high school for kids with learning disabilities, and he was scheduled to start there yesterday. I so hope that he is able to recover and thrive there! He and his mom remain in my prayers. I just want to see the Matthew that we saw by the end of 8th grade -- a boy who interacts with friends and make jokes and is able to enjoy life. I want to see him fulfill his potential and get a college education and head out into the world with justified optimism. He deserves it. In fact, every kid does!

2008-11-12T10:43:00.003-05:00

My son's grade card came and all things considered, we were pleased -- nothing lower than a B-. As I've indicated earlier, in terms of raw intellectual power he ought to be a straight A student. But he has learning issues that center around organization, and last year we saw more than our share of Cs and even lower. I hope that over time he is able to master compensating techniques for organizing and earn even higher grades, but for his first grading period of high school, that wasn't too shabby.

I had a conversation yesterday that made me stop and appreciate how good things really are with Sam. I called a friend I hadn't talked to in about four months. It is one of those friendships that grew out of the fact that our boys were classmates and involved in many activities together, but eventually took on a life of its own. I was way overdue to have checked in with her.

Her son has Asperger's Syndrome. I think most people are familiar with that term now, but in case you have never heard it, Asperger's is a special type of autism. Those with it are often very intelligent, as her son is, but they have a lot of trouble with normal human interaction. They don't usually make eye contact and they are unable to read non-verbal cues and facial expressions. When her son was in early elementary school, I didn't think he would be able to make it in society in any "normal" capacity -- he was that disabled. But he has had a lot of good therapy and by middle school, he was really blossoming. He had friends, he interacted with other kids in seemingly normal ways, he made jokes...It was really uplifting to see how far he had come.

For high school, he went to a private all-male college preparatory school and I had heard from another mother that it hadn't worked out well for him. He had transferred to a co-ed Catholic high school with a good reputation. I hadn't felt unduly alarmed by that -- the all-male school in question is pretty rigorous and pretty rigid, and lots of boys who start there find it's not the right place and transfer somewhere else successfully.

I'm sorry to say that was not the case for my friend's son. He found the new high school emotionally overwhelming. There were so many new teachers to try to connect with and understand, so many new kids to try to get acquainted with, the constant changing of classes and input of too many stimuli. She said he completely withdrew into himself to the point that he would sometimes go a whole day at school without speaking a word, or no more than monosyllables.

So yesterday he was off being evaluated at a special high school designed for kids with learning disabilities. She said that if they do not accept him, she feels her only option is some kind of home schooling. And she didn't sound any more excited about that option than I would be. This is a very, very intelligent boy, and the goal is to get him to college. It would be very, very difficult to provide him all that he needs in a homeschool setting. Yet I share her certainty that if he can get a college education, he can find a niche -- probably in the computer industry -- where he can apply the things he is good at and build a satisfying life for himself. Besides, he DID learn to relate to his classmates at the old school, eventually. Moving into an isolated setting where he gets no practice at that can't be good for him.

So today my heart and prayers are with her as she awaits the decision from the potential new school. And inside, I rage at the injustice of a world that can't accomodate a kid like this.

Oh -- and I hope this doesn't sound insensitive -- and I also breathe a little prayer of thanks that my son's transition to high school has been as overall positive as it has. This sad story is a huge reminder to me that while my son's road has a few bumps, his journey is progressing pretty well.

2008-11-10T09:25:00.002-05:00

On Friday, I passed the one month milestone of losing my previous job. Maybe that's the underlying reason, but I find myself in the best spirits I've been in since that fateful day in October. As I look at it, I find several widely different reasons to feel so good.

On Friday, I spent much of the day seeking out ways to reactivate all my professional networks and to get the word out that I am looking for writing work. Even though it is too early to have seen any rewards from those efforts yet, I find that I do feel better just for having made the effort. It helps me begin to believe that I really will be able to generate some work this way.

Today, I did my weekly search for job opportunities to which I can apply in order to keep drawing unemployment compensation. Hey, the job market may be bleak, and I may have set my sights on this freelance path, but that weekly unemployment check is hugely helpful until I make the transition and I want to make sure I continue to qualify. So I had just resigned myself to applying for the least objectionable opportunities I see. After all, I rarely get a response even when I'm applying for a position for which I think I'd be perfect. I'm not in that much danger of getting hired for a job I know is not a good match.

But today, I actually found a couple of postings that were not objectionable. They were jobs I could actually envision myself doing. And I realized as I applied for them that I have a wonderful freedom right now. I have laid all my plans based on building my own freelance business and scrimping by on low income while I get there. But if I were offered a really decent full-time job, I would probably accept it and continue to build my freelance business on the side in a slower, safer environment. How's that for a can't lose situation?

Finally, and I'll admit this is a little silly perhaps, but I'm beginning to recognize some of the wonderful virtues of working from home. I was never a full-time mother or homemaker. I have spent my entire life driving through rush hour traffic to a workplace where I was expected to be for most of the day, and fitting my life around those constraints. On Friday, knowing the weather was predicted to turn bad as the day went on, I went to the grocery store at 8:00 a.m. I did my grocery shopping in lovely uncrowded aisles, and I was home before the rain and flurries came. It felt great -- like I was getting away with something! That's also how I feel when I choose not to put on any makeup some mornings, or when I take a break from the computer and sweep the floor or some like task.

Who knows, this positive turn of mood may not last. But while it does, I'm going to enjoy it!

2008-11-06T14:24:00.013-05:00

I am in the interesting situation of having a teenager in the house during my midlife years, since we didn't have our only child until somewhat later than average. (If there is any "average" time to have babies any more!)

My son is wonderful and gifted and all those things you would expect me to say, but he is also a very different kid. Depending upon your mindset, you might describe him as eccentric or unique or just weird.

He went to a private Montessori school from age 3 through 8th grade, and is now a 9th grader at our public high school. We shopped around, but we were fortunate that our local public high school is a very, very good school. Given how different he is, I thought it would be to his advantage to be in a larger population, where he could more likely find a few like souls.

I guess it was a good decision, because there is no doubt that he is happier this year than I've ever seen him. But I continue to struggle, as I always have, with understanding what happiness means for him versus for me. He really hasn't made any friends yet, but I have to admit that this fact appears to bother me more than it bothers him.

Next week we will receive the first official grade card and have parent-teacher conferences, so I should get a lot better insight into how things are going then. I'll try to post something more when I've synthesized that!

2008-11-05T16:31:00.003-05:00

My day job went away quite suddenly (and not of my own choosing) a month ago. My last two career jobs have left a bad taste in my mouth, so I’m feeling a little gunshy about jumping back into the traditional job market. I have worked as some form of a marketing professional for about 24 years, yet I feel very unsure about getting back on that horse. Times have changed, I have changed, I’m feeling a little scarred, and all other things being equal, I’d like to make a big change. I’d like to work independently as a freelance writer.

I’ve been doing a lot of research, and the way I see it, there are two key ways to make money as a freelance writer. Well, three, really, but the third one is a slow-build. That one is writing for magazines and such. It is work I think I would enjoy very much, but I know can’t build up to an adequate income level fast enough with it. (That is, fast enough to continue making mortgage payments after my meager savings are exhausted.)

The other two ways to make money as a freelancer are to do commercial copywriting and to aggressively “monetize” a blog. (This is the process of drawing advertisers and creating other things you can sell from your blogsite, like e-books or newsletters. When done well, it can be very effective.) Commercial copywriting ties most closely into what I’ve done for all these years, and would use skills I know I have, but I’m a little hazy on how to actually market myself and build a clientele. (Again, with an implied “fast enough” at the end of that sentence.)

The blogging thing appeals to me, except that to be successful you have to passionately state your opinions about something. I feel like I’ve spent most of my adult life getting trained to suppress my opinions, make peace, smooth the waters, not alienate anyone. I would definitely have been AWESOME at this when I was in my 20’s, because back then I had a strong opinion about everything and I was pretty sure I was right. Now, I am so accustomed to self-censoring that I don’t know if I can write passionate opinion.

Most experts would say, of course, that the trick is to blog on a subject you feel passionately about. So what do I feel passionately about? Well, I feel passionately about raising my son; I am passionately intrigued with the experience of mid-life; I am passionate about my beliefs as a Catholic Christian. Beyond that, I’m not so sure.

My son is 15 years old, so I don’t fit the general mommy-blogger stereotype. They are mostly stay-at-home mothers of pre-schoolers and early-elementary-age children. The parents-of-teenage sites I have found all seem like us-against-them battle stations. So perhaps there is a niche for me to explore here…..

I found a whole mid-life blogging community, so I can definitely think about targeting something there. Actually, I could probably blog about mid-life and raising a teenager and create my own niche-within-a-niche that way.

The Christian stuff is really important to me, but I’m pretty sure that if I want to do something with that, it should be on its own separate blog. And while I know I would enjoy the writing, I’m less confident about making money through it.

So I’m thinking that tomorrow, I’m going to try blogging on the experiences of raising a teen-age son and turning 50. I can see the potential for it to turn into boring navel-gazing, but I hope I can bring enough professional discipline to the project to keep it targeted to real readers.

And thus, a blog is born!

2008-11-04T09:02:00.002-05:00

I know it's probably cliche, but I just can't help myself. I just returned from voting and I feel so good! Like most other people, I get very sick of the campaigns and I don't want to hear another political ad for -- well -- ever. But election day, when I get to go to the polling place and stand in line to cast my ballot, is one of the most inspiring events of the whole year.

I don't know if this is true for others, but I always see a bunch of my neighbors there. That adds to the general feeling of well-being that election day provides. Here I am, surrounded by my neighbors, exercising the great privilege and responsibility of living in a democracy. It's like all the cynicism created by my life experiences is just peeled away, and I'm that elementary school kid again, aglow in the excitement of patriotism.

