How many of us ever thought we’d wind up needing a desk for every person in the household? So suddenly?
This is a subject that tends to come up a lot, because everyone at my work was sent home to work for the indefinite future - with no notice. They’ve been continuously hiring, too, so all the new people like me were expected to provide all our own equipment. Can I just say that sitting in a wooden folding chair for two weeks was a great way to bond with my work partner? And also to perhaps permanently alter the shape of my caboose? (Not sure about hers) (Never seen it) We’ve all been told to plan to work from home at least through the end of 2020. Personally I plan on things remaining more or less how they are through the beginning of 2023. I’d rather be wrong, of course! But it’s psychologically much easier for me to plan just to keep on keepin’ on for three years. Same apartment, same job, same schedule, same... furniture? I’ve heard a lot of stories about the truly pitiful situations that a lot of people have found themselves in, and the time has come to acknowledge them and take action. By this I mean, yes, of course, we can’t have hundreds of thousands of people evicted and living in the streets. What utter nonsense. Just restructure everyone’s debts, from the banks and the mortgages on down. If I owned rental property right now, I’d definitely rather have a grateful, loyal tenant keeping guard over my biggest asset than an empty shell crying out for squatters, vandalism, and who knows what else. That being said. This is about all the office workers and students who are suddenly finding themselves trying to get a full day’s work done amid a total and complete lack of ergonomics. I’ve spent the last three months working full-time in a corner of our living room that is precisely four feet square. I measured it. It doesn’t take much square footage to get in the zone and get some quality work done. It does, though, take a flat surface and somewhere decent to sit. This is quite clear in my mind as I gaze lovingly at the office chair I bought with my stipend from work. I assembled it before bedtime, since it arrived at 9 PM, because I couldn’t bear to wait for it one more day. My poor flat and striped bottom. You know I used to work with hoarders? One of the things that always boggled my mind was how so many people could fill rooms from floor to ceiling with ‘bargain’ items, all bought for $1-5, and then feel like they Could Not Afford anything. Anything! I would point out that if you have a hundred things you bought for a dollar, then in one way or another, at some point, you had a hundred dollars. If you had twenty things you bought for five bucks, then you had a hundred bucks. If you in fact had five hundred things (balls of yarn, sets of markers, stuffed animals, shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, etc etc etc) then you probably had enough cash flowing through your life to buy a nice piece of furniture. What would it be? A replacement for your lumpy, sagging old mattress? Or a bed frame to get it up off the floor? A big bookshelf? ...a desk? In this particular case, I’m changing the frame on this a bit. The concept here is not that there may be enough money for something nice, rather than a large pile of small objects. The concept is that there is probably enough space in the home for a desk of some kind, if some other objects are removed. Keep in mind, I have lived in a space smaller than 800 square feet for the past five years. Currently we are at 650 square feet. Three apartments back, I gave away a bookshelf on Craigslist to make space for the little secretary desk that I have now. There was no room in our apartment otherwise. My choices were: in front of the oven (blocking the fridge), inside the bathtub, or in front of our door. Or simply get rid of the bookcase and make space for something I use every day. Our next apartment was even smaller, so the commitment and the trade paid off. I had a desk before, of course. It was made from a top I bought at IKEA for $12. I bought it because it was the biggest desktop I could find, which made it obsolete when we downsized. See, I would never suggest that someone else do something I am not willing to do myself. I got rid of something that was once very important to me, a bookcase I assembled myself and moved half a dozen times. It used to contain my cookbook collection, which I have since digitized. In the physical space where I had that bookcase, I now have a little desk. It’s possible to put together a makeshift desk, or create a study/work area, without using a piece of furniture. One of my coworkers has a TV tray that she uses on the couch. I’ve seen photos of other people working in the driver’s seat of their car - not driving for a living, just sitting out in the driveway for some privacy - or on cushions on the balcony. A lot of people are using their dining table. I know from my home visits that about 90% of dining tables are used for storage 364 days of the year. This is what I mean by trading for a desk. If all that stuff goes away, then someone has somewhere to sit and work. My husband, stepdaughter, and I have all worked together for days on end, sitting at the same dining table, and that location alone might solve a lot of problems for a big family. My bestie and I both have bathtub trays, and we’re not ashamed to admit that we both have the habit of sometimes working while we soak. (Me, on personal projects - her, I won’t ask so I don’t have to tell). A lot of households have completely viable furniture that could be a desk for someone. Maybe something weird, but still something about the right height that has a flat surface. An end table, a coffee table, a dresser, a kitchen counter, a rolling toolbox? An actual desk? A lot of households also have plenty of square footage for someone, either in the garage or an extra bedroom or some other place. When I was a newlywed in my first marriage, I had my desk set up in the walk-in closet next to the bathroom. Bookcase and filing cabinet in there, too. Stephen King wrote Carrie in the laundry room. Thomas Wolfe was very tall, so he stood and wrote his books on top of his fridge. The thing here is to value humans and human activity over any random pile of stuff. Marie Kondo told everyone to make sure your stuff ‘sparks joy.’ I say it’s more important to build your personal environment around the stuff you like to do. Everyone in the house should have physical space to sleep, bathe, eat meals, stretch, relax, make things, and (now, alas) study or work at home. Any clutter that is in the way should be removed so the people can simply do their thing. If there isn’t room for you or for anyone else in your home to get your work done, look around and figure out where it could happen. We might be here for a while. This was the year I was going to turn in my book proposal. I had bites from an agent and an editor. I had a plan. I had an outline. I had pages of notes. I was actively working on it and it seemed like I was on track to finish by my personal deadline of mid-June.
