Still making art? Fear no art. Art is for everyone.

One of life's perplexing questions, right up there with why men spit, is how every day, I somehow manage to get a blob of toothpaste on my shirt. I can't figure it out. I never notice when it happens. I only notice it when I'm in a social setting. I happen to look down and see a circle of dried white stuff and think to myself, dang it, it happened again. Is this one of the signs of aging? I don't need a toothpaste blob to tell me I'm getting older.

Speaking of feeling old, this week I received an email from an old friend. I met Mary (not her real name) when I was seventeen years old working as the reservation-taker at a popular dinner restaurant. The restaurant had an Irish musical theme; Mary was of Irish descent and loved to sing bawdy Irish drinking songs. She was several years older than I, with much more life experience (a failed marriage, a small child). For some reason, Mary took a shine to me and decided she would support my budding career as a painter by buying two of my paintings.

Forty-four years, we are still friends, although I moved away, she went to work for a bank, and we lost touch. However, over the years, Mary managed to accumulate a storage attic full of junk, some of which was art I had made in the 1970s when I still believed I could make a career of making art. Mary believed in me whenever my enthusiasm flagged. We spent many hours in my parents' basement building picture frames to nail around my brightly colored impasto acrylic-covered canvases with the intention of selling the paintings at the Saturday Market, a gathering of craftspeople and artists displaying their wares under tents and awnings haphazardly erected in an open parking lot, come rain or shine. I rewarded Mary's devotion to my art with art, which she apparently stored in her attic.

Her email message last week was something like this: It's been too long, let's get together, I have some of your art to share with you. Yes, she used the words "share with you." Immediately I recognized the code for Please come take your stuff back. I replied affirmatively, we set a time, and I drove over to her house in northeast Portland, expecting to take back the two paintings she paid $50.00 for back in 1974.

I walked into a chaotic scene. Her living room looked like a thrift store. Every surface held junk. The couch was obscured by artwork of various sizes and shapes, not all of which was mine, I was relieved to see. Mary gestured at a stack of paintings I had not seen since high school and early college.

“I had no idea you had so much of my artwork!” I exclaimed, thinking to myself, do I owe her forty years' worth of storage fees?

“I'd like to keep these two,” she said, pointing out two small painterly paintings, one of a stream coming down a hillside and the other of a beat-up wagon in an overgrown field. I pondered both pictures, not remembering either one. Certainly I had no recollection of painting them, but my signature was on both, so there is reality for you.

“Keep what you want,” I replied generously, thinking to myself, will all this crap fit in the trunk of my car? I saw some drawings I'd done while in fashion school (yes, I went one year to fashion school, you would never know by looking at me). “Just let me take some photos of them.”

I used my fancy new smartphone to take photos of the two little paintings. Then I gathered up an armload of the paintings and drawings she no longer wanted and hauled it all out to my car.

Was I ever so naive that I believed I could make a life for myself as a painter? Apparently so. I was in art school, everyone I knew was a painter, so I painted. We all painted, constantly. That first year of art school I produced scores of paintings. Most of them are lost to history. Maybe they hang on walls in houses somewhere. Maybe they clutter up attics and basements. I don't know. I wish now I had not been so prolific. At night I dream of the paintings stored in my own basement (well, my landlord's basement), the cast-offs of my mother and now my friend Mary. I wonder, how do people get rid of art? I don't mean, how do they haul the junk to the dump? I mean, how can they bring themselves to part with art that others have made? I don't mean crafts that disintegrate into plaster dust or knick-knacks made of construction paper and pipe cleaners. I mean authentic art, made by authentic artists seeking to express themselves through visual media. I have art from people I knew in college, people I knew in Los Angeles. Would I call them and ask them to take their work back, I don't want it anymore? No, never, not in a million years.

But now, after downsizing my mother into assisted living, I know that we don't take anything with us. Nothing last forever, not people, not stuff, not art. Art used to be made of organic materials; art used to decay. Modern humans make too much stuff, and none of it decays. There is no room for all this stuff. My old paintings are junk now, trash, stuff nobody wants. And because the paintings are largely made of acrylic paint, they will never decay, they will never turn to compost to help grow the next garden. I thought I was making art, but what I really made was pollution.

Never again, people.

Be careful what you ask for

I told the Universe I would walk through whatever door opened, financially speaking. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the Universe, I realize now. But you know how it is when you are desperate for income: you start throwing out blanket-sized prayers and making promises to whatever deity happens to be on television at the moment. And before you know it, the Universe (or random chance) responds. With something you were perhaps not expecting, or wanting all that much, like a pie in the face or an e.coli infection.

