Hello, dear Reader, I am now officially on hiatus. I know I will miss you. Will you miss me?
Yes, that’s a trick question and a good reason for comments to be closed :)
Author: Marie A Bailey
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My mother once said I was predictably unpredictable. I would argue that I’m simply consistently inconsistent. Some of you may have noticed that I’ve “rebooted” my LinkedIn account. Those who know me well aren’t the least bit surprised. This seems to my M.O.: I’ll think long and hard about taking an action, consider all the pros and cons, and after considerable debates with me, myself, and I, make a decision and announce it to the world. Then, within a short period of time, I will flipflop. I will discover some reason, some argument that I had somehow overlooked, and come to regret what now seems to be an ill-informed decision.
Well. So it goes.
I try to simplify my life, but life simply isn’t simple.
And I really can’t complain about that. As an older yogi friend of mine said, after asking him how he was feeling: “Well, I’m still vertical and sucking air.” True dat. Still, I get annoyed with myself for being what I perceive as inconsistent. That said, while filling in all my employment and education history (I had deleted my previous account and obviously all the data that went with it), I saw a lot of consistency.
I’ve been working for the same state government for 15 years and have progressively gained more experience in working with, what we in the biz call, “large administrative data sets.” Your birth certificate data sets, your hospital discharge data sets. These files of millions of records that were never designed for research, never meant to “communicate” with each other. But I make them talk, in a manner of speaking. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m no magician or even expert when it comes to this kind of work. I was (and still am to a degree) part of a team of highly skilled epidemiologists and public health experts. Working with data like this is like working on a massive jigsaw puzzle that was designed by different people for different reasons. Not all the pieces are going to fit. Some may even be missing. The fun is in finding those pieces that will fit, and the reward is in knowing that the completed puzzle, even with its missing pieces, will be used to understand health behaviors and, ideally, improve health outcomes.
The true benefit of deleting and then resurrecting my LinkedIn account is my realization that this part of my life is still pretty important to me. Of course, if I could afford to live off my writing, I would. I’m not a fool. But since I have to have a day job, I’m glad it’s in a field that seeks to make a positive difference in the world. A colleague recently said to me, “I just want to be where I can do the most good.” I know some if not many people think government employees are slackers at best, parasites at worst.
Well, hello there, dear Reader. My name is Marie and I am a state government employee. What motivates me in my work is not my salary, not even my benefits (although I truly appreciate having them). My motivation is in being “where I can do the most good.” And I know, in this case, I am very, very lucky.
And now for something different.
A tree! Yes, a tree and not a cat! This photo was taken a few years ago when I was visiting my childhood home. There’s a wonderful footpath through the woods and past the cornfields near my old house. The photo doesn’t do justice to the wonderful late afternoon light which made the leaves of this tree glow. Soon, I’ll be making another trip to this area. I’ve plan for a couple of posts while I’m gone, but comments will be off since my access to the internet will be intermittent at best.
But you know, dear Reader, I’m always with you in spirit.
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Nothing. Yes, dear Reader, I got almost nothing for this post today. I have been fairly productive of late, but not with writing or blogging. Again, it’s the knitting.
A friend noted that the buttons on the baby sweater I knitted for a baby-to-be might not be appropriate for a baby.
Yes, they are cute cat heads but the ears are rather pointy, not too sharp against my rough old skin, but I don’t want to the buttons to be the cause of baby’s first injury. So I swap them out for these.
And, to be honest, I think these buttons are better suited. They are pretty without drawing the eye entirely away from the sweater pattern.I hope to present the parents-to-be with the sweater and hat tonight. I’m sure they will be pleased that at least the outfit can be machine washed and dried, and yet it is wool. Merino wool, in fact, which is very soft.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m thinking (again) of changing my blogging schedule. If I aim for Fridays, then I can have all week to write and revise my posts instead of doing them half-off as I am now. We’ll see.