I decided to put all that aside for now and take a day job instead. I haven’t given up on Being a Writer, not yet anyway. What I did was to make a strategic decision based on new inputs. This year hadn’t been going all that well. First Quarter 2020 was a mess. I was still in bandages from my surgery, then my hubby had a severe eye injury, then we both got the flu, then we had to put our dog down, then my hubby’s bike got stolen... Week after week, disruption followed by chaos. Then I began Second Quarter with COVID-19. These things aren’t even problems, not for a writer. In a certain light, they can be regarded as unexpected gifts of interesting material. Something to write about. What happened was that in the weeks that I spent severely ill, feeling that death was near, my perspective shifted. I realized that the world had changed. My plans needed to change, too.
My husband’s employer (and now mine, too) sent everyone to work from home quite early, before any state in the US had a stay-at-home order. Our county had had one death, but the schools, bars, gyms, churches, and everything else were still open. Airports hadn’t even begun screening. Only Disneyland made the decision faster. This is part of why I made the choice to go to work with them. Imagine a workplace culture where employees are literally regarded as irreplaceable assets whose safety must be protected at all costs. Different, right? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Last year, my husband was out on travel over half the time. We barely saw each other. A couple times we had mere hours within a few weeks. This year has started to make up for the time away, considering that he is now in our living room on conference calls up to 10-12 hours a day. Here, in our living room, where I used to work quietly alone. Now our home is a company-sponsored conference room. If I’m going to be here anyway, I may as well put on a headset and join the party. It’s not like I can leave and work at a cafe. Going back to work has been everything I hoped it would be while I was ill. The time passes very quickly. I learn something new every day. I am rapidly catching up with several new titles of enterprise software. I had met a dozen or so of my new colleagues before the shutdown, and it’s fun to be able to talk to them more. There are other reasons why I feel like taking a day job was a good idea, as opposed to poking away at my now-obsolete book proposal. This is the first place I have ever worked where anyone takes my degree seriously. I feel accepted as an academic peer. I’ve already been invited to a few separate ideation meetings, where I was able to contribute as an active participant rather than a clerk. I could plausibly apply for a fellowship here, not just tuition reimbursement. My goal in writing a book was to share my perspective in some way that would impact others. What if working for an organization made a bigger dent than my book ever could? What if I also earned more? What if I did both, the book and the job? It occurred to me that my writing has been a pressure valve for my life, and that if I felt very busy again, it might blast its steam into any part of my schedule that it could. It also gives me more to write about. More power dynamics, more colloquialisms, more quirky characters. I have a window into something that I otherwise would not, which is how this particular profession handles the shift to WFH and positions itself against the pandemic. One of our colleagues, a young PhD from a family of medical doctors and researchers, is convinced that our strategy is not nearly cautious enough. This is interesting in the context of a beach community where everyone else is busy demanding the rights to surf, go to the bar, and have access to hair dye and nail art. We’re most likely continuing to WFH for at least the rest of the calendar year. I just learned this a few days ago, and it helps to validate my decision. Where could I work on my book when my husband and I are confined to our 650-square-foot apartment for the duration? When there may not be open seating in the library or the coffee shop for the rest of the year either? Cases are accelerating rapidly in our county. I see no (sound, rational) reason for a major shift in social distancing policy in the near future. I wanted something interesting to do. I wanted to be a part of something great and to be where the action is, instead of moldering away on my couch. There are intriguing financial benefits, too, beyond the obvious. I maxed out on life insurance and long-term disability, having had recent cause to believe that I truly could expire any day. What a load off my mind, that if I die suddenly, at least my poor hubby could buy a house. It’s a bit of a paradox, but having a day job is relaxing in many ways. There’s no time to fret about world events. Most of the day is highly structured. Now, if I find time to write a book, it’s remarkable, rather than belated. If I get published, it’s great news, rather than overdue. There is plenty to be going on with. As so often happens, I sit down to write and a random person wants to strike up a conversation. I figure I might as well hear this guy out, at least for a few minutes, because sometimes I can get a good story out of it.
