To earn or not to earn

Somehow I've managed to divorce earning money from receiving money. It's as if the hose got disconnected from the faucet or something. No, that's not right. It's as if I'm putting energy into a meatgrinder, cranking the handle for all I'm worth, sweating up a storm, and nothing is coming out the other end. Not meat juice, not water, not air. Then when I go look in my refrigerator, there's meat in there. Like, how did that happen? 

I am not a meat eater, so this is a bad analogy. All I know is, something is wacky with me and money. I'm turning the handle but nothing is coming out the spigot. It's similar to the wackiness between me and time, the challenge I discussed last week. 

What the heck am I talking about? Vertigo is clawing my brain into pieces. My head is reeling from a storm system moving through. Actual rain is coming down from the sky. Moisture. Falling from the sky. So weird. 

Anyway, I can't think very well when the bucket is sloshing in my head. I think what I'm trying to do right now is describe my experience this week of doing work for no pay. I seem to be caught up in swirls and eddies that take me nowhere. Words are failing me.

The past few weeks, I've edited three papers for the for-profit higher education institution that hired me as a part-time dissertation editor. I'm supposed to get paid a certain amount per student per term. It isn't hard work. The hardest part is learning the quirks of the institution's dissertation guidelines, which seriously depart from APA style. 

Enough palaver. What I'm saying is that I've done a bunch of work, the term is over, and I have not been paid. I think I recall the supervisor saying they pay twice per term. It's a paltry amount, minus taxes, so I'm not holding my breath, hoping to have money for bread. What am I saying? I don't eat bread. Okay, milk. I don't drink milk. Money for onions. I don't know. My brain is going sideways. 

The agency guy I sometimes edit for sent me a little paper to edit yesterday. A proposal thing in a weird institutional template. I polished it up and shipped it off. Five hours later, the guy writes back, oh hey, here's the institution's handbook, can you see if what you edited complies with the format in Appendix E? I wanted to yell at him (via email), you idiot, why didn't you send it to me before I edited the paper? But I thought, what would be the point, other than releasing my frustration? So I downloaded the handbook and looked at it. It had some examples of title page, copyright page, you know, all that front matter stuff nobody ever reads, as well as some formatting requirements.

I wrote to the agency guy: You want me to format this paper?

He wrote back: Yes, would you?

I'd already spent over two hours just editing the text. Now I was expected to reformat the paper and add a title page, copyright page, acknowledgments page, and a table of contents. 

Oh, did I tell you how much I am getting paid? Sixty dollars. 

I might as well be paying him for the privilege of being of service. Ditto the institution I supposedly work for. 

I recently decided to stop teaching online Zoom classes for artists who want to learn business. It's not worth the hassles. I'm intrinsically motivated, you know that. I have to be. The pay is $25 per hour to teach a class. Minus taxes. I'm paying transit tax for a county in which I no longer reside. I spend many hours gathering my material and refining it into presentations that I hope artists will enjoy and understand. I don't expect praise, although I get some now and then. I also don't expect to be reamed for using incorrect personal pronouns when students don't turn on their cameras or otherwise give me a clue. 

Have you tried speaking without any personal pronouns at all? It's quite challenging. I have changed all my business emails to "pronouns: any." Honestly, I don't care what you call me. Pronounce it any way you want, make up your own spelling. My sense of well-being does not depend on you using my preferred pronouns. 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah: the meatgrinder. I put in energy and effort, I turn handle, and no meat comes out. It's a metaphor. Not a good one. I have a commitment to self to blog every Sunday, no matter what. Sometimes I can't find the words. I don't even know what I am feeling, other than dizzy.

And yet, my fridge is full. Not of meat, but I have plenty of eggs, yogurt, vegetables, fruit, nuts, twigs, and gravel. I'm not starving. There is gas in my car (I hardly go anywhere, I think gas prices will probably drop by the time I need to fill up). I'm doing fine. 

The disconnect I perceive might not be real. 

If I have to choose between a "real" job that pays a "regular wage" and this weird quasi-freelancing editing gig, which is better for me? If I'm not going to get paid, is it better to be useful? Or is it better to work on my own projects and tell everyone else, no, I can no longer do your projects for a few pennies or no pennies at all? Rain is a suitable mood, and the Bat Cave is a perfect place to excavate the words that escape me.
 

Who am I and what just happened?

Poor old Google can't keep up. I'm opening and closing several web accounts using multiple log-on identities on two different computers and Google keeps trying to alert me, Oh no, there could be a security breach! As long as I remember my passwords, I'm okay. Worst case, I get a text with a magic number. If I ever lose this phone or get a new one, I'm toast. I've lost one yahoo! identity because of a lost phone number. If it happens again, I'll just have to reinvent myself. 

Reinvention is not new to me. For example, I used to be a person who had a cat. Then the cat died (two years ago today) and I reinvented myself as a person who used to have a cat. Up until a year ago, I was someone with a mother. Now I'm not. I used to be a resident of Portland, and now I'm a resident of Tucson. Personal reinvention is the natural progression of life. Or is it reincarnation? I don't know. 

Speaking of starting over, I asked the universe if it wanted me to live in my car. You know how you sometimes ask the Universe stuff? Or is it just me? Universe, I said, if you want me to live in my car, okay, I'll give it a shot, but if you don't, please send money. 

You can't expect the Universe to do all the work. Sometimes the Universe needs help. Right after Christmas, I got on the Web and looked for a job. I found a job listing for an academic editor, updated my CV, figured out how to upload my documents, and clicked Apply. Whoosh! With that click, I had notified the Universe of my willingness to earn.

The Monday after New Year's, I got an email. The next day, I had a phone screen. The day after that, I had a Zoom interview. Thursday I got a job offer. How about that? I had one day to bask in my job-hunting glory. (They want me! I'm not too old!) The basking was short-lived. On Saturday, parts of my brain stopped working. 

It happened while I was on a Zoom meeting. Maybe I was super stressed out, I don't recall. I had a ten- minute talk, and luckily, I had notes. I think what I said made sense, but I can't be sure. I don't remember much. By the time the talk was over, I was experiencing a phenomenon known as transient global amnesia. Now that I'm more or less on intimate terms with the condition, I think I can snuggle up to it and call it TGA. 

TGA is a sudden, profound, temporary inability to form short-term memories. I know! Who knew such a thing was even possible!? Not me. I thought I'd had a stroke. After the Zoom meeting ended, I ran to the mirror and started making faces at myself and flailing my arms around in the air over my head. Was my mouth drooping? Had I started drooling? Were my arms matching each other in their range of motion? No to the first two questions, yes to the third. Did I know my name? Yes. Could I type? Let's find out.

I consulted Dr. Google and quickly discovered my malady had a name. Transient global amnesia. It sounds frightening, and it was. Transient sounded reassuring, but global? Amnesia? Oh no, who am I? What just happened?

TGA is a strange phenomenon. My mind had wandered out into the short branches and could not find its way back home. Thoughts ran through my brain like water. Once they passed through my mental processor, they were gone as if they had never existed. File not found, file deleted, file corrupt. I was literally trapped in each moment, like a goldfish in a water bubble. I could not reconjure the thoughts I'd just had moments before. I could have a conversation, but I could not hold the thread of the conversation in my mind. Every sentence was new, disconnected from anything that just passed. I attended another two meetings, limping from one sentence to the next, before I could eat lunch and assess the damage. Formats and agendas saved me. I could read, I could follow directions. I just couldn't remember what had just happened. 

