Life is just a bowl of business cards

"Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you." Erma Bombeck


My career fair checklist goes like this: Stapled copies of resume with business cards in upper left, also stapled (to the stapled resumes or stapled with a third staple on top of the stapled resume for easy removal should the recipient be annoyed by the presence of the business card whose only business is to mention that you know enough to have a business card made up to advertise you are available for hire). Check (I guess.) Business cards (already covered in item one). Check. Writing samples. (oy vey-even the intended audience doesn't enjoy reading those, heh heh I'll attach my blog, what the hey). Double check. Outfit? Oh please.


Cheri (esteemed Zen teacher spoken about vociferously in prior posts on the offchance anyone reading this has never heard of me)-- speaks about the idea that suffering can be ended the moment one decides to do so. Say what? Say I agree with that or at least am intrigued by the idea-- HOW?

The 'how' is both the easiest and hardest process I've ever engaged in. In simple terms, how is often just opening my mind to the idea that something else exists. In the contradictory way that Zen appears-- we start with the sense that we have the control to divert our attention to a more harmonious inner experience, and then proceed to work with the notion that harmony involves staying put here until we experience what appears to be out there, perhaps in someone else's purview.

A lot of my early practice experiences with this idea have centered around being able to recognize thought patterns that I thought really represented who I really am gloves off, and coming to believe they not only weren't me, but items in some regard 'just there,' generated from who knows where (or cares) inside my head. 


Sure I'm the one wracked with worry about approaching strangers at the job fair knowing the balance of their interest will be in the subject matter experts for whom I have written all these years. Yet those fears are comprised largely of thoughts, if I can pause even for a moment to let one or two of them into my consciousness. That realization alone is the point at which another hateful voice comes along and starts filling me with the idea that I'm having the 'wrong' experience, and hardly one of nonsuffering. Again, with pause, or even the ability to breathe and physically look away, the notion comes along that that two is a thought, randomly generated, yet appearing to intimately connected with the reality that is my current experience.

So how does that make my job today one of nonsuffering? I'll be sure and let you know when it's all over. I arrived early and had enough clarity and love for the human that holds these thoughts and this consciousness to decide to put 'her' in the company of others going through the same experience. So I'm actually typing in the career center and about to head over to 'the fair' center shortly.


A lovely side effect of the willingness to pay close attention (notice everything and *try* not to take things in your head personally- don't believe everything you think! as a bumper sticker beckons)- is that the minute you are in it just for the view, you not only start seeing a kind of space around content that you might otherwise run toward and cling to, if only because that seemed inevitable- but other ideas make themselves known as well-- such as be kind-- really be kind-- to you as the container and watcher of these hateful/hurtful thoughts. 


Just as a thought to the effect of, 'you are totally unprepared and going to come off sounding like you don't know anything about any company you approach,' so can a less intrusive thought of, 'hey, it's ok-- you won't be alone,' or even 'gosh I'm proud of you for doing this.' It's all there, in your own head, I promise-- all for the noticing.


Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

My ears and whiskers*

"The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time."
Richard Cech


So, I have to assume that if the above is true, I am doing many MANY things all at once because I am doing many things but few to completion, or few that don't need to be re-completed (isn't that the same thing?) like, my resume. Any idea how many versions are required to get one person one job? or even one half or one-quarter a job? (That is, if you cast a net to include part-time work.)


Thankfully (and I thank all of you reading) very few, like only one, or one-half or one-quarter person has asked me what I'm doing with my free time. We out of work persons, and I'll speak for all of us, even though I'm so new at it, *really* appreciate it when that (the free time question) is *not* asked, however logical it is.


Before I was out of a job I remember telling John that I would 'quilt every day' should I have the misfortune to get laid off. And of course with the extra work everyone I know is either taking on, or feeling like they have to take on to invest in whatever security, real or perceived is available, getting laid off can have a lottery ticket feeling to it.


Somehow, I have spent less time quilting since I got the news, a bit more time with childcare (and they are hardly children might I add) oriented tasks if you consider flex accounts drying up by the end of last month and the need to get everyone their checkups, glasses, and oral surgeries-- yet, much more time cleaning up old email, learning my new computer, stopping the presses of making a master plan for income generation in several different arenas for the sake of following up on one small, big, or medium lead as the case may be. That generates a flurry of activity, often requiring asking favors from others (thank you Facebook friends!) only to get no response at all from the lead, or a thanks but no thanks note because the market is simply flooded. So that feels like a back to square one situation even if in fact the lead follow up involved more work on a resume or a furthering of a course charted out earlier. What remains after one of these goose chases is massive disorientation as to what path I was headed down 'before' the lead was forwarded, and a stack of people who I doubt will continue to think of me as their friends if I don't make time for them in some form.