No worries, neither one has happened to me yet, although I got a robocall earlier today from the City of Portland warning me to boil my tap water. Wha—? Seriously, boil my tap water, here? In the City of Cleanest Water in the World? Oh boy. And wouldn't you know it, the culprit is one of those hundred-year-old reservoirs just 200 yards from my front door. A broken pipe, a little breach, or some nut peeing in the water, whatever the cause, all that lovely Bull Run water is now contaminated with e.coli bacteria, and the City of Portland is on a boil-water alert for the first time ever. A big thank you to my good friend V., who called me to tell me about the alert, else I would have never known, and probably swilled e.coli infested coffee all day long. In fact, ugh, I have! Oh well. If you don't hear from me in a few days, send out the hazmat team.

I spent the last two days editing academic papers for writers whose first language happens to be something other than English. One 7000-word project was through an agency, the other (12,000 words) directly from the author. I've been sitting at my computer for two solid days, editing, commenting, highlighting, spellchecking, formatting... and I must say, this is the stupidest way to earn money I've ever thought of. I'd almost rather be a gardener (I did that for a few months years ago, when I was still young and limber). As my wrists solidify into concrete and my eyes grow gritty with weariness, I am reflecting that I got what I asked for. And now I'd like to give it back, but I don't have any other income right now, so I'm stuck.

It could be worse, I suppose. It has been worse. Driving a school bus was worse. Sewing clothes for overweight, underappreciative female Los Angelenos was definitely worse. In comparison, this has some perks. I get to swelter in my own stinky sweat. I can listen to my music (Grace Jones, John Foxx, and new Coldplay). I can bury my nose in my cat's furry tummy. I can fart all I want and pick my nose. Really, it's not so bad. But I haven't found the balance yet: I haven't been out of the house for two days. I fear the blood has pooled to my ankles. I can barely move, so it's hard to tell. I should probably be drinking more water, but well, whatever.

On the bright side, however, I have sold a whopping two ebooks! Thank you, dear friends. I don't know who you are because the $15.98 has not yet been posted by Smashwords to PayPal, but someday I hope I have a chance to thank you, if not in person, then with a big sloppy email kiss. Mwah! It is very difficult to promote a book anonymously, I have discovered, so I'm not even trying. Meanwhile, I'm contemplating my next book, which will not be anonymous. This time I'm going to ask the Universe for great big wads of cash and see what happens.

The Chronic Malcontent succumbs to shameless commerce

Well, I did it. I've been thinking about doing it for a while (thanks to the encouragement of my sister and my friends), and I finally did it. For the past month I have been compiling posts from the Hellish Handbasket blog, in preparation for turning it into an ebook. Yep. A compendium, call it a handbook, maybe, of dissertation-related posts for aspiring doctoral learners. Yesterday, I did it. It's done. I've officially gone over to the dark side of shameless self-centered commerce.

All I've ever wanted to do, since I was nine years old, was write and illustrate my own books. Sometime during elementary school, evil powers convinced me it was an impossible dream, so I pivoted toward painting. Equally foolish pursuit, I was told. Thus, in college (the first of many attempts at higher education), I gave up painting for graphic design (or "commercial art" as it was known in the x-acto knife and rubber cement, layout and paste-up days. Wow, I'm old.)

Unfortunately, I sucked at graphic design. But I loved fashion! I used my hazy vision of taking over the fashion world as a fashion illustrator and designer as an excuse to take a geographical to Los Angeles, where I fell awkwardly into costume design, started my own business, and got into debt. The rest is the boring history of me crawling out of the various holes I dug for myself over the ensuing 20 years. But you can't take the dream out of the girl, apparently, even when she's middle-aged, sagging, and growing a mustache. All I ever really wanted to do was create my own books.

It just wasn't the right time, it seems. Until now. All it took was for the world of technology to catch up to my vision and make it possible. Yay.

Of course, the world of technology also has made it possible for millions of other would-be authors to realize their visions of publishing, too. I find I am a speck, invisible in the vast and swarming tide of people who can also proudly claim they are ebook authors. Anyone can write and publish an ebook. (Even my mother could do it, and she just might, who knows! My scrawny 84-year-old mother just relaunched her online presence! Look out, Internet!)

As part of the gigantic and vibrant marketplace of ebooks, odds of being found are not in my favor. Especially considering my ebook is (more or less) an anonymous entry. Some marketing ploys to boost awareness of the new ebook may be undesirable, if I want to stay anonymous. Am I really hidden? No...anyone who wants to find me, can. I'm not well hidden, I'm not really anonymous. Who cares? Once again I find myself questioning my identity. Who am I? Who am I now? On so many levels, I'm still so confused.

But I finally got something done! Something is now present in the world that wasn't present before, and I was responsible for making that happen. That is the victory for me. If the universe wants to take note of it, so be it. If not, whatever. I'm on to my next ebook. My car may have a layer of moss on it, for being parked in the same spot for so long. But not me!