Oh, and what about the classes I’m taking? Well, the Modern Poetry class is a no-go for me. It’s too fragmented: too many links to follow, an audio here, a video there. Each week brings an email (or two) with several embedded links. In contrast, a class I started a long while ago (on a lark), through the same platform (Coursera) has a very simple syllabus, with all content accessible through my iPad app. The course is historical fiction and very interesting so far. I can (and have) happily watched a video lecture while knitting. I’ll say more about that class in a later post. I’m still looking forward (with eagerness and dread) to the Fiction Workshop that will be offered free through the International Writing Program. That will start on Thursday, September 24. And, no doubt, you’ll hear all about that as well.
Until then a little eye candy for all you cat lovers: my green-eyed boy Junior. Why buy a fancy cat bed when an old basket and a couple of magazines make him happy?
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This is pretty much how I’ll be looking/feeling over the next several weeks … photos courtesy of my husband and a visiting hummingbird.
Coming in a for landing. 
Aim. 
Drink up! -
Hello, dearest Reader. I feel like I’ve fallen far off the grid, and yet it’s only been a week and several hours since my last post. The real difference is I haven’t visited any of my friends’ blogs. I’ve been busy, which is quite fitting since today is Labor Day in the US.
Guernsey style infant sweater and hat. Yes, the buttons are cat faces :) I still have the baby blanket to knit, but at least I’ve completed the sweater and cap. I have my doubts about this pattern, though, and it’s the second time I’ve knitted it. I used to knit sweaters a lot, adult sweaters for friends, me, and my husband. The baby things have only come about in the last 14 years, since my nephews started having children. Then a good friend gained a granddaughter and coworkers started having babies. For a long while I was knitting baby blankets, occasionally throwing in a sweater or socks or a dress. The thing is … I hate sewing the pieces together, especially when the stitch pattern is anything other than stockinette stitch. I recall only one time in my knitting life when I sewed up the seams of a cardigan so well they were almost invisible. (And when I say “sew,” I mean taking several inches of the yarn and a large blunt needle and weaving the seams closed.)
Knitting is much like writing for me. I love the process. I love seeing the pattern unfold through my fingers as much as I enjoy seeing a story take shape on a page. I love the feel of soft wool against my skin as much as I love the intimacy I develop with my characters. But I don’t love having to put the pieces together as much as I don’t love having to revise and rewrite. The problem is self-doubt.
Whenever I knit for someone else, I’m more critical of my work than when knitting for myself. I will rip out a finished sleeve and start over if I find a mistake. Even when I’m convinced I’ve done the best I could, I still find “defects” in my knitting: a slight gap where I twisted a stitch one way instead of the other; a telltale seam along the back of the hat. It’s the same when I think of other people reading my writing: Melissa’s breakdown is too melodramatic; the setting too vague, too Anywhere, USA. Typos and grammar can be fixed by an editor. Poor revision cannot (well, not unless I’m willing to spend $$$$$$$$$$).
So it goes.
Shortly, things will be even busier. I’ve managed to register for two free online courses: (1) Modern & Contemporary American Poetry offered by the University of Pennsylvania; and (2) How Writers Write Fiction with the University of Iowa, the same folks who offered the poetry course I took a few months ago. The poetry course will start on Sept 12 and the fiction course on Sept 24. And I still have my day job.
Am I insane? Is there a padded cell in my near future? I keep taking things to the limit. Cue The Eagles.
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Over the last few weeks as I debated whether and how to simplify my social media presence, this song kept playing through my mind. It’s a particularly apt song for when I open my Facebook feed.
Keeping with the spirit and intent of my last blog post and new mantra, “I’m too old for this,” I’ve closed my LinkedIn and Tumblr accounts. I went to Facebook and “unfollowed” a slew of “friends” whose obsession with memes made me feel like I was going through some kind of Clockwork Orange intervention. Slowly, I feel sanity creeping back into my online life.
It’s all perspective, and your comments on last week’s post were validating for me. Thank you again to everyone who commented and shared your own stories.
Now for a change of topic: this weekend I watched a documentary on Harry Nilsson, singer and songwriter and sad soul.