So, what am I going to do about it? My question to myself, if not anyone else's. I'm going to face down this conundrum the way I face down just about everything else-- why I'm going to write about it. Not here (just in case you are not interested in how much time I spend down to the minute going to yoga and the grocery store on the way back)-- but I will see what I can unearth as to the time suck culprit. Work has deadlines, meetings involving reports and all manner of things to either sum up what we've done, or notice what we haven't done. Some of that exists now in the form of my job search work team and certain productivity tools we are asked to generate.


More soon.


"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." St. Augustin

*Title is by Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland, "Oh my ears and whiskers how late it's getting."

Bonus round: guest bloggers wanted-- I will be away the week of October 18 and would love to feature a guest or 2 for the October 18 and 21 blog entries. Yyou can write about any subject you choose!

Fall Fever

"If there is no wind, row." Latin proverb

Isn't that quote cool? That was on my monthly drycleaning newsletter-- so if you think your drycleaner's newsletter cannot make your day (or at least cause you to pause), consider yourself disabused of that notion.

I notice at the career center where we 'restructured' employees get to go as much as we like these 2 months post handing over out laptops and badges, that though levels of energy and enthusiasm vary widely as you might expect among us, to a person, everyone given the slightest opening will say something tantamount to, "I'm so HAPPY I don't have the headaches of my old job."

I had a few unwelcome sea changes these last months especially but didn't think I'd feel much beyond terror being jobless with a spouse also jobless. I find myself dejected at times, and sometimes even sleepless the way I was when I felt like a given project or team assignment was untenable-- but there's no denying it's so very nice not to have those particular day to day worries.

In trying to partake of everything available while it lasts, namely the job placement services, I've scattered myself widely across workshops, free coaching and job fair preparation such that I'm not feeling very effective. I don't feel too put off (although I'm not jazzed by any means) that I don't have a great many interviews (ok, none yet) lined up.

I am revising my resume targeting it toward writing jobs and clinical jobs should an opportunity come along. I'm loving have the days to chart various courses for myself and when I keep my eye on just what's in front of me, I don't ever entertain worry or fear.

Fall is my favorite season. I won't lie- it's because it acts as harbinger to 'the holidays' beginning in the US with Halloween and ending with New Year's. I caught myself thinking I wouldn't have the right to enjoy them 'with no job' but have managed to get Fall and Halloween decorations out and about our house even a little early this year.

I say early because in a fit of holiday decorating superiority, I declared a few years ago that Halloween decorations should not be donned (can a nonperson don something? I don't know) prior to 3 weeks before Halloween and certainly not before the month of October. Well, it's September 30 and ceramic jack o' lanterns abound. Aren't we rebels?

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” (Chinese Proverb)

Happy Blessed Opportunity

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." Woody Allen

The title of this blog entry gets referenced with sarcasm, or maybe mirth is more like it, by members of the spiritual community with which I study Zen. The group of persons that sit and study with a Zen teacher is called a sangha (silent ‘h’) and in ours, you can consider yourself a sangha member if you want to be.

As it happens, I am handwriting today’s entry for transcription later as I sit in the parking lot of Alice’s middle school campus (though she is in high school—I actually drove here after dropping her off at the high school campus both because the parking lot is large and I can park under the shade of a pine tree and meditate, and because it’s too early to go to Target!) and I am waiting for John to arrive with stepson Robert in tow, to jump start my battery which I just discovered has died.

I love and appreciate my Zen practice so much, although it makes me giggle to describe myself as having such a thing. I think to giggle might also be the experience of anyone who really knows me (the word sister comes leaping to mind here). I doubt even after 6 years of daily  sitting  meditation (sometimes at home, sometimes in my car) accompanied by trips to the Zen Monastery Peace Center as I can manage -- where not only is everything done in the silence of the ‘privileged environment,’ the entire time, but, we are encouraged to refrain from eye contact --  would anyone confuse my temperament with His Holiness the Dalai Llama (and the word children comes leaping to mind here).

