My first paying gig was as an elf for the Marseilles, IL school district my junior year of high school. I don’t put that on my resume.
My first real job was the summer before my freshman year of college, where I was a fast-food worker. My co-workers once locked me in the walk-in freezer.
Jobs during my undergraduate years: kitchen help at Papa Del’s Pizza; storeroom supervisor for Bevier Hall Cafeteria, all at University of Illinois.
Jobs during my graduate years: Teaching/Research/Administrative Assistant, Family and Consumer Economics Department, University of Illinois (various years); 2nd cook, Y Eatery (Thai/Italian eatery); typist for a Psychology computer lab.
This is what we ate at family-style lunch on Fridays at Y Eatery.
Professional career post-grad: Assistant Professor, Consumer Economics, SUNY Oneonta; Assistant/Associate Professor, Human Services, Northwest Missouri State University.
And I suppose I can count “writer”, even though I’ve made very little money on that so far.
About my trip, all I have to say is “Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, but I presented my poster and got home”. It involved paying for another ticket to keep my husband and I on the same flight home, a delay causing us to miss our connecting flight, and me passing out the morning of my presentation. And I caught up on my sleep all day yesterday, which my psychiatrist would caution against, but the late nights traveling took a toll on me.
Now to get back into writing. I had a weird dream which almost turned into a book, but I thought it would be too cheesy because the fantasy angle was a bit thin and there was a vampire. And a court full of potential victims under a geas to stay and not kill the vampire. And the chosen girl revenging her father masquerading as a adenoidal, unintelligent servant girl. And at least three romance tropes: fake relationship, enemies to friends, and time travel. I don’t know if I could write her without her becoming a Mary Sue, at least in part because she’s the only one without the geas. And there were Edsels. And jousting. Did I mention the vampire? Not all dreams should become stories. (Spoiler: She does not fall in love with the vampire. The vampire is the bad guy, not just misunderstood.)
I’m back from the break feeling somewhat discombobulated, which is how air travel leaves me. I traveled through an airport once that had a “recombobulation room”, and I now wish all airports had them. San Francisco had a “quiet room” which I wished I had time to spend in. Now I need to be recombobulated before I write again. The goal is to do Starbucks and writing tomorrow. And to luxuriate in doing nothing today.
I haven’t been on an airplane for three or four years, but it’s inescapable when part of one’s job is to present research at professional conferences, something I have shirked for a couple years through loopholes. But now it’s time, with a trip to a conference in San Francisco.
The thing I hate the most is logistics. I can’t just plan a trip for two (my husband comes with me) and get reimbursed for travel. Instead, I have to use the university credit card to book my flight while simultaneously booking my husband’s flight, not on the university credit card, so we can get the same flight. I did this on my iPad while in the school office (The School of Health Sciences and Wellness, which the Psych department is part of, and I’m part of the Psych Department.)
I am not proud to say I made a mistake and put myself on a flight a day later, which had to be fixed this morning and cost us $288 extra because, like all faculty, I have to find the cheapest flights, which are economy class. I had to buy a new ticket for the return flight and could not cancel the old one. Imagine my aggravation. It’s all my fault; logistics is a weak point with me.
Then there’s packing, which isn’t too bad as long as I remember to pack everything in the car.
Then there’s waiting. That’s my least favorite part. I have to run a couple of errands before I go (including picking up a precious prescription).
Then the airport. Air travel in the US has become much more complex since I started traveling, and I’m grateful for heightened security, but it is a pain.
And finally, there’s motion sickness. (Yes, I have meds). And wondering if the door’s going to fall off your Boeing jet.
I now understand why people drink when they travel.
In my writing, in my teaching, and in my everyday life, I espouse the message that diversity in people enriches life.
People have always considered me “different”. Some of this may be because of my lifetime of bipolar disorder, but much of it isn’t. I am not autistic, so it isn’t that. Maybe I’m just “weird”, being creative, not interested in fashion, awkward, a little loud, and as much at home in my round body as my clumsiness will let me be. I dance in the grocery store when nobody is listening, I find humor in absurdity, and I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of edible weeds. Oh, and I write, and writers are weird enough on their own.
I believe the world needs diversity. People need to have different philosophies, different bodies, different colors, different customs, different viewpoints, different orientations, different likes, different loves. If they don’t hurt others, their differences are vital for our human ecosystem. Evolution counts on difference; so does personal growth. We grow by coming into contact with people’s differences, if we’re willing to grow at all.
