1. At a work event last week, I added a short PowerPoint slide show to a presentation that I regularly deliver to students. There were like eight slides. The information I conveyed was exactly the same as my regular verbal presentation, but the students were way more impressed. They kept saying things like, "I don't have any questions! That was sooooo informative!" I don't know if it helped them to have the visual representation in front of them, or whether they were just impressed that I had my stuff together enough to have real life slides with the real live University logo on them. Either way, for 15 minutes of work, it was a pretty major WIN!
2. I've ordered myself the new iPhone 4S for my birthday. It's completely unnecessary and expensive and a little bit pretentious, but I'm soooooo excited for it to arrive! Siri looks downright amazing; I imagine that talking into my tiny handheld computer and having it talk back to me is going to be one of those things that makes me go, Holy crap, it's the future and we're living in it! It's funny to think that only 10 years ago I had just started using the Internet, I had just gotten my first (brick-like, green-screened, hideous, non-texting) cell phone along with my first car, and I didn't know how to search for things on Yahoo or AskJeeves or whatever was popular then. What a crazy and awesome time it is we live in.
3. I've been watching OccupyWallStreet in the news, and I'm absolutely fascinated by the protesters' use of hand gestures and "the human microphone" to communicate (you can read about the history of the method at New York Magazine). By using simple gestures and group repetition, the protesters can communicate a single speaker's information and respond to his/her ideas without relying on megaphones and amplifiers (which are often prohibited in the occupied spaces). The process is so simple and old fashioned, yet it's still marvelously effective. Not to mention the fact that it's pointedly democratic and, in my opinion, downright inspiring. You can watch a protester teaching the method to the Occupy Boston protesters here:
There are plenty of things that I love about working at a university (good karma, student hijinks, excellent benefits, an abundance of general and free-floating intelligence, etc.), and a few things that I hate about it (bureaucracy, dowdy clothes, bureaucracy, student hijinks, bureaucracy, etc.).
But one of my favorite things about being a university employee is the number of brilliant women leaders hanging around. Of the two deans and three department heads I work with, four are women, so 80% of the leadership I'm exposed to is female. They're all brilliant in their own unique ways: this one's a great communicator and an excellent team manager, that one's efficiency and ability to think long-term is unrivaled, this lady bursts with a never-ending stream of fruitful ideas, and that one's kindness creates the type of team-oriented culture that makes working for her a pleasure. My last department at the university was also lead by a brilliant female director--one with a lot of invaluable stubbornness and savvy who was able to create and shape her program from the ground up. Trust me: I've worked with a lot of impressive ladies.
In institutions of higher learning, I love that there doesn't seem to be a glass ceiling in sight. Women can be leaders and managers here and still be genuinely respected and valued by their colleagues--and have I mentioned the fact that they're usually nationally respected, brilliant scholars leading research in their respected fields? Oh, yeah, that too. ;)
All this is great news for me because I'm surrounded by strong, intelligent, successful women who I can readily adopt as role models. It's also great news for the flood of young women entering college campuses (57% of all students graduating from universities are women, according to USA Today): they're frequently exposed to intelligent female leaders in their classrooms, heading their departments, and piloting their universities (including the recently appointed chancellor at my university!).
I like to think that seeing women in leadership roles at the university-level will encourage young female graduates to go out and believe that they can do great things in the world, because they can. Maybe in 30 years, that 57% of college graduates will translate to 57% female leadership in corporations and government--here's to hoping. :)
Happy Earth Day, everyone! I completely forgot the holiday, but it's a happy coincidence that I bought a new Electra quick-release wire basket for my bike last weekend and a Patagonia messenger bag this week. Both I plan on using for environmentally friendly offices. I'm going to use the wire basket for conveying groceries from my local farmers' market and books from my library. It looks cute on my bike and is soooo fun to use!
The Patagonia bag is extra-special to me. I've wanted one since college. Patagonia makes high-quality camping, hiking, and bicycling products in an extremely earth-friendly way: they fund a lot of great causes, and pretty much everything they sell is either completely recycled or completely organic. They're a fantastic company, and I can't wait to tote my work computer around in their bag! I'm calling it a Happy New Job present to myself. :)
Finally getting a Patagonia bag is a big deal for me; their stuff is expensive (in part because it's meant to be used for decades without falling apart), so it's exciting to finally be able to afford one and to placate a consumerist fetish that I've been nursing for a long time!