I have a 15-year-old son, and I'm amazed how cynical he is already. He looks upon the electoral process with a surprisingly jaded eye and seems to believe our system is broken beyond repair. But I'm still hopeful that tonight when the returns are coming in and he's watching the pundits with us (which he has to do because it is required for a couple of his high school classes) that maybe in those moments he will see some glimmer of hope, get some sense of why we all invest so much in this process. Cliche or not, the concept that I can actually make a difference in the future of this country and of the world by taking the time to become informed and cast my ballot is pretty heady stuff. Surely that can overpower the cynicism of a teenager for one evening, can't it?

2008-11-03T14:21:00.002-05:00

I'm feeling a little nervous because I have to report for Federal jury duty later this week. After all, trying to start one's own business, dealing with a high school freshman with learning issues and just surviving election day 2008 isn't QUITE enough stress in one's life. It seems I needed one more item.

I have had a number of friends and people close to me who have served on juries and found it an uplifting and positive experience. In spite of that, I have always viewed the possibility with dread. I am a real "play-by-the-rules" kind of gal, and if I end up in a situation where I have to disregard evidence that has been presented or ignore some fact that we find out or something like that, it is going to be very tough for me. I would hate to have to believe in my heart that someone is guilty but let them off because without that piece of excluded evidence, I really wouldn't know they were guilty.

I also dread the opportunity for conflict. I am usually pretty decisive. I can make a decision and move on. The thought of being stuck hashing and rehashing evidence with a group of people I may or may not like or respect worries me. It seems to me that the third or fourth time through it, tempers would be likely to flare.

On a brighter note, I finally got my writing website up and running. It isn't yet all that I want it to be, but it is at least active and people can, in fact, visit it and see samples of my writing. I'm pleased with that as a start. (Feel free to check it out at www.EmersonWrites.com.)

2007-04-06T07:52:00.000-04:00

Well, once again I've let several weeks pass without posting. And a lot has happened in those weeks!

Perhaps the biggest news is that I have a job! I have accepted the position of Director of Marketing and Community Relations with The Catholic Foundation. The Catholic Foundation is a nonprofit corporation, separate from the church but aligned with it, with the mission of providing a permanent source of funding for religious, educational and social service activities and ministries in the 23-county Diocese of Columbus. It is one of the oldest and largest Catholic foundations in the country.

I feel really good about this. In fact, honestly, I feel that I was meant to be here, and that God had a plan from the beginning. I had been moderately unhappy or perhaps uncomfortable at the old job for a while, but I wasn't taking action to leave. So God forced my hand. And throughout the time I was unemployed, I just kept praying that he would lead me to a really "right" new job -- not just a job, but a place where I felt like I belonged, where I could use my talents and feel at peace. I believe this job is the answer to that prayer.

Since my last posting Sam has had his meeting with the psychologist who gave the tests, and just yesterday we had the meeting with the doctor and Sam's teachers. Also, I read a book recommended by the psychologist and one of the strategies it recommended was having a coach for Sam. Well separately from all this, Sam had already been talking with the phys ed teacher at his school, with whom he has a good rapport, about whether there was some way she could counsel him a little. So I asked her how she might feel about taking on this coaching role. She was very enthusiastic, and is currently reading the book to better understand the issues we've identified and what the role of the coach is. So his classroom teachers are going to try to help him develop external structures to support himself and make some accomodations for his extra needs in this area, and are going to communicate with the coach so she can be effective in supporting him and holding him accountable.

The other big thing that's going on is that my mother is having back surgery on April 16. She was originally supposed to have it in February, but the pre-admission testing revealed a heart issue, which led to a cardiac catheterization. She is now stabilized on some new meds, and has been cleared for the back surgery. That's really important, because just in these few months the surgery has been delayed, the pain has gotten much worse. So we are all very excited about the pending surrgery. Of course, she's 82 years old, so I will admit I'm a little scared -- though she's been through all these tests and everything, of course the risks of surgery are a little higher for her. But we hope it goes smoothly and once she recovers, she will be able to remain active and pain-free.

In other news, my niece Jena just gave birth to a son yesterday. I don't know the height and weight, but she named him Aries, to her father's obvious chagrin. But my brother at least showed good humor about it. He adores his daughter, after all, and since her favorite screen name online is "hippiegirl," it's not like this name is an out-of-character choice.

That's where I'm going to wrap it up for today, except to wish everyone a very Happy Easter!

2007-03-20T07:10:00.000-04:00

Well, yesterday Bob and I had the long awaited meeting with the psychologist who administered all those tests to Sam a few weeks ago. And interestingly, as we left Bob and I both felt that on the one hand, he didn't tell us a single thing we didn't already know. And on the other hand, he somehow reframed it into a perspective that helps make sense of it.

He said that while Sam's intellect is very high, as we have always known, the area psychologists call "executive function" is much lower. His executive function is not actually low, but relative to his intelligence, it is. The doctor said that only about 10% of very bright kids would have scores as low as Sam on executive function.

Executive function is controlled by the frontal lobe and governs things like working memory -- the ability to hold a set of directions in your mind while working on a project, for example. It covers a lot of self-regulation, the postponing of gratification in pursuit of a long-term goal, time management, planning, etc. Now, these are all areas where we knew he had problems. What we didn't realize was that they are all connected, all controlled by that one area of the brain.

So again, in terms of the labeling that schools and psychologists seem to love, Sam doesn't quite fit the label. Just as we know he has "Asperger's-like" behaviors but doesn't really meet the definition for Asperger's, similarly, he has ADD-like behaviors but doesn't meet the definition for ADD. Which is just as well, especially since we have previously tried ADD meds on him and they produce strong and unacceptable side-effects. (They make him anti-social.)

So the recommended course of action is that we must provide him with external structures that take the place of that internal regulation. For example, when he goes to do a homework assignment, we will now have him show or explain to us exactly what the assignment is before he starts. That will establish whether he knows or not. If the assignment is complex, and it took a lot of coaxing and guidance to get it all laid out, we might write it down, so he has those written instructions in front of him as he works. Then as soon as that assignment is finished, we will review it to see if he completed all the steps.

The psychologist will meet with Sam next week, and with his team of teachers in about three weeks, so that we are all on the same page. I had mentioned to the psychologist how frustrated we and the teachers have been by his apparent loss of motivation this school year, and the doctor was pretty sympathetic to Sam about that. He likened him to a dog that has jumped at an electric fence and been zapped enough times that now, when he looks at the fence, he just sees the pain. Even if someone opens a gate in the fence, he is likely not to notice it. In Sam's case, he started the year trying really hard to do a good job, but in spite of what really were his best efforts he couldn't stay caught up and was perpetually in trouble. So somewhere along the line, he checked out. Why invest all that energy just to fail anyway?

The doctor said in kids like this is it usually particularly hurtful and frustrating to hear, "You're not working up to your potential." Because while they have this great intellectual potential, the frontal lobe issues are just as real, so they have been working to the best of their ability -- their overall ability. But if we can get Sam to buy into building up structures to support him, then he can get past that roadblock and allow his intellect to shine. At least I hope so!

2007-03-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

See, I'm doing better: it's only been a week since my last post here. I don't think I've mentioned it in this blog, but again this year I am doing a daily Lenten meditation online. If you're interested in checking it out, go to www.lentendaily.blogspot.com .

Today I had a second interview at The Catholic Foundation. It was with the head of the communications committee of the board, who is also the Executive Director of the New Albany Community Foundation. I felt it went very well, and I have to admit that I'm getting to that point where my hopes are up for an offer. I know I wasn't the only candidate called in for a second interview, but I did get a very good feeling during the interview. I keep trying to remind myself that I'm just trusting in God to lead me where I should be. It's hard, though, because there's a big part of me that wants to prod and poke God and generally tell him how to do his job.

Earlier this week I had a first interview with a company called Mapsys, and it was surprisingly interesting, too. I take some comfort in thinking if The Catholic Foundation doesn't come through, I can still pursue it. But I'm hoping God gives me some kind of clear sign which one is really the right one for me!

Poor Sam is still having a rough school year. In fact, I'd say it is getting worse. Next Monday we get the results of all that neuropsychological testing we had done, and I'm pinning a lot of hope on that revealing something actionable. If it doesn't, I don't know what the next step will be.

There are several different areas of problems. First, smart as he is, he is not performing well in school. That seems to be mainly about not organizing his work and managing his time, but I am gradually becoming convinced that this is not willful noncompliance. I think he has some sort of problem that makes doing so extremely difficult for him. This is a big area where I hope the tests reveal something, and the doctors know some form of therapy or something that can help.

Then there's the motivation issue. Sam seems to have lost all interest in school work and all internal motivation. To the extent that he does perform in school, it is clearly motivated by trying to keep me and the teachers off his back, not by anything intrinsic to him. He doesn't play music for his own pleasure any more, and he doesn't practice his instruments unless pressed to. He hasn't accomplished anything in Scouts (other than showing up) for months. Sadly, for him lately I think just showing up is an accomplishment. More than anything, I want him to find an inner desire to learn and accomplish!

He is having a big problem with one teacher. He says that he doesn't like the way she teaches but moreover, he doesn't like her. He says he has had other teachers where he didn't like the way they taught, but she is the first one he has ever not liked as a person -- and he believes she doesn't like him any more than he likes her. Today I mentioned this with another of the teachers, one I've known for years and trust a lot, and she said she has never seen any indication that the teacher doesn't like Sam. I think part of the problem may be that this teacher is one of those people whose voice doesn't fluctuate a lot, who is even-keeled to the point of almost placid, and I think Sam may read that as a lack of caring. Whatever, I've come to realize it is very intense and real to him and something must get resolved, as he has the same team of teachers again next year.

Of course, social skills are always a problem for him. I don't necessarily think those have gotten worse, exactly, but with all this other stuff going on he hasn't had any energy left to work on getting them better. Still, I am mildly encouraged that he has had some boys over for sleepovers this year, and they aren't just the kids who've known him since they were tiny.

We've begun talking about what summer camps to sign him up for and where we might want to vacation, but this is the point where my unemployment begins to loom large. I'd plan the summer one way if I thought I was still going to be home, another way if I plan to be working full-time. It is my hope that the answer will reveal itself before we get down to deadlines where I just have to make my best guess.