The word that kept me calm was temporary. Sure enough, in a few hours, the fog lifted. The websites I consulted indicated I might not remember much about what happened during the episode. I know what I had done because I had notes and my calendar, but I can't recall specifics of what I said or what others said. A few hazy images linger now, but mostly yesterday afternoon is a black hole. 

I have profound empathy for what my demented mother most likely suffered in her final years. It was utterly confounding and disabling to be unable to access my short-term memories. It's ironic that the goal of meditators is to detach from distractions and stay in the present moment. Someone should figure out how to put TGAs in a bottle, Red Bull for Buddhists. Guaranteed to keep you in the here and now.

I don't think I am cut out for meditation. Before this episode, I was neutral on the idea of the here and now. Now I am sure, being stuck in the here and now is not nirvana. It's okay to visit, but don't lose your way back to where you were. 

Which leads me back around to this new editing job. It's a part-time remote gig editing dissertation chapters for half a dozen students a few weeks of each ten-week term. I need a functional brain to do the job. I'd like to believe that the Universe has come through, delivering an income source when asked, so I don't have to end up living in my car, but we know the Universe can be a trickster. 

This week the new college is checking out my former employer, a crummy career college that laid off a bunch of teachers in 2013, me included, and finally gasped its last in 2020, thanks to COVID. The defunct career college (of which I have blogged a great deal! See just about any post prior to 2013) is following good camping practices by packing it in, packing it out, and leaving no trace. I had to send copies of my W2s to the background check company to prove I actually worked there. 

The new school might decide I'm a liar. I doubt it, though. They need people like me, people who are intrinsically motivated by something other than money. It's a for-profit institution. If you have read my blog over the years, you know how I feel about for-profit higher education. I know they underpay employees to keep tuition low. I know the hours will be ridiculous, and I will have no say in anything. I know this from experience. If they decide to hire me, I will accept the job with my eyes open. Editing student papers will help me stay current in my quest to be of service to nontraditional graduate students who need support and guidance. It's my thing.  

As long as my brain holds out, I will keep trying to live usefully and walk humbly. 

The chronic malcontent is stuck in one long slow pratfall

My life is punctuated by drafts of proposals and dissertations that magically appear in my email inbox, demanding my editing skills. Compensation is predetermined (too low). Deadlines are often severe. I immerse myself in each paper like a scuba diver slipping gingerly into mucky water. Eeww. I add Oxford commas and snarky comments exhorting the authors to embrace Word styles instead of manually typing their tables of contents.

In between editing jobs, I fret about my mother and try to keep my nose above the surface of my anticipatory grief. (Yes, there's apparently a name for it.) It's almost two and a half years since I lost my teaching job and two years since I finished my dissertation and earned my degree. In between editing jobs and fretting over my mother, I have time to reflect on the current state of my life. Sadly, I seem to have lost my funnybone, and the loss has manifested in fewer blog posts.

Back when all I had to fret about was resenting my job at the career college and finishing my massive wretched tome of a dissertation, I didn't know how lucky I was. Pre-vertigo, pre-dementia, pre-summer of carlessness... ah, the good old days. My attention was riveted on the PhD and the job. As I steamed and stewed in my self-righteous messy little bog, I could always find something funny in the experience. Students! Ha, ha! Dissertation chair! Har har! The jokes were low-hanging, shiny baubles just above my head. So I picked them. Who wouldn't? I didn't name names; nobody was hurt in the making of this blog.

I mean, admit it, it's hilarious when someone does a pratfall into a hole in the sidewalk (especially when they are texting). Come on, don't tell me you haven't laughed at someone else's misfortune, as long as they were only humiliated and not hurt. That's how I felt most of the time, back in 2013, like I was watching myself taking one long slowmo pratfall. So funny, look at her clutch and cling to her expectations and resentments—what could be more comical? ROFLMAO.

So what's the problem? Thanks for asking. Lately, the jokes seem to be harder to find. I'm sure they are still there, somewhere, peeking out from under my scowl. I feel so weary. Who knew a 90-pound, 86-year-old scrawny twig of an old lady could be so heavy?

Maybe I'm caring too much. Everything seems overly complicated. I fear I'm descending into dementia along with my mother; we'll probably end up roommates in the same adult foster care home, yelling at each other and drooling on our bibs.

Hey! That joke snuck up on me! It's not a great one, I know, but it has potential. It's a chuckle, not a guffaw. But I bet there's more where that came from. There's not much funnier than demented old people who don't know how funny they are. I imagine a sitcom about a mother stuck in adult daycare and her recalcitrant, unwilling, resentful caregiver of a daughter. Well, maybe that's a little close to home. Still, there's a joke in here somewhere. I could go in after it, but maybe it's better to just let it gently percolate to the surface, like a stinky gas bubble.

Rewind

I've been away from the blog for a while, immersed in life and not feeling energetic enough to share. The vertigo is destroying my frontal lobe, grinding off layers of brain matter with every wave. Well, I know that isn't really what is happening; I know vertigo is an inner ear problem, not a brain problem, but that is how it feels: like heavy ocean waves are beating the inside of my brain. I've found the symptoms get worse with stress. Ha. Does anything get better with stress. I ask you. Really. I'm asking. If you know, please tell me.

What am I so stressed out about? Thanks for asking. The usual crap: weather, earning, creativity, cancer (Bravadita's), transportation (lack thereof), and my mother.

Actually, news flash, the weather has been pretty excellent: mild late summer days punctuated by a little bit of much-needed rain. Really not much to complain about. It's that rich moment just before the leaves go golden. I guess it's really the turning of the earth and the angle of the sun that puts the melancholy in me. Sometimes I wish I could sleep until April. I've heard naps can be good for you. Maybe not that long, although I'd be willing to try it.

As far as earning goes, I am still editing other people's massive dissertation train wrecks for money. I don't like it, but I can say with a bit of pride that I'm getting better at it. I'm sure that is good for the clients. For me, maybe not so much: I don't think just because I'm good at something, that means I ought to do it. I got caught on that hook for years... sewing, typing, driving the short bus. Ack! My good friend said to me in 1989, “It's never too soon to stop doing what you hate and start doing what you love.” Those oddly convoluted words granted me permission to stop sewing for a living, an activity I detested. Maybe I can find another set of equally interesting words to set me free from editing. Hey, it could happen. All I have to do is finish my book, market it, and watch the cash roll in. Said the crazy insane woman.

I'm doing a fair amount of walking these days, compared to before my car went to Ford Focus heaven. I was sort of hoping to have achieved buns of steel by now. I'm sad to report that is not yet the case. I'm still working on it. Now I've almost convinced myself that I don't need a car, that in fact, I'm a better planetary citizen without a car. That doesn't stop me from eyeballing the shiny not-so-gently loved cars parked in the used car lots I walk by on my way to my weekly meeting. I'm just looking. Mostly at the little yellow striped mini. It's gone now. Oh well. Another missed opportunity.