It’s hard to be different, because people fear differences. I think they most fear being found “wrong” or “inadequate” themselves — “If this other person is okay, does this detract from me?” That’s not how difference works. You be you, and I’ll be me, and the world will be richer.
I’m writing live from Kauffman Center, in an atrium filled with light, feeling underdressed for the occasion. I am on the nerd side of the foyer because I’m here for Sci-Fi Spectacular.
Light-Filled Foyer, sci-fi style.
My husband is here for the music; I’m here for a bucket list item; seeing John DeLancie* in person. No, I won’t get to meet him.
In the meanwhile I’ve just had lunch at Jerusalem Cafe, and before that, coffee and editing at Broadway Cafe. Before that, a ninety-minute drive with classical music. A near perfect day. To be perfect, Richard would have to let me blast Adam Ant** full-blast on the way home.
I’m not totally kidding. Right now, I live in the middle of a bat colony, which seems to have established itself in my attic. I’m not totally kidding about that, either; the Public Health Department considers my house a bat colony. Over the past several years, I have found about 14 bats in the house, having taken several to Public Health to be tested. They’re tired of me — Public Health, that is. (I don’t know about the bats). They have declared my bat colony free of rabies, however.
The number of bats that I’ve had to deal with over the years has actually resulted in reducing my fear of rabies in a real-world example of systematic desensitization. Be in the same house with a bat and not get bit? Check. Live with a bat-hunting cat? Keep them in quarantine and then give them a vaccination. Check. Almost step on a dead bat in the living room? Check. Pick up the dead bat with heavy gloves? Check. Worst case scenario? Get the rabies shots. Hasn’t happened yet.
I’m not crazy enough to adopt a bat as a pet, because they’re cute but they carry rabies, which means my attic colony is not without risk. And I want the colony out of there, which will happen soon while we repair the soffits on the old house that allowed this.
I think there’s a third choice not mentioned here. I am neither a leader nor a follower, but a — what would you call it in one word — a loner?
That’s not the right word, evoking as it does gunmen in warehouses. What I mean to say is that I go in my own direction, work independently whenever possible. I tend to be an impatient person, and want to get right to business. I used to be in a department where the first 15 minutes of any meeting was spent with conversations that went like:
“I saw (name of former student) the other day. Remember her?” “Wasn’t she related to (this other person)?” “She married that farmer out in (name of town) last year.” That drove me up a wall, especially as a new person who didn’t know who (name of former student) was. But most of all, it bothered me because it was not on the agenda.
I have been the leader (of a committee in my department) and a follower (most other times I’ve been in groups). As a leader, I tend to feel impotent because I can’t get the group to make a decision. And as a follower, I get impatient. I find myself pretty predictable, on the other hand, and I can brainstorm and chug along to solve problems.
So I’m an independent, happiest solving problems and making plans by myself. How does this work out in marriage? My husband and I have an egalitarian marriage, so we’re neither leaders or followers, and that’s the way I like it.
One of the recommended budgeting strategies for couples is what is known as “mad money”, or money allocated to each spouse that they don’t have to account for. They can spend it on anything they want* without recriminations from the other spouse. I have always said there are two different types of discretionary purchases — “mine” and “stupid”.
What I do with my mads is save it. Usually for some big technological marvel down the road. I spent my last accumulated money on an iPad Air 5th Gen, (circa 2022) gently used/refurbished. It does a good job of most of what I need, which is composing novels on Scrivener and surfing the net. It does sometimes seem a bit slow when I’m posting pictures for social media on Loomly, but I’m not sure if that’s my iPad or the wi-fi at Starbucks.
I have had that iPad for 15 months. I know this because I started saving my mads as soon as I bought it, with my goal again being “something technological”. I’m at the age where my knick-knacks are barely contained by curio cabinets, and I am fashion-backward. Therefore my reward to myself will always be technology, something useful and cool.
When I heard of the new iPads coming out, especially that it was going to be an exciting product revamp, I listened for the rollout, and — wow. The new iPad Airs with the M2 chip, the better display, the landscape front camera …
And then, I looked at the iPad Pro with its M4 chip, clearly overkill when it comes to my needs. All the features of the iPad Air, with a few more, and a faster, more powerful chip. Way overkill.
Way within my budget, given that I would be selling my old iPad to my husband and getting a bit of technology budget money. In fact, I thought I’d be paying Pro prices for my new Air. Rationally, the Air was the better choice.
Or was it?
I had been replacing my technology at a rate of once every two years because I found myself up against a slight slowdown and my expectation of needing power for graphics (Photoshop, Canva, Loomly) applications. If I could draw, I would be doing the artwork for my book covers, and I delve in Sketchup to draw maps of my settings.