So, all of that is a round about introduction to my reassurance to anyone reading, that I am not now nor will I ever profess later that I’m in fact grateful for the chance to sit alone in the school parking lot for an additional hour I didn’t sign up for. This opportunity to enjoy the sights and sounds around me that in other circumstances I’d have left behind, otherwise quickly forgotten as I speed off to Target (When you are a working parent with a sitting meditation practice, trust me, you are ALWAYS mediating in one parking lot or another), is the slice of solace I didn’t even know I wouldn’t hate until it came my way.

That said, a promise we make out loud before and after sitting meditation, is “to use everything in our awareness to see how we cause ourselves to suffer.” To this end, I have participated in all sorts of exercises over the years with the goal of greater self awareness as in who are these ‘selves’ I call me? To wit, I have worn my watch on an alternate wrist, walked around with a notebook all day to record all sorts of observations within and without, worn a bread bag twist tie on my finger for the sake of remembering to “come back to the breath” or center, often times one and the same experience.

I never was and am not now a fan of disrupting my carefully planned, normally jammed schedule. For reasons not entirely clear, but about which I don’t care one ounce of kapok, I don’t feel the need to sit cursing our car, my bad luck, or worrying myself to death over whether I’m still going to make my doctor’s appointment, or fit in my Target errand. Nor do my thoughts run to trying to second guess how John and Robert feel about rearranging their morning and what it means if some of them is or isn’t feeling or acting put out.

“It is what it is” and that includes time to sit quietly, once dreaded by me and now a chance to gather my thoughts, read more of my book and to savor in writing m newfound solace where once there was angst.

"To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like." Charlotte Joko Beck

Freedom and Yams

"An hour of freedom is worth a barrel of slops." The Goose, Charlotte's Web by E. B. White 
I made the mistake of thinking I could 'just run over' to the community college bookstore at lunch hour on the first week of class and 'grab' the two books John needed for his online project management class. After 20 minutes circling around the wall to wall covered with cars campus parking which looked like a 'Cash for Clunkers' section at a car dealership, I had managed to park on the 3rd level of the new parking structure, go down 1 flight of stairs, pay for a day pass, return to the car to put the permit on the dash board, make my way across a quarter mile of campus featuring a sea of students, wait in a reasonably short line to check my back pack at the 'complimentary' back pack check in, head to the book store entrance only to figure out it was the exit, wind away around to the designated entrance, wait in a small, square entry way of the bookstore, bounded by a student employee holding one side of a velvet rope, equivalent to the foyer of the Haunted Mansion at both Disney parks, but far less enchanting, however just as scary, get let in after "just" 2 minutes with what seemed like a civilized group of about 8 other people, breathe a sigh of relief that the crowd of shoppers was being controlled this way, barely glance at the section where the PM books were located, look to my right to observe another velvet rope cordoning off 50% of the bookstore where some 60 students waiting to buy books were snaked around aisles of school supplies in line, beg to be let out of the bookstore at the entrance which was in no uncertain terms not to be used as an exit even for disgruntled non-shoppers who made the mistake of thinking they were home free *just* because they had cleared the velvet rope, eventually re-enter in order to be allowed to exit (?!), make my way to the backpack retrieval line, wait there for a good 15 minutes with other hot and bothered people waiting to retrieve their backpacks, and feel thoroughly defeated.


This of course evoked memories of my own active college bookstore days as waiting around with people half your age is wont to do, and, to my surprise, all I could think was, "Poor kids!". Not literally judging from the wide variety of nonclunkers in the parking lot, although I'm sure that's the case for some. But of course in addition to being afforded the luxury of a private college where at most you might decide to put your backpack up at the register, mostly so you didn't have to bother with it, your parents sent you off to said school (or mine did anyway) with a blank check for which you were welcome to buy all your textbooks new and they knew the damage would be no more than a one or two hundred dollars at the most.


I'm well aware that in fact, given the flooding of college age students to community colleges, my response might better have been to think, "Lucky kids," because I understand that many students are locked out of classes, but I couldn't turn my attention away from how not-fun it is to jump through so many hoops for such little gain, and I was not the only empty handed book buyer by far.


John headed back to the store this morning when it opened this morning and got the 2 books, used. He continues to work toward career change and productive use of his nonworking time while he diligently works all leads and suggestions for a job that will make use of his sales background. I can't help but be relieved to be out of the cycle of "will I/won't I/don't I" want to leave the job I just left while it occurs to me we could be in this waiting and wondering cycle for a while.