This weekend holds a Merit Badge workshop day for Sam on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon his team for a Social Studies project is meeting here at our house to cook. Yes, cook. The class is studying Africa, and his team took on the subject of African food. So in addition to their oral report, they are making and serving some recipes from Africa.

There's never a dull moment here!

2007-03-09T14:37:00.000-05:00

I don't know to what extent I even actually HAVE readers on this blog, but if there are any out there, you probably think I dropped dead. I didn't, of course, but I have had some big distractions since my last posting.

Most recently, we took my Mom to a cardiologist on Tuesday because she had flunked her stress test a few weeks ago. (About the time of my last post, actually.) The cardiologist ordered a cardiac catheterization. She needed to go to the hospital the next day for her pre-admittance testing, and my sister was already scheduled to work that day, so I drove back to Zanesville on Wednesday (yes, the day of the snowstorm) to take her for a couple hours of tests. Then I drove back over after church choir Wednesday night to spend the night, as we had to be at the hospital at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday.

The procedure went well and Mom seemed strong and fine afterward. It showed two major arteries are blocked 50 to 60%, and the one at the back of her heart is blocked 90%. They don't do bypasses or angioplasty or anything unless it is at least 70% blocked, so they will let the first two ride. And the one at the back of the heart is too hard to get to and too small a vein to be easily treated, so they will let that one ride, too. The doctor prescribed a beta blocker for her and said he will clear her for her back surgery. (That was the start of all this -- she is in pain and needs back surgery.)

So it was a largely positive outcome, except that now we know Mom is at risk for a heart attack. The beta blocker may help reduce some of that blockage, plus now we know to respond quickly to any signs of potential heart trouble. And the woman is 82 years old -- we were only kidding ourselves if we ever thought she WASN'T at risk for a heart attack. It's just a little disturbing being told that she is, somehow.

I have noticed as I've gone with her to all these appointments, the medical community actually treats her with a certain respect. (Amazing, huh?) I can see in their eyes and hear in their voices that they are impressed with what a tough, active little lady she is, and they really want to see her do well. It's quite uplifting, actually.

Last week had its excitements, too. Sam was off school Thursday and Friday, and while he went for neuropsychological tests each morning, we also went to a movie and tried to fit in fun stuff around the testing. He had a friend over for a sleepover, among other things. Christmas break had been like no break at all for him, with three papers due when he returned, so I felt great about him actually getting a four-day break where he could kick back some.

Friday evening and all day Saturday, I babysat for our nephew and niece. Drew is 6 and Paige is almost 4. They are really well-behaved children and just a delight to be around, but even so, by the time I got home Saturday evening I was exhausted!! Keeping up with little people is definitely a young person's game!

Since my last missive, I had an interview at The Catholic Foundation. It went well and I liked the Director there and the job sounded rewarding. The next step was for each of the ten candidates she was interviewing to provide a writing sample. It turned out to be both a writing sample and a brief project plan, but that was fine --- I felt they played to my strengths. Based on the combination of the first interview and the writing sample, she said she would narrow the field and have the remaining candidates come in for a second interview. I received a call Wednesday inviting me in next week for a second interview. So if you're reading this, then send me prayers and/or positive energy next Friday morning!

I also have an interview Monday with a place called Mapsys. I don't know much about them yet -- I still have to do my research. I never sent my resume to them -- a friend forwarded it to someone she knew there on my behalf, and that's where the contact came from. It sounds like more of a pure sales job than I think I want, but it is such a thrill to have someone seek you out that I didn't turn down the interview. After all, you never really know!

After all that driving to and from Z'ville this week, I am really looking forward to hanging out at home this weekend. I have some freelance work that needs my attention from a friend's sole proprietorship, and I'm at the point that just sitting and working on it will be a delight. In between spending some quality time with Bob and Sam, of course.

I'll try not to wait three weeks before I post again!

2007-02-17T09:37:00.000-05:00

Today, I'm fighting the blues. I'll try not to make this post too self-indulgent, but I did think perhaps it would help to write about it.

Central Ohio has been battered by winter weather for the past two weeks, resulting in a total of five cancelled school days out of the last ten. So I know that's one big contributing factor. There was a period of about 2 1/2 days where I didn't even leave the house except to shovel the driveway. Repeatedly. Of course, all that wasn't without its rewards. My son was home with me and in addition to the pleasure of his company, it gave him a much needed chance to work on his Interest Fair project, for the fair coming up on March 22. Frankly, I don't know how it ever would have gotten done without this found time.

Which brings me to one of the big sources of my blues. Things are not going well with Sam in school this year. Though a brilliant child who scores in the 99th percentile in Language and nearly as high in other parts of the standardized tests, he is chronically behind on his work, and shows no motivation or pride in school work. On top of that, I found out at the end of the week that he had actually lied to me about having finished work that he had not finished, just to get me off his back. It was very hurtful to me.

At the suggestion of his psychologist, I have scheduled him to have a comprehensive battery of tests done with another psychologist who specializes in such testing. It will cost an arm and a leg plus two full mornings of Sam's time, but I sure hope it tells us something. We seem to be getting nowhere in improving his study skills, social skills, or general probability of succeeding in life. Supposedly this battery of testing will produce about a 15 page report that analyzes not just his abilities but his emotional make up and his learning style and his executive functions (ability to plan, etc.) and give recommendations about how to set him up for success. Then I think both the testing doctor and Sam's regular psychologist may join us for a meeting with his teaching team at school so we can develop a plan. I think all involved with him feel a sense of urgency because we have the remainder of this school year plus eighth grade to turn around all these negative habits and behaviors and get him ready to succeed in high school -- and right now that feels like a long journey for the time allowed!

I'm also blue because things with my mother have taken a downturn. Thursday night I found out her stress test, which did not occur on Wednesday because of the weather, was rescheduled for Friday morning and my sister couldn't get off work to take her. So I hurriedly packed and went to Zanesville so I could spend the night and take her to the test at 7 a.m. Friday. I did that, my sister joined us when she got off work at noon and we had lunch. When we returned to their house, we got word that the stress test revealed "abnormal results." So her back surgery, scheduled for Monday, is postponed until they meet with her, discuss what these results mean, probably get her in to see a cardiologist, etc. She was very frustrated and disappointed, having had herself all psyched up for major surgery, plus now hearing she may have some kind of heart problem she was previously totally unaware of.

Finally (and this one is really shallow) I'm blue because I'm all alone today. Being currently unemployed, I spend all day alone most days, and I really look forward to time with people. But this is the long-awaited Boy Scout ski trip for Sam, so he is in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. Bob is at a Boy Scout leader training that lasts until 3:00. I had contacted a girlfriend about getting together today, but by week's end she was too backlogged in work, etc., because of the weird weather week. So here I am yet again, alone with the computer and the fish in the aquarium.

To end on a positive note, though, I did get one piece of good news this week. I am scheduled for a job interview next Tuesday. The job is Director of Marketing and Community Relations for The Catholic Foundation of Columbus. I think I'd like the job and I think I'd do it well. I am a little worried about whether it will pay enough to meet my family's needs, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I have prayed and prayed that God will lead me to the RIGHT next job, so I'm trusting that if this is it, the pieces will all come together. Anyway, just gettting called in for an interview is very, very uplifting. With all the craziness this week I don't think I have sent out one single new resume, so getting an interview about one I had already sent feels like a great gift. Send me positive thoughts and/or prayers next Tuesday afternoon at 1:30, please!

2007-02-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

This weekend proved to be even MORE fully packed than I had imagined. When Bob picked Sam up at school Friday afternoon (unannounced) he learned from a teacher that so far this grading period (about 2 1/2 weeks) Sam had hardly turned in ANY homework. So on top of all we had scheduled, there was a bunch of homework to be caught up. Needless to say, there were some serious family discussions about that situation.

But the good news is, by the time he went to bed Saturday night Sam was caught up on schoolwork. And Bob and I went to our dinner dance and had a great time. I'm posting the best picture I got, but I'm really disappointed with the pictures overall. There are almost none of us there having fun, and the pictures Bob took of other people at our table look like we were at a wake rather than a fun event -- but I swear, people really were having a great time! Anyway, here's what we have to show. Then on Sunday Sam and Bob worked really hard on making this plasma ball for his Interest Fair project. They have not yet successfully built it. After they struggled for hours, they enlisted the help of our neighbor and friend Nick, who is an electrical engineer. He was able to better articulate why it wasn't working, but not yet make it work. However, Bob is optimistic that if he contacts the company from whom we bought the kit and explains what data is missing, they can still finish it.

I had a lovely lunch with my sister-in-law Lori while they were working on that project, and it was delightful. I am so fortunate to have a sister-in-law who I would have chosen as a friend if I'd met her in other circumstances.

Now, here it is Monday again and we're back to the rat race. Even unemployed, I feel like I have more to accomplish than hours in the day. Weird, huh?

2007-02-09T10:57:00.000-05:00

It has been a very strange week. Because of sub-zero windchills, school was closed throughout Central Ohio for the first three days of this week. That kept my 13-year-old home, which certainly put a damper on my productivity. Of course, Monday I wouldn't have been productive anyway. My mother is scheduled for back surgery on the 19th, and Monday was her day to go have all her pre-operative testing done. So that day was blown away for my purposes. (I sat at the hospital with her for the several-hour process.) Productivity aside, though, it was kind of nice to have that extra time with my son. He was finishing a major paper and I was able to provide support and guidance and keep him on task.

One thing I did accomplish yesterday was contacting a few more friends who had not yet heard my news. I was really touched by the immediate and powerful outpouring of support I got. My friend Lisa called right away and gave some really nice emotional support. My friend Ann called this morning and was brimming over with thoughts about who she could call and places I could look. And later in the conversation, she also provided some lovely encouragement to make sure I use this opportunity to do some soul-searching and figure out what I'm really good at and what gives me joy, and turn it over to God to get me to a place where those are the things I'll be doing. I had already been thinking along those lines, of course, and working with both the career counselor and my life coach/friend Jamie on them. But it felt great to get another reinforcement that this is what I need to be about.

