Un-join me

As I slide down the dark tunnel toward winter, I'm embracing my inner curmudgeon by de-connecting from social media. I started with LinkedIn groups, ruthlessly clicking the "Leave" button with a sense of relief and hope that there would soon be less in in my box. After un-joining half my LinkedIn groups—just the ones swamped by ubiquitous discussion posts from desperate small business owners who write pleading blog posts with titles like “The ten ways using LinkedIn will make you a content marketing star!”—I moved on to my modest roster of Meetups, wearily choosing "Leave this group," and then typing in the subsequent box exactly why I was un-joining: I'm tired. My feet hurt. I can't stand people. Your inane networking sessions at crappy Chinese restaurants are killing me.

I know it's not much, but it's a start. Next I'll take the hatchet to Facebook. Every time I get an email that says, Joe posted a new photo to their timeline, I cringe at the bad grammar and vow to de-friend everyone. Well, from experience I know it's as hard to leave Facebook as it is to rid your computer of AOL. The best I can do is un-follow everyone (except Carlita and members of my immediate family, of course. My sister is in Europe. Can't miss those photos of Paris and Lyon. Can't breathe, wish I was there).

Today, as my stomach roils with the remains of almost-raw onion eaten at a networking Meetup I went to last night, I find that indigestion and general dissatisfaction with life feel much the same. I fear I've learned to associate nausea with networking. (Have you noticed that Meetups seem to find hospitable homes in the backrooms of Chinese restaurants? Wonder why that is.)

My friend Bravadita is bravely downsizing in preparation for her impending move to Gladstone, a suburb of Portland about 20 minutes south on I-205. As she described her desire to have less stuff, I found myself yearning for something similar. Except for me, rather than unloading my books at Goodwill, it's more of a jettisoning of social baggage, a conscious uncoupling, as it were, from the faceless groups of rabid networkers swarming Meetups and after-work networking parties all over the city. Hey, networkers, back off. You met me, you didn't care to genuinely know me, so stop pretending. You can keep your tar-baby emails.

Argh. I confess, I'm as much to blame: Did I try to know anyone deeply? Not so much, especially not if the place was noisy and crowded. Did I wall myself off in my introvert suit of armor and exit at the first available moment? Yes, mostly, I guess I did. Is my current dissatisfaction evidence of my chronic malcontentedness, or is it just a special case of non-digesting onions? In fairness, I must say, not all networking events are the same; I'm learning to be discerning (no more Moxie mixers for me). And not all networkers are the same, either. I have met some smart, strong, interesting, and determined women in the past year, people I respect and admire. I fear the stinky truth: I'm just ashamed to admit I'm as desperate as the next hungry shark waving a business card at a crowd of fellow sharks. Rather than admit I can't compete in that pool, I'm disconnecting by choice. I'm following the artist's way: If you build it, they can come or not, as they please.

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.

The chronic malcontent is itching for a niche to scratch

I wish I were smarter. If I were smarter, I would no doubt be able to gather up all the loose ends of this entrepreneurial fiasco and bundle them into a cohesive strategy that will fill my bank account. If I were smarter, the path to success (which I define as money, lots and lots of money) would be as clear and bright as the Yellow Brick Road. People would stumble over themselves to help me trot like a frisky colt along my merry way. Or maybe I'd be more like a golden-haired maiden, strewing rose petals behind me. Whatever. It would all happen easily and effortlessly, followed by the miracle of happy and secure retirement.

Last night I went to the monthly meeting of a local SEO Meetup group. (I believe SEO stands for search engine optimization.) I've attended three months in a row, thinking I would meet a specific person (I'll call her Caroline), who was recommended to me by an SBDC counselor (I'll call her Saundra). Three times Caroline has indicated via RSVP that she would be attending the Meetup. Three times she's been absent. This week, I noticed that Saundra had RSVPed her intention to attend. Great, I thought! Saundra is the person who recommended I connect with Caroline. Wouldn't it be great if they were both there? Score! Well, no, not SCORE, I mean, SBDC!

Even as I walked out into the 90° heat to my car, I thought, what am I doing? Odds are neither one of these women will be there. Will I be okay with that? Am I still willing to burn gas to drive 45 minutes in heavy traffic to bumf--k Lake Oswego, sit and chat about a topic I know nothing about, and pay money to eat crappy Chinese food? Apparently so, because off I went.

There was a pretty good turnout this month, about 20 people all together, oddly mostly older men. Sure enough, neither Caroline nor Saundra were there. I was one of four women. Three of us were somewhat long in the tooth and broad in the beam. But there was a golden-haired maiden (I'll call her Tiffany. Or Heather. No, maybe Chelsea. Yeah, let's call her Chelsea.) Chelsea was a young goddess, with full lips, long sunkissed hair, and a Barbie-esque figure, that is to say, prominently jutting along all the right frontal planes.

We started with a round of introductions (in which I introduced myself as a market researcher with no knowledge of SEO, and the emcee—let's call him Daniel—said, “Oh, if you are a market researcher, you probably know a lot about SEO,” a comment I found perplexing, since I was telling the truth, I know virtually nothing about SEO. I have a hard time even remembering what SEO stands for. I keep confusing it with REO, as in REO Speedwagon, which I believe was a 1970s rock band. Maybe he was trying to be funny? People laughed. In my usual out-of-body fashion, I am always the last to get the joke. I still haven't got the joke.)

After the introductions, Chelsea and Daniel fielded questions from the group on various aspects of SEO. I had no questions, but I listened and took notes like a good student. When the show was over, I paid my bill and drove away into the setting sun.

The memorable moment, the takeaway, as they say, was when the older woman sitting next to me turned to me and said, “Who do you do market research for?”

“Marketers and small business owners,” I replied, my usual tentative answer.

“No, my dear. That is much too broad,” she said in a peremptory tone. “Small business owners is too big. You need to narrow it down.” Later I realized she was lying in wait for a teaching moment. Did I look so lost and unsure of myself? Still, I've been trying on niches in my mind, the way some people try on hairstyles and sandals, so what she said hit home.

“Uh, how about the visual art and design industries?” I offered.

“Okay!” She turned back to the woman across the table, her teaching moment complete, leaving me to ponder the significance of what just happened. I don't believe the universe delivers signs, but when the same message keeps cropping up in various places, it probably behooves one to take a closer look.

So, I've got an itch to find a niche. A methodology niche is not going to cut it, I've been told. Apparently I need an industry niche. Banking? Finance? Healthcare? Freaking SEO? Whatever industry I choose to focus should have two essential qualities, namely that the potential clients in the industry want me and can afford me. Other than that little detail, any old niche will do. Clearly, I don't know where I fit, as usual. If I were smarter, I would know this stuff.

Let them eat cake

It seems like every time I write about an event I attended, I start with “I survived the...” Is that odd? Do you do that? No, probably not. I guess the best I can do these days is survive. Thriving, or succeeding, or seizing the day are all way outside my current zone of expectations. That's okay. I'm clinging to the short branches, breathing the rarefied air of entrepreneurship. I expect things to be challenging. Like camping at the Oregon coast, for example, which I vow never to do again (rain).

I am happy to inform you that I survived my 40th high school reunion, held yesterday at a park situated on Hwy 224 past Estacada, which, if you are familiar with the Clackamas County area, is part of the exurbian hinterlands. It was a lovely drive, though, along winding tree-lined, single-lane roads, I admit.