I was losing money due to depreciation of the machines (the $600 iPad I bought being valued a year or so later at $180)
Because of the prior point, I wanted to keep the iPad for longer, maybe four years, before upgrading and get all the value out of it. The iPad Pro with its M4 chip, from what I could tell from iPad upgrade cycles, would be as good or better than the subsequent iPad Air for at least three years. If the Pro had contained the M3 chip, I probably would have stuck with the Air.
Only $150 of the difference between the Air and the Pro of similar specs was paid by my savings.
I had saved my money for the new big thing, and the Pro is definitely a new, big thing.
I value performance. If I can afford performance and delayed obsolescence, I’m going to go there.
I bought the Pro. It might be that this is my mid-life crisis sportscar, I don’t know. This post might just be wild justification, and in the long run I may regret spending so much on what is, basically, a tool for my writing and an adjunct for my leisure.
It’s supposedly coming in on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to it!
*Except maybe drugs and prostitution, but those aren’t a budget issue per se.
I’ve been writing for twelve years. I started, strangely, three months after being diagnosed with bipolar 2, which I hadn’t realized till today. I know I didn’t start writing as a coping mechanism or as character insertion (my first characters were not me) and I didn’t write about being bipolar. I think I started writing because being treated for bipolar helped me focus on continuous tasks instead of pouring all my energy on the whim of the moment.
I was not a good writer at first — I wrote each chapter as if they were separate episodes, like short stories strung together. I didn’t feel like I wrote an overarching plot. The novels (I use the term loosely) I wrote then I have had to revise several times such that only the characters are the same. I learned a lot from revising them.
My first draft is not my novel. Over the years, the novels have needed less and less rewriting, but there are always things to fix in second and third (and fourth, and …) drafts.
Developmental editors are an important part of your writing toolbox. It is worth paying for them.
There are three ways to write a novel: Plotting, pantsing, and plantsing.
Plotting: an organized outline at the beginning, and following the outline.
Pantsing: writing it as one goes along, without the outline.
Plantsing: writing with a rough outline but pantsing through the chapters.
I am a plantser.
Scrivener is a great program for composing my work, especially plantsing.
Scrivener arranges itself around a chapter format and a synopsis form that I use to guide my chapters. I use it like pantsing with training wheels.
One can get templates for Scrivener novel-writing that incorporate plotting frameworks, such as Save the Cat and Romancing the Plot.
ProWritingAid was another investment I don’t regret — my grammar has improved in ways I hadn’t considered before. I have lessened my passive verb structure massively.
Writing is the easy and fun part. I still don’t think I have the hang of promotion (and this blog is part of my proof of that.)
My favorite novel is always the one I just finished.
The most important thing I learned? That I can write. The second? That there’s a whole lot of luck in being discovered, and luck hasn’t come to me quite yet.
I feel like I could have learned more in 12 years, and maybe I have, but these are the biggest things I can think of. I hope they’re helpful to someone!
Usually, summer for me is a free-fall. For externally required work, I have the internships (now up to 13 students) and even then, the class has a huge amount of flexibility. I can grade the assignments (which arrive in dribs and drabs, as everyone has a different time schedule) and set up site visits with some leeway. There’s one conference I’m presenting at a poster session for, at the end of the month. Absolutely required.
Then there are the things I should get done before the fall semester, which are tempting to put off till the end of the summer. I have two new classes I’m teaching (one I used to teach 10 years ago, another I got from another instructor) this fall that I should prep for. It would tempt me to take a vacation for this first part of summer and vegetate. I have done it in the past, usually because I get depressed at the end of the school year.
This year I’m trying something different — I’m structuring my days. In the morning, I do prep for my new classes, refreshing myself with the material. When I’m done with that, I will be prepping the class Canvas (online instruction) sites. In the afternoons, I’m writing. If I get done with the daily task early I do what I’m doing now — blogging, getting attacked by my cats, and surfing a little.
Somewhere in here I have to fit some real vacation time. I don’t know when I’m doing that. I don’t do ‘nothing’ well, and would probably arrange my vacation as writing time anyhow. Mixed with restaurants and coffee. The best part is that my inability to do nothing isn’t my manic state. When I’m manic, I don’t do ‘anything’ well.
I’m looking at the plan, and I need to make sure I have some rest time. I can do that after reading my chapter or my module for the day. Pace myself; there’s plenty of time to do this.
Words Like Me 