My younger brother gave me a bicycle he wasn't using, in exchange for one I gave him that was too big for me. The exchange was leisurely, taking place over the span of ten years or so. In the interim, he seems to have lost the helmet I gave him, so I need to get a new bike helmet. Plus the bike he gave me has no front brakes and the seat is stuck too high. But it's got great big fat tires and it's small enough so that falling off it doesn't seem like it would be fatal. I wonder two things: Will riding a bike will retrain my brain to find its balance? And is this bike stolen?

I've saved the best (or worst) for last. Last month you may recall, my siblings and I moved our maternal parental unit into a lovely apartment in a large retirement community. I remember feeling a great sense of relief when we finally got pictures hung. Apart from the ongoing telecommunications nightmare requiring me to check in with the cable company every day, I thought things were going pretty good. Unfortunately (for me), my mother has hit the reset button on her move.

I accompanied her to her doctor's appointment last week. As I helped her fill in the forms in the waiting room, I started to get a bad, bad feeling that all was not right in retirement village heaven. Depressed, lonely, bored. Depressed, lonely, bored. In a warehouse for old people.

In the exam room, she sat on the exam table in a gown, with her old lady blue jeans half on her legs. When the doctor came in, she kicked her feet like a kid and said belligerently that she wanted to move back to the condo.

The doctor asked her to stick it out another month, but I knew that was a waste of breath. My mother is a bulldog. You wouldn't know it to look at her tiny 93-pound frame, but when she wants something, she goes after it with a single-minded focus. Maybe that's because she can only hold one thing in her mind at a time these days. The move pretty much destroyed her short-term memory. She may be hoping it will come back if she moves back to familiar territory. Logical. She reminds me of what a cat does during an earthquake: run until the earth stops shaking. Wherever the cat hunkers down equals safety. Right now Mom's world is shaking. The condo represents safety.

Most of my blog viewership has departed, leaving only a few friends and family members, all of whom are over 50, I believe. So you get the word rewind. I don't need to explain. If you are under 40, you may not be familiar with the word rewind. Just think of your parents' VCR. Or that old 8-track tape player in your basement (antique!). My mom wants a mulligan. A do-over. A reboot. She's calling a moving company tomorrow to help her rewind time.

My first thought was, how could she do this to me? Fortunately, my second thought was, how can I support her in her quest to be as happy as she can be in her final days? My third thought was, what the hell am I going to do when my turn comes?

Two shank's mares walk into a bar

A friend dropped by briefly today. He laughed when he saw me. I thought that was odd, but didn't say anything. We concluded our business. Later I happened by a mirror and saw that my hair was sticking straight up. I looked like Don King. Or a shocked Bride of Frankenstein. Since I stopped coloring my hair (brown), it's now reverted to it's natural color (mottled grayscale). Not only is the color different than it used to be, but the texture has also changed, which accounts for its vertical tendency. There was a time when I would have killed for hair with the ability to stand up and salute. I guess it just proves the maxim that if you wait long enough, all your desires will eventually come to you.

Take climate change, for instance. Hot, is all I can say. Hot, hot, hot. I'm loving it, although I admit that I start to wilt a bit when the thermometer nears 100°, especially if I'm outside hiking from store to bus stop with a heavy sack of groceries. Oh, woe is me, I have to walk. Alas, alackaday, and all that folderol.

Speaking of odd idioms, I called my mother on the phone tonight to tell her I would like to borrow her car on Wednesday. “Shall I come pick you up?” she asked. Part of me would like nothing better than to have my mother drive over to loan me her car. Part of me thinks walking might be beneficial for my butt.

“I'll walk over,” I said.

“You'll use your shank's mare?” she said playfully.

I was like, what? My what? I'd never heard that expression before. I Googled it while we were on the phone and read some background on the term. Ha! Shank's mare! I love language. I should probably have studied English. But then I'd be unemployed. Hey, wait! ...well, whatever. I still love words.

Speaking of words, I've spent the past four days editing a train wreck of a dissertation proposal. At first pass, I despaired. I didn't think there was much hope. The structure was there, thanks to the institution's template, but the content was fractured and bent, with huge gaps (the theoretical framework is completely missing!). A plague of perplexing grammar gaffes sent my brain grasping for meaning... every paragraph had some sort of bizarre arrangement of words, kind of like those magnetic word games you seen on your friends refrigerators, where people before you have spelled out cryptic sentences like closet cats pee dark secrets. I've seen this kind of language abuse before from native English speakers who somehow absorbed just enough in high school to produce phrases like “On the same token,” and “as it relates to them being able to hit the ground running; hence being prepared.”

I am starting to develop a systematic process. First I wrestle the format into submission. If you've ever used Word styles and section breaks, you know what I'm talking about. Once I've got the styles, headings, and pagination nailed down, I generate a Table of Contents to reveal the bones and help me navigate the paper. Then I scan the paragraphs for main ideas and shuffle them around so they fall in line with the subheadings. Next, I take paragraphs apart to nudge ideas next to their buddies. And then I go word by word, semi-colon by misplaced comma by missing bracket, to wrench meaning out of each sentence. I go round and round in circles, finding statements that are repeated, or should be repeated but don't agree, shoving things hither and thither, sometimes working with the paper zoomed out to 30% so I can see two pages on the screen.

I highlight all the 4 billion instances where she should have cited a source (can we say plagiarism?). When I've combed the paper for dead commas and excessive spaces, I save the wreck as a pdf file and get down to the task of digging for meaning. I check my edits as I go—I always find errors, some of them egregious. Argh. As I work, I add comments in the margin, berating the hapless would-be scholar for thinking her feeble research question is going to pass muster with her reviewers.

Then again, she's attending an online for-profit university not unlike the one I attended, so all bets are off. Maybe her reviewers will be inexperienced and lackadaisical and wave her on through to the IRB review. Or maybe she'll get the Nazi mentor who blocks progress because of misplaced commas. I will probably eventually find out what happened: This is her proposal. If she's satisfied with my edits, she'll likely submit the dissertation. I can hardly wait.

Going to the hardware store for bread

Events conspire to reinforce my belief that everything is going to hell in a stinky hand-basket. Planes. Mountains. Smithereens. Blown head gaskets. Dripping green stuff. Decrepit mothers. Rising rents. The cafe across the street that I've loved to complain about for the past year closed for good last week. Everywhere I look, I see the fabric of the world (or the world as I know it) falling apart. I know my perception is an illusion, a curious artifact of my puny hiccuping brain.

Here's the deal. If I look for trouble, I shouldn't be shocked or dismayed if find it. When I watch a TV show that is set in a hospital, I shouldn't be too surprised or grossed out if every scene is about someone puking up blood. Ditto a cop show about cops chasing bad guys, week after week, nothing but bad guys. When I watch the news, I should expect to see mostly tragedies, not because the world is mostly full of tragedies, but because most of what happens in the world is not newsworthy. Life happens. Move on.

Like a baby planet nucleus, I can make every bad thing about me. Me, the center of the universe. As if I have any control or influence on events that happen halfway across the globe. My sister arrived safely in Berlin. As I trotted along the paths in the park today, I thought to myself, whew, we dodged a bullet. But no, not true. Bullets are flying constantly. There's no dodging the bullets life continuously shoots at us. No, wait. Not at us, that's not true, either. Life isn't out to get us. Life shoots bullets at everything. Some bullets are called bee stings, some are called asteroids. Some miss, some hit something. Sooner or later, we all get hit.