If you are interested in ordering or sampling the ebook, you can find it at Smashwords. And if you want more info, check out the Welcome to Dissertation Hell: the ebook page on this blog.

Best advice I've heard today: Go crazy!

As I sit staring at my computer, trying to dredge up something worth blogging about, I listen to Prince's manifesto Let's go Crazy, and think, hey, maybe that's good advice. Maybe it's a sign from god. You know how it is, when you can go in a million different directions, but you just don't know which ones will pay off, so you find yourself waiting for that special sign from the Universe. The song on the radio: You get what you give. The billboard: 127 million dollars! The horoscope: Watch out for family members trying to undermine your creative endeavors. A song from Prince is as good as any other sign out there, I think. I've tried everything else, and all I get is disapproving growls from my cat and a dwindling bank account. (I'm not sure which is worse.) Going crazy sounds like it might be fun.

My friend Zena the Warrior Princess, who is going on sabbatical for a few months, expressed her uncertainty about what activities to engage in during her time off. We talked on the phone today.

“I have a list of about 20 things to do while I'm gone,” she said. “How do I decide what to do first?”

“Write each activity on a little piece of paper,” I said, “fold it twice, and put it into a container. Shake it up and draw one out. Let the Universe decide.”

“That's brilliant!”

While we were talking, I realized that I had already done this. Years ago, I designed a “game” to help me choose among many alternatives. I called the game Divine Chance. I'm not wedded to the divine part, necessarily, but I do believe in chance, as in random stuff that makes us crazy. And, as my brain slowly remembered the game, I recalled that in my kitchen, high on a shelf behind the houseplants, is the colorful game board, a two-foot square piece of cardboard, which I segmented into something like 15 numbered sections. The sections are loosely painted in festive primaries and secondaries—red, blue, green, yellow, orange, outlined in black, all in acrylic, kind of like an opaque stained glass window.

And there is a container, too! An empty coffee can, still smelling like French Roast, pressed into service long ago as a receptacle for about 20 little folded slips of paper. My idea (at the time it seemed like fun) was to place the game board on the floor behind me, shake up the container, and then toss the slips of paper over my shoulder so that most of them land on the game board. Then my plan was to turn around, find the task that landed in section 1, and do it first, and so on down the line, according to the numbers on the game board. Thus would my destiny be created, through random chance.

Of course, it all depends on what you write on the slips of paper, doesn't it? Did I write impossible things, like... become an opera singer? Learn to fly? Travel the world in a yellow submarine? No, I did not. I opened up a few of the musty pieces of paper to reveal the mysterious tasks that at the time were important enough to me to ask for random intervention.

Cut my hair. (Really?) Fix my car. (Uh-oh) Get an MFA. (Whoa. That dusty dream is, like, 15 years old. I had forgotten about it.) In fact, most of the tasks were trivial, prosaic, and years out of date. No longer applicable to my middle-aged solitary self-employed existence. What would I put in the can now, I wonder? Take a nap. Write a book. Go crazy?

But the idea of the Divine Chance game is still funny. And it's no goofier than using Tarot, I-Ching, or tea leaves to try to chart a path through the unknown future. Now I believe that if I can't make a decision, it means I don't know who I am, at least temporarily. I also know that as long as I stay in action, the Universe can influence outcomes. I don't know how it works, I just know that it does. If I sit around waiting for the bus to come to my door, all I will see is the short bus coming to take me away, ha ha. Signs or no signs, the trick is to be a shark and keep moving. Even if everything seems random and it feels like insanity.

Turn here

I spent a couple hours today working on my first lesson plan for the Marketing course that was supposed to begin tomorrow evening. That's right. Was supposed to begin. I got a phone call from the Dean late in the afternoon: Sorry, the class is cancelled due to lack of students. I made all the appropriate noises and so did she. After I hung up the phone, I shocked my cat by bursting into song. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! The universe has spoken!

I'm not surprised the class was cancelled. This is the world of for-profit career education, after all. Vocational students say one thing and frequently do another. And when you push them toward a deadline, they balk.

Am I sad? Not even slightly. I took a few minutes to calculate the financial return I could have expected from the 11-week course (lest I be deluding myself that I was doing it for the money). By the time you factor in a couple hours a week of prep time, an hour of commute time, and a couple gallons of gas, what looked like a reasonable hourly rate dropped by two-thirds. I might as well be paying them.

What other reason besides earning a few dollars would I have for teaching at a dreaded for-profit career college? Other than the relatively minor joy of teaching marketing, the only solid reason I can think of is that it would give me stories to blog about. I never lack for stories to blog about. But students are so.... ripe for skewering. It would have been a rich source of material for my pen-like sword. Sword-like pen. Whatever.