I’ve guessed right. Go ahead and try to tell people “I’m busy” or “trying to get some work done” or “on deadline.” This goes through some kind of internal translator, like a babbelfish, and after it goes through a few loop-de-loops, what they hear is “please tell me your life story” or “we are best friends now” or “why yes, I do give out free therapy.” I figure new writing material is the least I can expect as a fair trade for the imposition on my time. This particular character who has wandered into my work zone is supposedly an Army ranger and combat medic. Do I have verification of this claim, no I do not, but then I could counterclaim that he was a circus clown or a bank teller and nobody would be the wiser. After rambling a bit, he suddenly pops out with this idea that writing is hard, and there should be a writing school similar to ranger training. WRITE A CHAPTER IN THE NEXT HOUR OR YOU’RE OUT! Hmm, I say, that’s actually a really good idea. There’s your movie if you want to write your own screenplay. We start elaborating on this together. Apparently ranger school involves a lot of things like running up and down a hill in the jungle, or doing pull-ups for many hours. What would be the parallel for this in the world of notebooks and keyboards? You’re sitting next to your friend, shackled together at the ankle. If you don’t meet your word count quota for the day, your friend dies. You’re sitting at your keyboard with someone standing next to you, holding a gun to your head. Okay, that probably doesn’t happen in real ranger school, but why not? I have to admit, I’d watch this movie. The truth is that the physical act of writing is easy enough that almost every adult and child in our culture can do it. Technically. People will write a thousand words just to give out a one-star product review. The madder they are, the more they’ll write, and heaven forfend if some restaurant doesn’t meet their expectations. Something weird happens to interfere, and many of those who want to write start thinking that they can’t. The point of a grueling experience like ranger school is that people sign up for it voluntarily because they’re looking for the biggest possible challenge. They want to find out if they’ve got the right stuff. They know they’ll come out the other side either fitter than they’ve ever been, or not. There’s no in-between state. Pass/fail. It’s also over quickly. Setting oneself up as a writer can be drawn out, dragged out over months and years. We look at someone like Henry Roth, who published a critically acclaimed novel at age 28, suffered writer’s block for 45 years, spent 15 years on his next book, and finally published again after a 60-year gap. Are there any other careers that would torment people with visions of what might have been? Someone who wanted a career of military service might be haunted by that sense of missed opportunity, but they could probably accept after sixty years that it wasn’t going to happen. Writing isn’t that way. Carpenter’s block is probably a kind of tool. (Checking) Yes, and not only that, apparently it’s also a good thing in this little game called Minecraft. A plumber with a block probably has a tool or some kind of chemical to drain it. Other professions take obstacles in stride. What is it about writing that feels different? What if there was in fact a school for it? What if there was a kind of boot camp that taught wannabe writers (and maybe other artists) how to deal with resistance? How to get around it? When I sat down today, I didn’t know what I was going to write about. Really I wanted a nap. I figured it would be good discipline to show up, sit down, and see what happened. If all I did was edit and format a few pieces, that would be progress. I physically sat down and a story came to me. At this moment, the same wandering character is appealing for my attention from the next table. I’ve done my part for the community by giving this person fifteen minutes of my best listening skills, and now I feel justified in clocking out. What I’ve done is to turn a distraction into a... something. An anecdote. I have a clear image in my mind of this character, a surf-talking old soldier who thinks that putting a shackle on your ankle might help you beat writer’s block. I have three pages of content. I have something that might eventually turn into something. Maybe this same person has a list of stories that might turn into incredible action films. Maybe if he sat down and wrote up some of his personal experience, he could be a hit machine. Maybe he’ll go off and advertise a super hardcore writer’s workshop. Maybe someone will read this and realize, all you really need to do is sit down and keep working until you’ve produced something, no drill instructor required. One of the great fantasy lifestyles of the last decade is that of the digital nomad. Right up there with the social media influencer, I think it’s going to prove to be more of a trend than an enduring occupation. Why? It’s challenging to do, that’s why.
