My University

Daily writing prompt

What colleges have you attended?

I have only attended one university for my education, and that is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

University of Illinois was an excellent school. I didn’t pick it because of reputation; I didn’t think that way as an undergraduate. I picked it because I visited Champaign-Urbana with my dad once and fell in love with the towns. Like in many other parts of my life, I fell into a good decision.

In academia, it is strongly discouraged to attend the same university for graduate school as for undergraduate. However, my undergrad was in a significantly different field than my graduate degree, so the intellectual stagnation of such a move wasn’t an issue. My undergrad degree was in Foods in Business, a food industry-focused major. My graduate degree was in Family and Consumption Economics, which is about people and their decisions about money. It involves everything from decisions people make about whether to move to take a job to things we can tell about a country by what they buy.

Photo by Gu00fcl Iu015fu0131k on Pexels.com

I was recruited into graduate school. I was taking family economics as an elective and fell in love with it. Family economics is a class about financial decisions a family makes, from who has the say in purchasing decisions to family job migrations to child support. After class, I asked the professor if there were graduate degrees in the field, and she escorted me down the hall to the department office and introduced me to the chair.

In the 11 years I spent at University of Illinois, I became familiar with its spaces. I ran across campus to get to my classes, napped in the South Union (with many others), drank coffee at various places in campustown, and moved into my own office in Bevier Hall eventually.

I went back to Champaign-Urbana a few years back, and I hardly recognized the place. The campus town now features tall buildings which give the streets a claustrophobic feel. They are filled with high-end apartments for students, whereas the undergrads in my time lived much more modestly. I do not feel at home there anymore; I could not take a nap in the South Union anymore, as the lounges have disappeared. The cafeteria is now a food court. I know it’s a natural thing to be disappointed in the places you once dwelt because of changes, but I didn’t believe it until I stepped on campus again. It had been over twenty years, however; time flows on.

The Hat

Daily writing prompt

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

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When I was ten years old, my mother made a denim cap, the type with several segments and a button on top, very fashionable at the time. She made it from scraps of denim, so that the colors were all subtly different, and there were pieces with a segment of pocket or a rivet. It was lined with red bandana material. The hat was 1970s cool. This hat below, basically, but in denim:

From the ARAN website, https://www.aran.com/donegal-tweed-mens-driving-cap-charcoal?sku=0000030849-000097138&utm_source=x&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=21937313969&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAj9m7BhD1ARIsANsIIvBve43PE00qfrJ37TQDIhmtjw742rU52-ul6Ka9OqpcgY3UBUGqcJcaAnqbEALw_wcB

Much to my mother’s frustration, I couldn’t be parted from it. She made it, but neither she nor my dad wore hats. I fell in love with the hat, and if they didn’t want it, I did.

I didn’t wear the hat to school, but I wore it everywhere I could. It became my hat, even if it was a little big for me at first. My sister was quite tired of it. My parents asked if I was thinking of getting married in it.

The hat went to college with me. By then, it was starting to show wear. The elastic in the band gave out and the denim on the band was wearing thin. Yet it still came with me and I wore it, although I wore it less often. By graduate school, I wore it only occasionally, and the band was threadbare. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, but it was too worn to wear.

I finally threw it away when I moved to Maryville 24 years ago. The cap lasted 25 years, longer than expected for a garment. I have seen store-bought caps like it, but none of high enough quality or panache. It was a one-of-a-kind item, and I miss it sometimes.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2025!

Things to think about in the New Year:

Resolutions are made to be broken; SMART goals are made to be flexible.
Happiness doesn’t come from a store.
The best exercise is the one you’ll actually do.
Failure is an opportunity to learn.

It’s going to be a rough year for Americans when the new government comes in, if the government gets to do all the things they want to do.

Despite that, there is room for resistance:
- Take care of the people who fall through the cracks
- Write to your elected officials and let your voice be heard
- Practice kindness
- Don’t give in to ‘divide and conquer’
Don’t submerge yourself in despair

New Years Celebrations

Today is New Year’s Eve in Western countries. I know other cultures have other days for new year’s celebrations, but this is mine.

Do I have New Year’s resolutions? Not really, but over the next two days, I try to include all things that I would like to continue over the year. Some will be the habits I want to start; others the habits I’d like to keep. So I will write at least a little, walk a bit, drink coffee, and the like. It’s a superstition of sorts, a reminder of what is important.

We will eat good luck foods. The ones we have slated are pork (German), noodles (Chinese), and pickled herring (Scandinavian). Not simultaneously. We have Chinese peanut butter noodles on the menu, and that’s one of my favorite comfort foods, so I’m all in.

Every year, we have a Lord of the Rings marathon starting on New Year’s Eve. I’m not tired of it yet. We don’t stay up till midnight, because I need my sleep and my body is picky about when I get it. We don’t party because we’ve always thought New Year’s parties are depressing.

So if you wanted to know how two old nerds spend their New Year, here you go.

By the way, Reclaiming the Balance goes live tomorrow!

My Biggest Challenge

Daily writing prompt

What are your biggest challenges?