Although I was familiar with much of his work, I was still amazed by how productive he was. I hadn’t realized how many of the songs my teenaged self sang along with on the radio were written by him, if not always sung by him. And what a sad story: at the height of his success, he set himself on a self-destructive path that would ultimately kill him. It’s so easy to judge but that’s not what I want to do. Enjoying his legacy is the best way to honor him.
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As too many of you know, I struggle with keeping up with social media. I often feel overwhelmed with the tsunami of memes, messages, Likes, Invites, and other cacophonous clatter that greets me whenever I go to the feed of my Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+ accounts. (Strangely I don’t feel that way when I go to the Reader on WordPress.) I often think to myself, “I’m too old for this.” Now I do have some friends older than me who seem to manage their social media threads with grace. I don’t care. I still feel “too old” for this.
In yesterday’s Sunday New York Times, Dominique Browning expressed in the most clear (and enviable) prose what I’ve been feeling and why I should embrace that feeling. In her essay, I’m Too Old for This, Browning celebrates the psychological benefits of getting older, of being able to let go:
The key to life is resilience, and I’m old enough to make such a bald statement. We will always be knocked down. It’s the getting up that counts. By the time you reach upper middle age, you have started over, and over again.
Browning focuses for a bit on women’s perception of their own beauty (or their perception of their lack of beauty) over time. Until recently, I hated nearly everything about my body: I’m overweight. I have fat ankles. I want straight hair, not hair that waves with a mind of its own. My skin still breaks out and I’m two years shy of sixty. Brown advises that we simply reach for the larger sized pants in the closet, the ones we wisely did not give up to Goodwill, and be thankful that we have healthy bodies. I do try to be thankful even if some of my body likes to roll over the waistband of my yoga pants.
There is a certain freedom in being able to say, “I’m too old for this.” At my workplace, the atmosphere can be toxic with everyone overworked and each effort to get work done being second-guessed by the politically motivated. I feel too old for this. I’ve seen it and heard it all before. Sometimes I feel like I’m living Groundhog Day every day, except I get the weekends off. I’m too old for this.
I’m too old to worry myself about social media. If I close my LinkedIn account, will anyone notice? If I close my Tumblr account, will anyone notice? If I close my Google+ account, will anyone notice? More importantly, will I notice?
Now I can spot trouble 10 feet away (believe me, this is a big improvement), and I can say to myself: Too old for this. I spare myself a great deal of suffering, and as we all know, there is plenty of that to be had without looking for more.
I have unwittingly gotten into “trouble” because I was casting about, trying to be involved in an milieu that is better suited to people with short-term attention spans as well as long-term memory loss. I’m definitely too old to engage in social media dust-ups, innocently or not.
But I do enjoy my blog, particularly the environment created by my blogging community. It feels like a safe place. I can be myself knowing that if people don’t like me they simply won’t follow me and that will be the end of that. And I feel less fragmented when I’m here.
So when I think I’m too old for this, in the context of my writing and blogging, I know that it’s the fragmentation that I struggle with and that I need to correct. Let’s see if anyone notices when I do.
By the way, Dominique Browning was wrong about one thing: being too old to have green hair. Take it from me. One is never too old to have green, blue, pink, or purple hair.
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I’ve mentioned that Luanne Castle of A Writer’s Site and I recently participated in an online course for flash nonfiction, offered by Apiary Lit. Well, we’ve
survivedfinished the course and want to share our experience with all you dear Readers. We put our heads together and created the following list of Pros and Cons.First, let me share with you Luanne’s lovely shout-out to our instructor for the course:
The course instructor was talented writer and teacher Chelsea Biondolillo. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Brevity, Passages North, Rappahannock Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Shenandoah, and others. She has an MFA from the University of Wyoming and is a 2014-15 O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University. You can check out Chelsea here http://roamingcowgirl.com/ or do a search for her pieces in online magazines. Her knowledge of the genre and generosity to share that knowledge with her students was outstanding.
PROs
- The teacher prep was outstanding. She provided a wealth of readings, which were useful in showing me what flash nonfiction can look and sound like.