While I admit to having a low grade fear about not finding something soon enough to shelter my family from financial distress, overall I do feel that this has all happened for a positive reason. I feel God is guiding me to something better, and I just need to cooperate and relinquish control and let it happen. While I wasn't actively miserable (usually) in my previous job, I wasn't truly happy either. It was never a perfect fit for me, and I often thought how I missed the feeling I have had other times in my life of being truly engaged by my work and energized by it. I believe God will lead me to something that gives me that energy again.

In spite of the weird demands on my time this week, I have had some successes. I went through a mock interview with my career coach which was a positive experience. She gave some good tips for improvement and preparation, while at the same time giving lots of positive feedback and praise that built my confidence for when I go into a real interview. I signed up for temporary access to the Central Ohio Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America's job board, so I can keep looking there for PR/Communication/Marketing type jobs. And just by trolling the general job boards I've identified another four jobs that are at least worth looking at harder and possibly sending off a resume.

I've become a mall-walker, and I've resumed my previous habit of using my walking time as prayer time. (You'd think I would have become MORE prayerful when I lost my job, but actually, I felt a little numb at first and didn't really talk to God as much as usual.) This morning as I walked I was very focused on how blessed I am. My life is filled with such wonderful people -- my immediate family, of course, and my extended family, and then the wonderful friends who support me. I just had to thank God.

This weekend, Sam, my son, needs to finish his 3-dimensional project and his display board for the Interest Fair at his school. The fair isn't until February 22, but he is scheduled to go away for a long-weekend ski trip with his Boy Scout troop next weekend. It is fully paid for and everything, but he knows if the Interest Fair stuff isn't finished, he doesn't get to go. So I'm sure as a family we will ALL be focused on those things this weekend. And on top of that, this Saturday night is the black-tie dinner-dance fundraiser for the scholarship foundation at our church. So Bob and I will get to go out on a wonderful date! By Monday, I'll need the weekday routine just to rest up from the weekend!

2007-02-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

Wow, this unemployment thing is a lot of work, ya know? I can't believe it's been this long since I posted a new entry here at the blog.

Going all the way back to the weekend, let me just say, if you have not yet seen The Pursuit of Happyness, you are missing something. It is a wonderful feel-good movie. Very uplifting, very inspirational. I loved it -- and so did Sam.

We actually did take pictures of ourselves dressed up for our formal last Saturday, but I haven't bothered to upload them yet, so I guess we'll do without that little addition to the blog. Oh well.

This week, I have met with a career counselor and a life coach, I've sent out two resumes to positions that look REALLY attractive and found two more such postings that I will respond to tomorrow. I've had a telephone conversation with an executive recruiter who specializes in marketing positions who didn't have anything that was a match for me right now, but could another day. And I've forwarded my resume to two friends-of-friends who may or may not have some kind of connections, and made a few more initial contacts to old friends to let them know I'm back in the job hunt.

Also, I found that somewhere along the way my subconscious mind has come to the conclusion that the financial advisor thing is probably a bad idea, just because I have a 13-year-old son. I'd virtually disappear from his daily life for a year or two, and I can't think of a more vulnerable time in a boy's life for that to happen. So I'm exploring my other options.

Today, I spent most of the day designing the program for the Valentine's dinner-dance fundraiser at my church. It felt good to be productive. Plus, I hadn't used desktop publishing software in years, so it was also rewarding to find that it came back more easily than I had feared.

Well, that's probably all I have time to write this evening. But at least I got something out here!

2007-01-26T14:15:00.000-05:00

I skipped blogging yesterday because I was spending the day with my son, quite unexpectedly. The day before yesterday, the Columbus Police found a syringe full of cocaine in the possession of a Columbus school bus driver, on the bus. The driver worked for an outsource provider used by Columbus Public Schools. Apparnetly late that evening the outsource company determined that their Columbus office had never run criminal checks on any of the bus drivers in their employ. They called Columbus Schools officials and said they weren't sending any of them out until they were checked. That left Columbus schools too short of buses and drivers to open their doors, and in ripple effect, the Columbus Catholic schools closed, too, because many kids come in on CPS school buses.

Thursday is Ski Club day at Sam's school, which means he has a ski pass good every Thursday. So after I kept a morning appointment, he and I had lunch together while watching an old episode of The Incredible Hulk, then we went to the ski resort. He skied for about 4 hours while I sat in the lodge sipping coffee and reading Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. On the way home from skiing, he told me it ranked among his top ten all time best days!

My morning appointment yesterday was with the firm where I had an offer to become a financial advisor back in May. They are definitely still interested in me, so I just need to make up my mind if that is really what I want to do. I'm leaning toward it, but not firmly decided yet. The first couple years take a lot of hard, grueling work with long hours, and while I am not opposed to working hard, I don't know if it is the right thing to do when my son is 13. But back when I proactively worked on what kind of work I'd enjoy, this is what I came to, so if I decide it just isn't right for my family, I don't know where to go from there. My friend Jamie, who is a professional life coach, is giving me three free coaching sessions, and I hope to meet with a career counselor next week as well, and I'm hoping that all that professional guidance helps me make the right decision about whether this is the next step for me.

I have also downloaded writers' guidelines from a bunch of places and am hoping I can write something to sell to bring in a little interim cash.

But today, I'm largely being a domestic godess. I did the grocery shopping, I'm doing the laundry, I ran the dishwasher and I'm about to empty it and start refilling it. And I finally, FINALLY forced myself to take all the junk from my office out of my trunk. So far it has only made it to the corner of the family room, but I won't leave it there too long. It feels too good to have a clean family room. But in the trunk of the car, it was largely out of sight and out of mind and it seemed like as long as I left it there, I didn't have to think about it. It became a big mental block for me. So I'm pleased to have broken through.

Tomorrow Bob is at a Boy Scout leader training event most of the day. Sam and I are meeting one of his teachers at the library for some help on a project, then we've discussed going to see The Pursuit of Happyness together. I like the idea, because I realized recently that with all his school issues and social issues, sometimes it feels like all we ever do is talk about problems and hash out how to do stuff. It had been way too long since we relaxed and had fun together. Yesterday felt nice in that way, and tomorrow holds promise, too. And for me, the day ends with a black tie gala on somebody else's nickel. It doesn't get much better than that! I'm wearing a red gown that was already in my closet. I'll try to get a photo I can post!

2007-01-23T17:27:00.000-05:00

Well, today was the day when, inevitably, I got a little bluesy about the job situation. I know it had to come eventually, but I hope it doesn't stay around long. I'm still basically optimistic that it will all work out in the long haul, but today I am more focused on the short term. Will I find something before the money troubles set in? Will my family suffer hardship because of me? Will I end up having to go do temp work again? Where will I end up? What ending do I WANT to see?

Other than that, not much new. I've also been struggling to keep up my good diet and exercise habits. There's something about being around the house all day that makes it hard not to eat all the time! But I did get out for a nice outdoor walk this afternoon for the first time in days. The sun definitely helped my mental state. And yesterday, I got through the entire Pilates DVD for the first time.

One thing that I think is contributing to my bluesiness is that I'm home alone all day. I am definitely a people person and with no one to talk to all day, I get a little stir crazy. I haven't even been getting much by way of e-mail. Hint: if you're out there reading this, drop me a line or pick up the phone!

The rest of the week will probably be better, because I have a hair appointment on Wednesday and a job interview on Thursday, so at least I get to go out and interact with other humans those two days. Too much solitude makes me crazy.

Oh, and here's something funny. The last three years, Bob and I have gone to the Catholic Social Services black tie gala as guests of Nationwide Insurance -- they buy a table and then end up scrambling to get people to attend because it would look bad if no one was at their table. We had expected to go this year, but no word, no word, and finally, Bob was told yesterday that whoever is on the CSS Board this year got his own people to sit at the table. So today, Bob calls and asks me if I'd still like to go. We don't really know what happened, but apparently those other guests were a lot less sure than we were led to believe. So in spite of our financial state, I'm going to a black tie dinner dance on Saturday. That will be fun!!

2007-01-22T14:46:00.000-05:00

Here it is, Monday afternoon after a very enjoyable, restful weekend! I went out to my friend Jamie's house Friday night where she had a little "self-improvement" party that was a lot of fun. I hardly knew any of her other friends who were there, so it was a pleasure to make some new friends.

Then Satruday night we hosted our Euchre Club at our house. We ran around like crazy people cleaning all day, of course, but it was worth it both for the sheer joy of having a clean house plus the fun of having this group of friends in. I don't know what was different about the drinks that night, but I swear it was the rowdiest we have ever seen our Euchre Club!

Yesterday Central Ohio finally got some snow for the first time this winter. I have sort of mixed feelings about it. I actually think it should snow in the winter -- it just feels right. On the other hand, I like to walk outside for my fitness exercise, and snow creates ice which makes that difficult. So I'm going to have to discipline myself to do something else for a while. (Lookout Pilates DVD, here I come!)

I don't think a lot of my blog friends are big sports fans, but the playoff game yesterday evening between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots was an amazing game! The first half was all New England, and it was a moral victory when Indianapolis managed a field goal just before half time to bring it to 21 - 6. But they came back from halftime on fire! It was tied up before I knew it, then they took turns scoring, keeping it tied, until the final moments. Peyton Manning led this beautiful drive to a touchdown with 1 minute to go, bringing Indianapolis to a 4-point lead at 38-33. In football, 1 minute is enough to be dangerous, and I really though New England might turn right around and score again. But then Tom Brady threw and interception and the game was over! It was a really thrilling football game to watch. And with a Chicago-Indianapolis matchup, I'm actually excited about watching the Super Bowl this year!!

Today Sam woke up with an awful sore throat, which he had yesterday, as well, so I took him to the doctor for a strep test this morning. It was not strep, just viral, but I still kept him home from school today because he obviously did feel like hell. He slept the morning away, but has been doing homework this afternoon. I had a long to-do list that I've been marching through, too. Nothing job-hunting related, really, but more domestic.