In the mean time, no complaints about having freedom (with decent slops most days) with which I can do things video chat my precious Leo and Peter in Virginia during the 'work day,' photograph orange yams in a blue bowl 'just cuz,' and read The Missing Manual and Zen and the Art of Knitting simultaneously.


"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back." Maya Angelou

Annie Get Your Gun

"Now Ive been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun." Cat Stevens

There are the days when we sing about the peace train and there are the days when we oversleep the alarm, can't find our ticket,  and forgot why we ever thought it was a good idea to board anyway. That would be me today. Poorly slept, behind in what I need to do and what I planned to do even though at least on paper I have ample time to do it all (Note to retired friends: I now totally get how it is one can NOT have a day job yet scarcely find time to return a phone call!).

I became interested in what my meditation (Western Zen) teacher, Cheri Huber calls an awareness practice, organized around, well... meditation... readily and dramatically after attending a day long workshop at the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment. Starting to meditate so quickly (like the next day) surprised no one more than me quite honestly. Celia's Top Ten Least Likely Activities would include meditation right *after* sleeping outside in a tent and aforementioned guest stints on Survivor.

However, Cheri 'got' me when she began explaining that nothing in the universe was dedicated to my suffering. Now my husband John over and over respectfully disagrees with this idea, and is happy to supply a list of people he KNOWS want him to suffer but I, lacking in that masculine, affable, sales guy confidence have to admit that my suffering could not possibly hold anyone's interest that long. By process of elimination, like the day at age 5 when I vehemently denied magic markering my parents' painted white windowsill and my mother, acting on a hunch, asked me to turn over my hands which revealed black magic marker (I still to this day wonder how she KNEW to ask me that!)-- that meant I was doing something somewhere along the line to muck things up for myself just enough to have perpetual angst and never feel like I was participating in the right life or living the "right" way.

As in the Big Box Zen store where the guide shows us around the voices and parts of our emotional selves that go around masquerading as ourselves, I came to believe that sitting meditation would take me toward the path to becoming the internal observer of the store that alternates between being overseen by a kindly, older grandfatherly like presence with infinite patience and understanding, and a psychotic control freak with an emotional age of 5 at the very most standing at the helm with machine gun ready to fire.

We talk about watching ourselves *become* someone else. With much study we define these aspects of our personalities and sometimes give them names. They are spoken of as subpersonalities. Over time (and I wouldn't ask how much at this stage as it certainly doesn't sell the process), we come to understand that however powerful those familiar scenarios are when we have become a part of ourselves, we are not *that* person but the presence that watches, contains, and ultimately can love that person. Sometimes, often in fact, that person is 'those 2 people,' in the form of a younger child being given information by an older child. That's where, in part, the voices section of the Big Box store does well and when we sit we get in the habit of noticing what is being said in between couting breaths.

So today, very fair to say that identification with a tired, overwhelmed and much in need of grown up attention subpersonality had her way with myself and my family (gee, wonder if my name is on John's list of suffragettes). Often, the only remedy is to hope we realize when we check out and patiently wait Father Knows Best style for this little person to feel reassured by the bigger presence that we actually can offer at these times. Other times, we wake up to an emotional battlefield the day after smelling of virtual gun powder and littered with used up artillery. The trick is to see that all that is nothing more than remnants of us doing what we are conditioned to do, and fearlessly start over.

Today that amounted to taking that person running my mouth away for a while and going to a favorite karmic refuge, the movie theater. I have been engaging in meditation, retreats, email classes, and reflective listening offered by the Zen Monastery Peace Center for just about 6 years now and it's been a lamp of solace and joy that has restored both of those things even when Machine Gun Milly is taking the lead.

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher

Erma, Grandpa, and Yussuf

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic." Erma Bombeck

For the record, I knew that Erma died some time ago. What a great gal she was, don't you think? When she was coming out fast and furious with books and columns I was too young to appreciate her irony but remember fondly my parents reading The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank to each other one Sunday morning, roaring with laughter.

I didn't know about this quote until today but I did now that she refused any special treatment on an organ recipient list that might have slowed the progress of her cancer from which she died. I also knew that joking aside she thought that nothing much mattered by way of success if you weren't a good parent. I'm down with both those sentiments, regardless of how well I would do or live up to them.

