Those who can't . . . teach

I spent almost ten years teaching business and general education courses to reluctant, resistant, and recalcitrant adult learners, many of whom attended school only for the student loan money they lived on. I used my time as a teacher to learn the craft and earn the advanced degree I now regret pursuing. Teaching was fun. I relished the challenge of organizing my approach to communicate material that most students would briefly absorb then promptly forget. I strove to create handouts, worksheets, templates, rubrics, guidebooks, cartoons, board games, dice games, role-play games, whatever it took to jam information into their heads that would stick long enough for them to pass the finals and graduate. It wasn't easy. Students often slept in class. They texted and played Farmville. They cheated on tests. They ignored me. They didn't read the textbook or do the practice exams. Many of my blog posts from 2012 and 2013 are stories of my angst and frustration with students.

It's happened again. I am now officially a teacher. Recently I taught two sessions of a day-long class for artists who want to learn some business skills. This time the format was continuing education, which meant no tests, no lectures, no jamming and cramming, no grading. This time, my students were artists.

Artists are the greatest. I love artists, probably more than I love art. Art is great, but once it's on the wall, it is done, it's over. Artists carry an endearing combination of creative confidence and urgent desperation. They make art with faith and trust in their ability to enter the zone, the flow. They know exactly what that zone is and regally assume their right to enter it. However, when it comes to bringing their art into the world, to show it, to sell it, to price it, it's like half their brain has gone missing. They are lobotomized by the prospect of applying business tools to their creative lives. They can't find the balance between creating art and marketing art. It makes them insane, timid, angry, anxious, resentful, all in the course of one discussion about whether we should make the art we want and then find a market for it, or whether we should seek a market and then produce art for that market. Yowza!

The day was long, split in two by a leisurely lunch hour. The students were attentive and eager, until we reached the point in the discussion about including financial statements in the business plan. Then they all entered their own private hell. I know this from the student feedback forms I collected at the end of the class. What is it about artists and business? Oil and water is trite but apt.

At one point in the pricing discussion, after much debate about how to price a painting, one older woman said, “What about that thing that artists bring, our creativity, shouldn't that be added in, shouldn't we get something for that?”

“Because we're so special and unique, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

“If you can convince your buyer of that, then yes,” I said. “If people want what you are selling and can afford it, they will pay for it. Your job is to persuade them that your painting is worth that extra premium.”

“Well, what if they don't want to pay for that special extra thing, the . . . muse?”

“Then you don't sell the painting.”

“But shouldn't they understand that artists are different from . . . I don't know, ditch diggers?”

“Do you mean, buyers should give you something extra just because you are an artist?”

I could see other people nodding. I could feel myself nodding. The story of my life.

“Boy, wouldn't that be great? To be recognized for our creativity and compensated for it?” I sighed. “Art buyers might buy your painting because they think you are special. But mainly they are concerned with their own needs and wants. How will that painting make them feel? How will having one of your paintings boost their self-esteem? You need to convince them that your work is worth whatever price you are charging.”

I could see they were still dissatisfied. Some part of their artistic souls still thought they should have what they want, when they want it. They didn't want to do any work to get it, beyond making the art. Making the art should be adequate. They thought recognition, wealth, and fame should be theirs by divine right, apparently, simply because they were the artist and the buyer was not.

Finding the balance between the practical brain and the creative brain is the quest of the serious artist. We know we have to play by certain rules to bring our art into the world—that is why these artists enrolled in my class. But they still couldn't help complaining about the unfairness of having to think about things like marketing and selling, financial statements and business licenses.

Oh poor us, poor artists, woe is us, alas, alackaday. For those of us who haven't figured it out, it's easy to retreat to the hothouse and wait for someone else to administer the fertilizer, preferably in the form of big checks with no restrictions. And for those of us who still haven't figured it and who have all but given up, there's always teaching.

From self-awareness to self-obsession in two seconds or less

Howdy blogbots. Has this ever happened to you? You are busy grappling with whatever issue confronts you, no time to think. Then you take a bio break and while you are sitting there, you let down your guard and the weight of your life suddenly falls upon your hunched shoulders. In the time it takes to blink and take in one breath, you realize your world appears to be imploding and you say oh God out loud, forgetting for a moment where you are. No? Hmm. Maybe it's just me.