- The course was only four weeks, so I found that to be very manageable. If it had been longer, I would have been too stressed during the summer and at this time in my life.
- The instructor generally gave useful feedback, seemed qualified in the subject, and was very nice. She seemed to love her subject.
- The instructor was accessible, responding within the same day if there was a question or concern.
- Other than a problem I will list under CONs, the website was pretty easy to negotiate.
- The online classroom had various forums that enabled you to share your work with the other students and have discussions.
- The writing prompts were generally interesting, but I didn’t feel tied to them, which was good.
- The course was not graded. I could focus on what I wanted to turn in, not what I thought I had to turn in in order to get an A.
- The course got me writing without adding stress to my life.
- I got more writing done in this past month than I would have otherwise.
- I feel that I know where to go with flash nonfiction now. It would be ideal to get more feedback down the road on attempts at Flash Nonfiction, but at least I feel much more comfortable with the genre from taking this course.
- Above all, I had fun with the readings and the writing.
CONs
- Although there were forums available, we had no real discussion of any of the readings. We were not strongly encouraged to interact with each other. We had maybe one discussion prompt during the whole course.
- The readings and essay examples were available through either some kind of Adobe program that took a bit of time to figure out, or through hyperlinks that weren’t always easy to download.
- We posted our written assignments privately to the instructor so I had no way of learning from what others had turned in or from reading instructor comments on the work of others. I didn’t care for this method as it diminished what I could learn from the course by a hefty percentage. I suppose this is the difference between the workshop method and a traditional style class.
- We felt isolated in this class and had little interaction with anyone but each other and the instructor. In the discussion forum, one other student interacted with us, and another made a couple of independent comments. Other than that, it was a strangely quiet class.
- Two platforms were used for the course: an online classroom and a blog,so sometimes I had a little trouble negotiating the course. Sometimes I had to login in two places. This inconvenience turned out to be less of a problem than I first anticipated, but it could be streamlined. The blog material could have been included on the classroom platform.
- Since I don’t know how many people were in the course, I don’t know the instructor’s workload. My belief is that in a course that is short in length, the instructor should return assignments in short order. The lag time between turning in an assignment/beginning reading for a new lesson and getting the instructor’s feedback on my previous assignment was a little too long for my comfort.
- The price at $199 was a little steep for four weeks and no discussion/no workshopping.
My personal riff on the course:
Whether fair or unfair, I kept comparing the structure of this course with one I took on poetry a few months ago. The poetry course was free, but if I fulfilled certain requirements, I could order a certificate of completion. Those requirements involved participating in discussion forums as well as providing feedback on other students’ assignments. I learned a lot from the online discussions and from the feedback I got from other students (many of whom were published poets). It made for a dynamic learning environment, similar to what one would expect in a writing workshop.
What I missed in the poetry course was having a direct relationship with an instructor/mentor whose purpose was to critique and guide my writing.
So when I heard about this course through Luanne and saw that the instructor would provide individualized feedback, I jumped at the opportunity. And although $199 was a bit steep for just 4 weeks, Chelsea’s feedback alone was worth every penny. I also happily “discovered” that creative nonfiction is just as boundary-less as poetry. There are rules and then there are rules to be broken. You are limited only by your imagination.
But.
I am still looking for that perfect-for-me online writing course. My biggest challenges, as always, are Time and Organization. I complain I have little time but that’s in large part because I’m not very organized. Hence, my need for structure, for someone/something setting deadlines for me. I learned that through NaNoWriMo: if I don’t have a deadline, I don’t write. I know I would be better at this if I were retired from my day job, but until that happens, when I do have time, I tend to procrastinate. (Although my procrastination takes the form of household chores and errands, which, sadly I have no one to do for me.)
I would consider taking another course with Apiary Lit (and definitely with Chelsea), but I want to try another venue if possible. If any of my dear Readers have taken an online writing course that you truly found beneficial, please let me know in the comments.
Marie at 1 Write Way 