So 10 years and 3 months after landing the longest running paying job I ever had, I'm 'out' and by definition trying something new. So far it amounts to the most disorganized electronic and actual desktop I've ever had and no idea where the time runs off to each day but relative certainty time spent including something toward securing new employment.

I had occasion to think of my maternal grandfather, whose 110th birthday it would have been on September 12 (my Mom is sure, although she might not appreciate the press on this, that this fact combined with the collaboration from my paternal grandfather in heavenly regions, helped safeguard my brother who had the misfortune of attempting to head into the World Trade Center at 9:00 for a job interview when the sound of a loud explosion prevented his entry).

My grandpa Raymond (Raimondo) 'hopped ship' at the age of 18 the story goes to come to America from poverty stricken Southern Italy. This would make the year of his entry 1917. To my knowledge he knew no one and certainly did not have any set English skills or skills of any kind having not gone to school much past elementary school.

I think of him and all his courage has provided us, his children, grandchildren and now greatgrandchildren. Was it a dream of his to come to America or was it just a chance he had that he figured he'd better take not even knowing for sure he'd have a safe passage across.

He lived to be 80, owned a home and laid the ground work for privilege that we still enjoy, even in jobless times. Sometimes I wonder what he'd say or if there is some way he somehow knows how much he is thought of and appreciated (alternating with copious periods of abject taking for granted) for the chance he did take.

Thanks to my job I made wonderful friends in Netanya, Israel who provided for their families by doing the opposite and settling in the country of their faith after having been raised in far flung English speaking countries. The courage of those decisions does not seem to be lost on their most devout children and in some cases, bevy of beautiful grandchildren who gleefully gather for holidays which don't require special permission to miss work and school.

No official interviews yet. Lots of offers to read and pass along my resume and some nervous wondering going on about the social work internship I applied for last week.

"Oh I can't keep it in, I can't keep it in, I've gotta let it out.

I've got to show the world, world's got to see, see all the love love that's in me."

Cat Stevens aka Yussuf Islam

Big Box Zen

"I cannot tell if what the world considers 'happiness' is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness..." Chuang-tzu.

Since I'm between jobs (By the way, don't you just love the phrasing implying the next job is just laying there waiting for me to take it up?)-- now seems like a pretty good time to dream up a fun one. So, I keep thinking, since we are talking dream jobs here, how about a fantasy job? Most people who know me will thing full time quilter and that would fit the bill, for sure, but at the moment, I was thinking more like Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. Except I'd be more like the Buddha's trainee and technically in Buddhism as I understand it, we don't try to *get* anywhere, but rather to realize that we are, at any given time, *here* with no need to go elsewhere, so I'd have to give some thought to how that correlates to an angel getting his or her wings (worth noting perhaps that bells in fact are frequently run in the Zen tradition in which I am a participant so whatever the end goal, the ringing of bells would certainly figure prominently as it did for Clarence).

I'd have a name tag of course (Buddhist Guide, Trainee) and the job description would include showing new souls (which would probably be called incarnations) around the karmic world which in my rendering of it, takes on the appearance of Costco, an oversized warehouse with everything you could ever want alongside that much which you never even realized you want.

So I'd take the pre-conditioned human, between lifetimes if you will, and point out a few things that, should he or she awaken with a desire to end suffering in the upcoming lifetime, might come in handy. The largest section of the karmic big box store, would be the huge central area that stores swing sets and barbecues in the summer and Christmas trees at holiday time. "This," I'd matter of factly point out, is your content. Getting stitches, bored rainy afternoons, first days of school on up to family members dying, miscarriages, divorces, and watching loved ones die of cancer and car accidents, drink too much, win a triathalon, get a raise, have an affair, and pay too much for coffee because they forgot the sales circular at home."

I'd go on to explain that the content will forever be competing for attention and shelf space with the inborn knowledge that your sense of well being is not controlled or defined by IT- whatever IT is (thank you ebay!) And I'll do my best to reassure by reminding my charge that most go through their entire lives forgetting that they know this is true, and, when you consider the state of the content, who can blame them.

Next we'll go up and down the aisles on either side of content. Rows of shelves containing toiletries, over the counter medicines and vitamins are just about the perfect location for The Voices in Your Head. "Lots of folks catch on to these babies pretty quick," I'll jovially explain. "They're the things that talk at you all day and all night long, telling you what you're doing wrong, what to say, what to do and think. Sometimes they will throw a complete curve ball and tell you how great you are. But don't be fooled. They live to make you completely forget that YOU aren't THEM and as such don't have to pay one bit of attention."

