Neither a Leader nor a Follower

Daily writing prompt

Are you a leader or a follower?

I am not a leader. I am not a follower. I am the person who works the best and fastest on my own.

I have some leadership opportunities, chairing one committee in my department. I don’t feel I do a good job of it. People let me do it, but I feel like (American proverb here) a fish out of water when I do it.

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As a follower, I am impatient. Mercifully, my chair and assistant chair believe in short faculty meetings, so following is not

so painful. I do what I’m told, so I’m not a bad follower, I guess, but it’s not my natural state of being.

I really want to be in my own office, completing tasks from my personal checklist. When I have scheduled time, I’m a rockstar, checking things off my list. I prefer brainstorming on my own to sitting in a meeting. And when I brainstorm with others, I prefer they be an equal to either a superior or a follower.

Left to my own, I’m a loner, I guess. If I have to choose between leader and follower, I would be a follower, but it’s not my natural state. I’d rather work on my own, thank you.

Work Never Ends

First day of my break, and I have a faculty meeting over Zoom. How does that even work?

Eat More Veggies

Daily writing prompt

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

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Small improvement? I can’t think of one. But one big improvement I could make in my life is to eat more vegetables.

I don’t eat healthy enough. I eat a lot of processed food because we don’t have a lot of time or energy to cook at the end of the day. Between Richard’s job and his share of the housework, and my work and writing, we just don’t have the energy to do more than open a jar of spaghetti sauce or eat some faux lobster dip with crackers. It’s a wonder that my stomach hasn’t reached up and strangled me at some point.

It’s not that I dislike vegetables, even. When I eat vegetables, they’re the best thing on earth if ripened well and not overripe or spoiled. I have very good tastebuds and I can tell if a tomato or cucumber is a bit off. Right now I’m craving an Indian vegetarian dinner of channa masala, saag with turnips, and chutney. Or a Thai cucumber salad and some green chicken curry. Or a stir-fry with peanut sauce.

We’re putting in a vegetable garden this year. I hope that entices me to eat more vegetables. I’m also putting in an herb garden for the same reason.

Revamping one’s diet is not a little change, but a big one. Wish me luck.

In Protest of Trump

Daily writing prompt

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

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As an American with progressive leanings and a desire for globalism, the public figure I agree with the most is Donald Trump. I could throw the rest of his cabinet in for good measure, but I’m going to focus on Trump today.

I’m going to spare you readers the commentary on his personal attributes of vanity, venality, and probably narcissism, because this essay is supposed to be about disagreement.

I disagree with Trump’s overuse of executive orders to reshape the government, bypassing Congress. The legislative branch exists for a reason, and is vital to our democracy.

I disagree with Trump’s viewpoint that the purpose of government is as a despotic tool of revenge. There are plenty of examples of this, from revoking security clearances for past Democratic opponents to firing prosecutors for their roles in prosecuting January 6th rioters.

I disagree with Trump’s denial of due process toward people he deems as undocumented aliens. Due process exists for a reason — it’s in the Constitution.

I disagree with Trump’s dismantling of DEI programs, which sought not to favor women and people of color, but to give them equal access. I disagree with Trump’s efforts to rewrite public history, removing these people’s accomplishments.

I disagree with Trump’s every Cabinet pick, as they seem to be chosen as the least competent people for the jobs.

I disagree with Trump’s destructive purge of government employees and organizations, especially those which protect Americans. Cutting government spending can be done thoughtfully, as was evidenced in the Clinton administration.

I do not just disagree with Trump. I protest his heavy-handed, anti-American actions.

My Career Plan

Daily writing prompt

What is your career plan?

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I’m 62 years old, an associate professor, and five years from retirement. This is the time where people with careers coast until retirement rather than thinking about promotion-type ventures.

What is my career plan? For the most part, doing the best job I can until I retire. This means teaching, a bit of research, revamping classes, and possibly writing up a new class. There’s going to be a little bit of helping with curriculum revision, and always summer interns. Nothing new or surprising on that front.

I don’t want to go up for full professor because of the stressors of paperwork and worthy research — I have tenure; that was what I needed. I need life balance.

As far as the writing goes (I guess that’s a hobby rather than a career, but I’m going to talk about it anyhow) I am going to keep writing. When I retire, I will have more time to write and will have to write to keep my sanity in retirement. I don’t do nothing well. Maybe I will find the secret to promoting my work. Maybe I will write a best-seller. I don’t foresee anything else unless I turn a hobby into a more considerable operation, such as going professional with my moulage. I haven’t gotten to that quality; it would be fun if I had.

That’s my career in a nutshell. At my age, it’s not exciting.

Happy May Day!