For the past few years, I’ve taken to carrying a small Moleskine or similar bound notebook on trips. My goal has always been to keep a running journal, so I don’t have to lug a laptop around with me all day. It’s much easier to slip into a pocket and pull out, even when there’s only time for a paragraph at a time. The trouble with this system is that I have never successfully recorded an entire trip. I’ve tried, oh, I’ve tried. The same part of my identity that bought a locking diary at age nine feels this really strong urge to record everything for posterity, or at least my own personal dotage. As I get further and further behind in my chronicles, I start feeling more of a sense of urgency. I promise myself that I will “catch up” at the airport, on the plane on the way home, or, worst case scenario, in my own living room. It never happens. Sorry, Future Old Me! The other problem is trying to keep a blog up to date. In the past, I’ve written material weeks ahead of time and scheduled it to auto-post. Then I’ve posted about the trip from the comforts of home, with time to compile recollections and notes from my travel companions. Doing this from the road tends to interfere with the trip itself. You find yourself writing about writing, and then journaling about writing about writing. It’s a textual exercise in navel gazing. The point of travel is to see the world. How can someone do this while simultaneously writing about it, making a meta-trip of the trip? More and more time needs to be allotted to the record-keeping. If you’re into the Quantified Self movement, then you would also be recording your food log, hydration, exercise, hours slept, etc. If you’re a birdwatcher like me, then you’re also tallying sightings for your life list. That’s where the other voice pipes up, the voice that cries CARPE DIEM! and YOLO! (My inner voice is too old for that latter; I keep reading it as You Obviously Like Owls). Stop photographing everything, especially your lunch! Stop trying to fit your online persona’s parallel life onto social media while you yourself are walking in the steps of Today You! It’s a tightrope walk, a precarious balancing act between the living of the adventure and the artistic representation thereof. My fantasy has been to do this full time. How great it would be to be completely location independent and write while on the road! Let’s just drop everything and travel from place to place as the whim takes us. In the background, the big wet pleading eyes of our dog Spike and the benignant golden gaze of my little gray parrot Noelle stare us down. What then will become of us, they cry poignantly. Never love an animal, it will mess you up like nothing else. There should be hostels in the major cities of the world centered around animal rescues, where lonely animal-loving nomads can drop by for snuggle exchange. That’s what we’ll call it! Snuggle Exchange! There can even be cats that bat people in the face in the middle of the night, yowling for their 5 AM feeding while sleepy tourists respond “All right, all right already!” Sounds perfect. The real problem, and I’ve read this in the blogs of other nomads, is that seeing the world interferes with getting any kind of work done. A huge amount of time can be spent on the simple transactional aspects of travel, while normal chores like banking and grocery shopping and laundry still need to be done. You’re forever checking in and out of hotels, waiting at bus stops, packing and repacking luggage. It’s a huge part of the fun and the feeling that a real adventure is being had, but it’s also a recurring pain in the neck, sometimes literally. A flat pillow has been the cause of so many disappointing days and so many stupid quarrels, probably for several millennia. Didn’t Marcus Aurelius write about flat pillows? (Not looking that one up because I specifically remember him telling himself off about the desire for a warm soft bed). The other thing that goes well with pillows is the act of reading. On this trip as with all others, I have counseled Future Me that there won’t be as much time to read as usual, and to plan around at least a 50% reduction. Really it’s more like 90%. The time that Imaginary Me is supposedly reading a novel is also the time that Aspirational Me is supposedly writing in the little black journal, and in reality Today Me is trying to identify a flock of what will turn out to be jackdaws. There’s always a tradeoff, isn’t there? Why can’t I be Default Me and Aspirational Me at the same time? Why can’t there simply be three of me, one to do the great things, one to do the secret cute habits, and the third to write about it all and make it sound like the stuff of legend? We’re sort of pulling it off today. We walked in the woods, ate in a cafe, ventured into the countryside, saw some new birds, visited two castles, learned about history, tried new foods, bought a bag of custard donuts, read a few news articles, and now my mate is cooking dinner while I’m “working.” {tee hee, she went} It could be done, it could be done. It could be done with a smooth enough road and enough bus travel, enough convenience foods and a patient enough helpmeet. If nothing else, writing about it might convince others that living on the road isn’t always very adventurous, and the comforts of home are well worth appreciating. Another wild and crazy day at World Domination Summit!