About this time, the entering soul will probably ask what all the fuss is about. "Why would anyone or anything *care* to throw me off track enough to create all this distraction?" And this will be a test of Buddhist trainee meddle because I'll so badly want to provide the 'proper' answer. I'll want to have something at the ready, like a SOAR story (situation, obstacle, action, result) we're encouraged to prepare by out outplacement coaches, lying in wait for the toughest interview question. Or I'll want to be able to believably explain that the system was actually intended to protect us from the harm of going crazy by coming up with a belief system however bogus.

If my thoughts are properly collected however I'll say instead, "All we know for sure is that there seems to be for every productive forging ahead that we do, an equal and opposite drive to deconstruct our ability to stay in the here and now, seeing it all, not believing any of it, and in that seeing, having the true freedom to attend closely to the life experience we truly want to have."

That will lead us to the section that runs parallel to the cash registers. Where mountains of oversized boxes of candy, pyramids of plastic jars of Twizzlers reside. "Here's where all the action is. Your conditioned responses. Things you do automatically. Sometimes these are perfectly matched to the content and other times, not so much. How much you can stay in your observing self and disconnect from your voices telling you how you should feel about your swing set, I mean your content is going to have a lot to do with how well you can choose what to do when." This conversation will probably require breaking into the Twizzlers for some relief, a perfect example of a conditioned response to hearing voices tell me I can't manage this part of the tour, but that's what training is for I'll realize.

And how will I realize this? Because a thought or feeling in the form maybe of the person who checks what you have bought against your receipt will arise in a moment of clarity, to remind me I do have options-- and lots of them. Like today for example, I can stay in my pajamas all day, skip church, eat junk food (oh, wait- that's what I AM doing!)-- you get the idea.

There are more sections to tour in our Zen Costco-- but first I have to work with someone in customer service on putting on my game face (and realizing I WANT to?!) as I hand over my badge tomorrow.

"I would like to learn, or remember, how to live." Annie Dillard

Keepsakes

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. " Mark Twain

I'm more than half way through the 3 hour and 40 minute Ken Burns PBS special about Mark Twain. I didn't plan it this way but it's a delightful way to wind down my longest running job as a writer and as usual when I delve into a biography of someone I should have learned more about in high school, I am amazed at what I'm learning for the first time (which is not necessarily the same as being amazed at what I'm hearing for the first time I do realize). Among the things that escaped my notice when I first read Huck Finn, was the fact that the life of Mark Twain overlapped the lives of 2 of my grandparents, which I find such a delightful notion.

However, Mrs. Mark Twain, or Olivia Langdon Clemens is on my mind this week as I sort of, kind of, most of the way am not too sad that I am saying good-bye to my trusty job and scads of easy access to friends around the world. In the documentary, a narrator reads as passage from a letter from Olivia to her mother during one of the periods when she was home caring for her 3 children while Sam Clemens (MT) was on the lecture circuit. I could not find the exact words to copy them here, but I was so struck that she confided to her mother that in the midst of the taxing duties of running the house and taking care of her young children she wished she could put her head on her mother's lap and 'be somebody's baby' at times during this period.

Her honesty took me by complete surprise when I would have imagined that being stoic all the time to everyone, most especially one's parents was 'the thing to do'. After all MT hadn't published Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn quite yet so he was lecturing to pay for all the luxuries of their opulent Connecticutt home and accompanying lifestyle.

However, I'm just projecting wildly on her that she felt so completely at home in her own skin that she didn't feel the least bit timid to reveal that to her mother. My first thought when imagining telling that to my mom is that I'd feel so bad doing that- not because she would mind- in fact I think she'd be flattered to know I still feel that way at my ripe old age (and she being only 22 years older than me gets closer to my age all the time it seems like-oh ok the other way around but still!). I thought I'd feel bad letting her know because she hasn't had the benefit of a mother to express that to for a period even longer than she's been a mother or a wife. My maternal grandmother and name sake died just 8 weeks before my parents' wedding when my mother was just 21.