I left about 9:15 a.m., and got there a little more than an hour later, delayed ten minutes by an overturned panel truck, lying on it's side in the roadway. Luckily for me, a civilian directed traffic around the truck. More relevant, luckily for them, it appeared no one was injured. As I drove by, I got a 5-second look at the underside of a large truck: not something you see every day (unless you are a truck mechanic).

The other three members of the reunion planning committee were already there when I arrived. Everything was in place except the balloons and the easel, which were in my trunk. I unloaded my stuff and took a look at the layout.

“Having the registration table here is going to create a bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs,” I said, hands on my hips.

They looked at me skeptically, but gamely helped me move the table about ten feet away into an L-shaped alcove. Good call. For most of the rest of the day, I manned the table, checking people in, taking money, making change, filling out receipts, and peeling off name tags. I was safely barricaded, with plenty to do, and blessed with limited social interaction. My perfect job. Too bad it didn't pay.

The park was small, perched on a low bluff over the Clackamas River. Tall fir trees provided abundant shade. The picnic structure was partly covered by a barnlike shed with a huge stone fireplace at one end, and partly in the open, where chairs were scattered around the edges of a wide wooden deck. Picnic tables spanned the length of both spaces. The two committee members in charge of the food arranged a staggering selection of fruit and veggie trays, chips, salads, and other dishes neatly on the tables under the shelter. Flies immediately descended on the croissant sandwiches. I snapped photos of the decorated cake, offering a silent prayer to the reunion gods that I might be allowed to avoid eating any of it.

The weather was perfect: the air was warm, just a tiny bit humid, and there was plenty of shade. The sleepy Clackamas River basked below us, accessible by a short but steep trail, at the bottom of which was an unoccupied wooden dock built for boaters and kayakers. We had none of those, and there wasn't much river traffic, so the River provided a silent but picturesque backdrop for the mini social dramas that unfolded on the deck above.

There was a fair amount of squealing among the women, as they stared at and then recognized former classmates and friends. There was no shortage of hugs. I had a ringside seat behind the registration table. I would eyeball each newcomer as they came down the concrete steps from the parking area, trying to guess his or her identity: is this a classmate or a spouse? Even after scanning yearbook photos and printing name tags, I got only about half of their names right and managed to call at least two people by the wrong name. Can I blame early dementia?

Few classmates looked like their high school yearbook photo, which I had thoughtfully provided on their name tags. Most of the women were obese, the men not so much (although for some reason there were many portly male spouses). After 40 years, it's no surprise we all look somewhat haggard. A few, though, seemed especially aged, while a few others seemed untouched by time. Many of the classmates had major health issues: diabetes, pacemakers, knee replacements... not to mention the challenges of dealing with aging or dying parents and adult children who refuse to grow up, hold down jobs, or marry the right partner. I was so glad to be single and childless. And I hereby declare that I'm going to stop complaining about my mustache: Clearly, it could be a lot worse.

On the other hand, many classmates, when asked what they do, replied that they were retired. They put in their 35 years at their electrician jobs and their telecommunications jobs and their healthcare jobs, and then they gracefully bowed out of the workforce. Ouch. Luckily for me, nobody cared about my life: They were far more interested in talking about their children. And their vacations, cruises, and volunteer activities. I didn't have to try to explain my unsettling financial predicament to anyone and in the explaining inadvertently reveal my fear and anxiety. Sometimes I am relieved that other people are so self-obsessed.

Still, I had a great time. I enjoyed seeing people I hadn't seen in 40 years. Seven of them were people I went to elementary school with. We have history. And as I talked with each person, a strange thing happened: The years seemed to fall away from their faces. I saw past the bald heads, puffy skin, and wrinkles to the 18-year-olds they used to be, the people I knew and the people I didn't know, as I endured the long hellish years of high school. I wasn't afraid of any of them. I felt a deep affection for all of them. We had survived a shared experience. Not all of us lived to tell this tale: We lost some along the way. But those of us who are left have figured out how to live. I'd like to think I'm one of those survivors, although it's always one day at a time for me.

The afternoon wafted to a close, and people drifted away with promises to keep in touch. Yeah, let's do this in five years! You bet. I helped clear away, pack up, and wash down, and eventually just the planning committee was left, plus one stalwart helper, whom we will no doubt recruit for the next iteration, should we live that long. I drove home thanking the reunion gods that I escaped without tasting a single crumb of the cake. It wasn't really such a miracle: It wasn't chocolate.

Back in the (teaching) saddle again: Yeehaw!

Last night I gave my first official presentation to a small crowd of Meetup junkies. We met in a back room at a Chinese restaurant, where in an earlier time I could picture stoic Chinese gangsters engaging in some serious cigar puffing, poker playing, and tea drinking, while tiny waitresses in traditional dresses scurried around refilling tea pots and serving egg noodle soup. The Chinese men were absent, but the tiny waitresses were a silent presence throughout the three-hour event. (Although they were dressed in plain white shirts and black pants.) At one point while I was speaking I noticed one waitress leaning against a wall near the entryway, arms folded, a skeptical look on her face.

The group was small, just seven people, plus the other presenter, the two organizers, and me. The space was cozy, maybe a little too cozy. We were packed in pretty tight around two tables, not much elbow room. A few of the attendees were close enough to touch. I didn't mind. After years of teaching, I don't mind standing close to my audience. When I'm that close, I can look my students in the eyes, alert for signs of discontent, boredom, or disagreement. There was a bit of an echo in the alcove, which added to the ambiance. As the evening progressed, the light from the overhead skylight glowed golden.

Some informal networking took place before the two 20-minute presentations began. I busied myself setting up my tiny Flip video camera (ancient technology) and my digital audio recorder (semi-ancient technology). I arranged my handouts, brochures, and a stack of business cards neatly on a table. This is a new Meetup group, so things were a little disorganized. Still, they remembered to bring name tags. Name tags are always a nice touch, especially when you forget to take it off after the event, and you wonder why people at the grocery store are suddenly calling you by name. I scribbled my name on a name tag and noticed that my hands were not shaking.

I wasn't nervous. (Well, maybe a little, since I discovered later I had failed to press the REC button on my audio recorder.) Maybe I should have been more nervous, I don't know. When I'm nervous, I try harder, I'm more animated, I tell more stupid jokes. Last night, I was feeling pretty mellow by the time the presentations actually started. I was up first. The organizer introduced me, stumbling over her words a bit as she tried to read my email on her little phone.

I stumbled over my own words, more than once, but I didn't care. I've fumbled and floundered in front of way larger audiences than this one. If you can survive forgetting your speech in front of 100 Toastmasters, you can survive anything. I wasn't afraid of looking foolish in front of seven Meetuppers! As the light grew dimmer, I had to lift my glasses a couple times to read my notes, but mostly I think I managed to stay on track, and was pleased to finish exactly on time. Always leave them wanting more. Or maybe it's more like, quit while you are ahead? I don't know.

Sometimes it is hard to tell what your audience is thinking. Have you noticed that? You babble on, you forge ahead, and you get increasingly uncomfortable as they stare at you intently. Are they understanding me, you wonder? Are they judging me? Do I sound like a ignoramus? Is there hair coming out of my nose?