We never hear stories about planes that don't crash, or cars that don't mow people down, or people who aren't bombing or being bombed. We don't hear about rivers that aren't flooding or cats that are peacefully sleeping on keyboards. We could write about that stuff. We could make shows about that stuff. Then what would we have? Something like My Dinner With Andre, maybe, something truer to life yet excruciatingly, mind-numbingly dull. Anybody who likes stories knows that there's no story without conflict. I mean, I could tell you about my terribly tedious boring yawn of a day, but where would be the fun in that, for you or for me?

My last editing project was a thesis about antitrust law in Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and the United States. Ninety pages of mediocre maundering on mergers, markets, price fixing, and dominant position... I kept waiting for the juicy stuff. Come on, kid, where are the corporations that broke antitrust law and were taken down by the Justice Department in a hail of badges and bullets? Where are the stories of the sad-sack CEOs who shed crocodile tears for the juries to avoid going to federal prison? Where are the stories about the consumers who lost their life savings to crooks and creeps and cretins in the crazy world of commerce? What about the hapless foreign businessmen who are rotting in Saudi jails for collusion?

Nope. Not there. Ninety pages of ho-hum, Bluebook legal citation style. Three days of yawn torture. $20.00 in my pocket in exchange for each hour of my life energy. Worth it? I don't know. What is my life energy worth? Try plugging a toaster into me. I'm pretty sure you will be disappointed. If you were expecting toast, that is.

And to prove we are all in the hellish hand-basket together, whats-his-name Malik pulled a Mike Nesmith and left One Direction. The wailing and suffering and angst made the 11:00 news last night. The new announcer read the story in a bemused voice to an audience that was possibly equally bemused. I know I was. Bemused. Perplexed. Confounded. There's no making sense of life, but I feel compelled to keep trying.

Compelled by the obsession... or is it, obsessed by the compulsion?

I may have mentioned that I've been editing dissertations to earn money. Although I'm happy to be earning, I am fairly certain this isn't a long-term career gig for me. Editing uses up parts of my brain that have been rapidly deteriorating since menopause while leaving the creative parts of my brain to wither from lack of use. I managed to put three hours into formatting a paper about student retention in online college programs (ho-hum). Then I started going through a box of old mementos my mother gave me as she begins her downward spiral into a retirement community. After looking at photos of myself from elementary school, high school, and college, I felt a bit queasy. So I began my own downward spiral, which tonight consisted of cleaning my egg beater with a toothpick.

I don't see very well anymore, especially not up close, so I don't notice things like detritus on dishes and grimy goop on my egg beater. I admit, possibly I also don't care all that much about squalor at the Love Shack, but that is another topic. The other day, though, while I was beating the crap out of my morning eggs, I noticed little black flecks of... ucky stuff flying into the eggs. Just a couple, not a lot, looked like pepper, but I don't pepper my eggs, so WTF? I looked closer at the egg beater and realized all the grooves on the dang thing were black with grime. The only clean part was the part that went into the eggs.

Thoroughly grossed out and embarrassed (knowing that I would have to blog about this eventually), I set the egg beater into a container of water and dumped in some ammonia. I let it soak overnight. Tonight, when I'd had enough of formatting the 28th Word table of incomprehensible research data, I decided: It's time. I grabbed a small handful of toothpicks and set to work.

While I picked and poked at the crevices in the egg beater, I could hear my neighbors carrying on a conversation outside my open kitchen window. I couldn't see them, and they couldn't see me, but the acoustics in the back are perfect for eavesdropping. Susan and Pat live in the house directly behind the Love Shack. They are musicians. Or at least, Pat is. When the weather is good, I see him perched on his porch, strumming a guitar. He seems to be into a sort of folk rock fusion groove. I just made that up. I have no idea what kind of music he plays. He's got long hair and a beard, though, and he wears tight jeans, pointy black boots, and a black leather vest. Maybe you can figure it out.

Susan was talking with a male visitor about a plant in her yard. A car engine was rumbling. Suddenly, I heard the voice of Roger, the neighbor to the east of Pat and Susan.

“I really liked your music!” he said enthusiastically. “It reminds me of some guys I knew in college.”

Susan's visitor murmured something I couldn't hear. Roger went on, “Yeah, the guitar player quit the band and started growing organic vegetables, or something. You gotta remember, I'm 68 years old. We were all hippies back then.”

Susan must be in her 40s. I imagine to her Roger seems like a decrepit old man. I finished one side of the egg beater and flipped it over. The dishwater was cloudy with gross black specks.

Roger's voice echoed across the driveway. “The drummer, though, the drummer just disappeared. They went to his house and found it was empty, no clothes, no furniture, everything, just gone.”

Susan's visitor said something in response. She lives in a cute little house. I saw the inside once, before she and Pat moved in. Before Roger moved into the next little house in the row. I frequently see him tending to his many potted plants. For some reason, he rarely acknowledges my presence, even when we are within ten feet of one another. I don't understand that.

“But hey, I really liked your music!” Roger repeated loudly. I finished cleaning the egg beater. Susan's visitor got into his car and drove away.

Cleaning my egg beater is a sign. I'm regretting the past and trying to control the future. Some significant endings are bearing down on me: my mother, my car, my apartment, my lifestyle. Nothing stays the same forever, I know. But I'm worried at the prospect of change. I used to think I welcomed change—why else would I be a chronically malcontented pot stirrer? But now I think I'm just like most of the other people on the planet: terrified of losing what I have or not getting what I want. It's just plain old self-centered fear.

It's spring in P-town. Everything is blooming (including my sinuses). I have another paper (18,000 words) to edit after I finish the one I'm working on (32,000 words). I would like to get off this bus, but I don't know how.

Next week, Mom and I are touring another retirement place. Neither one of us thinks it would be a good fit. I think she wants the fancy place on the bluff over the river, the one with the gazillion dollar buy-in. She said, “I can sell the condo.” And she's right, she could sell the condo. On what she has left, she could survive maybe five years, if nothing went wrong. Maybe that is the best option when you reach 85. Put it all on red and let it rip. You don't know how long you have left. Might as well enjoy it while you still can.

Meanwhile, she's offloading the 55 years of crap her four kids gave her...back onto her four kids. Last week, the bed in the spare room was covered with four stacks of photos, homework, and other mementos of childhood. One stack for each kid. I'm lucky, I got to take my bag of old pictures, photos, and poems with me, because I live nearby.

My mother kept just about everything, it seems. There are mementos from just about every milestone in my life: high school graduation, college graduation, letters, long-forgotten photos of me and former boyfriends. She kept a tattered piece of notebook paper on which I had very carefully written in a childish scrawl, “Captain Robert Gray sailed into the mouth of a big river. He named it the Columbia.” There is even a plaster imprint of my kindergartener-sized hand. My mother kept everything. Which is why it is painful to see her letting it all go. I know every ending is followed by a new beginning. But apparently I don't like change.

I do like my shiny clean egg beater, though. Obsessions and compulsions may be underrated.

Shmushed

I just finished editing and uploading some hapless doctoral student's wretched massive tome. Now I have a few minutes before The Walking Dead comes on the local re-run channel to reflect on ants, editing, and stupid people.