Buying my bag got me thinking about people's unique proclivities and passions. Patagonia is an old one for me, and it's a passion that is unique to my geographic location, my class, my social situation, my values, and my temperament. It comes from being a former Enrivons member and a KU graduate and a Lawrence resident during the early 2000s. It's symptomatic of who I am and where I come from, just like my passion for bookstores and literature and education and vintage clothes and granola and pickles and who knows what else! Our loves and desires are created by more than just ourselves--they're organic outgrowths of our unique personal contexts, as well.
This has been on my mind as I learn about the students I'm involved with as an advisor. The personality types common to each of my academic programs are so distinctive from each other and often quite different from my own. Each day contrasts my values and understandings--those values and understandings unique to my background in the study of literature, writing, and the creative process--with those of my new co-workers and advisees.
I suspect that my job will be a great one for studying human nature and the variety of human passions. Whether it's service, professionalism, creativity, or knowledge that my students seek, I find it refreshing and fascinating to experience, at least for a few minutes at a time, how these lovely people perceive the world, themselves, and their career paths.
So, BIG HUGE FANTASTIC NEWS: I started a new job this week. I'm still working at the University, but in a different department with far more responsibility and freedom. It's a distinctly grown-up feeling job, with nicer clothes and an incredibly hectic Outlook calendar and a steep learning curve and a lot more pressure.
Obviously, this is a huge step for me career-wise, but it's also frightening. Terrifying, in fact. But I keep reminding myself to breath deeply, to trust myself, and to trust the search committee that thought I was right for the job.
I also keep reminding myself that a yoga instructor once told my class that "Pain is good. Pain is just the feeling of your life force actualizing." Of course, she told us this as we were sweating and trembling at least three minutes into an arm-aching balance pose.
I keep telling myself the same thing this week: If pain is just my life force actualizing (!), then maybe terror is just my life changing, expanding, moving forward before my mind can wrap quite comfortably around all the changes.
So that's my philosophy and my hope for the next few weeks. I'll let you know how it all turns out. :)
Last week, my boss and I discussed my 2010 job review. I wrote a few pages, she filled out a rating sheet, and then we sat around and talked about how awesome I am. No, I'm not kidding--she actually used words like "awesome" and "fantastic" and phrases like "you're so good at X, Y, and Z" and "I couldn't be happier"! Needless to say, I really enjoyed it--it's always nice to receive positive praise in exchange for a lot of hard work!
In my "narrative" portion of the review, I wrote mostly about how difficult it was this year to gain the depth of knowledge that I needed to do my job well. I also wrote a little bit about how I struggled to improve my communication with my boss by learning when to ask questions and what questions to ask.
But it's what I didn't write about that's been on my mind this week: the benefits of failure. I'm a perfectionist by habit, a terrible nitpicker who hates to let projects go. I used to think that my perfectionism made me a careful, detail-oriented, conscientious worker. I used to think that it made me a better writer, a better baker (well, that one might actually be true), and a better person.
But now I just think that it means that I'm afraid to make mistakes and have other people see my failings. It means that some part of me believes that I have to work harder and have higher standards than everyone else just to be a valuable, productive, and likable person.
But at this job, I've learned to let go of some of my perfectionism--I've had to. When I first started, I knew so little about my department and its processes and its many (many, many, many!) aspects that my days were riddled with mistakes. I had to let go of my perfectionism just to stay sane.
But I was also able to let it go in part because I began to develop a meaningful rapport with my director. During my first months on the job, I was terrified whenever I had to tell her I had made a mistake. I thought that whenever I told her there had been a typo in an advertisement or a forgotten email or a misdirected student that she would think that she had made a terrible mistake in hiring me. I thought that each mistake would mean that she would consider me unfit to write emails or work in an office or even live in civilized society!
But, in time, I learned that telling her honestly about those mistakes actually improved our relationship. Now that she knows that I'm willing to fess up to my mistakes and learn from them, I think that she has more respect for my integrity and character: she knows that I can admit a failing and willingly start again with her at square one. My mistakes strengthened our bond because I know that I'm allowed to be human and fallible at work, and she knows that I'm consistently upfront with her about my work and its results.
Though I wasn't looking forward to writing or discussing my annual review, it turned out to be a valuable exercise. Naturally, I'm pleased with the feedback I received--hey, who doesn't want to see a row of check marks beneath a "(5) Excellent" column?--but I'm more pleased with what the process has taught me about myself, work relationships, and the benefits of letting perfectionism go.