The first thing that happened is that I followed through on my dare from Michael Guillebeau. I’ll tell the truth. I went to the event where David Fugate the literary agent was speaking, and took a ton of notes, and then at the end I had about a 50/50 mental split between DO IT NOW and WEASEL OUT THE DOOR CONVINCING MYSELF I’LL DO IT LATER. Then Guillebeau popped out and caught me! I stood in line and waited, and what they say about “my heart was hammering in my chest” is physically true. By the time I got my chance to speak, my legs were shaking and my stomach was rolling. I did it, though. I made my pitch. David Fugate said, “Tell Mike Guillebeau it was a success.” SO THAT HAPPENED Then I went to another book-related event, followed by FREE HUGS and then we went to the picnic. Somehow or other, I wound up hornswoggled into participating in some street magic. My friend guided me across the park, and who should be there? None other than Nate Staniforth! I completely wigged out, telling him how much I loved his book Here is Real Magic. He pulled an ink stamp off his arm, threw it at me through thin air, and suddenly an ink stamp appeared on my arm. COME ON, I said, as one does. If it had happened to someone else I wouldn’t have believed it. I got magicked on. This is more or less routine WDS. We’re about to go in for the main stage event, so that’s it for today. As for you? Go out there and look for some magic! Lemme tell ya a few things about research. First, you shouldn’t listen to anything I have to say, because I’m a blogger and you have no means of verifying any of my stated credentials. The only thing I can guarantee to you is that “my opinion” may or may not accurately state my actual opinion on any topic.
I may or may not be who I claim to be. I may in fact be an AI, a person who looks just like me and has my same name, or an unusually bright magpie that likes keyboards. Now that we have that cleared away: I have a bachelor’s degree in history. I “research” things all the time, because it’s how I like to spend my time. I’m motivated by curiosity. What I’m doing falls under different categories. They have official terminology. “Gathering string”: Reading and skimming a bunch of stuff at random, not knowing where it might lead, and possibly finding an interesting pattern. This is a lot like looking through your fridge and cobbling together a dinner out of leftovers, or shopping at a thrift store. What am I going to find? Dunno, but let’s keep looking! Gathering string doesn’t work as well if you have a specific outcome in mind. “Looking something up”: Checking information, like whether there is a location of a particular business nearby, or what restaurant options there are in a city we’re planning to visit. I might also look up the date that something happened, which historical figure invented something, or other verifiable data. “Reading”: Reading things that other people wrote. “Studying”: Trying to learn about something. For instance, recently I did a speech on Ignatz Semmelweis for my public speaking club. I wouldn’t claim to have done “research” because I don’t speak German and I lack expertise in medicine or public health. What I did do was to read half a dozen articles about Semmelweis and look for images from his time period. Most people would probably consider the work I did on this report to be “research,” but I would refer to it as “reading up on” something or “putting it together.” “Reporting”: Investigative journalism, such as finding out that someone lied about their credentials or accepted funding unethically. Reporting is based on verifiable information that is not readily available, possibly because someone is motivated to hide that information. “Original research”: Most of what I do as an historian is NOT original research. I know what it is, I know how to do it, and yet I generally have not done, nor claimed to do, original research. What would be an example of original research? Let’s say that I am extremely interested in the history of conspiracy theories. I am putting together a biography of Sir Edmund J. Whackaloon, noted conspiracy theorist. His chief claim to fame is the factual statement that “the Moon is made of green cheese.” (A factual statement says that something is a fact, even if that statement is demonstrably false. It has to be something that can be proved or disproved). While researching Sir Whackaloon, I note that a collection of his personal letters and diaries was donated to the Noted Archive as part of the Eminent Library. It’s been catalogued, but as far as I can document, nobody has actually read anything in this collection. *OOOOOOOOH* I ask for permission and go in to look over the special collection. While reading through it, I discover that Sir Whackaloon has kept a secret diary discussing his theories on performance art and mass hysteria. Over a period of eleven years, he had been pulling an elaborate prank, pretending to believe that the Moon is made of green cheese, just to see whether he could get anyone to believe him. Astounding! What I’ve done is to consult primary source documents, discover new information, formulate my own version of events based on this evidence, and make it public. Once my paper is edited, published, and peer-reviewed, it’s up for debate. Naturally, other Whackaloon scholars are going to dispute my formulation and try to refute it, and that’s all part of the game. Sir Whackaloon’s letters and journals are the primary source. My academic paper referring to this collection of letters and journals, that’s a secondary source. Someone might rely on my research because the materials I referenced have not been published and are not publicly available. A magazine article discussing the controversy over my research and that of other Whackaloon scholars, that’s, well, maybe you could call that a tertiary source. If someone then blogs about that article, and then several people comment about it, whatever the name is for that, it’s a separate category. One could do original scholarly research on blog comments and trolling, if one wore a respirator, gloves, and protective clothing. Primary sources generally are not available to the public. The vast majority of people do not conduct original research, unless we count whatever they’re growing on the leftovers they deposit in the office fridge. This is part of where the confusion about “research” comes in. Reading stuff off the internet is probably only going to count as research if you are *researching* the internet. Sociology, right? I have a few topics that I follow, such as robotics, medical innovations, and autonomous vehicles. I don’t research those things. I read articles about them. I have my own opinions and my own guesses about trends in those areas, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert and I know that my reading isn’t the same thing as research. I also have an investigation underway, a hypothesis about my personal health. I have some sleep issues, and I’m playing around with my behavior and my home environment to see if I can get some improvement. Even if I succeed, I can’t really call that “research” because it only applies to me. Whatever I come up with, it might be a starting point for someone else’s research, and that would have to involve at least a few hundred people to really count. It just isn’t a good idea for anyone to extrapolate and base their decisions on the personal opinion and anecdotal evidence of one single person. Especially without really knowing anything about who - or what - that person is. Researcher, crook, fabulist, actor, novelist, artificial intelligence, alien invader, bright magpie, or even a web-savvy Sasquatch. I got a makeover. A pretty major one, this is a makeover of such a scale that it’s really messing with my head.