I'm feeling a little disgruntled. I counted up the hours I spent on the editing project and calculated I earned just over $16.00 per hour. You might think that is a pretty good wage. If you think that, you would be wrong. Don't forget that at least 40% must be set aside for taxes.

While I was in the bathroom staring at the whiskers hanging out of my nose, I reflected on the possibility of writing a little program that would edit a dissertation for me according to a frivolously random algorithm, replacing commas with semi-colons and periods with exclamation marks. My edited product might defy the rules of grammar; but it would certainly read more energetically! Grammar-shmammar, that's what I always say. To my cat when he's licking his butt in the chair next to me.

The most recent editing project, and the source of my disgruntlement, consisted of the first three chapters of the client's dissertation and her proposal. It's rare to edit the dissertation before approval has been granted to field the study. I get the feeling that this client's brain is not firing on all cylinders. No doubt she is exhausted from smacking her children, placating her husband, and making empty promises to her committee. Or maybe she's just not ready for prime time.

I edited the proposal first, so I would know what the study was about. That took an entire day. On day 2, after I was part way through the dissertation itself, I happened to see an email from the agency guy in my inbox: Hope you haven't started the proposal: the client has an updated version. Enjoy! My yowl of horror and dismay inspired my cat to leave the room for a while. I did a quick document-compare and found very little had changed. No harm, no foul. Thank you, editing gods.

Speaking of editing gods, where were they last week, I wonder, when I won and lost my first (and probably last) dissertation coaching client? All gods are fickle—driving gods, dieting gods, ant-killing gods are just a few of the wingnuts that rule my world...but few gods are more unpredictable or capricious than the editing gods. This is the story.

I got a call on my cell phone from someone I didn't know. That happens occasionally. I rarely hear the thing buzz. My business number rolls over to a Google Voice number, and Google Voice sends me a transcript of the message. I always chuckle when I read Google's attempt to convert someone's quickly spoken words into text, especially if the person has an accent. Which was the case with the message that prompted the ensuing fiasco/learning opportunity.

I deciphered the message by listening to it and heard a man's voice say, “My professor recommended I get a coach.” After some back and forth by email and phone, I met Alphonse last Saturday at a local college campus (not the one he was enrolled with), where we sat at a picnic table in the sun and tried to understand each other. He told he he was enrolled in an online doctoral program in Education at someplace based in Colorado. He needed a coach and some help with APA formatting, he said.

“Do you have a copy of the APA book?” I asked. I held up my tattered and annotated copy. He looked perplexed.

Alphonse is from Kenya and retains a strong accent even after two decades in the U.S. It takes me a while to get familiar with a new accent. Meanwhile, I read lips. His lips were thin, and his teeth were perfectly white. His gums glowed pink, like there was a light on inside his mouth. He laughed a lot. Too much, and way too loudly. I hadn't been out of the house much lately, so I felt a little shrunken at his exuberance.

“Here are two of my assignments that need editing,” he said, holding out two bent pieces of white paper crammed with lines of single-spaced text in a variety of barely readable fonts. I could feel my eyes crossing (which in retrospect was an important clue, if I ever decide I want to do this again). He told me he was in a doctoral program, which led me to assume that he actually qualified to be in a doctoral program. I mean, I assumed he could write at least at a college level; he had to have a master's degree from somewhere, right? So I didn't do more than glance at the assignments he showed me.

Caught in my assumption, I failed to see red flag #1 (poor writing skills) and forged bravely into the muck, agreeing to edit his school assignments, which two days later got me into a frothy brouhaha with his professor, a faceless academic working at a two-bit for-profit university (not unlike the one from which I matriculated), who thought I had written Alphonse's assignments for him. More on that in a moment.

My second error was assuming that because Alphonse could use a cell phone, he could use a computer. Specifically, that he could send and receive emails with attachments. That assumption led me to refuse to receive the flashdrive he tried to give me, stating instead, oh, just email me the files. I'll edit them and send them back to you! Tra la la. Thus, red flag #2: poor computer skills. It's difficult to instruct someone how to download a file over the phone.

Red flag #3 involved his concern about how much my services were going to cost him. Duh. If a person has to ask, obviously they can't afford me. But at that point, I was more interested in the process of acquiring a real coaching client than I was in making money editing. Curiosity won out over chasing the cash. I have yet to be paid, but it's only $67.00, so I'm not too concerned.

As you can imagine, the fact that Alphonse couldn't send and receive email attachments meant he had to physically drive to my apartment and deliver a flashdrive to me. The first time, I met him in the street. He handed off the little gizmo and departed in his Toyota Prius. The second (and third times), in utter frustration, I invited him into my sacred space (red flag #4! Luckily he wasn't allergic to cats) and attempted to teach him how to do some things on my computer: send and receive an attachment, do some online research at the county library, and log into his university course room and upload a file. Alphonse sweated, mopped his brow, and laughed and laughed.

Without a doubt, Alphonse has the worst writing skills I have ever encountered. I do not lie when I say the editing I did for him was essentially a translation from a bizarrely poetic foreign language consisting almost entirely of... well, see for yourself.

This passage, by the way, was formatted entirely in bold. This was one of four paragraphs, all similar. After weeping a little, I began to pick my way through this verbal minefield and eventually produced a concise, neat translation that more or less represented the ideas I was able to glean from the essay. I felt I'd done a stellar job editing difficult material, and allowed myself a smidge of prideful satisfaction, which quickly dissipated when I got a call from Alphonse telling me his professor wanted to talk to me about the editing I'd done for him.

After some phone tag (on a holiday!), I connected with Dr. Bob, who calmly and with arrogant complacency commenced to regal me with his professional pedigree: program director, wrote the curriculum, president of a college, founded a college... yada, yada. By this time, I had looked him up on the Web and I knew exactly who he was: an academic wannabe stuck in the for-profit higher education world. And a bully, too, I found out.

I don't bully easily; I bend, I don't fight back. I didn't argue with Dr. Bob. I couldn't have gotten a word in, even if I had wanted to. I knew I had done nothing wrong: Alphonse hired me to edit his essays, and I had done my job as an editor; however, from an educator's point of view, I had made it possible for Alphonse to cheat. Once I saw that editing his papers was not going to help Alphonse toward his goal of earning a Ph.D., it was clear I had to release my new coaching client.

Meanwhile, Alphonse decided he didn't like his online university and the bossy Dr. Bob and began taking steps to transfer to a local university in his neighborhood. He emailed me yesterday that wanted me to edit his admissions essay. I declined. Alphonse has called my cell phone three times today. My cell phone was dead; forgot to charge it up. Ha. Maybe there is an editing god.

This is way too long, so I'll tell you about the ants another day. Hint: The word of the day: shmushed.

If I wait long enough

I realized last night as I tried to fall asleep after watching back-to-back episodes of The Walking Dead on the re-run channel, few things give me more pleasure than posting to this blog. I return to this blog like returning to a old friend, the kind of friend who listens unconditionally, thereby giving me space to say the next stupid thing that comes to mind. How rare is that, to find that generous a friend?