I do think that tomorrow I'm going to place a call to the Financial Advisor firm that I almost went with back in May of 2006. I have been thinking seriously about going with them, so I suppose I had better first check it out and see if the opportunity is still there. They left me with the feeling I was welcome to come take the offer later if I had a change of mind, but 8 months have passed and who knows what changes may have occurred. No point continuing to consider this and decide it IS the right thing only to find at that point that it is no longer available!

2007-01-19T15:58:00.000-05:00

Well this has been a productive day! I broke out of the pattern of the past couple days and it seemed to pay off. After my walk and breakfast, I dug up materials I had prepared when I came close to taking a financial advisor job about a year ago, so I can review them and help myself remember what I liked and didn't like about that option. I also placed a call to the career counseling service I had used back then, as well as placing a few calls on personal matters. I am going to a little party at a friend's house tonight. It's a party to drum up work for her business, but I don't mind -- I will still enjoy it very much. I also did a load of laundry, moved all the furniture out of the kitchen and swept and mopped the entryway, kitchen, half bath and laundry room. Only then, after 2:00 in the afternoon, did I shower and put on better clothes than I walk in each morning. By the time I was finishing my make up after the shower, Sam was arriving home.

This weekend we are hosting our Euchre Club, so I will have lots of activity to keep my mind occupied. As long as I can land a new job in a timely manner so my family doesn't suffer financially, I can't help but feel that Dick, my former boss, has done me a huge favor. I needed to get out of that place and I kept finding excuses not to go. Now that the decision was taken out of my hands, I feel liberated. A little fearful financially, but really more that sense of liberation, that the future will hold something better than the recent past. In my heart, I know that I am going to be OK.

2007-01-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

Here I am, about halfway through day #2 of life after the credit union. I have no profound insights, just a few little niggling realizations.

One realization is how diligent I have to be to keep up good habits during this period. I spent the past four months losing 16 pounds and got to a point where I feel pretty good. Actually, I was still thinking of trying to take off 4 more just for good measure, but I'm down two pants sizes and I feel well and I know I'm pretty close to where I want to be. But last night, what did I do? I kicked back with TWO rum-and-Diet-Cokes and about half a bag of Pepperidge Farm goldfish.

That is so pathetic on so many levels. First of all, if I was going to cut loose and do something wild and crazy, I'm thinking it should have been more glamorous or at least more FUN than Diet Coke and goldfish. Yeah, there was rum in there, but big whoop.) Second, it was evening -- a time of day largely unchanged by my change in job status. So why did I decide to lose control THEN? And finally, it really didn't make me particularly happy, so WHY?

Then today at lunch time I turned on the TV while eating my lunch. Big mistake. While there was absolutely nothing on worth watching, I still found myself unable to extricate myself until the end of the episode of What Not to Wear. I don't even like that show, I swear! So the bottom line is that I have to shore up my resolve to stay positive and productive and not fall into the easy traps.

I'm still trying to develop a new routine. I like the start of these two days -- get up, get the guys off, take my walk, eat breakfast and read the paper and then shower. And today, the next step was to go out to stores on the Nintendo Wii hunt. Word at Target is that if I'm there around 4 a.m. Sunday, I may be able to get one. And I'm considering it!

After the shopping trip I checked e-mail, where I had some well-wishes from people just hearing about my change, and sent some more e-mails to people I probably won't be seeing anymore with my job change. That brought me to lunch and the big sucking sound of the TV. When I finish here I plan to do my new Pilates DVD, then it's off to a parent-teacher conference at my son's school. Tomorrow I HAVE to do some major housecleaning, since we are entertaining here on Saturday night, and I want to get together a long household project list so that in the future I don't have to think of things to do, just go to the list and pick one.

I know that sooner than later, I also need to turn my attention to what I want to do for a living and start the process of finding something. But I think that will wait until Monday. It seems reasonable to me to give myself this whole week as a rest and recovery period.

Oh, before I go I have to give credit to Bob for one good insight. I can't remember how he said it, but it was great because it didn't sound mean or judgmental. But when I said something about getting up and starting the rest of my life, he reminded me that at least he isn't dead. (For readers who don't know, Bob's college roommate died suddenly and totally unexpectedly a few minutes past midnight on New Years.) It was a wonderful reminder of perspective -- compared to his roommate's widow, Sue, my problems look pretty small.

2007-01-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

Well after letting this blog languish for a few months, it suddenly has a new life. That's because I'm entering a new life myself!

I got fired yesterday. Whew! Is that hard to say. It really blindsided me, too. I expected a contentious review, but I never saw a termination coming. The boss used a sports metaphor. He said that we had not grown membership up to the potential he perceives there to be and just like a sports team that isn't performing, it means it is time for a new coach. He had called me in around 12:30. After the conversation, I went downstairs, packed my things, tried to arrange for an orderly transition of my work, and left for the day and forever around 3:30. Even now, almost 24 hours later, I'm still having trouble getting my head around it. I feel a little numb and it just doesn't feel like it can possibly be real.

Obviously, I haven't had the time, energy or distance yet to figure out where I go from here. I don't feel particularly panicky, but that may just be the numbness again. If anything, I feel cautiously optimistic. About a year ago I explored the option of becoming a personal financial advisor and there was a company I liked that was ready to hire me. So one option is to reopen that discussion and go there. But I feel like I need more time to get past the numbness, experience some grief over this loss, and really assess what I want before I pursue that or any other specific option. There are money worries, of course, but so far they are not of crisis-proportion. I believe God will lead me to a right next step, before the wolf is at the door but in His time. And again, I am well aware of a level of numbness that must be worked through before I am ready to make good decisions.

I will say that compared to the time I was unemployed about six years ago, I feel better equipped to just face the start of a new day. I got up when my husband got up for work this morning, dressed in my walking clothes, and as soon as he and my son left for the day, I went out for a walk. When I returned I had breakfast and read the paper, showered and dressed. (There was a brief moment of thinking "How do I dress when the day is without shape or plan?" But then I sucked it up, put on khakis and a sweatshirt and moved on.) Then I started identifying people from my former work life to whom I wanted to say some kind of good-bye, and sent out some e-mails and made some phone calls. I also sent my old boss a list of items I had remembered that needed attention that were probably on no one else's radar.

It's been kind of funny. Before I left the building yesterday I found that my very top priority was making sure my wonderful staff that I left behind had everything they needed to continue to be successful, and that work could go on without me. And this morning, as I said, I sent that list of additional items for follow up. There is some little voice in my head that says, "Why? Why do you care?" But there is a louder voice that says, "I care because it is who I am, and I will not allow being fired to make me any less than who I am."

I plan to use this blog as a bit of a diary for a while, with the purpose of making it easy for loved ones to check on me. I know I am often reluctant to call a friend too often when they are going through an upheaval, but I really do think about them and wonder how they are doing on a regular basis. This will allow my friends to check in without discomfort.

So wish me luck! I need to work through what happened, figure out what I want to do next, launch a search to find that next thing, and still keep my family running and all that. Oh, here's one lesson learned from my unemployment six years ago -- that time I was too depressed to get a lot done at home. I will not let that happen this time. We have almost twelve-years worth of accumulated junk in the basement, and its days are numbered! And if I conquer the basement, there are plenty of other household projects where I can apply my nervous energy.

2006-11-02T18:58:00.000-05:00

I am currently awaiting the arrival of a life insurance agent (because my life is just that exciting!) but I felt like writing a little. Today at work we participated in an educational event at a school, so the flow of the day was each period of the high school day I had five to ten minutes of intense activity followed by 30 or 40 minutes of mind-numbing waiting. That is not healthy, especially not for me. Suffice it to say I begin to understand the old chestnut that "An idle mind is the devil's workshop."

I think I need some adventure in my life. The problem is, I have no clue how to get it. I'm still far too much in love with my husband to seek out sexual or relationship adventure. I'm far too conventionally employed and far too committed to raising my son and sending him to college to undertake any kind of adventure that begins with, "I'll just quit my job and...." And we don't have the kind of disposable income to take on some adventurous hobby, at least, not any that I've been able to think of thus far. Adventure seems to take a lot of time and money, both of which I'm pretty short on.

But I sure would like to have that thrill of being totally engaged in something, getting the adrenal rush of putting myself on the line and facing down my fears. I'd like to challenge myself physically, meet new people, go new places, have new experiences. Frankly, I'd like to have one thing in my life that is all about me.

That may be the biggest thing, really. Not that I don't LOVE the life I have, but sometimes it feels like it is mostly about everyone else but me. At work I feel responsible for my team and, to a lesser extent, for the well-being of all the employees. At home I'm wife and mother. Other parts of my time are full of church choir and room parent volunteering and helping lead the Boy Scout troop. Good things, things I enjoy doing, certainly. But not a lot about me.

Sigh. I'm sure this will pass. But just in case anybody out there is reading this and feels moved to send me some thrill-seeking ideas consistent with my overall values, I'm open!!

2006-10-24T19:01:00.000-04:00

So last night after writing my blog entry, I sat down and fired off another poem for my friend to use as lyrics. The weird thing was, this one almost wrote itself. I feel so good about it I'm going to post it here. For anyone who wonders, the 22 year old, the 35 year old and the 55 year old mentioned below are absolutely real people of my acquaintance. The 47 year old is basically me with a few details changed to make me a little more typical, and the 68 year old is an amalgam of two different people rolled into one.

I hope Debbie is able to set this one to music, because as I said, it practically wrote itself. I hope it will convey to others the message it conveyed to me, that life is beautiful at every stage and that with the right attitude everyone's life can be bliss!