How is it that changing something about your external appearance can make such a huge difference in how other people see you, and in how you see yourself? “You look thirty years younger!” cries the cosmetics artist. Thirty, really? I’m forty-three! That would imply that I’ve been going around looking older than my chronological age. Either that, or I now look like a middle-schooler, in which case I’m going to have to start listening to much peppier music. I relish my privacy and, as a writer, I like to think of myself as invisible. I’ve felt that it pays to be modest, maybe even inconspicuous. I can walk around the city and get a free pass from panhandlers, who nod courteously as I go by. Invisibility, though, isn’t our choice. My friend and mentor tells me, in no uncertain terms, that just because I feel invisible does not mean I am. “People notice you and make judgments about you, whether you realize it or not.” This is a harsh truth, but I am a proponent of radical honesty and I take it in. Whatever was true for me at other stages of life, today I am forty-three. I have aspirations that will not be met at my current level. If my goal is to perform in front of an audience, then I need to look suited to the task. I need to be stage-ready, and, arguably, I am not. The whole point of my existence up to this point has been about avoiding attention and staying out of the spotlight. Changing my look is letting go of that sense I have had, that feeling that I have the option to hang out in the shadows and be a passive observer. It’s been hard enough dealing with the physical changes I made as I became a midlife athlete. I went from a size fourteen to a size two. I can get away with wearing a bikini in public. When I do, I feel like I’m adopting a temporary persona: Vacation Pool Babe. Wearing a bikini in public in Las Vegas is not the same as wearing business casual at home. That’s my avenue to adjusting to my new post-makeover look. I can pretend that I’m someone else. I need a stage-ready persona that helps me feel like these are mere surface-level changes, that I have gained rather than lost options. I can still find privacy when I need it. I don’t have to physically be on stage and in front of people every minute of the day. There are no requirements to this new look other than maintenance a few times a year. Well, that, and the not inconsiderable technical skills involved in applying cosmetics. I remind myself that men wear stage makeup, too. Some men wear cosmetics every day, because they like it. I remind myself that a lot of people think this is fun! Honestly, having fun and looking pretty both feel like work to me. That might sound sad. What I mean is that when these come down as external requirements, it becomes self-conscious. It’s supposed to be “fun” to go to nightclubs, or watch team sports, but neither of those fun things are my style. I find myself asking, “Am I doing this right?” I’m more comfortable doing things that probably sound un-fun, like mud runs, martial arts, or public speaking. It’s definitely better not to wear makeup in martial arts, since it gets in your eyes, although I have worked out in a cocktail dress and a rhinestone bib necklace, and a stiletto heel can make a respectable improvised weapon. Not in the mat room, though. I remind myself that I wasn’t comfortable when I started any of those things, either. Surely eyeliner is no worse than a real black eye! Hair color is no worse than surfacing out of a water obstacle, dripping with mud. Public speaking as a hobby is what got me into this whole mess. The point of the first impression is that it carries so many unspoken messages. Did you show up prepared and on time? Do you look glad to be there? Do you know how to shake hands properly? Is your hair three colors of gray on top, but reddish at the tips for some unknown reason? Now I have to accept the reality that I’m also being evaluated on not just my clothes and shoes, but my hair and makeup as well. The terrible thing about all this is that I look fantastic. Objectively. My husband loves it. My best friend started squealing and hugged me. Even my barista noticed. Once upon a time, I was a chronically ill, broke, overweight, underemployed, divorced, sad brunette who lived in a cold, rainy climate. Now I’m a successful, fit, happily married... attractive redhead? Does “auburn” make you a redhead? Nearly twenty years later, I look younger than I did at twenty-five. This hair color makes my eyes look enormous, which is disconcerting, a feature that should properly have gone to an extreme extrovert who loves attention. My big blue eyes have always felt like something of an unfair burden, traits that I can’t put away or hide on demand. I myself can’t hide on demand, not really. I’m a writer transforming into a public performer. Many performers would like to go the other direction, developing their skills as lyricists, poets, playwrights, or memoirists. They can’t just put on glasses and some kind of special writer hat and make it happen. (If there were a special writer hat, I would definitely be wearing one, even in the shower). I remind myself that I’m lucky that all I really have left to do is to learn to live up to this made-over image. With the image reset comes the attitude reset. Can I inhabit the body of an objectively attractive person? Can I learn to handle the constant 21st-century expectations of photography and video, the headshots and the spontaneous selfies? We’re here to participate in the culture of our time. I want a meaningful existence in which I can contribute at the highest possible level. I want my legacy to be bigger than myself. If I have to be better-looking for that to happen, I suppose that’s a sacrifice I’ll have to make. An Audience of One is a very intriguing book about the artistic process. Srinivas Rao clearly dwells in the other realms. There are plenty of inspirational books in the world on creativity. This one speaks with assurance on the untapped wellspring.