Meditation aficionados wrestle willingly with self-awareness as a path toward self-forgetting. For me, self-awareness is the kick that plunges me into self-obsession. I would like to launch myself off the cliff of self-awareness, metaphorically speaking, and find myself floating in serene detachment above the fray of my humanness. Self-forgetting sounds like heaven. Maybe it is, I don't know, I haven't been there. I'm not even sure such a place exists, but whatever.

Taking bathroom moments to reflect for me is dangerous. Washing dishes is another mind trap. My hands are occupied, leaving my mind free to roam. Roaming is not relaxing. Roaming is an invitation to reflect (self-awareness) and judge (self-obsession). What am I judging? Thanks for asking. Myself. You. The world and all its inhabitants. Life. Time and space. My mother and her slow demise.

The oh God moment emerges from a bone-deep certainty that everything is moments away from screeching to a halt. As if I knew the timing of the destruction of everything. Ha. There's an example of self-obsession for you. Everything is (probably) not imploding today. Therefore, my problem is my fear that everything is imploding.

Moreover, my fear of imminent implosion really applies to me, not so much to you, sorry. Of course, I would be sad if you imploded, but what I really care about is how implosion would affect me. What pain and suffering would I experience during said implosion? Oh, alas, alackaday. Poor me.

In movies, there's a moment sometimes when you can see the hero reach an emotional resolution. It's evident in the relaxation of the shoulders, a deep gaze, a nod, indicating an acceptance, a surrender to a new normal. Maybe there is a change of circumstance, a loss of something dear . . . the music swells, the montage fades to serenity, roll credits.

I have those moments sometimes: A sense of resignation and acceptance, a calm surrender to the strange limbo of my interrupted life. For a breath, I feel relief. Then I realize nothing has changed. She's still slowly dying, this could take years, and my life is not my own.

Life is not a movie. In my personal movie, the hero (me) goes home to her apartment and waits.

A few nights ago, Mom walked me to the back door after my visit. We perused the progress of two waist-high tomato plants planted in big clay pots. Someone had courageously planted one corn plant in another pot. Since then, Mom hasn't felt like walking much, not even when I told her the corn plant grew six inches overnight. I'm not keeping track of her decline, but my sense is that she's preferring her couch to walking about half the time now, when it used to be she would walk me to the door every evening. But it's not a linear decline; sometimes she surprises me with her alert conversation and peppy stride.

Death is gaslighting us both. Ha. There's my self-obsession again, making her death all about me. Her life really is imploding (in slow motion) but I'm the one choosing to suffer.

Rejection is a form of protection

In recognition of my need to increase my income, last week I applied to a local home improvement box store to work as a part-time merchandiser. In my previous blog post, I predicted I would not receive a response. In fact, a few days later, I received an email inviting me for further screening. Am I willing to work night shifts? Am I okay with working part-time? Am I okay with earning $13.00 per hour? Am I willing to take an on-the-spot drug test after the interview? Answering no to any of these questions means I would be disqualified, so of course I answered yes, thinking, if nothing else, it will be something to blog about. The final screen was a calendar inviting me to choose a day and time for the interview. I set the interview time for today at 11:00 am, a nice civilized hour, thinking it might be a while before I see such a civilized hour again.

As I closed the web page, I thought, all right! I made the first cut! Well, really the second cut, but who is counting. I immediately went into interview prep mode. What would they be likely to ask me? I pictured myself sitting across a desk, well, more likely a folding table in some dark corner in the off-stage storage warehouse. The traditional first interview question is Tell me about yourself.

I pictured myself saying, Well, I like to build things. In accordance with the adage of show don't tell, I decided to wow the interviewer (interviewers? Would it be a panel?) with some photos of things I have built over the past sixteen years with lumber purchased from their store. I took photos of the cat tree, my umpteen shelves, more shelves, and the aqua-topped table in the bathroom that shelters the cat box (strategically omitting the box itself, no easy feat). I artfully arranged the photos in a Word document and enhanced the color saturation of each one slightly to really make them pop on the page. I printed the photos on one double-sided sheet of card stock (to give it substance in the hand) and slipped it into a non-glare plastic sleeve left over from my teaching days.