I'm not unhappy with this turn of events. In fact I'm relieved. Tonight I used my sudden sense of freedom to finish stuffing and stamping my first batch of direct mail marketing letters. I know the recipients will toss them in the recycling bin, but that's okay. If I don't take action, then nothing can happen. That much I know. I'm taking each day as it comes. These days I stay pretty close to the present moment, and that keeps me fairly serene. If the universe says turn here, I turn. In this case, it seems the universe has recalculated my personal GPS.

Tomorrow, though, I wouldn't be surprised if I get another phone call from the Dean, saying the student(s) have reappeared and would I still be willing to teach the class? That's the crazy world of for-profit higher education. This institution appears better than the one that laid me off last year—regional accreditation makes everything seem shiny. But look under the hood and you see the same engine driving the operation: the profit motive. Even regional accreditation can't make a for-profit institution be something it isn't. The more I think about it, the more I suspect I just dodged a bullet.

Driving in circles

Yesterday I had a job interview in Tigard, which is a... I guess you would call it a suburb of Portland, although you can't tell where one city ends and the other begins. Tigard isn't as far as Wilsonville, which is where the career college I used to work for is located, but I can't get to Tigard by sneaking down the scenic route, I-205 (trees, dead deer, open fields). I had to muscle my way through the meat of the city. First I went west on I-84 (formerly known as Sullivan's Gulch, a tree-filled canyon that was carved up for Oregon's first freeway, AKA The Banfield). I-84 splits when you get to the Willamette River. You can go north. You can go south. I went south and crossed the river on the Marquam Bridge, a tall imposing double-decker that will plunge into the drink when the earthquake decimates the Rose City.

Time out while I bask in the glow of one of the greatest driving songs of all time: The soundtrack to Route-66 is playing through my speakers. Okay, I'm back. I wish that song were longer. So, where was I? Oh yeah, driving across the bridge, headed for Tigard. It's really not that far, if there's no traffic. I knew where I was going, more or less, and eventually I arrived at a multi-story office building housing a number of businesses, including some well-known brand names I wouldn't mind working for.

My destination was in the basement of that building, where a proprietary college from the Midwest has planted its flag, staking out territory for its first foray into the west coast market. At first glance, it appears to be just like the career college I left last year, perhaps with slightly deeper pockets and a longer reach. Why the Portland market, I wondered? Who cares. I looked at their reviews online, both students and employees, and they weren't any different from any other career college's reviews, that is to say, unimpressive.

Still, I was there to interview to teach one marketing class, their first ever on-ground class in that location, so I put my best malcontented foot forward and stumbled through the rain from the parking lot to the basement door. The place was empty. No students yet, just two administrators and some hardworking salespeople, I mean, admissions counselors, working the phones in little cubicles in a long narrow room with no windows. The administrator took me on a tour—see the lovely break room, the medical lab?—but we didn't go in the boiler room.

I had prepared a short first-day icebreaker lesson as a demonstration of my teaching skills, which I presented to the two administrators in a computer lab with one window high up on the wall. Through the window I could barely make out the grills and undercarriages of parked cars and pickups. As I talked, I had the eerie feeling I'd been there before. The computers looked a little different, but the beige walls and bland gray carpet looked the same. With fewer fingerprints and coffee stains, maybe, but give them time. I should have felt enthusiastic: Yay, I (might) get to teach marketing. But all I felt was a neutral resignation. Yay, a job, maybe. $500 for a couple months of wrestling with traffic and unmotivated students.

Haven't I been down this tired path? Why am I chasing one lousy marketing class at yet another despised for-profit college? I'm a dream come true for this outfit. I know their market as well as anyone they'll ever hire to teach there, considering proprietary vocational education was the topic of my doctoral research. They don't deserve me. They can't afford me. And if they offer me the class, I'll probably say yes. Because some money is better than no money.

Stick a fork in me

This morning I successfully defended my dissertation.

Sorry. I'm trying to figure out what to write next. Do I mention that my good friend and former colleague Sheryl braved 19° temps to sit with me, serve as my proctor, and be my only witness? Do I tell you how it went, how nervous I was, how I stumbled over my words? Should I tell you that my cell phone beeped during my presentation as it received a texted photo of my brother's girlfriend's old black dog, holding up a hand-written sign that read, “Good luck, Carol!”? Should I try to identify what I felt after it was over (a wintry mix of relief and nausea), or should I talk about how I am now? (Post-dissertation blues, already?) Should I even mention how my brain is already trying to rewrite history in a bizarre attempt to convince me that none of this happened? No, best not, perhaps.

After Sheryl left, I called my mother. Her line was busy. I called my brother: He wasn't home. In desperation, I emailed my sister, my most trusted advisor: Bless her heart, she called within minutes from her job in Boston. Finally. Someone to help me understand what I was feeling.

“Do you have any plans to see people next week?” she asked.

I looked at my calendar. Does taking my car in for an oil change count? “No,”I replied.