What shall I tell you today, friend? Would you like to hear about the unseasonably warm weather we are having here on the west coast? No, probably not, not if you live on the east coast, where you are slipping on ice or buried under seven feet of snow. I'm sorry for you, truly. Out here on the frontier the air is downright balmy. I still fear winter will return with a vengeance, but the trees, shrubs, and daffodils apparently don't agree. Nor does my cat, who after fluffing up during the month of January is now shedding like it's spring. The National Weather Service informs me that it is 56°F here in the Mt. Tabor area of the Rose City, and it's only 1:00 p.m. This is bizarre. My conclusion is that I don't have to pack up and move to a warmer, drier climate; apparently if I wait long enough, my preferred climate will come to me.

Still, it's a mixed blessing: I enjoy these warmer drier days, but I know we need snow on our mountain if we will avoid water shortages next summer. And if I were a skier or snowboarder or a snow resort operator on Mt. Hood, I would be totally bummed. The sun is trying to shine right now. I'm opting for living in the moment.

But enough about our warm winter. What else can I tell you?

My scrawny old mother and I are still trying to find a retirement community for her to join. On Tuesday morning we met at a third place, just up the street from her condo. I was a bit perplexed at not being able to find its website, but our senior placement adviser, Doug, had assured us he had placed many happy old folks there. Mom was skeptical, but doing our due diligence, we thought we should at least go look at the place. The sky was blue, the sun was warm. Great day to tour an old folks' home.

I got there early. I parked on a side street and started walking around the parking lot of the two-building complex. As far as I could tell, the place consisted of artists' lofts, studios, and gallery spaces. I didn't see any wheelchair ramps. No blue-haired women pushing walkers. No wobbling old bald men soaking up the sun. The place looked quiet and deserted, and the signs around the parking lot advised us to park elsewhere.

I turned and spotted my mother trotting toward me. She wore her trademark red fleece jacket and thrift store faded blue jeans with tidy creases permanently sewn in. She sported huge dark glasses over her regular glasses and a knitted cap on her short gray hair. I wore much the same thing (sans the huge dark glasses and the creases in my jeans).

“Where do we go?” she said.

“I don't think it's here anymore,” I replied. “All I see is a gallery, and it's closed. That building says 'Lofts' and that building says 'Studios.'”

A long-haired young woman wearing Uggs was scuffing slowly along on the sidewalk near us, smoking a cigarette. I stopped her and asked if she knew anything about the buildings.

“Yeah, I live here,” she said neutrally.

I asked if there was a retirement community here. She said no, not anymore, and wandered on her way. Mom and I did a 360, eyeballing nearby buildings. Nothing but houses and small apartment buildings, nothing big enough to house 100+ old folks. The buildings were here, but the retirement community was gone.

I walked Mom back to her car. We agreed it was a good thing that we hadn't driven clear across town to see a place that wasn't there. She had more errands to run: post office, day-old bread store, library, I don't know what all... errands that keep her connected to the world (and driving on city streets). I watched her motor away and walked back to my own car. I drove home, made lunch, and continued editing a paper on evaluating the differences between Ed.D and Ph.D. degrees. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, Doug the senior placement adviser is AWOL, not responding to email or phone calls. I am imagining that he got tired of wrangling needy desperate clients who want the best facility for the least amount of money.

We'll carry on without him. Next up is a place in Milwaukie where Mom has some friends. It has a garden. I'm hopeful that eventually we will find the right place. I don't want to let this search drag on too long. The old mother I used to have, the one with stained bent teeth, bulging biceps, and a determined stride has been replaced by a stranger with perfect dentures, sagging arms, and a wary, wobbly step. I guess if we wait long enough, none of this will matter. But I want her to be safe and happy in her last days, at least until the money runs out.

I used to imagine that someday—and I am not proud of this—that someday after both parents were gone, that there would be some money for me and my siblings. If I just waited long enough, maybe some of the pressure of scrabbling for a living would ease. Maybe I would be able to retire, or at least not worry so much. If I just waited long enough.

Now that scenario seems pretty unlikely. Now that I know how much money my mother really has, and how much income she receives, I see that there is no safety net there, no ease, just more of the same. Of course, we all know that I'm not required to worry. Everyone has challenges but suffering is optional. That thought doesn't really make me feel better, but it does motivate me to pull my head out of my own butt just a little. I guess that is a start.

And I know that if I wait long enough, none of this will matter. It's hard for a chronic malcontent to have hope these days. Climate change, terrorists, Russia, nuclear war, and stupid people who care more about money than about people... the odds are not looking good for the human species—or any other species on Planet Earth. I carry on as if my tiny life matters, but I know that in the end, nothing matters. I'm a speck. Suns explode, planets are hit by asteroids, new havens appear in distant galaxies, and life (most likely) carries on. There is no question we all die; the question is how to live until then. I'm still working on it.

Lowering my standards

I surely should have my brain examined. Something funny is going on in there. I fear it's termites. I think if a curious surgeon happened to open up my cranium, she would probably find an army of hard-hatted termites working diligently to destroy whatever synapses are still firing. It's a sad and perhaps little known fact that working with Wordpress themes, menus, widgets, and html accelerates the process.

In typical style (launching the new to avoid finishing the old), I started a new... what shall I call it? A division? A department? A product? I don't know. It's a new direction aimed at taking advantage of my academic career. I'm thinking of helping doctoral students finish their dissertations. Based on what I've seen as an academic editor, they could seriously use some help.

My academic career is somewhat sparse, I admit. One doctorate and six months of editing doesn't really amount to much. Can I call it a career yet? (Nuts, she cried gaily. Career, schmareer! In this age of nanosecond attention spans, six months is a lifetime!) Notwithstanding the fact that I haven't had any editing jobs since before Christmas, I've got this wild hair poking me in an uncomfortable place, prodding me to adopt the delusion that it might be possible to develop some kind of online business around the knowledge I've gleaned so far from learning, teaching, and editing. I figure other people learn as they go. Well, that approach suits me fine.

So there you have it: I have a new “career,” and true to my typical style, I'm launching it on the proverbial wing and a prayer. I don't know what the wing is all about, but I do know something about prayer, namely that you can't petition the lord or anyone else with it. So I don't know how this new venture is going to go. If past performance is any indication of future results, the odds are not good. But, as my friend Carlita is wont to remind me, the nature of oddness is not always obvious. Is it odd or is it God? That is a question for brighter minds than mine. I am focused on earning.

But as I mentioned up top (and I'm trying to hurry because Season 5 of Downton Abbey starts tonight), my brain is full of buzzing termites, and they aren't helping. I tried on five Wordpress themes over the past couple days. Bzzzzzzzzz, said the angry termites, shaking their little fists at me. I guess my efforts to use my brain to think are getting in the way of their efforts to destroy it. Yipes.

I can tell this won't end well. The world is once again going to hell in the stinky old handbasket. But nothing lasts forever, so I might as well go for it. The alternative, besides being dead, is to go to work for Target. Wait, that's the same thing. I mean, it's time to lower my standards and keep moving in the direction of my dreams. Nobody will do it for me, and I don't want to spend the remainder of my short and brutish life wishing I tried, even if I failed. Not trying at all is the true failure.

Tomorrow I will figure out this wretched theme, or spend money to get one that I can edit myself. Whatever happens, I will carry on. I might do a little surreptitious petitioning as well, but don't tell anybody.