Now, what should I wear? The interview instructions required “business casual.” I looked up the term on the Internet to make sure my idea of business casual conformed with current style. After perusing multiple websites aimed at much younger audiences, I realized I should focus on being myself. I wanted to be comfortable, not too casual, not too weird. And not too old. I dug out my black pinwale cords and, in a nod to current fashion, altered the flares out of the hems. I'd altered the waist and hips several years ago but after I lost a few pounds over the past year, the pants gape in the waist. It's hard to get pants to fit given my unique set of figure flaws, I mean, figure challenges. I planned to pull a long t-shirt over the waist and try to remember to suck in my gut. Once I was seated, my bulging tummy probably wouldn't show much if I sat up straight. Besides, I anticipated they would be too busy admiring my photo portfolio.

The unspoken elephant in the room would be my age. As I mentioned last week, the job application website would not allow employment dates older than 1993. Perhaps it was a web development error; maybe the prohibition was intentional. In any case, I knew that I would have to acknowledge openly that I am experienced. To appear younger, I decided to wear flat and perky white-laced gray tennis shoes.

Finally, I wondered, did I need to bring a resume? I reviewed my myriad resumes and CVs written over the past few years. All the jobs focused on teaching and academics. None of the jobs I listed were older than 1993. Hmmm. I started to add the art-supply sales job I held in 1985, thinking it might be relevant to this merchandising position. After looking at the date 1985 in black and white, I decided to print a copy of my current CV. It's two pages, focused on my short list of publications. I anticipated the interviewers might not care but at least I had something to show them if they asked for a resume. And maybe I could score some wow points for having a PhD. Maybe I would be the overly educated mascot of the merchandising team. Maybe they would call me Doc.

I got dressed and left the Love Shack in plenty of time. I drove to the box store and found a place in back to park in the shade (it's going to be 90°F today). I hiked across the parking lot to the mall entrance.

In the 1970s, my friends and I visited this mall often. I bought fabric at Discount Fabrics and many pairs of shoes at Thom McCanns. I bought a rayon print dress in 1975 at Casual Corner—I wore that dress once. I shopped at Montgomery Wards, White Front, and the Emporium and watched movies in the cineplex (multiple theaters in one location, how novel!).

Today, the mall air was refreshingly cool. A few mallwalkers strolled to the 60's musak. I walked around the corner toward the door into the home improvement store, noticing the fitness gym was still there but the bike store was gone. The one remaining food stand, a hotdog kiosk, was shuttered.

The door from the mall into the home improvement store opened as I approached. The overweight employee manning the register looked up from his phone and said “Welcome in,” the phrase recently adopted by my bank. Must be a customer service trend. I acknowledged his welcome, feeling self-conscious that I might soon be sharing an employee break room with this guy.

I shuffled through the store to the service desk and asked for the merchandising manager. In a few minutes, a burly young man with pink cheeks and wire-rimmed glasses appeared. We shook hands.

“Let me do a quick walk-through with you so you know what we do,” he said. He pointed to the display of patio furniture at the front of the store. “We organized that display a few days ago. It's looking a little . . . ” I didn't want to complete his sentence. I would have said frayed. Tatty. Disheveled. Neglected. Being highly educated means I can usually draw from a deep repertoire of adjectives. Perhaps not an essential trait for a merchandiser, but maybe some customers would be amused.

“Okay,” I said, thinking, I could move around patio furniture.

 Next, the manager hustled toward the garden center. I scuttled along in his wake.

“We work for a company that is hired by the store,” he said over his shoulder.

“Oh, okay,” I said. Huh, did not know that. The merchandisers are not actually store associates.

We went through the sliding doors into the garden center. Past the rows of potted azaleas I could see a half-dozen people in orange vests milling around between twenty-foot high warehouse shelves. I quickly gauged ages and genders. Mostly men, mostly young. One robustly built young woman with long blonde hair. One older guy with a grizzled beard and glasses. I thought, okay.

The manager grabbed the older guy's smartphone and quickly scrolled through the screens, explaining how the team received and followed plans for building the displays. I barely heard what he was saying. Next to me was a row of tall cardboard boxes wrapped in strapping tape. I could not tell what was inside. I reached out and gave one box a tentative shove. It barely budged. It was clear the box was taller, wider, and much heavier than me. There is no way I would be able to lift or even move that box.

I tried to make eye contact with the older worker, looking for some encouragement. He did not look at me. For a tiny moment, I thought about what I would tell Mom. Then I remembered, I don't tell my mother anything about my life anymore. I tell her stories about the neighbors, the birds, the cat. I show her pictures I take on my walks in the park. I share with her the photos my sister sends from France: rainbows, sailboats, and red alstroemerias. We discuss the fascinating lives of Chip and Joanna, the stars of Fixer Upper, and I remind Mom of their new son's name. We marvel at the height of the Property Brothers. I joke that we should start our own mother-daughter demolition team.