“You need to stay connected,” she said. Hmm. Is there a high suicide rate among new Ph.D.s?

I promised to make plans to do something with people. She said, “Congratulations, Dr. B.”

“Thanks, Dr. B.” I replied with a smirk.

I emailed a few people, ate breakfast, and went to bed, too saturated and weary to stay awake any longer. I dreamed of burned onions. (19° outside means no windows open in the Love Shack.) Finally I couldn't stand the smell and got up to find a smattering of congratulatory emails in my inbox. That was nice. My mother called. We talked about her condo board meeting.

I stood around for a while, looking at things. I cleaned out the drawer I had devoted to academic files for the past eight years. I cleaned up my desk. I filed papers I want to keep, for what, I'm not sure. As I stacked paper and filled the recycle bin, the phrase eight years kept rolling around in my head. Eight years, $50,000. Now what? What's next? Who am I, if I'm no longer a struggling grad student? Who am I if I can no longer complain about the wretched massive tome, or the timeline, or the waiting?

It's time to reinvent myself. I'll give it a few days, though, before I tackle that challenge. I need more sleep.
 

Do I look like a risk taker to you?

I'm relieved to say I hit the ground running on my first day of freedom. I could have slept in. I considered it, actually. But I had a dental appointment to keep at noon, made six months ago when I was still employed, before I had a hint I would be laid off. If I had known I might have spent less on vampire romances and put more in the bank. But I digress. I got up, I went to the appointment (covered by insurance until the end of the month, thanks former employer!), and then I efficiently blazed a furrow through my errands, one after another: gas, post office, bank, thrift store (I was only going to drop off a box but I was compelled to go inside and look for said vampire romances. Sigh. Found a few. Yay.), and finished up at the grocery store, where they were out of carts, so I was forced to only purchase what I could carry. Darn. Still I managed to spend a few hundred dollars today, if you count the dentist.

I have many fears about this new regimen. One is that I will spend my days efficiently running errands, briskly knocking items off my mundane to-do list.... toothpaste: check!... while completely avoiding the activities that could generate income. (Like, for instance, job hunting.) I have a to-do list a mile long of projects half-finished: scan family photos, recycle old paper, donate old binders and books, dust my shelves (I have ten million shelves, no lie!), sweep, mop, vacuum... ahhhhhh! Now my true colors shine. I have the time to do these things, and yet I resist. I guess I prefer to live in squalor. I feel like I'm missing an important food group if I don't have cat hair with every meal.

Speaking of hair balls, my next dissertation course started today. I uploaded my first draft of the Institutional Review Board application, which will result in receiving approval to interview human subjects. They can't be too careful with a researcher like me—I might be tempted to brainwash my participants into thinking that for-profit higher education is a scourge that should be banned from the land. Bwahahahaha. My chairperson will probably mosey into the course room in a few days and spy my submittal parked in the corner. Oh, look, she did something. After some back and forth, eventually she will allow it to be sent to the faceless nameless IRB reviewers, who will eventually allow it to pass, after ripping me a new one and sewing it closed with some warnings masquerading as compliments. Then, finally at long last, I'll be cleared to collect data. What does that mean, you ask? That means I will be approved to arrange interviews with ten faculty to discuss their definitions and perceptions of academic quality in for-profit Gainful Employment programs in vocational colleges like the one that just laid me off.

It would be the height of irony, the epitome of poetic justice, the ultimate toothpick in the eye, if I can't find ten teachers who would be willing to talk to me. That won't happen, I'm pretty sure. But it would sure be the height of something, after these eight years of persistent struggle, to have my efforts fall flat in a big ho-hum who cares.

I started out on this academic journey with a pie-in-the-sky, ice cream-colored dream—oh, la la la, I'll just teach marketing and management courses online to students who won't even know I'm wearing my pajamas! I'll make tons of money, write books on the side, and life will be grand! What a dream, eh? More like a delusion. In eight years, I've changed (I don't eat ice cream anymore), but more importantly, the world of online teaching has changed. Something like 70% of all college faculty are adjuncts, working long hours teaching one or two classes for very low pay and zero benefits. Plus the institutions now want their instructors to have current “real world” experience—i.e., a job. Well, of course you'd better have a job, because you won't be able to live on what you make as an adjunct.

Teaching is looking less and less appealing. I doubt I will be hunting for a teaching gig in the near future, even if they wanted a Ph.D. from a for-profit institution (scourge upon the land, etc.). The pajama thing still seems good, though.

If your life could speak for you, what would it say?

My family reunited for a brief few hours today. My older brother drove in from the Oregon coast for the day. My sister came in from Boston for the weekend. My little brother pried himself away from his menagerie (two dogs, umpteen cats, a rabbit, and a pigeon) to traverse the endless block between his house and our mother's condo. I set aside my weekend for family stuff. The weather has cooperated nicely so far. And we haven't killed each other, which is good. In fact, we haven't even argued.