An older gentleman dressed in a gray cotton shirt that matched his hair seemed to be riveted, but I couldn't tell from his facial expression and posture if he was receptive to my message or resistant. He sat about three feet from me; I could have reached out and smacked him with my notes if I wanted to provoke a response. Of course, I didn't. But I kept coming back to him, drilling him eye-to-eye, trying to figure him out.

Later we endured about an hour of serious networking, which ended up to be the best part for me. I found out the man in gray is a former newspaper publisher, a soon-to-be author, and a funny, friendly, very receptive and appreciative guy. Just goes to show, I guess. That you can't tell from the outside, bla bla bla, and also, that I'm not a very good judge of people. Who knew he would turn out to be so charming?

Overall, I had a good time. I judged my performance all the way home, but mostly I was relieved that it was over with so little drama or pain. Today I downloaded the video, intending to split the two segments apart so I could send the other presenter her portion of the video. In the course of figuring out how to do that, I watched my portion. Despite poor video quality, I have to say, I didn't do too badly. I'd give myself a B+.

Now I can move on to the next exciting event on the immediate horizon: my high school reunion. Once that is over, I think I'll take a day off. Summer is tiring.

Monstrous feverish crowds of networking women

Nothing inspires me to blog more than noise in the neighborhood. I was trying to update one of my websites, which is always a challenge because I am not that skilled with WordPress, and suddenly the Cafe cranked up the volume. The bass is vibrating through the Love Shack, itching through my nerve endings. Is it live music? Is there a person I can blame? Argh.

Oh, hey. It's nine o'clock. The music just stopped. There is a god after all, and its name is Silence.

Today the weather was perfect for jogging in the park. I trotted around my little beaten track and reveled in the warm air on my skin. When I spread my bat-winged arms in sheer joy, I imagined I was getting just the tiniest bit of lift. I felt lighter. I always do in summer. Everything is easier in summer. Even being broke, unemployed, and terrified is easier in summer. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

A couple nights ago, I went out on a warm summer's evening to mix and mingle with a crowd of women at a... I guess you would call it a club? over in North Portland off of MLK near Legacy Emmanuel Hospital. It seems every old storefront in town is being renovated, even in the (former) ghetto. This club was up a steep flight of carpeted stairs from a bar/restaurant, where a bunch of trendy 30-somethings were sitting at little round sidewalk tables, looking oh so hip. I skittered by in my old blue Levis and long floppy olive green rayon men's overshirt, hoping it would conceal my muffin top and wondering what the hell I was doing so far from the Love Shack, going to a club to hang out with a bunch of women. Jeez.

I don't like women. Not groups of women, anyway, and a club full of drinking older gals laser-focused on networking the crap out of each other is just plain frightening. The air reeked of perfume and estrogen. Some wore hats and cocktail dresses. Who were they dressing up for? There were only two men that I could see: the sound board guy and the club guy who moved around tables and checked the lighting as he nervously looked over his shoulder at the women. As if the herd could bolt at any moment. The noise level made it impossible to hold a conversation. I tried, honestly. I roamed and mingled, sipping a salty soda water with lime, wandering from table to table (there were no chairs), barging in on conversations with no shame, trying out my creaky elevator pitch and listening to others breeze through theirs, thinking this is so stupid.

I don't care anymore. You know why? Because I finally figured out that all these frantic, frothing, networking women are just like me: broke, desperate, and on the edge looking down. Successful women don't network; they are too busy working. Or if they aren't working, they are out with their pals, swilling craft-brewed pale ale and ouzo martinis at the trendiest watering hole in the Pearl District. Someplace I wouldn't dare go, even if I knew where it was. Secret handshake and all that.

The music has resumed. I knew it was too good to be true. There is no god called Silence. Pestilence, maybe, but not Silence. Sigh.

I eventually sat down on a red velvet-cushioned bench along the wall of the club and watched the hordes of females buzzing around each other like colorful bees swarming the hive. Pretending they were taking effective action. Maybe they were, and I'm the one who didn't get it. After a while, a young woman came over and sat next to me. Yay, another introvert. We started talking. It was quieter there on the periphery, and I found out she was an arborist and landscape designer—a refreshing departure from the wellness coaches, personal change catalysts, jewelry sellers, and multilevel marketing distributors that I'd met during my attempts to hobnob. We exchanged cards and best wishes before we escaped down the stairs and out into the warm evening.

In spite of the strange interlude which seems to have commandeered my life, I find things to be grateful for. Besides showing up for networking, somehow I have continued to exercise intermittently, eat organic and local, mostly, and get enough sleep. I've managed to scrape together coins to do laundry. I've somehow kept the bird feeder filled and the litter box clean. I've reached a cease-fire with the ants in the kitchen; they know what happens when they cross the line into my territory, and in return for taking no prisoners around the sink, I'm happy to give the occasional passenger a ride from the kitchen to the bathroom, with the couch the final destination. If they bite my neck, the gloves come off. Those are the rules.

So mostly, I'm trundling through these strange days feeling a bemused mix of hope and despair. If it weren't so ghastly watching my savings evaporate, these would be the best days of my life. I try not to think about it too much. I just keep updating my website, making my plans, and hobnobbing with monstrous crowds of women.

I'm a stumpy-legged fish paddling in a dwindling pond

Summer is speeding by while I'm learning the nuances of networking. Another delicious 90° day in Portland. I went out in the mid-morning coolness to meet yet another prospective client, a “life transformation” coach who no doubt thought she was meeting a prospective client as well. (Har har, joke's on her.) By the time the mercury hit 90°, I was safely hunkered in my cave, windows closed, shades down, blinds drawn, with a wet rag draped around my neck and a pitcher of sweating ice tea close at hand. I like it. For me, it doesn't get much better than this. No complaints allowed if you are one of those pale-skinned Portlanders who don't like hot weather. It could be a lot worse; be grateful we don't live somewhere where missiles are falling. If you are one of those unlucky folk, I'm very sorry for you, and I hope you survive.

Here in Stumptown, in this funny little networking pool I seem to be floundering in, I'm afraid of what will happen if we are all each others' clients, and no one is making any money. I fear it might be like eating your own leg for dinner—fills the empty stomach but at the expense of your git-along; maybe that's why they call it Stumptown.

I've said before networking is a long-term strategy. I asked the “life transformation” coach I met with today if she was able to transform her own life through networking. She admitted networking is a long game. She sipped her orange smoothie. I slurped my iced chai. I can read the signs now. There's a certain set to the shoulders and neck, an unmistakable glint of desperation in the eyes.

“How long can you hold out?” I asked.

“Not much longer,” she confessed.

“Me too.”

“But it's not a totally useless strategy,” she said, and went on to assure me that now we were “referral partners.” That is my new favorite jargon, referral partners. I refer people to you, you refer people to me, the miracle of money floods our parched landscape, and all boats rise. Or something to that effect. The point, obviously, is that money must flow in from an outside source, because we referral partners are feeling a mighty thirst. Well, saw off my legs and call me Shorty!

Last week, a brief flare of something occurred (I won't call it hope, because it wasn't). A headhunter found me through the American Marketing Association. She invited me to submit a resume for a market research temp job for an insurance company. I'm like, ok, whatever, I could do it for two months... get up early, pack a lunch, take the bus, get home after dark... yeah, for two months, I could do it. So I trucked on down to the Pearl to meet her in an old funky office building just off Burnside, kitty-corner from the famous Powell's City of Books. While I waited for her to arrive (I was early, as usual), I took some photos through the third-story window. Which actually was openable, by the way. Not that I had any plans to open it, in case you were wondering.