For those of us who do a lot of public-facing work, there can be a tendency to develop a sense of obligation and turn our output into a chore. Rao says this focus on external outcomes (such as profit) can make the work boring. We return to our involvement in the process when we let go of attempting to control the outcome. One way of doing this is to make something purely for ourselves, to remember why we first fell in love with this particular form. A focus of An Audience of One is on people who do something creative only for themselves. No readers, no viewers, no customers, no followers or commenters, imagine! These examples of devoted creatives have a way of elevating more activities to the level of “art.” Maybe a home cook is more talented than a professional chef; how would anyone know? On the one hand, this perspective should give courage to novices. Art is good for you! What you do matters! It’s fine to do it for yourself and nobody else! Rao cites something a lot of readers will want to know more about, which is Mindfulness Based Art Therapy. Apparently making art has measurable, positive health effects on everything from heart rate and blood pressure to cortisol levels and bodily pain. On the other hand, the perspective that we should make our own art for ourselves alone, that’s a potent idea. What if we took it all the way? What if we really made every single last thing that’s been swimming in our fountains? What if we never held back, what if it all came out and kept coming out? What if we? Swam out full fathom? These are the parts of An Audience of One that compelled me the most. Rituals, power questions, activation energy. Identifying and eliminating your tolerations. Dream work. Setting intentions before sleep. Wow! Some of these chapters maybe could be full-length books in their own right. I loved An Audience of One. It pushed my barriers and made me feel that I can and should be doing more with my work. It reminded me that there is more potential in my craft and my process. Rao mentions having three books that you refer to at least once a month, and this may become one of mine. Favorite quotes: When we focus on end results, we essentially defeat one of the main benefits of creative work: to derive joy from the work itself. The work itself defeats resistance. It’s rare for anybody to proudly state that they did “nothing.” Hey habit nerds, here ya go! This is my own highly personalized system. How do I find the time in the day to do all the things I do? What is it that I do, anyway?
Over the course of a year, I put up five blog posts a week, review about 50 books (and read a couple hundred), put out a specialized tech newsletter for aerospace engineers five days a week, and record a podcast up to six days a week. I’m training in Krav Maga, Muay Thai, and situational combatives (a.k.a. weapons class). I do consulting work with chronic disorganization and hoarding. I’m an area director overseeing five regional clubs while I finish the requirements to become a Distinguished Toastmaster, and I’m also a club coach. I’m at my goal weight, I keep a clean house, and I journal every night. Believe it or not, these are just my side projects! There are some tricks involved with all of this, which I’ll share before I get all “inside baseball” on my actual routines and habits.