My guess is we are feeling too old to pick a fight. Memories fade. Old rivalries evaporate. I hazily recall that my older brother broke my nose when we were kids. (The statute of limitations has long since expired.) I doubt if he remembers. It takes too much energy to hold a grudge. I've come to terms with my crooked nose. If I ever got it fixed, no one would recognize me. I'd be another Jennifer Gray. Who, you say? See? I rest my case.

The high point of my day was a conversation I had with my sister as the afternoon was winding down. High clouds streamed over Portland, filtering the sun we've enjoyed all weekend, but it was still bright in the little coffee shop we found a block away from the famous Powell's City of Books. We sipped our fancy coffee beverages from tiny white porcelain cups and talked about turning points, crossroads, and intersections.

I may have mentioned in previous posts that in a week I will join the ranks of the unemployed. I'm thinking of starting my own business, and every time I think about it, a burning wave of fear rushes up from my stomach out to my fingertips. Prodding me toward self-employment is the suspicion that I am very nearly unemployable, due to factors beyond my control: age, introversion, and chronic malcontentedness.

My sister has her own big decision: move to Europe or stay in in Boston. I've always felt she was a European at heart. Somehow she was inadvertently dropped into a lower middle class suburban household in Portland, Oregon, when she should have been raised in Paris or London or Rome. To me, hearing her talk of moving to Europe is sort of like hearing someone talk about moving home after being away for many long years.

This special time of turning points is a fertile time. My sister and I stand together on a cliff, metaphorically speaking, peeking anxiously toward a new future. It's in the air. Several of my friends are also standing on the same cliff. Who can say if it will turn out to be a leap of faith, or a leap of foolishness? At our backs, nudging us toward the edge, is the prospect of a lifetime of boring jobs working for companies that don't appreciate our unique gifts in industries that don't nurture our souls, where we earn just enough to sustain our sorry unfulfilled half-lived lives, until finally we die withered and bitter with our stories untold.

Well, hell, when you put it like that! Even though we don't know what will happen (and who ever does?), I think we would all agree there will never be a better time than now to take the chance, to bet on ourselves. If not now, when? The alternative is unacceptable. For half our lifetimes we have half lived. We know what that is like already. And nobody else cares if we die as grouchy, dissatisfied malcontents. It's up to us to claim our future.

All together now!

The artist's futile lament: I gotta be me

It's almost 11:00 p.m. I've spent much of the day grading student work. I haven't even been outside today. The cold winter sun came and went, and I missed it, hunkered in my cave. It's midterm time. Instructors are required to submit midterm grades, in case they get run over by a truck before the end of the term. Or get fired. Or they quit because they found a  better job with a better company. (Dream on.) It takes time to do a good job grading. I joked with someone today that I probably could just throw darts at a dartboard. Ha ha, I'm sure my students wouldn't think that was funny.

Actually, once I see some writing samples, I can pretty accurately predict the grade each student will earn by the end of the term. We don't grade on the curve. It's all about points. Everyone can get an A if they do all the work satisfactorily. I have no problem giving everyone an A. Considering that my job security depends on how students evaluate me, I guess I'd say giving all As is part of how I keep my job. Kidddddingggg. No, really. I'm kidding. Just because I work at one of those low-life for-profit colleges we all love to bash doesn't mean I don't provide the best learning experience I possibly can. I'm sure I can do better on any given day—who couldn't?—but I really do try to show up and do a good job for these students. Most of whom don't give a rat's ass about learning, I might add. They just want to get out and on with their lives.

This term I have fewer computer classes and more business classes. That means more stuff to read. Two sections of Organizational Management (four students total), two sections of Professional Selling (three students total), one section of an introductory level Marketing and Finance (two students). One section of Access (five students, one of whom refuses to do any work, so he won't be around much longer). And two sections of Keyboarding, with about 25 students total). Do you wonder how this career college stays afloat, with such a low student/teacher ratio? I do.

I often complain about Keyboarding as a reason I want to poke my eyes out with a stick. I use the word “teaching” very loosely when speaking of Keyboarding. Teaching isn't exactly what I do as I stroll around behind the students, peering over their shoulders, poking at their monitors with an accusing finger. This is how you set a tab stop! Center the table! Vertically! Which way is vertically? Google it! I'm the Keyboarding drill sergeant from hell. Most of the students find me very annoying. But how else can I stay awake in class, I ask you?