She arrived. We sat across from each other at an old wooden round table in a dinky conference room, just a little too far apart for comfort, but taking up all the space.

“You have an unusual background,” she began. I laughed. Right then, I knew my chance of getting this temp job was next to nil. I've heard those words before. They always mean the same thing: You are odd. You are different. What have you been doing with your life? You don't fit in here. We can't hire you. But I am not a quitter: I soldiered gamely on, answering her questions, addressing her concerns.

“I'll submit you to the client,” she said finally, “Because you never know.”

And that's the thing. We never know. Total flukes can happen. That's how I got the nutty job at the crappy career college, which was pretty much a bend in the road that attracted all sorts of lunatics. I fit right in there with the other misfits.

Well, turns out I did not get the temp job, no big surprise. Not enough of the right kind of experience. I understand. Not every actor who auditions gets the part.

Meanwhile, back in the networking pool, I am endeavoring to scramble onto the sand, so I can perhaps slide over to a different, larger pool, where the fish are bigger and the designer duds they wear so boldly have deep, deep pockets. Enough of these wizened, parched, desperate referral partners! Get back, you wretches. And, oh, by the way, some of the other referral partners I met last week are starting a Meetup for Small Business Owners. They've asked me to be a presenter. I've got 20 minutes. Will you come to my presentation?

Your sweet hopeless dreams have finally come true

I often get spam email in my Outlook inbox. I've set up rules that filter out anything with the words pfizer, viagra, penis enlargement, breast enhancement, or send money now, I'm in jail. Today one email slipped through that made me laugh: “Your sweet hopeless dreams have finally come true.” Isn't that charming? The email read like a poem. Maybe it was a poem, who knows. A sweet hopeless poem surrounded by a bunch of nasty hungry links.

Speaking of sweet hopeless dreams, today I attended a networking-event-slash-sales-event-disguised-as-a-seminar at a venue on Alberta Street in North Portland. If you know Alberta Street, you know that I'm not cool enough to hang out there. But it was broad daylight, not the wildly hip street fair known as Last Thursday, so I felt like I might be allowed to pass unmolested. I hiked hesitantly up some wide metal stairs and entered into an open loft area with pale fake hardwood floors.

“Welcome to the studio!” a small thin dark-haired woman said enthusiastically. She wore a short beige dress made of heavy lace. She looked like a doll. It was hard to tell her age: I filed that information away for future contemplation... wear short lace dress, look ten. Got it.

I was early, as usual. A tall older woman approached me, and we talked for about ten minutes. It took maybe 30 seconds to explain what my business was about. The rest of the time she swamped me with a description of Scientific Hand Analysis. I'm not even sure those words should be capitalized. What is it, you ask? I think it's akin to phrenology, astrology, and idiotology. Not certain.

People drifted in. All women. Huh. We arranged ourselves around some tables, set up in a horseshoe, facing a large blank wall on which was projected a pale PowerPoint slide. The seminar began. The slides remained pale and colorless because there was so much light in the room. The topic of the day was something about delegating tasks and getting organized. I can't remember exactly what it was called—and it only happened this morning. What can I say. I remember certain things and not others. For example, I remember how I felt when the seminar was over and the sales pitch began. I learned a lot from that part, mainly that if I ever use that tactic to sell my services, I hope you will take me out back and shoot me.

The young woman was definitely a pro, no doubt, and it was clear that her main motivation is getting money, lots and lots of money, preferably as she is laying by the pool while her “team” of minions is running around executing the tasks she has blithely delegated to them. She confessed, she thinks she's hilarious. I confess, I was cross-eyed with irritation after the first fifteen minutes of her presentation. I did a little reminiscing about my days as an instructor: Was I ever so annoyingly self-centered?

After the presentation, we went around the table introducing ourselves and handing around our business cards. Out of eleven people, six were coaches of some sort. Two did web design, and one was a marketing consultant. There was also a mortgage broker and a juice enthusiast. I sent around a stack of eighteen cards and got back nine. (That means two people didn't want my card. What's up with that?) I connected with a spike-haired web designer, and we made a commitment to meet next week for coffee. That's what I'm talking about! Networking!

This afternoon, as I was editing yet another chapter of the dissertation that won't end, I reflected on the strange energy that occurs in a roomful of women. Many of the attendees knew each other and entered the room boisterously, greeting each other with hugs and squealed hellos. I watched and listened, playing my familiar observer role. I felt like an alien, but that's nothing new. That is my normal state, especially in a group of women. I always feel like I don't quite belong. Maybe it's my mustache, I don't know. Or that I obviously don't care how I look.

The proprietors of the venue hold these events monthly, and apparently there is a membership group you can join. For a moment I considered it—only $99 per year! That's no bargain when you are an anti-social misfit. I have an erratic history of joining groups, especially groups of women. I was trying to remember what groups I joined in high school. I know there were a couple. I also know I didn't last long. I tried to play the game, but each time I flunked out (by choice) of each group I joined. Someone would pull out a guitar and start singing Neil Diamond songs. Someone else would start discussing periods and makeup. That would be it for me. A few minutes ago, I looked through my senior yearbook to see if I could find myself in any clubs or groups. I guess I managed to avoid all the photo days, because I was nowhere to be found. Was I really there at all? Debatable. It's been forty years, you can't really expect me to remember.

Don't talk to me, I'm networking

I'm starting to get a sense of the networking scene. Tonight I got another perspective on it at a networking event about networking. I know, so meta. Everything is meta these days. Or über. This was an über meta networking event. What was ultra neat about it was the location. The event was held at a new cooperative workspace on the eastside of Portland, out by the river (that's the mighty Columbia, in case you were wondering) under the flight path to PDX, in the uber armpit we call Gresham.

Yeah, Gresham! Who knew! I know, yech. Gresham is where I drove a school bus, way back in the year when the world as we knew it ended (2001). It's funny how things stay the same, round and round. If my business doesn't pick up pretty soon, I may find myself steering the short bus around Gresham once again. I'm kidding. Mostly.

The coop space is in a half-empty industrial park out on a semi-rural road, which means oodles of free parking and no traffic. Inside is a suite of offices formerly occupied by a solar manufacturer (bellyup? I don't know, didn't ask). The anchor tenant in the new coop is a security firm. During the presentation, young men in security guard uniforms marched stolidly past the open door. I bet some of them are proud graduates of the career college that used to employ me.

Before the presentation began, the office manager, a giddy pale girl with brown hair and an annoying giggle, took the little crowd of networkers on a tour of the space. Apparently a bare handful of entrepreneurs has signed up so far: lots of cubicles occupied only by empty "hot desks." I could have access to one of those random desks for only $275 per month. For that sum, I would also get my very own mailbox (not a PO box), access to a really nice printer/copier, and use of several conference rooms and classrooms. If the location weren't so far away (and if I weren't watching every penny slip through my clenched fingers), I would consider signing up. With all those security guards roaming the halls, I would certainly feel safe, out there in bumf--k Gresham.

After the tour, we settled into some uncomfortable plastic chairs in the main classroom space. According to the thermostat it was 77° in the room, a refreshing change of climate from the 92° heat outside.