Another Thanksgiving adventure

My scrawny 85-year-old mother called me a few minutes ago. “Have you ever had a worse Thanksgiving meal?” she asked. I had just finished admiring my friend Bravadita's colorful repast, described on her blog, complete with mouthwatering photographs. Roasted brussel sprouts. Mmmmm. I was inclined to say, no, probably not. But that would have been an untruth. Yes, I admit, it probably wasn't the greatest Thanksgiving meal I've had, but it wasn't the worst, by far.

Here's what happened. Yesterday I picked my mother up about 10:45; we rumbled through the rain to a local crappy chain diner (where my mother often eats with her cronies), where we met my younger brother. I'll call him Spike. We strolled into the place behind an older couple, who stood staring at the glass case full of pies.

“We are here to get a pie to go,” said the old man. We quickly sidestepped our way to the counter and were seated forthwith in a booth with a nice view of a gray wet boulevard. Mom ordered a turkey sandwich (which she told me today was chicken. I'm not sure if it was chicken when it was supposed to have been turkey, or if it was chicken from the get go, or if I simply misheard her when she ordered, assuming that because it was Thanksgiving, she would get a turkey sandwich.... am I making sense?)

My brother ordered a Denver omelette, which prompted some discussion about why an omelette might be named after a city in Colorado. I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes. We all had coffee, which led to a discussion about how the coffee was better than expected, and how the best coffee comes from Astoria, but we couldn't remember the name of the company that roasted it, only that the best stuff is called Thundermuck.

The food came fast as the place filled up with families. The servers were speeding around, looking harried. I mentioned to Spike and my mother that my eggs were cold, but I didn't really care. I often eat cold eggs. They tasted fine to me. The bacon was good, too, but I really just wanted the pancakes (syrup and butter, mmmm). Sadly, they were somewhat disappointing, being simultaneously doughy and hard (is such a thing scientifically possible?). Still, I was enjoying myself, sitting across from what is left of my local family. I took Spike's picture, and he took mine. We teased each other gently; our teasing is a pale version of what it used to be: we are old now, and tired.

The whole dining adventure was over in an hour. Spike declared his intention to go home and take a nap. Mom and I agreed it was too early to take a nap. “I'll probably play some computer games,” she said with a resigned sigh. I had a paper to finish editing. Every day is a work day for me. My brother and I split the bill while my mother was making a pitstop in the restroom, which prompted a discussion on the way home about the importance of learning to gracefully receive a gift, because to repudiate a gift diminishes the giver. That shut her up for a while.

I left her standing in the rain in her driveway, waving her little wizened hand at me. I trundled my moss-covered Ford Focus home, thinking I need to replace my wipers, and had some more coffee before I started editing the paper (a dissertation on probabilities and real options... I know, what?). When my eyes were properly crossed, I watched an episode of True Blood and then went to bed. As Thanksgivings go, it was one of the better ones.

The worst Thanksgivings were the ones from my preteen childhood, in which my grandmother invaded my mother's kitchen, my father and grandfather watched football, my older brother read a book in a quiet corner, and my sister and Spike duked it out in silent fury. Where was I? No recollection. I'm pretty sure I was there, but I might not have been completely there, if you know what I mean.

The second worst Thanksgivings were the ones I attended at the homes of various boyfriends. For example, I visited the surfer dude's bronzed parents, who lived in a ranch house in Newbury Park, California. I was an overdressed new wave mannequin in turkey-sized shoulder pads: it was 1980, after all. (But I was in the garment industry: it was my job to look edgy.) The surfer dude's two-packs-a-day mother and her bizarre onion casserole was mitigated by the desert heat.

A few years later, the surfer dude was gone, displaced by the Jewish dude. The Jewish dude's mother made chicken soup without salt or seasoning. His siblings tolerated me, but I think his father was secretly fascinated by the wild fashionista goy toy with spiked hair. (That would be me.)

Finally, I figured out how to say no and stay home.

The best Thanksgiving ever was the year when my sister came to Los Angeles to work for the Getty on a museum grant. While the Jewish dude went off to do the family thing, she and I stayed home and watched movies and ate popcorn for dinner. Despite that being the year of the Malibu fires, floods, and the Northridge Earthquake, it was one of my best years in LA, because she was there.

“Didn't you want to send the eggs back?” my mother asked me on the phone.

“No,” I said. I thought about trying to tell her how much I am thankful we aren't doing the whole cooking and cleaning insanity anymore. And I wanted to tell her, too, how much I enjoy going out to eat with her once in a while, and how much I will miss her when she is gone. But that's probably best left for another day. All I said was, “No, I don't mind cold eggs once in a while. It's all part of the adventure.”

Two theories walk into a bar

I'm back in editing hell, editing other people's crappy papers instead of my own. I should be grateful. I am getting paid for my efforts. However, I just finished editing a literature review on the topic of culturally relevant pedagogy, and if I do the math, I'm pretty sure I will discover I earned about $8.00 per hour.

Now, most of the papers I've edited since I started this bizarre gig pay much better, up to $40 per hour or even more. The reason the rate differs so much between papers is that I get paid by the word. The faster I edit, the more money I make per hour. Unfortunately for me, sometimes the writers... well, let's just say they lack skill. It's not like I'm such a great writer. I can't tell a present participle from a gerund. But I'm getting better at this editing thing. For example, I am now developing a knack for sniffing out anthropomorphisms.

Anthro what, you say? It's a mouthful, I know. Anthropomorphism, often used synonymously with personification, simply put, is when you attribute human characteristics to nonhuman elements (such as concepts or theories, for example). Hence, two theories walk into a bar. Hand in hand, of course, which is what the author of today's literature review wrote. (For more information, see the APA Manual, 6th ed., pp. 69-70.)

My former Chair explained it like this. “If a box can do it, you can use it. Otherwise, don't.” I was, like, what? A box? Yes. A box. To help me while I was working on my concept paper, lo, these three years ago, I drew a box on a sheet of paper, and under the box, I wrote a list of verbs that could be used to describe what a box can and cannot do. Two lists, one a whole lot longer than the other.

What can't a box do? A lot, if you think about it. A box can't argue, defend, claim, describe, or recognize. A box can't illuminate (no, wait, I take that back, it could illuminate if it's a light box!). Well, a box can't illustrate or demonstrate. And a box certainly doesn't suggest, point out, recommend, conclude, offer, or walk hand in hand with anything, theoretical or otherwise. A box can't compare or contrast (that's the writer's job). Boxes can't explore, examine, or find the meaning in a bunch of faculty members' lived experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy. No matter how much you pay them! The boxes, I mean; everyone knows you don't need to pay faculty, they'll work for nothing.

So when one of my hapless authors writes, “This study explores...” I haul out my boilerplate explanation of anthropomorphism and slap it merrily into my editor's notes, concluding by typing, “Don't do this! Studies can't explore, only you the researcher can explore. Be warned. Reviewers have been known to reject a submission simply because someone wrote 'my study examines the differences between pigs that fly and pigs that don't fly.'”

Some people think a box can reveal, but I'm not so sure. I haven't seen any boxes ripping their tops off lately. Celebrities on TMZ maybe, but not any boxes, corrugated or otherwise.

So what can a box do? Not a whole lot. Duh. It's a box, for cripes sake. About all a box can do is show, indicate, support, or include. Most boxes I know can also contain, encompass, comprise, and consist of. Some really cool boxes might be able to focus on, and if you don't blink, you may see a box that can center on something. But I think you are safer if you use the verb involve.