As I've mentioned earlier, it's been a busy month. First came an editing job on a tight deadline, which was followed by an intense drafting process for an essay that was due to my writing group, and then there was yet another editing job. (Oy! Freelance work seems to come in threes, just like deaths!)
Basically, I haven't had a lot of down time since January, so I've been trying to take it a little easy this weekend by enjoying a few of my favorite things. So, in the spirit of Mrs. E's "favorite things" posts over on Easy Street, here's one of my own--but a Lawrence hippie edition!
I've been watching a whole lot of Slings & Arrowsthis weekend. It's a Canadian comedy about a Shakespearean theater company struggling through various artistic and financial crises following the death of their artistic director. The former artistic director returns as a ghost to collaborate with (read: torment) his old friend and replacement as the company puts on Hamlet.
I love, love, LOVE this show--it's so smart, so well written, and so damn literate that I can hardly stand it. It's intensely funny (one of the main writers was an actor on both Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live), and the characters are amazing. I am so sad that there are only eighteen episodes of it (three seasons at six episodes each)--I'm almost done already!
So why's it hippie-tastic? Helloooo! It's all about arts funding and dramatic actors and romance and Shakespeare--with that earring, you know he wasn't precisely conventional.
I've been listening to a band called Pentangle. They're a British folk rock band from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I've heard them described as "folk-jazz" and "acid-folk." Yup, hippie-tastic.
I've been using my new Neti pot since my "seasonal" allergies have decided to make their appearance in this unusually warm February weather. It's been helping a lot with what I believe to be dust and mold allergies.
I've also been loving my newest thrift store find (wearing second-hand clothes is distinctly earth-loving and hippie-ish, by the way):
It's a fantastic khaki-colored blazer, which I got from the Salvation Army for $4.99. It's perfectly preserved and made of a somewhat yucky-feeling, stiff polyester-cotton blend (it's obviously from the late '70s or early '80s), but that just means it's the kind of garment that's going to last, like, forever. And it looks damn good with a colorful, flowy scarf; skinny jeans; and cowboy boots.
And last but obviously not least, I made homemade granola for the first time. I was buying Kroger's 100% Natural Cereal and eating entire boxes in three or four sittings--it was not a cost-effective way to live! So I thought I'd try my own version adapted from Alton Brown's recipe, a famous and somewhat complicated Allrecipes.com recipe, and what I had in my cabinet.
It turned out really, really, really well. I had a hard time not licking the spoon even before it was baked, and it's pretty fantastic now that it's cool and ready for some milk or yogurt.
Yum. Hippie life never looked so delicious. (See the recipe below.)
It's been a fun weekend, but I'm not looking forward to getting back to the grind tomorrow. But at least I can munch on granola before work tomorrow, and no one needs to know what I'm listening to on my iPod. More songs about knights and thyme and meadows, please!
--------------- Lesley's Granola
5 cups rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup sunflower seeds
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup craisins
Stir together rolled oats, almonds, sunflower seeds, and coconut in a large bowl.
Combine the vegetable oil, salt, honey, and brown sugar in a pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add the cinnamon and vanilla extract to the liquid mixture, stirring well.
Stir the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients. Spread the granola on two baking sheets covered in aluminum foil. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring and flipping the granola every five to ten minutes to avoid clumps and stickage.
Allow the granola to cool on the pan before mixing together with the craisins. Serve hot with milk or cold with milk, yogurt, or cereal. Or just stick your face in the bowl and gnash--whatever floats your boat!
I miss you. I really do. I want to write posts for you about snow days and this really good new sugar cookie recipe I found and Eat, Pray, Love and walking in the cold and writing essays and . . .
*sigh*
You get the idea.
But things have been busy here in Lesley Land. I took on an editing job last week that had a very tight deadline. It was a fun project, but it kept me busy all last week. Regular work has been unbelievably busy because of the snow days, and I've been furiously playing catch up for a solid week now. And then last week my writing group members decided that it was time for me to wrap up the essay I've been working on and submit it, so I've been furiously churning out 1,500 words per night all week long--and I'm still not done! Now I'm hoping to whittle it down and send it off early Saturday afternoon.
So, blog, know that I miss you. Know that I keep having ideas for you and writing them down, right before I go off and edit and/or write and/or work really hard and/or go to the gym to stay sane.
And then you have to go outside. Gah! The cold--it burns!