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My biggest challenge is my bipolar disorder. Right now, I’m on an even keel and have been for a long while. No rages, no glitches in judgment, no loss of conscientiousness, no desire to sleep all day, no weepiness. None of this despite a change in medication. But I feel like I’m overdue. Maybe it’s just superstition.

Hypomania scares me more than depression; I have gone to work despite deep depressions in the past. I can work through hypomania, but I’m more likely to do something I find embarrassing. One time I CC’ed an email when I should have BCC’ed, which sounds minor, but I broadcasted the mailing list for an anonymous survey. And I did it again to apologize; the apology itself bordered on emotional meltdown. The reverberations went all the way up to the Board of Regents and I had to go through a disciplinary action (some training and a “Don’t Do This Again”.)

My bipolar could be so much worse. As a Type 2, I don’t have the level of mania that truly disrupts life, but I have all the depression. That’s bad enough. The hypomania is bad enough. It’s the biggest challenge in my life.

Old Tunes and Nostalgia

Daily writing prompt

What makes you feel nostalgic?

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The music of my childhood makes me feel nostalgic. I was born in 1963, and my childhood was the 60s and 70s, with high school graduation in 1981.

To be specific, though, it’s not just any music of my childhood. The Beatles, surprisingly, don’t make me feel nostalgic, nor does hard rock or disco. The Top 40 radio format doesn’t make me sentimental, nor does easy listening. 80s and later music doesn’t make me nostalgic. Specifically, it’s singer-songwriter music from the 60s and 70s, as defined by Apple Music, that makes me nostalgic.

Singer-songwriter music comprises folk music and rock well-known for its lyrics. Its instrumentation often involves acoustic instruments, sometimes augmented by instruments like harmonica. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Janis Ian, and Judy Collins are examples of the genre. Not all singer-songwriters give me nostalgic vibes — I was not exposed to John Prine or Leonard Cohen as a child, for example.

If I had to pick one song that makes me nostalgic, it would be Helpless by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The song is about nostalgia, so that makes sense. Neil Young’s voice keens over the fiddle and piano singing about his childhood and how “the chains are locked and tied across the door”, because we can’t go back.

In a way, I literally can’t go back. I have aphantasia, or an inability to visualize in my mind. Visually, my memory is a series of snapshots which I only get to look at for a split-second, and they’re blurry. I remember from a narrative, where I tell myself the story, and by the feelings in my body. Nostalgia is a clutching of my heart, a longing.

Midwestern Female Syndrome Redux

My novel Reclaiming the Balance comes out January 1st, and I’m feeling pretty blase about it. I had an online celebration for the first two books but found it awkward (just as I would a real book launch party, I suspect). I don’t throw myself parties well; I haven’t had parties for any of my milestone birthdays, for which I am relieved.

I find myself craving attention, but I feel embarrassed when I get it. I’d love the recognition as long as I don’t have to be there for it (“We had a party for you. It went great.”) This must be part of the phenomenon I have named ‘Midwestern female syndrome’ where one feels the need to be inwardly perfect while maintaining an external shell of mediocrity.

So I will mark New Year’s Day with a note in the blog, on Facebook and Blue Sky and maybe Threads. I highly suggest reading the book, although I would recommend the first two (Gaia’s Hands and Apocalypse) first.

Thoughts on the Road (about writing)

We decided to stay in Des Moines overnight to break the trip back into a couple of days. Des Moines is a comfortable big city; I could live here. Richard, on the other hand, is worried about the snowy weather, which we are not having right now. It’s 46 degrees out and perpetually rainy. We’re waiting out the dense fog advisory south of us, so we’re at a Starbucks so I can write.

I’m bouncing ideas off Richard for a future novel in the Hidden in Plain Sight series. Apparently six is not enough. I like the characters in the series too much to quit writing. Right now, it involves the desert commune, Hearts are Mountains, and threats to the Archetypes there. If you’re preternatural beings with lots of power, this shouldn’t be much of a problem, right? But there’s the part where you don’t want to reveal your true, near-immortal identity. And the part where you used to be guardians of the humans, charged with keeping their ancestral memories, but as guardians you also can’t allow yourselves to be killed. The threat extends to the first child born in the commune, and the collective is immoderately protected of him… The story needs much more thought, but leave it to say there are problems with just killing the aggressors, and problems in not killing them. This is just an idea. There are other ideas, and we have another 2.5-hour drive to come up with them.

It would be nice if this story idea would break my writers’ block. I have been taking a break from writing because it’s not coming easily for me. I’m fighting the usual misgivings that come with being a writer. I have heard I would have these misgivings even if I were a writer on a contract like few lucky writers are.

Does the world need to hear my stories? Probably not as much as I need to tell them. But I always keep hope.

Traveling

We’re traveling back today, so this is going to be a short entry. I would have skipped it but I don’t want to break my posting streak.

I’m going to have time to work on classes when I return. More days with a flexible schedule will be welcome. Spring semester will get here soon enough.

Happy Holidays

Wishing all of you peace and joy whatever holidays you celebrate. I’m in a cabin in my Christmas pajamas enjoying the fire in the fireplace. Richard has gone out to get coffee.

Tomorrow the festivities will be over and we will drive the seven hours back to Missouri, and there will be work to do. But I will carry with me the feeling of comfort in this moment.