My mom, though much more of an introvert than me, never shied away from speaking up on our behalf. When we would take the train to Manhattan from our Brooklyn home (we lived on the first floor apartment of a two-story brick house owned by her father, who was such a wonderful buddy to me, my brother, and my sister that he deserves his own blog entry)-- on a vacation day from school to go to Radio City or visit the Museum of Natural History and have to ride back to Brooklyn during rush hour on the hot, crowded subway cars, she would look out for open seats, two together always, and my brother and I would sit. One day a commuter chided her for not forcing us to give up our seats to the surrounding adults. We couldn't have been more than 6 (me) and 3 (my brother John) at the time, and she unflinchingly said that we were tired from a long day out and had every right to sit down, all the while she scouted out no seat for herself.

When we were sick we got to eat teenie tiny pasta, resembling cous cous called Pastina. Three decades later, and 3,000 miles away, my daughter Alice looks forward to Pastina for any reason at all, as do I. On the few occasions when my parents travelled I would get so homesick for her, and feel so bad in hindsight for my Dad's mom who was left to pick up the pieces, because of all things, no one could fix my hair or tie a bow on my dress like she did.

With the blessings of good health and one-price long distance calling my mother is very much with me this week. Much like we used to play a full Monopoly game during school vacations but playing a little bit each night (to show you the intelligence level and give a hint as to our ages and stages, my sister's high chair with or without my sister in it was the bank, my brother cared only that he was able to hoard as much 'blue money' as possible,' and I just wanted 3 of the same color, *any* color)-- I've been treating myself to one fun thing each day of my last week.

Mark Twain combined with cross stitch figures prominently. Two days left-- time for Pastina. I love you, Mom.

"The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Getting Even

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish." — Anne Lamott

If my internal world had a patron saint, it would be Anne Lamott. I had her book about writing, Bird by Bird, alongside my computer as I worked on my first user manual when I was taking classes to be a technical writer in 1996 (Fun Fact: we insiders referred to the Internet back then as 'the web' and we dialed into it!). Her way of describing every day struggles to remain motivated each day as a writer are laugh out loud funny and I find, with the above being one of my favorite sentiments (you saw this was coming Cathy B, didn't you?) that she describes thoughts I didn't even know I had, with much more hilarity.

Another favorite example is her meeting with a therapist for the first time and assuming that when there was a pregnant pause following her description of what was on her mind that she was certain this was so the therapist could subtly reach around with his or her foot for the secret button in the floor that would sound an alarm somewhere to signify that this person was dangerous and needed serious restraint, stat.

Pointing closer to home, I'm faced with my last week at work. Having not lined up another position in house, I will be shown the door, literally. It's the gentlest, most civilized of partings and as stated numerous times in writing and out loud, will afford me the opportunity to forge ahead in reply to a drum I can't stop listening to off in the distance.

The hitch in the giddyup as my daughter enjoys putting it, is that I don't get to choose and I can't stop replaying conversations between myself and various managers and coworkers about the projects we ought to take on and the transfer I 'might want to consider' (You're the only one in your family working right now, right? was the sidebar conversation "man to man" if I was a man that is). That and understanding what COBRA and unemployment really means for our family (it means rushing everyone off to the dentist, oral surgeon and eye doctor before the month ends, STAT) leads me to A.L.'s quote above.

The gotcha of course is, we hardly ever really know in real time that we are being given a solid--a lucky break. It's our hindsight glasses which often as not I use to lament as to reflect with gratitude on a passage, that assist us in figuring those things out, if we ever do. What would the last 10 years have been like if I hadn't taken "Intro to Technical Writing" when I was home with my 11-month old ("hitch in the giddyup" gal about to turn 17) 'just to see' if I could do it or would even like it? And what about all the transfers that resulted in the avoidance of getting laid off until now? No need to go into what flex schedules and work at home privileges mean for moms.

I just about have the version of my resume I'm sending to apply for a clinical internship in San Francisco and 2 glowing letters of recommendation (neither person I asked made me feel even for a second like they were searching for the secret button on the floor in reply). Oh, and if you don't have the inclination for a Zen teacher, you really should consider having others write letters of recommendation on your behalf, even if you don't need any-- it's delightful!

I don't have a rock solid plan for income generation at my fingertips, but I have many relevant thoughts in that direction and still plenty irons to fire there (at least in the inner world presided over by Ms. Lamott in sainthood). Even though sad, I manage to have no lack of enthusiasm for saying goodbye and a tremendous thank you to what feels like casts of thousands who have been fellow sufferers, interlopers on my behalf over and over, and the best of buddies. (You know the type-- the ones who know you full well but like you anyway. That's them. Us.)