Here it is:

Can’t Wait to See What Else God Has in Store

I know a guy who’s twenty-two
His life is so much fun he doesn’t know what to do.
He’s got a good job and a steady girl
And he’s ready to give this life a whirl.
He’s not rich (though he is good looking)
But he’s always got new ideas cooking.
If you asked him about his life today,
I’m pretty sure that he would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a gal who is thirty-five
She’s got two little girls to keep her glad she’s alive.
Got a loving, fun husband there by her side
And a big Italian family whose arms are open wide.
They’re not rich but they have the things they need,
You can see the love she shares in her every deed.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a woman who is forty-seven
If you ask about her life she’ll tell you it’s like Heaven!
After 20 years of marriage she adores her man
They love in that way that only long-time lovers can.
Her kids are nearly raised and soon they’ll be gone
But through them she knows her story will go on.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a man of fifty-five
Lives every day knowing he’s just happy he’s alive!
They told him he had cancer and to make his peace
But with prayer he beat the odds and lives a new lease.
He and his bride take every day now as a gift
And when he looks into her smiling eyes he always gets a lift.
If you asked him about his life today,
I’m pretty sure that he would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

I know a woman who is sixty-eight
She is loved by so many and her blessings are so great!
Though her husband’s health is failing, she never complains.
She has grown sons and daughters to help ease the strains.
She loves those grandkids with a love that is fierce
And she still has that humor that can joust and pierce.
If you asked her about her life today,
I’m pretty sure that she would say:

It don’t get much better than this.
Got everything I need, yeah, this is bliss.
I got love, I got fun, I got health and brains
I got a place to stay warm and dry when it rains
I don’t know how I could ask for more
Can’t wait to see what else God has in store!

2006-10-23T19:51:00.000-04:00

I know that one is supposed to update a blog at LEAST once a week if one is to keep any readers, but sadly, it seems about once every ten days is the best I can do these days. For now, it will just have to do.

I think I mentioned in my last post that a songwriting friend of mine asked me if I could generate some poems she could use as lyrics. I have done so, and whether anything more ever comes from the effort or not, I have found it very rewarding just to sit down and generate the work. I have never considered poetry one of my best forms of writing, but I did find I had at least a few good ones in me. And I still plan to try to write more. It is truly a case where the joy is in the writing, not in what later becomes of it.

My work situation is so much better than it was a year ago that I can hardly fathom that I work for the same place. There's a new air of hope and enthusiasm in the place that can't all be inside my head. Closer to my heart, I'm still in love with my little staff of marketers and feel so blessed that not only are they really effective employees, but I actually enjoy their company. Similarly, my two close peers, the other executive managers who report to the president, are gifted and lovable people too. I believe this job is exactly where God wants me to be at this moment.

All the other parts of life are hitting on all cylinders, too. After 19 years of marriage and well over 20 years in love with the guy, Bob still lights up my life. There is nobody I'd rather hang with or come home to at the end of the day. He is so thoughtful and considerate and he shows me that he cares in a hundred tiny ways each day. Sam is the healthiest and the most enjoyable he has ever been. We are part of supporting communities through his school, through our church and through his Scout troop. What a lot of great people that is in our lives!!

I'm currently psyched about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. (Yeah, I know it's a little ways ahead, but I've always valued anticipation!) Bob's brother Bill lives in Michigan and for -- I don't know, maybe 7 or 8 years now? -- he has hosted as many of the extended family as can make it at his place for Thanksgiving. Except last year we had to change it, because their dad was in the nursing home, and by celebrating Thanksgiving there in their home town, we were able to spring him and have him enjoy the day with the family. It wasn't the same, plus there was a pall over the gathering as we all knew Dad was in bad shape. We lost Dad Beasley back in February, so this will be a return to the previous tradition. Bill and his wife, Teri, are amazingly good hosts. Bill insists on doing all the cooking for the holiday feast, but we all pitch in on munchies and a meal for Friday. (This bash starts either late Wednesday or midday Thursday and runs through Saturday morning.) Their house, though really just outside of town, feels like you're isolated in the country. And for the rest of us it really is isolated far from our homes and busy lives. So it's a really nice little oasis of relaxed family time. We watch football, some people read, some play cards, somewhere over the course of it we usually drink. And we visit. We REALLY visit. It is relaxing and healing and we reconnect with each other and I am totally looking forward to it!!!!

One last image I include because it struck me as quintessentially Susan. On Saturday night Bob was out working at a fundraiser for a church group. I took Sam to a Halloween party and had a couple hours to myself before it would be time to pick him up again. I came home and turned on the World Series game, opened my laptop and Bible, and spent my time watching baseball and writing a scripture-based poem that might become a song lyric. At some point I looked at myself and realized I was probably the only person in America doing exactly what I was doing! And what was more, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing!

2006-10-13T19:02:00.000-04:00

Life has been too busy to blog much lately, but it’s all good stuff! And I really do want to keep this blog alive, so I’m making time to blather on tonight.

First of all at work, now that I have a full staff, they are absolutely hitting on all cylinders. Angie, my marketing person, just churns out work like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t believe how many balls she successfully keeps in the air! And the more we work together the more we find that we have similar taste and views in marketing, so we run into those moments where one of us starts outlining an idea and the other one interrupts, wide eyed, to say “I was just thinking that!!!” It is very cool! And she has a wonderful, can-do, upbeat attitude that is just a joy!

The new business development guy, Matt, is still wowing me. I cut him loose on the telephones a few days ago and he had at least one appointment every day for the next two weeks already! And he and Angie seem to be settling into a fun working relationship, which can only be a positive.

Then today, my dear friend and colleague Tara, who has been positively DROWNING in work and frustrated beyond tears by our boss’s refusal to allow her to hire help, finally got permission to promote her best person and hire a new one from outside to backfill. So she is in the best mood I’ve seen in months. She had not only suffered from needing help, but had felt discounted and disrespected by his previous reluctance to act on her request. Her suffering had really torn at my heart and I am about as happy today as I was the day I got to hire Matt!!

Away from work, a friend of mine who is an awesome pianist and singer and composer contacted me a couple of days and said a nationally known singer/composer of our mutual acquaintance has encouraged her to put together a portfolio of original compositions to shop around. She started working on it and found that lyrics are stumping her, so she asked ME if I might be able to provide her with some poems to use as lyrics. I am so honored and thrilled! By rights I should be writing poetry right now for that project instead of blogging, I suppose.

But one of the reasons I’m blogging right now is that as I write, I am watching Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on TV. Which is another thing I consider the good stuff going on in my life. When Bob and I were first dating and in our early married years, we used to watch baseball together a lot, and we especially always watched the playoffs and World Series. Bob has never lost his interest in baseball, but in recent years I’ve been busy with other things and sort of lost track of that interest. But with Matt joining my staff fresh out of playing college baseball, I dropped back into a game or two early on in the playoffs just to sort of refresh my memory and enable myself to make intelligent conversation. Darn if I didn’t get to see the Tigers upset the hated Yankees, then celebrate with their Detroit fans in a heartwarming demonstration worthy of a Disney movie. I was hooked, and I’ve been following Detroit ever since. They appear to be on course to sweep the Oakland Athletics, and if they do, I’ll be glued to the World Series games as a temporary Tigers fan. It’s really been fun to pick up that old interest and immerse myself in the postseason like this!

Let’s see, what’s some of the other good stuff going on? My son has been working on his adjustment to 7th grade and, like about half of his class, was behind on work. (I know it was like half his class because the teachers had a list of “opportunity seekers” posted, which meant people who were behind on work.) Today, Sam’s name was erased from the opportunity seekers list! He is caught up on everything and assured me he feels it will be much easier to keep up now that he has gotten caught up. And I believe him, because I have seen that he is working really hard.

Apart from his academic performance, though, I’m just so pleased with how things are going with him emotionally. He was diagnosed with clinical depression near the end of third grade and we have struggled these last three plus years with getting things stabilized and keeping them there. But lately, I feel like his personality is back to the one I knew when he was a little boy of 5 and 6 and 7, before the depression started. He has a great sense of humor and wants to do the right thing and is really a lot of fun to be around!

He is off to a Boy Scout campout this weekend, so Bob and I get a little quality time together. Ooh la la! And tomorrow we’re going to what was scheduled to be our semi-monthly euchre club, but this time has morphed into a Buckeye football party that will end with the euchre game after the football game. I think that is going to be a lot of fun, and kind of a rare day of grown-up fun for us without having to be parental. The only downside is that it will challenge my weight-loss efforts, which have been clipping along successfully. As of Monday I was down four pounds in three weeks, which for me is a phenomenal success. (I mean, a phenomenally successful rate of loss. There are still another ten or so pounds that need to come off along with that first four.)

Well, this is a lot of potentially boring “what’s new in my world” blogging, but I’m going to leave it here. If you want to read a great humorous blog that is a lot funnier and more entertaining than mine will ever be, I urge you to check out Stephanie Lessing’s blog at http://stephanielessing.typepad.com/ . She is the author of She’s Got Issues and Miss Understanding, two wildly funny chick lit books. (I don’t normally read chick lit – but I actually started reading her blog first and figured if it made me laugh out loud most days, then her books had to be good. I was right!)

OK, I’m about to bring up my song-lyric efforts and see if it is possible to write poetry while watching a baseball game. I’ll keep you posted!

2006-10-05T22:09:00.000-04:00

I’ve been gratified to get some feedback on my blog lately. Keep those comments coming – I love the strokes. Though Shannon, I’m really pretty sure I never used the word “Hot” about my employee. It would be unseemly!

A co-worker of my husband’s committed suicide last week. It was hard on all who knew her, of course. Bob was pretty shook up. She left five children, aged 6 through 13. It’s hard to imagine the level of despair that makes a mother lose her judgment that badly. But I guess I’m glad I can’t imagine it. I don’t suppose it would be a good sign if I could.

On a brighter note, I had dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends Monday night. We have this funny ritual we have established where we get together for a night out once every six months, usually around April and October. (Give or take a month.) We meet at a nice restaurant and have a long, leisurely dinner and visit. We alternate picking up the tab, so we’re each on the hook for one dinner a year. You can feel pretty comfortable with a more extravagant night out knowing it is only one time a year!

It’s fun to observe each other’s lives from that perspective. When you talk every six months, you edit out the minutia and talk about what’s big in your life. Isn’t a shame we can’t bring that same perspective to our own life while we’re living it? I’d love to know as I’m making my little minute by minute decisions which things aren’t going to matter at all and which ones would be worth re-telling in six months! But I don’t think it is at all obvious as I wander through life. Often the activities seem very important – but in retrospect, it is more often the relationships that do.

