Tag: self-image

A Gift from the Universe

Today I found out that I will be teaching not one, but two of my favorite classes this fall.

The first is Family Resource Management, and this has a bit of history. I used to teach this when I taught in a Family and Consumer Sciences department (that is my background). It’s one of my favorite classes because all management is resource management. It’s part of everything we do and decide.

I lost this class when the FCS Department got disbanded some 12 years ago and I was placed in the Behavioral Sciences Department. I taught Psych classes there, teaching myself as I went along. The classes I taught in Psych included Research Methods, Personal Adjustment and General Psychology. I also taught (and still teach) Case Management, which is a lot closer to what I’m used to.

But now we’re bringing back Resource Management, and I’m teaching it!

The other class is Disaster Psych. This is a class for Emergency and Disaster Management majors. I am, besides being Behavioral Sciences faculty, EDM faculty by virtue of teaching Case Management, an option for the major that few students take. (Most EDM students are high adrenaline students who like humanitarian hot zones and lots of sirens).

I feel at home with the EDM people, and I work with them twice a year doing moulage (casualty simulation) for their disaster/humanitarian simulations. So I love working with them.

It’s funny how, when what we do is a good fit, our self-image becomes more solid. I have felt like an impostor for years, with most of the classes I taught not sitting with my self-image. But now I feel like I’m doing what I trained for.

Remaking Myself

I want to remake myself. This is the reason I think I try so hard to get published, because I want to think of myself as an author. It would give me an identity beyond the one I have currently (professor) that I will lose when I retire.

It’s not a good reason to write, but I think it’s a fine reason to try to get published. I think remaking oneself is a noble pursuit, unless one is trying to remake oneself as Harley Quinn (As opposed to Harley Quin, for all you Agatha Christie fans).

Photo by Sunsetoned on Pexels.com

I admire people who make themselves and remake themselves, flowing with the changes in the world. On the other hand, I believe that my writing is good and worthy of publishing, but I’m not apparently writing what agents want. Changes to flow with. Do I learn how to promote myself better and self-publish? Do I try to tailor my writing to the market — no. Then it would not by my writing. I will not remake myself by becoming someone else.

Have I already remade myself? I have written five or so books — Kringle in the Night, The Kringle Conspiracy, Apocalypse, Gaia’s Hands, Reclaiming the Balance, Whose Hearts are Mountains, and Prodigies. Ok, that’s seven, not five. I have put them through developmental editors and (most of them) through beta/alpha readers. One of them (The Kringle Conspiracy) has been self-published. Maybe I am already an author. Maybe I have remade myself.