The presenter noticed no one was sitting in the front row. “Someone should sit in the front row, or else I'll remove the chairs,” he warned. He was an oddly shaped man, with his jeans belted tightly around his bulging middle, longish droopy brown hair and glasses... and what I think might have been cowboy boots.

I was in the third row. “What are the benefits of sitting in the front row?” I asked, trying to be funny but probably sounding snarky. I started to pick up my stuff.

“You'll be closer to me,” he replied. “It will be more fun.”

I didn't have the gumption to tell him neither one of those sounded like benefits to me. But I moved anyway, and so ended up the only person in the first row, about three feet from the lectern. Two people were in the second row, sitting five chairs apart. Three people were in the third row, each two chairs apart. A couple people sat in the last row, also not together. Clearly, this was an anti-networking group: We'd managed to spread out among the chairs with at least two chairs between each of us.

The presenter fixed us all with a stare I recognized from many years in many classrooms: Uh-oh, the teacher is getting ready to wax pompous. I buried my attention in my journal, feeling a little too close to the lectern and the somewhat odd man who lurked around it. Wait a minute, no fancy slide show? no handouts? no music and light show? no dancers?... sigh. I guess after the AMA events I'm a little spoiled. “How many of you are introverts?” asked the presenter.

Of course, I raised my hand, not too high, but high enough to be seen; I didn't want to seem like a grouchy student. I didn't turn around to see how many raised their hands, but I would have bet more than half, judging by how desperate most of us seemed to be to carve massive personal space out of the room.

“I bet I have personally shaken the hand of at least 5,000 people in the past ten years,” the presenter said proudly. Dude. Clearly an extravert. Any introvert would have drank the funny kool-aid long before they got to 500.

The evening wore on. Where's the frocked and bearded emcee, I wondered? Where's the funny dude in the purple velvet jacket? The über meta-ness of being at a networking event about networking wore off and turned into an über grind. I did my best to make occasional eye contact with him, so he wouldn't get discouraged, and while I doodled in my notebook, I plotted my strategy to hold my own networking event, a real networking event, one from which the introverts come away feeling invigorated and hopeful instead of weak, morose, and despairing.

Stay tuned.

I am my brand; my brand is me

Solopreneurs work alone, by definition. That means we are the face of our business (...and the hands, feet, wide butt, and bulging belly). We not only represent our business, we are our business. There are no data entry snoids or social media geeks working in the back bedroom. There's nobody but us. Like it or not, we are our brand. As I sit here in my muggy cave of an apartment, looking across the gloom at my plywood shelves and dusty books, as I hike up my pajama pants to my knees and put another cool rag on the back of my neck, I think, wow, if this is my brand, then I am in deep doo-doo.

Thunderstorms rolled through today and left some fresher air. I was going to go out in it, but I was felled by the dregs of a migraine brought on by some food substance as yet unidentified. After I woke up from a nap (during which I met god, believe it or not—whoa, what was that substance!?), I made the mistake of looking at a job search site. As sometimes happens, I found a listing for a job that I could see myself in, and then I felt compelled to take some action and got hopelessly bogged down in customizing my resume, writing a cover letter, and crafting an essay about why I'm the best person for the job. I never think I'm the best person for any job, so right away my effort was doomed. My enthusiasm melted away, and I ended up on Facebook promoting my 40th high school reunion.

Whenever I feel like this, I find myself singing There's a place for us... in an off-key quavery voice fueled by a forlorn hope that there might actually one day be a place for me. It's futile. Both the singing and the dreaming. I'm getting a little long in the tooth to be fretting over finding the perfect job. I know enough now to know that any job is better than no job.

Meanwhile, I've been editing a series of chapters for some music educator who is blazing through his dissertation on the history of choral music in America, a topic I know nothing about, in Turabian format, which is a style I know nothing about. Luckily for me, this author is a very good writer, so I'm mostly fixing his tables and footnotes and curly quotation marks. That means I'm making good money per hour. No complaints. Except I still complain, because that is what I do.

I don't really need a brand. I just need some clients. Once they know me, they will trust me. When they trust me, they will recommend me to others. That is how it works in this business. They won't care that I have a fancy logo or a slick website. They won't even care if I have a business card. They won't care that I work in my pajamas and have hair sticking out of my nose while I'm Skyping. Am I right? Think about it. You grant a lot of slack to people you like and trust. In fact, if they are slightly eccentric, you will justify your opinion about them by embracing their eccentricities and defending their quirks to others. In time, a benevolent mystique will develop around their name. Their logo, no matter how awful, will become precious, like Pez. At that point, they could Skype naked and no one would care.

That's the kind of brand I want. I guess I could save a lot of time and just take my clothes off now.

I'm going to die penniless at 90

This is a great time of year to be homeless in Portland. Not that I'm homeless, yet, just saying. This is my kind of season: day after day of mid 80s to low 90s, fresh breeze, sparse clouds, unfiltered sun, and no rain... ah. Now if I could just get the relentless bass from the cafe's sound system, my neighbor's 1:00 a.m. cigarette smoke, and the invisible grass, flower, and tree spores and pollen to stay outside, everything would be perfect.

Well, almost perfect. I spent the past two days editing a chapter in some guy's music history dissertation, which isn't so bad, compared to some other topics, I guess. (Imagine how I'd be raving if it were... I dunno, The Lived Experience of Autistic Computer Geeks With Co-Axial Redundant Router Tendencies. Actually, that sounds sort of interesting. I just made that up. I have no idea what it means.)

English is the dissertation author's first language, thank the editing gods. So it could be worse. The truth is, I just don't like editing papers. That saddens me for two reasons: First, editing is the work that is coming my way; I can't afford to say no. And second, I'm apparently good at it. I got some praise from the dissertation guy. My reward was the opportunity to edit his next chapter. Lucky me.

Just because you are good at doing something is not a sufficient reason to do it, in my opinion, especially if you hate doing it. Learned that one the hard way when I made my living sewing clothes for ten years. I'd rather live in a chicken coop than do that again. Ditto for driving a school bus. Or working in a nursing home.

Speaking of nursing homes. No, speaking of chicken coops. No, speaking of not liking to do something but doing it anyway, yesterday I drove downtown to go to a local marketing luncheon. I parked 10 blocks away (free!) and hiked along the dusty streets. I wore loose black linen pants, a loose white linen shirt, blister-inducing sandals, and a straw hat on my head to ward off the mid-day sun. I carried a water bottle in case I got heat stroke.

The event was held in a brewery. The smell of yeast and hops was delicious. True to form, I was the first one to arrive (I have a chronic fear of being late). I selected my personalized name tag from the stack by the door. I wandered over to peruse the artwork on the huge brick wall: $1550 for a 30" x 40" unframed canvas caked with paint in a style I could best describe as preschool abstract. Is the artist actually selling this stuff? Jeez. Maybe I should have kept on painting. Oh well. I sat down at a table near the front and watched as the presenters arrived and began milling around the laptop on the lectern, fussing with cords.

A young blonde woman wearing what looked like a shirt-waist throwback to the 1950s but what was probably the height of current fashion hesitantly approached me. “I think we need this table,” she said.

“Would you like me to move?” I asked. It was a table set for seven people. Surely, I thought, there would be room for me.

“Please,” she said.