And on that note, I’m off to important moments in sawing logs!

2006-09-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

Wow, I've let way too much time pass without posting, so I'm going to spew some basic diary-type journal writing, even though it's not what I really mean to be about in this blog.

I haven't been posting because I've been really busy, and the good news is, I've been busy with positive things. At work I got to hire a WONDERFUL new employee to help with Business Development. His name is Matt, he is fresh out of college, and he's smart, enthusiastic, level headed, handsome and full of potential. I have been blown away by how quickly he is learning and by his great attitude and how much fun he is to have around! He keeps saying, any time I mention his age, "Yeah, but I'm an OLD 22," and strangely enough, he's kind of right. Old in good ways, while still young in the best ways of that, too.

And I have had this incredible onslaught of positive attitude myself at work. I can't remember whether I whined about it here, but as a company we ran really desperately short staffed almost all spring and summer. There were times it was a miracle we could keep the key functions covered to keep the doors open. But now we've finally hired for a bunch of those positions, so in about two weeks time we have added five or six new people. In a company with only 30 employees, that's a lot of new blood! So I have just been struck by what a great opportunity this is for us to turn the tide of attitude overall. If we just treat these people right and fill their heads with positive thoughts, they constitute a large enough group to set a new tone for the place. I believe it and I'm going to keep pounding on it, so I sure hope I'm right!

Here's another positive note. Today my son, Sam, was off school, so I took the day off and we went to visit our local high school and the district's alternative high school. Because he has been in this Montessori School that draws from all over our county and beyond, that jump into high school becomes a big hairy deal. These kids' established social network scatters to the four winds and each kid must seek out the high school that best suits his or her needs on his or her own. So we have identified five prospective schools -- these two public schools in our district, two Catholic schools, and one magnet math/science/technology school that serves the entire county. Sam is only in 7th grade, so we don't need to make a decision until spring of 2008, but I thought it would be wise to start our visits this year to give us all time to reflect upon what we see.

We really liked both the schools we visited today. They were very different. We visited the alternative school first. It's very small and very informal. The kdis call the teachers by their first names. The kids hold "town meetings" where they make lots of decisions about the school that would be administration decisions anywhere else. They hold "fairness meetings" where breaches of rules are discussed and punishments determined. With approvals, they are allowed to decorate their lockers or paint murals on the walls. During their non-scheduled times they can study or they can sit and play guitar if they want. Very democratic, very much each kid responsible for his/her own behavior and performance and success. I think the whole school accomodates 350 students. It really matches up with Sam's temperament in many ways.

Then we visited his assigned high school, and it was wonderful in different ways. There are 1,700 students there, but starting this year they break the incoming freshman class into "teams" and you work with that same team with the same teacher advisors throughout, so as to creat a small learning community in that big school. They have top notch science labs and theatres and music facilities and gyms and all that. They also offer a wide array of AP courses that appeal to him.

The way the alternative school works is that you are still enrolled in the home high school, so he could theoretically enjoy a lot of its advantages while still being primarily a part of the other. We go on open houses to the other three schools under consideration in coming months, so we will see how they compare. But I was blown away with what positive choices our public district had to offer!

There, I've rambled a while and at least there is a current date showing here now. Perhaps I can add more soon.

2006-09-07T21:46:00.000-04:00

Well, I spent most of the evening trying to write something, and I ended up with about 250 words. That's not much, but it's a start. So I thought I'd post it here and see if anybody gives me any feedback. How does it make you feel? Would it make you want to continue with the story or novel? Comments are extremely welcome!

Here's what I wrote:

“Whoever it was who said, “An unexamined life is not worth living’ should be shot,” thought Sharon as she walked to the refrigerator to add some ice to her rum & Diet Coke. “You examine it and examine it, and what do you gain? Nothing. But you lose the ability to just sit back and enjoy.”

As she pulled the ice cube tray out of the freezer, she noticed her drink was already half empty. “What the hell,” she thought. “Might as well top it off while I’m here.” But as she sloshed some more Captain Morgan into the glass, the more rational part of her mind knew she should slow down. She knew it was dangerous to drink every evening – especially in her current mental state. But it sure helped with getting to sleep – and there was no denying that it helped to ease the pain.

Just a few months before, Sharon hadn’t needed a nightly drink to ease the pain. Oh, she had often indulged in a drink then, too. But it wasn’t intended to ease pain. And it was only a single drink. Back then she was a happily married woman of 45 with a great kid in middle school and a decent job. Life may have been a teensy bit predictable, may have fallen a little short of her youthful dreams, but all around it was pretty good. Her biggest worry was whether Max, her son, was making any friends.

All that was before Dave died.

Again, comments are warmly welcome! Thanks for reading.
Susan

2006-09-04T12:18:00.000-04:00

As promised, I have now finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon and I want to write something about it and how much it reminded me of The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin.

If you’re not familiar with these books, here is a very brief synopsis. Haddon’s book is the first-person account of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. He finds the neighbor’s dog dead one night, and sets out to investigate who killed it. Along the way he uncovers a number of interesting truths about his own life and has quite an adventure. Martin’s book is the first-person account of a 31-year-old man with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In spite of his well-ordered life, he becomes involved in helping his therapist protect her toddler from a kidnap attempt by the boy’s father and uncharacteristically goes on a road trip, which leads to quite an adventure as well.

The two books have a great deal in common. Both written in the first person, they show us a person with a profound social disability and get us inside his head to help understand why he reacts as he does and lives as he does. In both cases, forces largely outside the protagonist’s control draw him into adventures that are a great challenge for him, and each experiences tremendous personal growth as he survives his adventures. In the end, each protagonist’s life is in better shape than when we met him.

They are both very good books, and I would recommend them both. But since I read Martin’s book first, I was amazed as I read Haddon’s at how different it made me feel. The Pleasure of My Company was generally uplifting to me. The poor protagonist faced a lot of struggles and was portrayed very sympathetically, so I never laughed AT him in the pejorative sense, but I did laugh a lot.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, on the other hand, didn’t really uplift me until the very end. As I read it, I often felt a knot in my stomach comparable to the main character’s. I get that this reflects the strength of the writing, but it made it hard to stay with.

I have to confess that I think my reaction was partly because I know several kids with Asperger’s. None of the ones I know are as profoundly autistic as Christopher, the boy in the book, but a lot of his explanation of how the world looks to him rang true of the behaviors I’ve seen. So I think in part it was that this affliction hit too close to home. Also, those with Asperger’s aren’t going to outgrow it or “get well.” They may learn to function successfully within society and lead what looks like a fairly “normal life”, but their difficulty in relating to other human beings will always be there. So the book made me a little heartsick in that regard.

Another thing about The Curious Incident that made it more disturbing to me was that Christopher lives in a working class world, where most of the people he meets have little patience for this “weird” kid and little desire to understand him. He gets cussed out a lot, and treated with a lot of disdain and minor cruelty. I believe it is an accurate depiction of how this character would be treated in the society in which he lives, but it breaks my heart. The Asperger kids I know all come from families with the means to get them special help and put them in schools where they are nurtured and can shelter them with the ugliest parts of the world.

So in the end, I recommend both books. If you’ve never read any of Steve Martin’s writing I especially recommend his. It will wipe away any vestigial image you may have of him as a guy with an arrow through his head doing broad comedy on Saturday Night Live. I have found all his writing to be smart, insightful, and warmly human. But Haddon’s book is really effective, too. His plot may in fact be the more complex, and it made my heart ache at times. If he hadn’t managed to pull things together for Christopher by the end, I would have had to give it thumbs down. Instead, the upbeat ending that did, in fact, grow organically from all that went before, felt like a satisfying payoff for the pain I had endured during the journey.

2006-08-30T21:49:00.000-04:00

It’s been too long since my last writing. And I’m still scrambling for something to write.

Actually, I’ve had an idea going. It’s just not ready yet. I am currently reading a book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. In many ways, it reminds me of a book I read about a year ago – Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company. So I’m thinking of writing an essay comparing/contrasting them. But first I have to finish the current book.

Other than that, what do I have to write about tonight…..Hmmm……

In this part of the country, last week and this week are the prime of back-to-school season. This affects my life doubly: I work for a school related credit union, so for the past two weeks I was pretty much in a different school district every day. The days were long and satisfying, but wearing. And they generated so much paperwork I didn’t get through it until the end of the day Monday.

And then of course, I’m a mother, so I also had all the back-to-school drill with my son, too. He has been in school for two days now. The excitement of day one was that his bus was a no-show. We managed to get him to school on time nonetheless, and he seemed to have a good day. Today was uneventful. I will say this, though – he is in 7th grade now and already, the increase in homework is evident. That is as we expected.

I know this isn’t much of an entry, but it is the best I can muster tonight. Once I finish the book, I’ll write about how it reminded me of Steve Martin’s book and why.

Toodles and thanks for stopping in. Don’t give up on me after tonight!

2006-08-22T19:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I have received an official rejection on my prayer book manuscript. That makes two unpublished manuscripts for me -- a book of Lenten meditations and this one, a prayer book for Catholic church musicians, tied to the seasons of the church year. In the interest of full disclosure, I will also say that I have not done anywhere near a full-court press to get them published. In fact, it was a lot closer to a token effort.

Here's the problem: I really want to write, but those aren't what I want to be known for. I mean, I'm actually quite proud of them, and for the prayer book especially, I get a lot of positive feedback. If I could get it published it would give me a warm fuzzy feeling of pride and all that. And I still truly believe there is a market for it. But I don't feel fired up enough to throw myself into a dedicated effort to get it published.

It's just that in my heart, I want to write fiction. Fiction is what I read for pleasure and I LOVE a good story. When I was growing up, I seemed creative. Even now, I think people consider me a good storyteller. But I feel like life has knocked the creativity right out of me. I have spent so much of my adult life ghostwriting President's messages in corporate newsletters and trying to put a bonnet on truly boring "news" being released to the media, that I seem to have lost the spark of how to start to make up a story. Get me going on a story I know, and I can tell it with style and verve. But ask me to create characters from scratch and devise a story line for them to follow, and I stare at a blank screen.