I started out as a classic ADHD-leaning, chronically disorganized person with some chronic health issues. It took several years to discover the hidden gifts of my situation. The first among these is to stop tolerating boring or unsatisfying uses of my time. The reason I do all the projects I do is that they interest me more than binge-watching anything, recreational shopping, or unstructured errands. I used to spend a lot of time poking around with different productivity systems, and at this point I’m pretty sure I’ve tried and rated them all. I do everything in time blocks. I publish about 1000 pages a year on my blog. Almost all of that is done on weekend mornings while I hang out at the cafe with my husband. He often has to bring his work laptop and do expense reports or that kind of thing, so it’s a way for us to be together on the same wavelength. My standard is to work three weeks ahead and auto-schedule so I don’t have to write or post on vacation. My husband travels quite a lot for business, so when he’s out of town, I work into the evening. When he’s home, we lounge around talking for hours. That’s my motivation for getting as much done as possible while he’s away. The tech newsletter is a natural outgrowth of my reading habit. It started because I was sharing so many articles with my husband that he wanted to pass along to his colleagues, that I finally just offered to format them and send them in daily batches. All I do is save the good stuff to a system of categorized folders, and then copy and paste them into a template. It takes about ten minutes a day and makes (us) look like a genius. Usually I do it while I eat breakfast. The podcast is a new part of my overall workflow. I’ve been challenged with it because I live next to a marina, in a tiny studio apartment, beneath a busy young family with a dog. There are perpetual construction projects, boat horns, weed whackers, car alarms, film shoots, and even a fashion model shooting a portfolio six feet outside my door. In other words, IT IS LOUD and I have to fit in recording sessions when it seems like it will be quiet enough for an hour. Martial arts training happens in a single hour-long time slot three to six days a week. It’s the main time-bound part of my routine. The warmups are HIIT (high intensity interval training), so they will continue to get more intense as my fitness level increases. The belt system provides a lot of structure and challenge. I train with my husband now, so it doubles as date night! Since we don’t drive, every time we go anywhere it’s a way to get something else done. Our commute back and forth to the gym is a bicycle ride along the beach, a fun and romantic part of our evening. Most of my time on the bus is my “helmet time” for outlining speeches, reading the news, and writing book reviews. If we had a car, how much of that would get done? Zero. It’s much, much easier and more efficient to maintain anything than to try to reach a goal. All I have to do to maintain my goal weight and keep my apartment organized is to avoid the basic pitfalls. Do roughly the same thing every day. Laundry on Monday and Thursday, keep the dishwasher loaded, clean the bathroom for 12 minutes every week, start the robot vacuum when I leave. Eat the same size of breakfast, lunch, and dinner most days. Boom, done. I currently use a Cossac day planner and... we’re getting married. Kidding, kinda. What I like about it the best is that it builds in a daily and weekly review, and that encourages strategic thinking. What did I attempt, did it work, and why or why not? With the amount of content I generate between the blog, the podcast, and my (ahem) ...other... projects, I need something very structured to track what I’m developing and posting and editing and formatting and illustrating and when. I check in when I first get up and also before I go to bed, with a longer weekly session on Sunday nights. That’s when I do my journaling, just a couple of minutes most days but sometimes several pages of rapid-fire ranting. I use my phone to capture random thoughts, blog topics, and podcast ideas. I’m also constantly bookmarking articles, downloading podcast episodes, or reserving library ebooks and audio books as I learn about them. When it’s time to kick back with some entertainment, I don’t have to spend the “junk hours” scrolling that most people do, because that has happened a few seconds at a time throughout the week. The most important thing I do with my phone is to set my notifications and quiet hours to distract me as little as possible, while unsubscribing from email and blocking spam callers every single day, like smacking mosquitos. I don’t have a “morning routine” because every day of the seven, I have a slightly different schedule. I certainly do not wake up early! I don’t meditate, I don’t put yak butter in my coffee or whatever, I don’t do “cleanses” (except my house), and I don’t do social media detoxes. If anything, I’d say what works the best for me is that I don’t spend five hours a day watching television, I don’t spend two hours a day on social media, I rarely eat snacks or restaurant food, and I sleep as much as I possibly, possibly can. I work outside of the time dimension as much as I can get away with, trying to make clocks and calendars more or less irrelevant to how I work. Steven Pressfield has done it again. The Artist’s Journey is another touchstone so condensed and powerful that simply looking at the cover can reignite the inspiration it originally sparked.
I got chills as I read this book. Yes, nod, I agree, yeah, OH WAIT, that changes everything! Unable to dispute any of his assertions, I find myself led along by Pressfield until suddenly confronted with some seriously mind-altering concepts about what it means to be a working artist. If you haven’t read The War of Art yet, what is stopping you? Artist, non-artist, it doesn’t matter. Pressfield does a phenomenal job of describing the Resistance, that inner feeling that stops us from doing anything interesting or important. I find it highly relevant that he breaks through his own lifetime of procrastination and irrelevance by washing a sink full of dirty dishes. Recognizing that feeling when it comes up makes it much easier to take action and break free. Carrying on from there, what do you do after you’ve learned how to dispel the Resistance most of the time? The Artist’s Journey carries on from that point, explaining in practical terms how someone can find and draw down that steady stream of creative inspiration. Pressfield assures us that no work is too inconsequential, that everything we make matters, because it is the work itself that makes us. I’m still very much under the spell of this book and I can’t stop flipping back and forth through it. Like a couple of his others, I know I’ll read it again and refer to it often. This one is a keeper. Favorite quotes: We have wasted enough years avoiding our calling. “I don’t have a spirit raccoon.” |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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