Can chapters do anything boxes can't do? Good question. Chapters can outline, if you give them a nice fountain pen. And the smarter ones can summarize. But they don't ever describe, not even in a really tiny voice. I guess you could use some fancy read-out-loud software to get a chapter to talk to you, but technically that would be a case of sound coming out of your computer speakers, not a case of your chapter actually talking to you. In case you were confused. And not your speakers, either, in case you were thinking your speakers were fond enough of you to start a conversation.

Findings, research, data, studies... none of those things can explore, examine, prove, or otherwise perform behaviors that only humans can perform. I recommend sticking to show or indicate. APA uses those two words, so you can't go wrong. If your Chair threatens you with abandonment because you anthropomorphized a verb or two, change all such verbs to show or indicate and tell her to refer to APA pages 69-70.

When all else fails, use the dreaded I-bomb. Take ownership! Stop the passive voice! Claim your power. What did I do in my study? I explored, I examined, I compared and contrasted the crap out of these feisty fickle data, and I found that it's true: as long as no one is watching (and they are loaded carefully onto a cargo plane), pigs can fly!

The chronic malcontent suffers from existential constipation

When I am sitting like a blob at networking functions, or ripping along the freeway cursing out slow drivers, or picking cat hair out of my eggs, I keep saying to myself, I gotta remember to blog about this. This is worth blogging about. Because the minutia of my life is so meaningful, right? To me, maybe not so much to you. I get it.

If I don't post anything for awhile, though, all these minor epiphanies and major revelations pile up until I am paralyzed by a serious case of existential constipation. Ahhh. Everything is meaningful! Everything is important! But where to start?

Should I write about being the only woman at a meetup about customer experience from a software designer's point of view? Rarely have I ever felt so old or out of place. They were kind to me, in that special way we often treat the elderly and infirm. I really need a new look.

Wait, I must write about the meetup where a so-called marketing guru (his nickname is Dream Killer, no lie) leaned into my space, red beard quivering with passion, to tell me, “You haven't figured out the what! Until you figure out the what you don't have a business!”

No, wait, maybe I should tell you about the local AMA luncheon, my third event since joining the AMA, where I ate wheat, dairy, and sugar while “networking” (talking) with two guys from a company that makes aviation headsets in Lake Oswego (I know, Lake Oswego! Who knew!) I'm chagrined to admit I was more interested in the ravioli and chocolate chip cookies than the headset guys or the presenter (whose topic I have already forgotten).

Or maybe I need to write about my second meeting with my SBDC counselor (what did I call him before? I can't remember. Fritz, maybe? He looks like a Fritz.) I swore to myself as I was driving to the cafe that I wouldn't treat him like a therapist. All I can say is, he asked for it.

So much has been happening! I've got too many papers to edit, on scintillating topics like prostate cancer imaging (eeewww), achievement gaps between white and minority kids (yawn, old old news, but so popular among educators), preteen sex (that was a good one, actually), and grief (complicated and uncomplicated). My hourly editing rate varies because I get paid by the word: sometimes the authors are good writers. Other times their writing skills suck. My reward for doing a good job, apparently, is the opportunity to edit more papers.

I'm reaching in all directions, grasping for something I can call success (income). On the teaching front, I'm planning on testing my first class in ten days on a small group of women—two hours on a market research topic. For the third hour I will get their feedback on the class (and feed them lunch). I haven't printed the workbook, or prepared my lesson plan, or finished my PowerPoint. Instead, I've been learning way more than I ever wanted to know about prostate cancer imaging techniques.

And, lo, the planets have aligned and the waters have parted, and now I have a little research project to work on over the next few weeks. I think it will be both challenging and fun. For a brief moment, my heart lifts. Then I think all the thoughts that come naturally to a chronic malcontent: two months till money appears, and half goes to taxes! What about the editing projects? What about my class? And knowing my luck, my car, my teeth, and my cat will all fall into disrepair at the same moment, and I'll have to move in with my mother. It's like winning the reverse lottery. Ahhh.

Once again, my brain is trying to kill me. I'm flailing in the wreckage of the future. And I'm constipated. I need to blog more often.

The season of stupid people

This is the time of year when everything goes sideways. A lifetime of Septembers has left me with a vague sense of dread. What will I wear for the first day of school? Will my classmates laugh at me when they see me with my new glasses? What if I don't like my teachers? What if they find out I'm smart? So much to worry about. New year, new classmates, new teachers, new clothes, same dread.

I don't care anymore about classmates and teachers, and I really don't care what I wear, much to my sister's consternation. But the season still deflates my will to live. I think it has to do with the angle of the sun. We've had a lot of sun this summer, and it's been great. Then Labor Day, and bam, the air chilled, just for a few days, but now the air knows it can grow colder, and so it will, without regard for hothouse flowers like me, plummeting to 50°F, and if it can fall to 50°, what's to stop it from plunging to 40°, or 30°? Or even lower? Labor Day is when the bottom falls out of summer, and I can feel the dark clouds piling up just beyond the western hills, raging in from the ocean to drench us in bone-chilling rain. Any minute now. Even though today the air is warm, it's a vile deception: There is something in the air that smells like death.

When I was struggling to finish my Ph.D., whining almost continuously about my woes via this blog, I always knew there would eventually be an end to the struggle. Either I would fail, or I would quit, or I would finish. Whatever happened, I always knew that it would end someday, and that helped fuel my persistence. Finally, I phinished, as they say.

I launched my business with hope and mild excitement. Now, nine months later, I am thrashing in the messy bog of my startup debacle, and I realize, there may be an end to this suffering as well, but unlike with the doctorate, it's not as easy to see the finish line. I mean, I know the ultimate finish line could look like me admitting defeat and joining the ranks of America's jobseekers. That is not the outcome I would prefer, but as every day passes, it's looking more and more likely.

To earn money, I've been editing academic papers. It's not fun, and the pay rate is erratic: How much I earn per hour depends on how fast I can edit. Sometimes the authors are good writers—not much for me to do, a few formatting suggestions, a word change here or there. I can easily earn $40 per hour. Other times, English is not the first language, which means I'm editing what pretty much amounts to poetry, not good when the topic is land use in China. The paper I edited yesterday was some poor schmuck's literature review. “My Chair has returned this seven times! I just don't know what else to do!” Sound familiar?

By the time I had compiled an extensive list of suggestions to expand and revise his/her literature review, I calculated I was earning $17 per hour. I guess in some (third world) countries, $17 would be a princely wage. Maybe I should move there. As long as I have internet access, I can edit academic monstrosities from anywhere.

I just finished editing a journal article for someone in Texas. I calculated I earned $25 per hour on the paper, mostly cleaning up Word tables. (How the hell do people manage to butcher Word tables so thoroughly? I don't get it.) I submitted the paper and prepared to start my real work for the day: writing the workbook for my first marketing research test class. Five minutes later I got an email from the editing agency: The client has a new version of the article. Can you compare the two versions for differences?

Really? I spent a couple minutes doing a document compare between my revised version and the author's new version and realized that was a waste of time. Then I compared the author's first and second manuscripts: Word found no differences between the two files. WTF? Is someone trying to gaslight me?

What did I tell you? Everything is harder is September. This seems like proof to me. Of course, I am biased toward chronic malcontentedness.