So I'm just assessing my options at this point. I may still submit the prayer book elsewhere, especially since our church choir director feels so strongly that the market exists. But I'd like to find a way to rediscover creativity -- to break out of the mundane and make up stuff like I did when I was 11. I think if I could do that, it would also go a long way toward making me feel unaffected by age!

2006-08-20T14:00:00.000-04:00

I've been really preoccupied with aging recently. I get the impression this is pretty common for women marching toward 50, but knowing that doesn't really make it easier. I know I should attempt to face it with humor and grace, making little self-deprecating jokes and appreciating all my blessings. Really, I know that. It's just this little voice inside me that doesn't -- the one hysterically screaming and scrabbling frantically for anything solid to hold on to so that I can't be dragged there. I'd like to say that it's yelling, "Hell no, I won't go," but even that overstates my composure. A primal scream is more like it.

Age smacks me around every single day. If it's not a young co-worker completely missing my pop-culture references to 1980's TV shows, it's getting a backache from -- well -- just living. I have reached that point I used to hear old people complain about, where young professionals look like smart-ass kids to me. (I've also fallen into my grandmother's old habit of coming out with a string of first names before I hit on the person I'm actually talking too. Boy, that creeps me out!) Last Christmas I was at a party where another guest was a plastic surgeon. She was flocked with women my age, seemingly normal Midwestern, middle class, noticeably non-movie star women, inundating her with questions like, "What would it cost to get rid of the bags under my eyes/turkey wattle under my neck/droopy eyelids/jowls/etc.?"

Though this has been on my mind for a while, the straw that provoked me to write about this today was something from today's New York Times Book Review. In her review of Nora Ephron's new book, Liesl Schillinger wrote, "But lately Ephron has learned that there is one betrayer upon whom no woman (with the possible exception of Cher) can exact vengeance or impose a fairy-tale finish: the body, with its dazzling flurry of early gifts, and its misleading air of permanence. Just as you begin to count on it, off it goes, hooking up with its smirking henchman, the aging process." I loved that passage on so many levels. First of all, it was beautifully written, and I had to admire that. But oh, how Ephron's sentiment resonated with me! I am definitely going to go track down her new book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, and wallow in her pain.

Another whole component of depression about approaching this age milestone is that it makes me feel like a failure. I find myself way too focused on all the things I haven't done in life -- whether those are career accomplishments unattained, travel destinations not visited, adventures not experienced, or legacies not left. (Don't worry, readers, I'm actually in pretty good mental health so I know how to go through the whole exercise of reminding myself how blessed I am, what a good life I have, blah, blah, blah. This is not a return to the self-pity I found I was indulging in during my 2003 blog experiment.) But today, at least, as I look at the big picture, it kind of ticks me off! How can it be that at 40 I felt like a success and at 48 I feel like a failure, and no cataclysmic events occurred in between? OK, there was a job loss in there, but it was 5 years ago, for Pete's sake! No, this creeping sense of failure isn't about anything that happened to me externally. It is definitely coming from the inside out, and that worries me. Worse still, it is definitely a key motivator of the primal scream inside my head.

So I sit here asking myself, "What am I going to do about it?" And so far, the best answer I can think of is distraction. I can't help but feel that the busier I am, the less energy I will have to devote to this. Except it can't be just busy-ness for its own sake -- it has to be something purposeful. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that if I can find something I perceive as meaningful with which to fill my time, I will feel less like a failure and a lot of the other preoccupations with age will fade or diminish.

Oh my God, I've just realized what I'm saying. I think I just said that I'm 48 years old and I have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Like that's gone really well for the previous 40 years.

Well, now that I've solved that problem (yeah, right!) I think I'm going to go immerse myself in the mundane. To be specific, I am taking my 12-year old out back-to-school shopping. If that doesn't take my mind off myself, I don't know what will!

2006-08-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten how hard it can be to discipline oneself to blog frequently enough to hold people's interest! Tonight I feel utterly uninspired, but I'm trying to get something going here as I don't want to fail in my first week back at blogging.

This week and next week are probably the busiest two-week period in the year for me at work. Because we work closely with school districts and this is the back-to-school time in Ohio, I am running like crazy from district to district to participate in their opening convocations and benefits fairs. On top of that, our board held its annual strategic planning session today, which involved a lot of work on my part and the rest of the executive management team in preparation and leading the meeting.

Have I mentioned yet how fortunate I am to work closely with two colleagues who I genuinely like and respect and trust? Tara and Jerry are the CFO and COO, respectively, of the credit union. The three of us report directly to the President. All three of us have similar values. We form a very effective team, and I think it's a classic case of where the whole is better than the sum of the parts. (And that's no dig on the parts -- we're each very well qualified for our jobs, thank you very much!) I am more extroverted than the other two; Tara is amazingly insightful; Jerry has a sharp analytical ability. Put us together, and we rock -- and have fun doing it.

After the strategic planning session today, Tara invited the other two of us to her house for a glass of wine and debriefing. (But we all kept our briefs on.) It was so relaxing. I feel so lucky we work together so well. Actually, the question of succession planning came up at the board meeting, and there was some discussion about whether Dick, our President, was grooming one of us to be his successor and whether he should. I'm glad we deflected it. I hope one of us does succeed Dick, but for the time being I think it's best we continue working as the strong team we are. When the time comes I'm confident we will transition smoothly into whatever new roles we assume.

This feels like pretty boring writing to me, so I'm not going to belabor it. At least I wrote something -- once I get better at just passing that hurdle, I'll try to raise the bar on the quality of the content.

2006-08-15T07:27:00.000-04:00

I've been pondering the delights of old friends this morning. This was motivated by my having had the opportunity to spend time with two different sets in the past couple weeks.

For our family vacation this year, we went to Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, and rented a houseboat. Joining us on the boat was a friend of my son's and John and Sammy, a couple who are friends of Bob's and mine. Bob and John have been friends for 30 years, having met while in college. Bob and I were married in 1987 and we happened to be in Atlanta visiting John the day he met Sammy, his eventual wife. I'm not sure, but I think that was in 1990. So we've known them both more than 15 years.

Before we had Sam, we used to get together with John and Sammy often. When we lost a baby before Sam, they insisted we come stay with them for some pampering. That's the kind of friendship it was. But Atlanta-to-Columbus jaunts get a lot more trying with a little one in tow, so now we mainly e-mail and check in via phone. This was the first time we have spent more than a mealtime together in close to ten years.

Then this past weekend, I got to see my oldest girlfriend, Kathee. (OK, let's rephrase that. She's certainly not any older than I am, but our friendship has existed longer than any other.) I believe Kathee and I were in 6th grade when we began sitting together on the bus, and after we landed two of the lead roles in the 8th grade production of The Wizard of Oz, the friendship moved into "best friend" status. After high school we went to different cities for college and from their our lives took very different paths. She spent ten or more years in Chicago, then relocated to Boston where she still lives. Just like with John and Sammy, our friendship is now sustained by e-mail for the most part. But Kathee's mother is still in Columbus, and her mother's knee replacement turned out to be our opportunity to spend an afternoon together.

In both cases, I marvel at how quickly the distance and the differences fall away and how easy it is to be together. Having lived through so much together -- even when it is only living by e-mail -- builds such a foundation of trust and acceptance that it's easy to just let go and be myself. I consider that such a precious gift! There aren't really that many places in life -- at least in my life -- where I feel completely at ease to let my guard down and just be. To be with old friends who have seen me fail and flounder and can still love and accept me is a great comfort.

I'd love to explore this further, but duty calls. I have to go jump into the daily grind. But I hope the time comes when some of my current workmates or acquaintances have earned the honored title of "old friend." And I hope I can earn it from them!

2006-08-13T15:42:00.001-04:00

Here I am, back at the blog-ranch again. I last tried keeping a blog in 2003. It went well for a little while, but eventually I came to the conclusion it had become whiney. I had slid into a bad mental space in general, and it all came pouring out into the blog. When I came to the conclusion that even I didn't enjoy reading all that self-pity, I pulled the plug.

But lately I have really been feeling the need to write something. And I've spent more time online reading other people's blogs. I think I may be capturing the notion of how to ramble on about various things of interest to me without the kind of self-indulgence I encountered three years ago. (Hmm, personal growth....ya think?)

So for those of you to whom I am brand new, let me give a brief introduction. I am in my late 40's and live in Columbus, Ohio. I work in sales and marketing (kind of a hybrid of the two, really) for a credit union. For the uninitiated, a credit union offers bank-like financial services but is actually a financial cooperative, based on great tree-hugging, kumbaya-singing types of values. My credit union was founded by school teachers and now serves anyone who works in education, as well as people who live in the immediate neighborhoods of our two offices and those who work for a handful of companies who have approached us for membership over the years. I am also part of the senior management team, so I get the joy and pain of interaction with the board of directors and get to see the wonderful sausage-making that goes into really running the business.

I am happily, joyfully married to Bob for almost 19 years and we have one son, Sam. Sam is 12 years old and entering 7th grade with all its incumbent drama and angst. He is an exceptionally bright child but has real social skills issues, so my visions of his future tend to whipsaw from Nobel Prize winner to axe murderer in rapid succession. But of course, he is my son and I love him more than I would ever have believed possible. If I had the chance to "fix" him, to change the problem areas, I'm not sure I could figure out which things I should change -- so I'd ultimately keep him just the way he is.

Bob was one of 8 children in his family, so his extended family is quite large and quite loving and plays a huge role in our life together. At his father's funeral earlier this year, I think there were 27 people there representing the "immediate family." With a cast of characters that large, there's never a dull moment. My family of birth was wide ranging in age and has been wide ranging in life choices, so we aren't as close --but occasionally they will no doubt turn up in this site as well.

I think that pretty well introduces me and this site. I welcome your feedback and hope many will choose to provide comments -- it will help keep me on task and true to the title of the blog!

Susan