“No problem.” I gathered up my stuff and relinquished my seat, taking my water glass with me. Take that, you table usurper. I looked around the big empty room. So far, there was one other guest, sitting alone at a table near the back. I had on my reading glasses, so I couldn't tell if the person was male or female, but it didn't matter to me. Rather than sit alone, I wove through the tables and sat down in the chair to the person's right. He/she/it turned out to be (according to his own labeling, offered quite early in our conversation) a gay Jewish writer, recently of Albuquerque, whom for purposes of this discussion, I will call Eli. He handed me a business card without hesitation. I reciprocated, feeling very professional.

The table soon filled up with other guests. Eli handed his cards around to everyone, and even leaped up once or twice to hand his cards to people passing by, making me feel slightly less special, but reminding me that this was a networking event, after all. I wasn't here to make friends. Or eat the food, although I arrived hungry, well, starving, really, and had set a strong intention to eat whatever I could get my hands on.

A woman about my own age wearing tan capri pants, strappy white sandals, and a white blazer sat down in the chair to my right. How does she keep it all clean, I wondered.

“What do you do?” she asked me.

“I'm a marketing researcher,” I replied, ready to hand her a card.

“Oh, so am I,” she said and abruptly turned to the man on her right. She never spoke to me again.

I paid $30 to eat barbecued pulled pork, baked beans, salad, and tofu. During the meal we were educated-slash-entertained by a local marketing guru, who waxed philosophical about innovation while strutting in front of strikingly designed yet obtuse messages arranged on 20-foot tall PowerPoint slides. As far as I could tell, the purpose of the slides was to serve as artsy backdrops for the man in the gray three-piece suit, while he blathered about innovation. I did my best to listen. At first I was mildly fascinated at how he seemed to have prepared the speech so well that he needed no notes. Was it memorized? Was he reading off cue cards? Was he speaking extemporaneously? And what the hell is he talking about?

I usually take notes when I'm at an educational event, and if I can't figure out what to write, I draw pictures: diagrams, arrows, big puffy words, caricatures... the images you see in this blog, for example. Doodling helps me listen. I try to keep my notebook hidden in my lap, but sometimes people see what I've drawn and feel compelled to say something: I couldn't help but notice your drawings. You're very good. You should put those on t-shirts. Yeah, thanks. Maybe you're right. Nothing else I'm doing seems to be working.

Near the door, on the way out, I connected with the president of the local marketing chapter and expressed my interest in volunteering. I've filled in the website registration form. I've emailed the volunteer coordinator. Now I've personally informed the president of the chapter. I don't know what else I can do, so I'll just let the universe take it from here. If I'm meant to volunteer, it will happen. I'm a little desperate: These marketers are members of my target market. Before they hire me, they need to know me and trust me. My best bet is meeting them in person through service.

A few minutes ago, I invited the president of the chapter and the writer to connect with me on LinkedIn. Within five minutes, both did. I guess people are using smartphones to manage their social network, unlike me, still slogging along on the pay-as-you-go, no-data-for-you-loser plan.

Someday my ship is going to come in. I know it. It may be a rubber dinghy, and it may end up crashing on the rocky shore of my financial ruin, but by god, when that damn boat goes down, I'm going to be on it.

Another new hat: Who am I now?

It's humbling to realize that even after 57 years walking around on the planet I have gained so little knowledge about my own preferences and working styles. A week ago, if you had asked me what kind of work I prefer, I would have said, “Well, thanks for asking! I like to work alone. I'm a control freak. I like to work in my pajamas.” And all that is true. Based on those preferences, I would have expected editing to be a perfect job for me. But after editing 200 pages of poorly written, convoluted scholarly tomes by wannabe academics, I learned that that is not the whole story, not by a long shot. I am an introvert, I am a control freak, I do like to work in stinky pajamas... and I'm a creator, not an editor. Beam me up, Scotty! I've had enough editing to choke a Klingon.

Editing someone else's mess of a dissertation is like trying to sweep kitty litter off a linoleum floor with a toothbrush. You have to find every... last... speck to get the job done right. And just when you think you've found every dinky stinky grain, you see a little dollop of poop caught in a corner. Poop like generating the list of references using a third-party non-APA-compliant software program. Poop like non-APA-compliant tables and figures. Poop like stringing five verbs in a row, all ending in -ing, in a sentence that takes up half a page. That kind of poop. A bigger broom won't do it.

Apparently, I'm a pretty good editor. I'm thorough, and I know my APA. (I ought to, after eight fricking years in graduate school.) My problem, though, is that I'm too slow. It takes me a long time to do a thorough editing job, especially when I have to create styles, reformat tables, and generate Tables of Contents, Tables of Tables, and Tables of Figures... wha—? (Tables of tables? I mean, Lists of Tables! Whatever!)

When you are getting paid a set amount per job, the more hours you spend, the less you make per hour. On the last job, the 150+ page dissertation (I know, what am I whining about? My massive wretched tome was 390 pages!), I calculated I earned about $16 per hour, when it was finally put to bed. That might sound good to you, but that's gross earnings. So, subtract federal, state, local, and self-employment taxes, and I netted a measly $10 per hour. And PayPal takes its cut, too.

So, time to find another hat. I keep finding out what I don't want to do. Year after year, job after job, I fall into the wrong jobs. That seems like a really painful, tedious way to discover one's calling, don't you think? How many possible occupations are there? A few hundred? Probably more like a few thousand. I don't have time to try them all in a colossally misguided process of job elimination.

Only one job lasted a significant amount of time. That was the teaching job at the career college, almost ten years. The job started out great, perfect fit, better than I'd ever had, certainly better than, oh say, driving a school bus, sewing bridesmaids dresses, or playing bingo with old folks in a nursing home. Or gardening, or waitressing, or secretarying, or chaufeurring, or admin coordinating... teaching was way better than all those occupations. And for a few years, despite the shenanigans of management, it continued to be a good fit. Until the marketing classes went to another campus, and I got assigned to teach keyboarding, term after term. By that time, the death rattle was echoing through the halls, and nobody was surprised when corporate pulled the plug last year. End of story. Old news.

On the bright side, it only took a week to realize that I'm not cut out to be an editor. No more spending years doing something I hate, resenting it, and plotting revenge. The downside, though, is that apparently in 57 years I haven't progressed an inch toward anything resembling self-awareness. It's easy to say, you can take the girl out of the art [world], but you can't take the artist out of the girl. (If I can still call myself a girl. I can, can't I? Clearly I am still about twelve.) That old platitude doesn't quite work in this case, but you get my drift, right? I make my own messes, I don't clean up other people's. I'm a creator, I'm a maker, I'm a writer, I'm an artist. You betcha. That and $5.50 will get you a frappuccino at Starbucks.

Tomorrow I'm off to yet another startup workshop (free!) to find my true calling. It's across the river in The Couve (Vancouver, WA), a green and magical land where you can pump your own gas, so maybe I'll find what I'm looking for there.

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.

Uh-oh. Can I get the cat back into the bag?

I would like to shout out a big welcome to the newest Hellish Handbasket reader: my mother. Yep. You heard right. My scrawny almost-85-year-old Wild-West mother is back online and tearing up the broadest band she's ever had. Speedy doesn't begin to describe her presence on the Internet. With one breath she's complaining that she can't remember how to use her computer. With the next breath, she's leaving snide comments on Facebook and forwarding chain emails to her entire contact list. Way to go, Mom.