After nine years, I can say with some certainty that I have pretty much perfected the job of grading keyboarding. I have developed a very colorful Excel spreadsheet that does all of the calculations for me. All I have to do is plug in the numbers. It's a thing of beauty, but unfortunately, I still have to review many documents for accuracy and formatting, a very repetitive and boring process. Letters, memos, reports, just kill me now. I've seen these documents so many times in nine years I bet I could recite them out loud. Especially the medical transcription documents. These are the documents the medical students must type from dictation files. They hate typing big words like... salpingo-oophorectomy, acute suppurative streptococcal infection, drippy gooey pus-filled tonsillar exudate (I embellished that one a little bit), as much as I hate reading them. This is why I am earning a doctorate? To teach medical keyboarders how to transcribe dictation? Where's that stick?

After nine years, am I done? Am I ready to finally admit I've done all I can do at the career college, and it's time to move on? I think I'm almost ready. Soon, very soon. Within a year, I think. On to what, though, is the question.

The cat just settled into the chair behind me and now has somehow managed to take over the entire chair. There isn't room for both our fat asses. I guess that means it's time to stop and take a nap or something. When in doubt, do what the cat does.

Don't ban guns, ban people

The fragility and unpredictability of life hits home this week, with the Oregon mall shooting and now the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. I'm struggling to process these tragedies, as many people are doing right now. Reading the comments section of the online news articles illuminates some fundamental philosophical differences in the solutions people propose.

Some folks say we should ban guns. That is the obvious first thought, isn't it? At the first mention of banning assault weapons, people shout, “Guns don't kill people, people kill people!” Well, duh. But it seems like banning guns might be a good first step. Or would have been a good first step. Now, of course, it is too late. In this modern age, every other teenager and half the pre-teens already have or in five minutes can get their mitts on the assault weapons of their choice. Barn door, horses, etc. Strengthening a ban on assault weapons may help 20 years down the road, as current models jam, melt, or get turned into lampbases and as new middle-schoolers have a harder time getting access. We may not have 20 years left at the rate we are going. I wish we could go back to cap guns.

I chuckle at the argument from the rabid gun supporters who say, “Cars kill people! Maybe we should ban cars!” Actually, I think the idea has some merit. I would gladly give up my car if my neighbors would give up their assault rifles. Hey, what if we all drove two-wheeled cars? Besides being super fun, we'd probably wreak a lot less havoc if we decided to jump the curb and mow down pedestrians on an urban sidewalk.

Well, we all know the problem isn't caused by cars or guns. The problem is crazy people. And stupid people. The stupid people leave their guns laying around for their stupid children to find and blow their stupid heads off. The stupid people fail to lock up their guns, so their stupid children find the guns and take them to school, where they accidentally on purpose blow away their friends and enemies. Stupid people let their crazy friends borrow their guns. The answer is simple. Ban stupid people and their stupid children.

But that is only part of the story. What to do about the crazy people? The crazy people sometimes look like non-crazy people. And what is crazy to one person might be perfectly rational to another. Just like defining stupid, defining crazy is hard until the person in question pulls a Columbine. Then it's easy to say, he was crazy. And his family was stupid. (If, of course, his family survives, which is often not the case.) So what do we do?

Ban people. It's the only solution. If crazy people and stupid people are the problem, and if they are walking hidden among us, there's no hope for society as we have fashioned it. From now on, to minimize the current pressure on crazy people, we should no longer be allowed to congregate in groups, so we present less of a tempting target. We should all stop talking about our fear of being randomly cut down in our shoes. Crazies feed on fear. The media should be silenced; crazies feed on publicity. And finally, we should not be allowed to propagate. Procreate. Whatever the word is. Because people are the problem.

The end.

Of course you know I'm being my usual snarky chronically malcontented self, right? I love people. Even the stupid ones. Even the crazy ones. Even as I weep for the dead, I pray for the souls of the living. And vice versa.

I'm lean, mean, mode, and median: Hire me, I'm yours!

Finally the low pressure system moved north, leaving space for a rush of warm air from the southwestern deserts, my someday home. Warm at last. Suddenly life is worth living. Amazing how a temperature difference makes all the difference. (It was close to 80°F in Portland today.) Now I don't have to complain about the weather. I can turn my whining toward my second favorite topic, my dissertation journey. Dissertation debacle. Morass. Swamp. Pithole. You know what cracks me up? That I'm using this blog like a Facebook page. I have two friends, Bravadita and my sister!

I spent almost the entire day, about ten hours, working on my concept paper. That old thing, you say? Yep. The living-dead paper that refuses to lay down and die. I keep beating the crap out of it and still it rises up from its fetid grave to perplex and confound my tired brain. Honestly, it feels like I've never written a research paper before in my life. I'm sure my expression must resemble those of my students, who stumbled into Introduction to the Internet (what's a browser, again?) after my colleague Bravadita's Research Paper class, shell-shocked at the prospect of typing (notice I didn't say writing) 15 pages. With in-text citations! And a Works Cited page! Quelle nightmare!