That brings me to the less humorous but much more relevant quote I discovered when searching for the exact wording of the Jesus cat dish quote, also brought to us by Anne Lamott, "You can either practice being right or practice being kind." I have years of practice being 'right,' I'm all over the alternative.

"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you." John Southard

Thanks for the fish

'There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.'
-Douglas Adams, Restaurant at the End of the Universe



I do not believe I read any Douglas Adams from which the title of this entry (Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) comes, inspired the opening to today's entry. I didn't even know DA died at the much too young age of 49 until I searched his name moments ago.



One of the reasons I am slow to blogging is having read a few 'run of the mill' blog entries, I have noted that the contents are of most interest, most likely, to the reader and in many cases, few others. I decided to forge ahead in spite of this because, well, to state the obvious-- I can -- whereas I know I could not last one half of one half-day on Survivor. The closest I've come to that is sleeping in a tiny unheated cabin for one called a hermitage at my Zen teacher's monastery (And if you don't have a Zen teacher, you really should). At that I felt like Rocky climbing the stairs in the Philadelphia Art Museum the first time I used the out house on prem. (The requisite silence of the privileged environment precluded appropriate musical accompaniment regrettably.)



After I posted my maiden entry here on Sunday, and took childish delight in my comments and followers (thank you Dad!), it dawned on me that I won't even write a Christmas letter because I find it an impersonal way to communicate, (though I love to read each and every one we receive) yet here I am BLOGGING effusively and backwards sommersaulting in my mind because, among others, my dear friend BU said she was along for the ride all the way over there in Florida! And speaking of Dad, boy do I owe him an apology for his email accompaniments to his wonderful photographic submissions to friends and family (Dad, they're long winded I have said. That's fine with me, he has replied. And so he should.)



Even before I received word that my job had been eliminated, I interviewed for a wonderful writing job in another company and it seemed as if I got along famously with the team. The hiring manager delivered the feedback that 'there were some problems with your writing samples.' I'm sure anyone reading this can imagine that is like telling a Miss America contestant.... "Miss Minnesota? Your looks? That bathing suit? I don't think so.... " Though she said complimentary things about my personality, I was crushed because I so felt as if I hit it off with her. In fact, I think she did me the courtesy of explaining 'about my writing' because she did like me so well.



She spoke about the writing being multilayered and difficult to tease out that which was original from that which was overlay-- I am paraphrasing but that's what I walked away with. Have I justified my maintaining a blog with this explanation and will I let an HM read it? I don't really know but, as stated elsewhere, I'm in it to see what happens and couldn't be more flattered that my loved ones (and everyone who has responded to me is *definitely* in that crowd) want to read.



Ciao for now,



C

PS: RR- start your blog so *I* can read it!



While I admire the glass is half full type...I'm comfortable with the fact that my glass will always have a slow and steady leak. (author unknown)

First day of the rest of my life- oh gawd

I am the most chatty person you'll ever meet. If it's anything I do well, it's keep in touch over email, often portraying myself in a far more interesting fashion than were we to speak face to face. Yet the notion of a blog somehow terrifies me (which in and of itself is odd if you consider what a person has to do these days to navigate the sea of blogs to find one worth reading).



So why am I blogging? Frankly, I just saw "Julie and Julia" for the second time in a month and I can't think of a direct application between blogging a journey through a classic cookbook for a year (though one of Ina Garten's would be my choice I'm sure!) and quilting-which would be my equivalent source of joy and comfort to that of Julie Powell's.



All I know is right now I sit here on the cusp of ending 10 years as a technical writer for a Fortune 100 company in Silicon Valley and I just know that in one year from this date my life might not look (probably won't look) a thing like it does right now. And I don't want to miss it- so writing about it will give me something to do and if I pick up a reader (or cajole enough friends to come along for the ride)-- so much the better.

Why is my story unique? I'm 45, which maybe the new 35, but it's not the new 25 in the job hunting world, that's for sure. As everyone knows we are in a 'down economy,' my husband has been unemployed by a combination of choice and chance for the prior 4 years, and to complete the picture I've been turning toward career change for quite a while now.

I trained as a clinical social worker and have been inching slowly toward returning to that field and have just found the courage to start mentioning that when people ask how my job search is going.

Wish me luck,

C

"I have met the builder and broken the ridgepole. I shall not build that house again."

THE BUDDHA, UPON HIS AWAKENING