In case you don't live in Kansas (or are an inveterate agoraphobe who never leave his/her house), it's been snowy and then cold and then snowy and then really, really cold again. I haven't been going outside much. In fact, pretty much all I've been doing is sitting on my couch attired in sweatpants, a hoodie, thick socks, and a lap-loving cat. My constant companions have been soup and herbal tea and young adult fantasy novels (Suzanne Collins and Phillip Pullman!) and a very cozy knitted blanket. Occasionally a Boulevard Amber Ale (my new favorite winter beer) makes it into the mix. Aaaaand that's about all the variation you're going to get.
Besides hibernating, I've also been extremely busy at work with the beginning of the semester and enrollment season. I like being busy and all, but dang! I don't even want to think about how many enrollment emails I've been sending. Obviously, I've been completely unmotivated to turn on my computer at home for blogging. The thought of it makes my fingers ache.
All in all, things have been good here. Maybe I'll get back into the swing of blogging soon. Or maybe it's time to start Catching Fire. Hmmm . . . decisions, decisions, decisions!
As much as I'm looking forward to 2011, 2010 has already been incredibly novel for me. My life has changed drastically in the last year, and so have I. So instead of posting a list of resolutions or expectations for the new year, here's my list of my favorite novelties of 2010--I think they're worth commemorating.
Singlehood: Breakups are hell, but, damn, I love doing what I want to do when I want to do it. There are benefits to being single--I'm starting to remember that. :)
New Job: No, make that three new jobs, including two part-times and my first real nine to five (not to mention the occasional freelance editing work!). Entering the working world has been challenging, but I love paying my own way.
New Apartment: Downtown Lawrence. Hardwood floors. Big, bright windows. Terrible insulation and laughable wiring and one very pathetic window unit. But I love, love, love it.
New Friends: You know who you are!
Yoga: I am officially that obnoxious yoga-obsessed person! I think a lot about posture now, and balance, and the importance of feeling strong every day.
Healthy Living: In general, I've eaten a lot better, drank a lot less, and worked out a lot more than I have since before I started grad school. It's been great, and it hasn't felt like discipline, really--more like setting myself up to feel good every day.
Music: I've been listening to music constantly these past few months, especially more of the ladies (Ingrid Michaelson, Kate Nash, Nina Simone, Cat Power, Erykah Badu, and Janelle Monae) and indie stuff (Ratatat, Arcade Fire, Yeasayer, and Phoenix). I've missed it!
TV Obsessions: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who have improved the hell out of my life. Thank you, Netflix, Joss Whedon, and BBC!
New Style: My hair is red again, and shorter, and saucier, with stiff little bangs. I wear my big nerdy hipster glasses every day now. I've bought all of my favorite clothes within the past six months. I look and feel like a whole new woman.
New Ways of Thinking: I've worked hard this year to think in healthier ways. I try to be kinder to myself, more understanding of others, and more protective of my own mental health. It's hard work, challenging my own assumptions about the world and shedding my mental poisons, but it's work that has made me feel happier and healthier than anything else this year.
As far as years go, 2010 has been both incredibly difficult and richly rewarding, and I expect nothing less from 2011. So I'll leave you with this, one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books of 2010: Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
People have (with the help of their conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult: everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us.
Maybe not in every office, but it's true in mine. Before I started this job, I thought that administration would be fairly easy: somebody else would come up with the ideas and take all the risks, and I would just shuffle the necessary papers.
But that is absolutely not true. Somebody else does come up with most of the ideas that I implement at work, but I have to make them happen. My job requires a lot of flexibility and creative thinking. When my program director or one of my faculty members has an idea, the onus is on me to follow it through. I'm everybody's go-to girl. I'm the nitty-gritty techno-wrangler, the smooth bureaucracy surfer, and the (supposedly) omniscient fact-knower about how to navigate the university.
When I first started this job, this responsibility scared me. I didn't know anything, and I didn't know how I was going to learn anything. Now I have a little more faith in myself, and I know my most valuable resources: our genius office manager, our dedicated IT guy, the department's knowledgeable HR liaison, KU's Google-based search engine, and the University's plethora of help videos and training workshops.
Now I can hire a new lecturer in three days flat. I can school a scanner so that it doesn't flip pages. I can track down a student ID based on little more than a misspelled first name and a department. I can tell you how to enroll in or drop a class at any point in the semester. I'm good.
It's pretty great that I can do this stuff, but the most important skill my administrative job has taught me is how to problem solve, how to take a question that no one else can deal with and track down the answer. My new greatest skill is my dauntlessness, my confidence in my ability to take an idea and make it into a reality.