A few nights ago, my mother and I were talking on the phone. I don't remember who called who, but as she is wont to do, she asked me what I've been working on. My first thought was to change the subject. My second thought was to lie. But sadly, I don't lie well, especially to my mother, so I took a deep breath and told her about the Hellish Handbasket ebook, which I had just published.

“Oh, what is it about?” she asked.

“It's called 'Welcome to Dissertation Hell,' and it is a collection of selected posts from my blog,” I replied.

“Oh. You know, I don't think I've ever seen your blog,” she said.

“You've been offline for a while,” I said, trying to steer her away to a different topic.

“Where is your blog?”

Suddenly, in a nanosecond, my future life as a demented person who wears her underwear on the outside of her clothes in public, on Trimet, passed before my eyes. Dirty red underbelly alert! Alert! Not... happening. My brain worked feverishly as I considered and discarded 50 lame reasons why I shouldn't give her the URL to my blog. In the end, I came up with zip. Zilch. There was no good reason to exclude my curious mother from reading my anonymous blog. The thought of telling her she couldn't read it felt worse than the thought of her reading it. Still, I made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade her.

“You know I blog anonymously, right? That means you can't tell your condo friends, 'My daughter has a blog.'”

“OK.”

“And you know I write about personal things, right? So you can't be offended.”

“OK.”

So, I sent her the URL to this blog in an email, hoping she would accidentally delete it or corrupt it or something. Well, I can hope, can't I? No such luck.

The next day she called.

“Hello, Mudder,” I answered, as I always do when I hear her voice blasting through the phone.

“You sound like you are the most frustrated person who ever existed!” she shouted. Oh Lord Kumbaya. She read my blog.

“Ma, relax, it's therapy for me,” I tried to explain.

“You are frustrated!” she accused.

“OK, I'm frustrated!” I agreed. “But it's also an exciting time in my life! It's not bad! It's good!”

There was a moment of silence while we both pondered our next move. In used car sales transactions, the person who speaks first loses. So I took a breath and waited.

“Your younger brother tripped over the cat and fell down the stairs,” she said. Whew. Won that round. The equivalent of a 1968 Dodge Dart, I guess. That is to say, not a huge win.

So now I'm outed to my mother, which may possibly be worse than being outed to the entire world, because only mothers can press all the buttons that put us into that special orbit we experience as frustration. I'm not worried she'll reveal my identity... it's out there in the ebook. And who cares if a few silver-haired old ladies know who The Chronic Malcontent is? Not me.

My fear is that knowing my mother is possibly going to read this blog will cause me to censor my words. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, certainly not hers. I don't think I've said anything too derogatory toward her, have I? Besides calling her scrawny. Which I'm sure she would agree with; anyone can see the woman is a stick.

Well, no use fretting over the wreckage of the future. The cat is on my lap, but he would fight to the death to avoid going into any bag, so it looks like I'm going to have to let this one go. I surrender, Mom. Welcome to my 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.

The chronic malcontent hedges some bets

If I could have any life I wanted, this would be it, pretty much. I've got a great little apartment (aside from an ant infestation problem), a cat who likes me a lot, family members who tolerate me, time on my hands to chase my creativity and exercise my curiosity... toss in a little sunshine and some income, and life would be darn near perfect. What was that? Yes, you heard me right: income. I'm sad to say, I'm still not earning much at the Love Shack. Who knew that Ph.D.s fresh out of the can were so unemployable?

That reminds me of a lyric I wrote last year when I got laid off from the teaching gig at the career college. Sung to the tune of Unforgettable, it starts out like this:

Unemployable
That's what we are
Unemployable
It seems bizarre
Like the stench of fear that clings to me

My age has done bad things to me

Never before has someone been more…

I'm sure you can guess the rest. Sorry, I'm an artist, not a songwriter.

The cat stretches across my lap, purring. Now he is attacking my hands. He hates it when I type. Every word I type represents attention that is not directed where it should be—at him. Time out while he exits with a disgusted look tossed back over his tail. My most honest critic.

This week I'm using the shotgun technique I've ridiculed my former students for using when they grudgingly wrote their essays. You know what I mean, where, when you don't know what to do, you try to do a little of everything, hoping by some miracle something will stick? Like, maybe the teacher won't notice that your paper has no point?

Since last Wednesday, I have attended a two-hour seminar on market research for small business owners, I've put an ad on Craigslist for dissertation coaching, I've written a blog post aimed at small business owners and posted it to one of those wretched social networking sites, I've formatted the first ever e-book compiled from my Hellish Handbasket dissertation posts and sent it to friends to review, I've updated two websites (not very professionally, but whatever), and I've drafted a survey for a non-profit organization as part of my volunteer effort (see Universe, I do think of something besides myself, sometimes!). Let's see, did I leave anything out? Besides fighting off ants, vacuuming the carpets... I guess that about covers it.

And, oh yeah, applying for any business adjunct faculty position in the city of Portland. Those are the hedges, just in case my bets don't pan out. My central bet is that I can hold out for the entrepreneurial miracle I'm positive is just over the horizon. But just in case, because I don't want to be a stupid person, I'm applying for jobs. I'm starting with teaching gigs. Then I'll move onto...I don't know, administration, I guess, since it was Administrative Professionals Day today. Why not: At least admins get love once a year. Then after that... hmmm. Not sure. Retail? School bus driver?

It won't come to that, I'm pretty sure. But no one can predict the future. Isn't it awesome, though, that I don't have $50,000 in student loan debt hanging over my head? I can afford to live under a bridge. If I had a mountain of debt to pay off, I'd have to kill myself. Hey, maybe there is a god.

The chronic malcontent goes undercover

Yesterday I left the Love Shack at 4:00 p.m., intending to catch a bus to downtown Portland. Of course, as usual, I failed to check the bus schedule, so I missed a bus and had to wait. The weather was gray, but mild, mid-60s. I sat on a wide green bus bench, watching cars go by, admiring my odd little village-like neighborhood, a crossroads throwback to an earlier time. (The neighborhood, I mean, not me.) My umbrella was stowed in my knapsack, for the rain that was on the way. And I carried my old but reliable digital camera, because, in this era of social media, what's the use of going on an adventure if you don't document the experience so you can share it with others? I mean, just experiencing something doesn't count anymore. Experience hasn't truly happened until you've shared it. You probably already knew that. All you social media experts, with your greedy little Facebooks.

I rode the bus downtown, holding my camera to the window, clicking the shutter every few seconds, documenting. Not surprisingly, a great many of them turned out to be blurry. Because that is what happens when you take pictures from a moving bus. Oh well. I experienced a bus ride, and I've got the pictures to prove it.

Just past the Willamette River, the bus slowed for its first stop at Third Avenue. I got off and started walking north along Third toward Burnside, cutting over to Second, and then to First, and then to Naito Parkway. I felt pretty good, striding confidently along in my tight-but-not-quite-so-tight Levis 501 blue jeans, my beat up black suede Merrell clogs, and my well-worn olive green denim shirt (sans collar, cut off last summer when I decided to adopt a Nehru collar look). My destination? The Mercy Corps Northwest building on Naito Parkway (formerly Waterfront Drive), just south of the Burnside Bridge. I was scheduled to attend a small business workshop, one of a series presented by MercyCorpsNW for a nominal fee of $25.