The manager turned to head back toward the store. I followed, feeling fragile and delicate. Who do I think I am?

“So that's what we do,” he said. “Day in and day out. Every day.”

“I don't think I would be able to move boxes that heavy,” I said.

He stopped. “Thanks for coming in today, Miss Carol,” he said. We shook hands. I turned and headed back to the entrance to the mall.

The entire “interview” took less time than it took me to walk back to my car.

I put on my baseball cap and drove home, admiring the blue sky, breathing in the warm air, and reveling in a fizzy sense of freedom that comes from not knowing what comes next.

The Chronic Malcontent endures a moment of world sorrow

I rarely cry. I'm not prone to sobbing. When I do cry, though, to avoid prolonged sinus congestion, I try to get all my angst and sorrow out during one session. I weep over every tragedy that comes to mind, large and small, from a pancaked squirrel in the road to the slow demise of my mother. I don't cry so much over abused children, because they can eventually overcome their trauma with therapy and the Twelve Steps. But I wail over dogs left in hot cars. I really lose it over sea turtles with plastic straws up their noses.

My editing agency jobs have all but dried up. The agency guy decided he needs to spend more time with his growing children and his full-time job. Who knew this editing agency was his side gig! He could have said he was tired of wrangling unhappy dissertators complaining about paying four cents per word before I cut out half their content. I wouldn't have blamed him. In response to his long list of reasons (excuses) why he's stepping back from the agency, I wrote, “Family comes first.” That is my standard response when someone chooses family over meeting my needs. I really believe it.

Last night, in a bid to stave off homelessness, I applied online to work part-time at a local home improvement store. I like to build things; maybe I could sell lumber to older gals who aspire to build their own bookshelves. I was cruising efficiently through the web application when I encountered a date field that would not accept a date earlier than 1993. I laughed and took a screen clip of this reminder that I am old. As if I would forget.

I will be very surprised if I get an interview request, even though I'm an employer's dream. They couldn't pay to buy the qualities I bring in the door for free: I will show up, work hard, and never steal. The Universe will have to decide this outcome. I don't really want to work at a home improvement store, but since when have my intentions produced results. I'd much prefer to earn money writing and making art. At my advanced age, here's what I've learned: It's easy to say I want something but much harder to take action to get it.

I am frequently reminded that the people who seem to make money are the ones who tell the rest of us how to make money. There's something wrong with that picture but I can't quite figure out what. You've heard the conversation, no doubt, which goes like this: Person 1 says to Person 2, “Give me a dollar and I'll share with you my secret strategy for making money.” Person 2 hands Person 1 a dollar. Person 1 says (while walking away), “That, my friend, is how you do it.” The winners: PayPal, Etsy, Udemy, and all the (former) artists and writers who figured out their path to success was telling people how to find their own path to success. Who are the losers? The hopeful, gullible dreamers who don't know what to do with the “secret” when they get it. Or are too scared to try. Or who keep trying in spite of failure. Talent is highly over-rated. Success depends more on persistence and luck. That is why I don't give up.

I can't seem to generate much enthusiasm about anything these days. I waver between derisive humor, self-deprecating chagrin, and debilitating despair. On the days my mother is too sleepy (tired, weary, depressed, exhausted) to walk me to the back door of the retirement home, I walk myself, humming our favorite tune (She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain). I walk myself out the back door to my car. As I drive away, I always look back at the window where she stands to wave me good-bye with the peace sign and a big grin. When she's not there I feel sad, relieved, fearful, and bereft. I don't know what to do with all these feelings.

From day to day, I attempt to do the things on my to-do list. Hence, this blog post. It's on my list. Sometimes I avoid blogging because writing means feeling. Other times, I'm anxious to get all my angst onto the page but my brain is too fogged to focus. Spring is my S.A.D. fog time. Later I will go out for a walk in the sunshine. It's on my to-do list. Walking always makes me feel better, eventually, although sometimes I prefer the oblivion of napping. Sometimes I find it difficult to be awake. However, on my last stroll through the park, I had four satisfyingly creative ideas. I arrived home sweaty but so happy to know I have not lost my creative spark.