Yesterday, after all the layoffs at the College, I thought I'd better at least try to look for other employment, just in case, so I uploaded a resume and cover letter to a job opening at a market research firm in downtown Portland. Yeah, rotsaruck on that one. I'm sure (if they had time to even download it) they had a good laugh when they got to my resume. I can just imagine them, sitting in plush chairs in their Gucci loafers and Donna Karan pantsuits, sipping lattes from the machine in the breakroom and making paper airplanes out of the stack of resumes sent in by desperate, unemployed MBAs and PhDs.

“Here's another one! Listen to this! This poor schmuck used to drive a school bus! Har har har.”

Wow. Time out. After I wrote that last line, I almost had to get up and make a yonana. But I'm sick of bananas masquerading as ice cream, so I just took another pull on my current drug of choice: room temperature PG Tips tea laced with rice milk. (I'm a professional whiner. Don't try this at home.) Fortified, I can now continue.

Sending my patchwork quilt of a resume into the corporate world is sort of like spreading my formerly-white-now-gray granny-panties all along Belmont. It's embarrassing. There's just no way to put a positive spin on my work history: I'm a loser. It's clear as day I had my head up my ass my entire adult life.

The phone didn't ring today. But should I actually get a call next week inviting me downtown for an interview, I can imagine trying to explain what on earth I was doing all those years.

“Uh... I was trying to...uh...”

How can I explain that I was under the mistaken impression that my art career would actually be able to support me? Should I say I was following my bliss (leaving aside the fact that it was anything but blissful)? I don't know—the word bliss sounds like I was on drugs the whole time, and I wasn't (at least not that I can recall). You know, even putting the words art and career in the same sentence shows how deluded I was, and apparently still am. Maybe I could say, “I was pursuing a career in the arts.” No, same problem. Nobody but Thomas Kinkade made a career in the arts (and look how well that turned out...guess I should be grateful).

Truth? I don't want a job. I don't want to work. I just want to write and draw silly pictures, read stupid vampire novels, and eat ice cream until I'm a blob. What are the odds my dream will come true? I bet the blob part wouldn't be too hard.

So, now I'm ABD, big whoop, and I think I can stroll into the corporate world and wow them with my knowledge of statistics. Unlikely. Today is a good day, but even on a good day my mind is trying to kill me. My brain is mush from my vegan debacle, menopause, and years of sleep deprivation from working at the career college. I'd be lucky to be able to describe the differences between mean, mode, and median. If they call me, I can only throw myself on the mercy of the universe. And if they don't call me, I can say, “See? Told you. I'm a loser, baby...”

Beware the frothy emotional appeal

After the wettest March on record, the temperature has plunged. It feels like winter here again. A little snow, some hail, a funnel cloud or two, and some sunbreaks... yep, it's spring in Portland. If you don't like the weather now, wait five minutes. Did you know Oregon actually had an anti-tourism campaign in the 1980s? I remember a postcard that proclaimed, Oregonians don't tan, they rust. Har, har. There was another one about Oregonian bicyclists falling off their bikes and drowning. Yikes. Apparently we were having trouble with Californians overstaying their welcome. As I was living in California at the time, I thought it was fairly hilarious.

This evening, after grading Access tests and several five-paragraph essays from paralegal students who would rather eat dirt than write, I needed to get out of the house. In lieu of a dog (or a person), I took my cheap digital camera to the park. I'm lucky enough to live near Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcano in Southeast Portland. I took some photos in the dusk with a shaky hand, more studies in texture than glimpses of Mt. Tabor's panoramic vistas.

While I was trekking the muddy trails, listening to The Associates, Bowie, Xymox, and Depeche Mode on my mp3 player, I pondered my bedraggled career. In other words, what the hell am I going to do when I finally finish this doctorate? Get a different job? Stay where I am? Start my own business? Jump off a cliff?

I'm beginning to accept the sad fact that I am not really employee material. The only reason I've lasted eight and a half years at the for-profit college is because they leave me alone. (Don't mess with a chronic malcontent.) I fear I need to start my own business. But having an entrepreneurial seizure is what dumped my life into a hole of debt. It took me two decades to claw my way back to zero net worth. I am loathe to go through that again. So not fun. And yet, every time I imagine myself preparing resumes and cover letters, sitting through interviews, being hired, showing up... I feel sick.

I don't trust my gut. Am I feeling queasy because it would be good for me to get a real job, be a grown-up, be a worker among workers, just bow my head and take it? Or am I feeling nauseated because self-employment represents a risky but exciting brave new world where I can spread my wings and fly? Well, when you put it like that...

I know there is more to say, but I can't think of it. My mind just shut down. I saw the words "spread my wings and fly" and I had a brain fart, apparently, because now I have to turn off the computer and go watch TV. Zombie-time. Beware the frothy emotional appeal.