I used to celebrate May Day — not the traditional Labor holiday (that’s celebrated in September in the US lest someone think we’re communists). I celebrated the genteel holiday where people flirted by leaving baskets of flowers on someone’s porch, ringing the doorbell, and running before one got caught. It wasn’t as genteel when I did it — I remember jumping over the railing of a long set of outdoor stairs about halfway down. I never understood the holiday — the idea was if the other person caught you, they would kiss you. Why am I avoiding this? Why would I deliver a basket to someone I didn’t want to kiss? It seems really passive-aggressive. It made more sense when I was seven.

I haven’t delivered May baskets for years — the idea being I’m much too busy with work and writing. I also don’t know if my husband would appreciate one, to be honest. And why would I run away from him?

This year, May Day is becoming a protest day, where people are gathering to protest our president. This is a good use for May Day. I am not near a protest, or else I’d get out with the rest of them.

What I am Doing for My Summer Vacation

First, it’s not really a summer vacation. Although I’m on a 10-month appointment as a faculty member, I also work over the summer doing internships. It’s not a big deal, though, doing internships — it’s mostly monitoring the students through assignments and touching base with them, and going on site visits. I don’t get a lot of money for internships, because this year I only have ten or eleven interns.

Other than internships, I hope to write. A lot. I have a book that wants to be written, and it’s starting to get interesting. I will have to edit it good so that I think it’s interesting from the start, but I’m in the ‘getting things down on paper’ stage. I wonder if I have more books left in me, and I realize I’m sitting on at least two ideas. So we will see.

I’m also gardening the best I can. I have a tangle of seedlings in the grow room that I have to put out to harden off soon. I would say most of what I’m planting is herbs, because my sister gave me a ton of herb seeds for Christmas. And I like fresh herbs. There will be a few vegetables because they are nice to eat. I’m hoping I can motivate to weed like I’ve had trouble with just about every year I’ve put in a garden.

I hope to do a writing retreat in KC sometime. Ideally (a hint to my husband) a trip to The Elms, a massage, and some grotto time. I would settle for a trip to 21c, some Broadway Cafe time, and a quick visit to see some kittens at Whiskers Cat Cafe. Or someplace totally new, as long as there’s a coffeehouse nearby and some decent places to eat.

Nothing fancy on the plans here. I just hope to have a good summer.

The Last Concert I’ve Been To

Daily writing prompt

What was the last live performance you saw?

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The last concert I’ve been to was the Gesualdo Six, a British a cappella group who performs vocal music from medieval to modern compositions. Mostly older.

The concert was held in McCray Auditorium, which is housed in an older building whose lobby looked like a courtyard. Very English Gothic, I’m told. Not a bad building for the Gesualdo Six.

The Gesualdo Six were fabulous. I have an eclectic taste in music, but one of the things I love is good harmony. I can’t play-by-play the concert like I was a music critic, but the soaring harmonies are what I will remember.

The concert I saw before the Gesualdo Six? The Hu, a Mongolian heavy metal band. Did I mention I have eclectic taste in music?

Weather Ahead

Today is supposed to be a stormy day, the kind of storm that comes with a side of three-inch hail and possibility of tornados. The worst of it is going to be north of us, I understand, but we are in an “enhanced” zone.

I hope the storm waits until we’re all home. This afternoon, I am at work for meetings, and I don’t want to deal with sitting in Colden Hall’s basement waiting for the all-clear. I’m CERT-trained, which means I can act in mass disasters to stabilize injuries and reduce the chaos. I hope to never use my training.

If I’m at home for the bad weather, my husband and I will go to the basement and wait for it to pass. The city has sirens, but we also have weather apps on our phones to alert us. The cats will follow us down. The basement is unfinished and cluttered, but there are chairs downstairs for us.

I hate tornado weather. I can handle severe thunderstorms, even though one took out our peach tree and a length of fence recently. I don’t like the destructive level of tornado weather. Towns get taken out by tornados, and I don’t want to be in the middle of one of them.

Working in a Test Kitchen

Daily writing prompt

What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?

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In my undergraduate years, my major was Foods in Business, a major designed to position people into the food industry. This was not what I ultimately did with my life, having discovered Family and Consumption Economics, and my life’s work, my junior year. But as an undergraduate, I wanted to work in a consumer affairs position, or even better, in a test kitchen.

I took a class my senior year called Food Science, where we spent the first half of the semester learning the chemical and physical properties of food, and the second half of the semester testing hypotheses about food. Mine was testing for substitutes for butter in baking poundcakes — margarine, butter flavored shortening, and regular shortening with butter buds flavoring. (Note: people preferred shortening over everything, including butter.) I fell in love with test kitchen work and, if it weren’t for the fact that I loved the thought of graduate school more, I might have gone into test kitchen work.

So, if I had a choice of any job to step into for a day, I would walk into a test kitchen. I think I remember the basics 40 years later — standardized recipes where one weighs all the ingredients on a scale (including a very sensitive one for small amounts like baking soda and seasoning), tasting rooms with good ventilation, white walls, and neutral lighting, testing of texture, crumb, and viscosity using simple and complicated testing. I think I can do it for a day with very little coaching.