I don't know if you were aware of this, but I am a secret genius of jai alai. Yes, that jai alai, the game with the big plastic scoops and a wiffle ball. I'm amazing at it. I'm like a graceful, athletic ballerina when I play it. A ballerina with a giant blue scoop!
I'm also a secret genius at working the line at a restaurant, doing marching band drills, and knowing just how much spaghetti sauce you can fit into a Tupperware without having it overflow. These are my "secret geniuses," my strange, small, innate talents that came pre-packaged with my bizarre little brain.
I believe that everyone has some bits of secret genius in them. These talents have little to do with training and everything to do with nature. For example, one of my friends is an expert cat charmer; she can have the most skiddish feline cuddled in her arms in less than a half hour. Charlie is astonishingly good at arranging furniture; he can glance around a room, draw a little sketch, and tell you exactly where you should put your couch to make the best, most elegant use of your living room space. My mom is an extremely talented gardener, capable of casually tossing some flowers or tomatoes in the ground only to see them flourish into a beautiful backyard garden with the minimum of watering and tending. Her thumb is neon green!
Of course, it is important to understand one's greatest natural talents and aptitudes, those skills that define one's professional life. I have a strong aptitude for writing, editing, managing detailed projects, juggling deadlines, and fitting into team settings. These are all very nice things to have on a resume.
But I think it's also important to understand and nurture my smaller geniuses, even if they're completely tangential to my "serious" work. Maybe these talents are nothing more than party tricks ("Just wait: your mind will be blown by how small of a container I can put this queso in!"). But they can also be the source of great pleasure.
For example, my secret genius for baking has led to an incorrigible baking hobby, one that consistently makes me happy. And it's always nice to think that, if I ever get sick of writing, baking is always there for me: a second talent, a second life, a second world that's always waiting for me to explore it!
So far, the most surprising thing about full-time work is how short the evenings feel. It's summer, and the daylight lasts forever, but each day after work I'm surprised by how quickly the clock hands spin from 5:00 p.m. to my bedtime. I want to tell them, Take it easy, guys! It isn't a race to 11:30, you know!
If I get, say, six hours of free time each evening, I spend an hour eating out or making/eating/cleaning up my own dinner. On average, I spend another hour paying bills, cleaning, running to the grocery store, setting up my apartment, etc.--doing all of that responsible stuff adults have to do. After that, I spend another half hour on play time with Willa and another half hour for making tomorrow's lunch and getting ready for bed.
If I'm lucky, that leaves me with three hours for hanging out with Charlie, going downtown with friends, calling friends on the phone, reading, writing, blogging, baking, planning vacations, checking Facebook, and renting and watching movies. Three hours sounds like a lot of time, but it sure doesn't feel like it when there's so much I want to do! And if I'm not careful, a whole evening will sneak away from me in a rush of shopping and chores; I'll be left holding a few Wal-Mart sacks, a ball of dirty dish towels, a glass of wine, and a very strong urge to pass out on the couch!
But this time crunch has helped me prioritize my life and avoid time-sucking habits. It's made me glad that I didn't sign up for cable; I don't feel like I have hours to spend with Bravo and Lifetime and VHI each week. I also spend less time on the Internet, which is bad for blogging but great for avoiding Twitter and mindless Amazon browsing.
When I was unemployed last year, I killed time. My biggest challenge was to fritter away my hours without frittering away my money. I resented my boredom. But now I feel more grateful for my leisure time, for every bike ride and long walk and book chapter. I appreciate spending time with people I care about and those half hours when my kitty crawls into my lap and sleeps. Staying up past midnight on Friday nights feels like a huge treat, as does greasing up my baking pan for a batch of cookies.
I'm especially fond of the feeling I get when I walk home right after work: I feel like a kid being let out of school for the summer because that evening time is mine, truly mine. I've earned it. There's no homework to do, no resumes to tweak, no deadline waiting in the wings. There's just my apartment, my people, my life.
I've been working at KU for two weeks now. It's constantly strange to me how much I still remember about my old surroundings, even though it's been four years since I was a student here. But I've spent so much time here that life at KU is still second-nature to me.
But there are plenty of differences, too. Here's what I've noticed over the last few weeks:
Old:Walking everywhere. New: I still walk all over campus and downtown Lawrence, but I don't blend in anymore. I'm obviously different from the students swarming the sidewalks. My clothes are more professional, my "luggage" is different (now I have a red leather purse instead of a tattered khaki messenger bag), and my face is obviously that of a twenty-something. I'm not going to get mistaken for a freshman anytime soon!
Old: Camping out on campus. New: I still spend my free lunch hours on campus. Fortunately, my memory for KU's public spaces (lunch tables, study areas, etc.) has proven surprisingly strong. I still know where I can go for a quiet hour on my own. But I'm no longer squatting in hallways to study or nap or scarf down a To Go lunch from the dining hall. Now, I'm eating home-made veggie sandwiches and writing during my lunch hours.
Old: Those damn hills! New: They're still everywhere, but now my old lady hip hurts when I trudge up them. :(
Old: KU email and Blackboard. New: I'm still checking the same sites, but now I'm using Outlook to check my email and using the faculty section of Blackboard. I'm also trying to figure out Microsoft Access to manage my databases, considering Google Wave to collaborate with my boss, and learning how to update the department's website with Adobe software. I'm way, way more tech savvy than I used to be!
Old: Feeling baffled by the University's vast, complex, and highly specialized bureaucracy. New: The bureaucracy's the same, but now I'm supposed to understand it all! In the past, I showed up at my advisor's office and asked for help when I was lost. Now, I'm expected to help lost graduate students figure out how to navigate the University. Ack!
Old: Constant school-related anxiety. New: I'm pretty nervous about learning how to do my job well, but I'm not worried about classes or finals or studying any more. That is one major perk of being a staff member instead of a student: no finals week ever, ever again!
I've finished my first week at the new job! Each day, my thoughts swung from "I can totally do this! Yay me!" to "Oh, God, I'm lost and confused and destined to be a failure at life. I'm going back to the cafe!" So far, it seems like the biggest part of my job is learning the ropes. I'm going to have to learn how to navigate KU's staggeringly complicated bureaucracy, learn all the quirky little software programs I'm working with, and learn the myriad tasks and procedures associated with running an academic department at KU. It's intimidating, but I know that (I hope that?) I'll eventually figure everything out!
I finally finished Middlemarch. The end was a little disappointing--the happy ending felt out of sync with Eliot's world--but I'm glad I stuck with it. The plot really picked up around page 500 so that the last 300 pages went quickly. For all the time Eliot spent on small-town dynamics and politics, the novel was ultimately about marriage and the way people perceive themselves and people's expectations about their lives. It wasn't the best novel I've ever read, but it was definitely thought-provoking, and I think it will stay with me a long time. Here's Virginia Woolf's brilliant quote from the back cover of my edition: George Eliot "was one of the first English novelists to discover that men and women think as well as feel, and the discovery was of great artistic moment. Briefly, it meant that the novel ceased to be solely a love story, an autobiography, or a story of adventure. It became, as it had already become with the Russians, of much wider scope."
I haven't done a thing about the fact that I'm moving to an apartment in Lawrence in a couple of weeks. I should start packing, but it doesn't seem real yet! I walk past my apartment building every day on my walk to work, and I gaze at it longingly. I can't wait to move in and decorate it and start living my life there. But it won't seem real until I'm holding the keys and my cat's litter box is moved in!
Speaking of kitties, I've been cat-sitting this weekend. The parents are in Virginia for my cousin's graduation, so I'm feeding the cats, picking up the newspapers, and taking out the garbage. It's strange to be in Olathe, but it's made for some good shopping. I love New York & Co. way more than I should!
I've been writing over my lunch hour at work. I like it a lot: it's nice to be creative for a half hour every day, especially in the midst of all my phone calling and spreadsheet wrangling. But it's also making me want to buy a netbook, so I could type on a tiny little laptop instead of scribbling in a notebook!
One of my inspirations these days in One Man's Meat, a memoir-y essay collection by E.B. White. Each brief chapter covers a month in his life and contains a handful of tiny essays about anything and everything, from chickens that lay too many eggs to the approach of World War II. There's a sense of happiness and relaxation to White's writing that's very appealing. The book is not entirely memoir, and it's nothing like the research-based nonfiction so common today. It's full of good-natured, free-form ramblings in the style of Michel de Montaigne. Reading White's book feels like chatting with an old friend who is candid and funny and smart and true, and it's a wonderful thing to read at lunch before I start my own writing: it makes me feel as if writing naturally is the best and easiest path to writing well.
E. B. White with his evil and affectionate dachshund Fred.