I was early (compulsively early, remember?), so I walked around the blocks just to the south and west, looking at the architecture and the people. The world-famous Saturday Market takes place every weekend in this location. The Skidmore Fountain graces an open brick plaza, which was dotted here and there with shopping carts and sleeping bags. I started to feel hungry. Among the old-fashioned glass-paned doors was a modern swinging door leading to a charmingly dark coffee house called Floyd's, open until 7:00 pm. I rarely eat out, especially not on the spur of the moment, but I knew if I didn't eat something, I'd be starving by the end of the workshop. I ordered a small coffee and something cheap called a breakfast burrito, which came wrapped in red and white gingham paper. When I peeled the paper back from the contents, the paper stuck to the warm and gummy flour tortilla. That didn't stop me from enjoying my snack, even though sometimes I was pretty sure I was eating paper along with the food.

To celebrate my intrepidness, I connected my so-called smart phone to the cafe's wi-fi and proceeded to check my email for the first time ever on my phone. Yes, I know that look on your face. I don't need your pity. Honestly, if you read this blog, you know that I don't currently have a data plan, and besides, I prefer to be left alone. I just wanted to see if I could figure out how to do it. I figured it out. There was nothing interesting in my email that I hadn't seen before I left home, so I shut it off. Objective accomplished. The phone went back to being what it usually is: a very expensive and inconvenient time-keeping device.

I arrived ten minutes early to the workshop. The training room was carved of concrete, with a high-techy ceiling of pipes and struts way overhead and a big projector screen high up on the west wall. Big windows faced east toward the River and north toward the Burnside Bridge, letting in the last of the grimy daylight. The center of the room was occupied by several large white formica tables, all shoved together in an island, around which were placed about 30 chairs. A young woman wearing the shortest and tightest stretchy black mini-skirt I've seen since the 1970s asked me my name and checked me off a list. Was this our trainer? People were already there, staking out all the best seats. I chose one closer to the front than I would have liked and sat down. An uncomfortable silence ensued, during which I imagined myself saying something like, “Isn't it strange to be sitting here without saying anything? Does anyone want to talk? Let's say something.” Everyone (except me) was busy checking their phones, probably reading emails.

“Welcome, everyone,” said the mini-skirted girl at 6:00 p.m., “to the introduction to demographic and industry research tools seminar. I'm Alice. Please introduce yourselves and tell us what your business is.”

Luckily for me, she started to her left, so I had time to ponder how I would introduce myself. Should I say I'm a marketing researcher? Would she feel like I was competing? Would she feel threatened? Would I find out I know nothing and make a total fool of myself?

The second woman in the lineup said, “I used to be a professional market researcher.” She sounded confident and a little patronizing. “Now I'm a wedding planner.” As we went around the table, I drew a picture in my journal, one of my typical goofy characters, wearing a t-shirt saying Who am I Today? Off to the side I wrote, Who cares? 

Many of the attendees had established businesses. A few were in the startup phase. When my turn came, I took a breath and made my decision. I said, “I'm Carol, and I'm in the process of reinventing myself after a job layoff. Today I think I'm a dissertation coach, but that could change tomorrow.”

From that moment, I was undercover, posing as a dissertation coach to scope out MercyCorpsNW's market research tools class. My goal was to see if I could pick up some tips on how to do a class of my own, but better. Alice stood at the lectern and launched her PowerPoint, saying, “I really want this to be an interactive workshop.” She then proceeded to talk nonstop, taking questions only when the slide on the screen proffered Questions? She spent a long time talking about types of research. I could feel my eyes glazing over. I was so thankful I'd had that coffee. Then we learned about Oregon Prospector, SizeUp, and ReferenceUSA, all in the context of a case study she had designed herself to illustrate the use of these reference tools. I continued to draw in my journal, trying to stay alert to the small things that would make my market research class better than hers.

I wanted to look around to see if anyone else was nodding off. I leaned down occasionally to wake up my phone to check the time. At 8:00 p.m., the ostensible ending time, Alice was still going strong. Finally at 8:30 her voice dragged to a halt. “It's getting late, people,” she said, looking somewhat dazed. I packed up my stuff and hightailed it out into the rain, intent on catching a bus home. The bus stop was blocks away. I walked fast, waving my umbrella as a defensive weapon rather than a rain deterrent, just in case any of skateboarding, weed-smoking homeless kids tried to accost me. Of course, everyone ignored me. I'm invisible.

The bus took forever to arrive, standing room only. As I moved back with the crowd, a teenager with long braided blonde hair seated near the back door looked at me and said something I had never had anyone say to me on a bus before: “Would you like to sit?” She stood up, wrapped her arm around a pole, and read her Kindle. I sat, feeling old and confused. To my left was a perky young woman holding a paper-wrapped bouquet of pink-edged white roses. As the bus cleared out, the woman with the roses held out the bouquet to the teenager. “I work at a flower shop,” she said. “Would you like to have these roses?”

Now the seat to my right was open, so the teenager sat down and carried on a conversation with the flower shop lady, back and forth, as I sat bemusedly between them. They talked about flowers and the flower shop. Suddenly the flower shop woman looked at me and asked, “What is your favorite flower?”

Taken aback, I told the truth. “Yellow roses.” She beamed at me. People were getting off the bus at Cesar Chavez Boulevard (formerly known as 39th). She joined the line at the back door, waving back at the teenager. And at me, I suppose. The teenager got off soon thereafter. By now the bus was less than half full. I had another 20 blocks to go before I could slink into the Love Shack and try to make sense of my adventure. What did I learn? People who ride the bus at night are fascinating and wonderful. And I don't like market research as much as I like marketing research, if you know what I mean.

No one is immune to the plague of being human

My favorite days are days when I don't have to go anywhere, and no one calls me. (I'm not saying those are good days, just that they're my favorite days.) Today was not one of those days. Today I drove to The Couv (which is short for Vancouver, Washington—look it up if you don't believe me) to attend an event hosted by the Portland/Vancouver SBA and SCORE. That's Small Business Administration and Service Corps of Retired Executives, for those of you who aren't in the know about the business of business. The event was held at a pub. It was a dingy brick building, formerly a factory, maybe, and dark, dirty, and wallpapered with bad art, so I guess it qualifies as a pub.

I drove over the I-5 Bridge that crosses the mighty Columbia. (This is the bridge that needs replacing yesterday, but no one can agree on what to build in its place.) The I-5 Bridge is old, narrow, and funky, and will probably fall down in the impending earthquake. (When I cross bridges that I know could collapse I mentally review my action plan for exiting my car while underwater. Basically, my plan is the same as my retirement plan: Die.) Anyway, I crossed the bridge, which is a requisite phase in any journey of self-discovery, and despite road construction, one-way streets, and lack of signage, found my way to the so-called pub.

I was early, of course, because I'm chronically early to everything. It's a family flaw. I attempted to verify that indeed there was an event there at 1:30. The waitperson looked at me skeptically and said, “A..B...?” I said hopefully, “SBA?” She said, “Right, right.... I heard something about that...” I put on my marketing hat, metaphorically speaking, and wondered if there might be a better way to greet a customer. Like, “Sure! That event starts at 1:30, and we have a table set up for you right over here! Let me show you the way!”

I ordered an iced tea and sat by myself where I could watch the door. Over the next 20 minutes, other people came in, ordered drinks, and sat by themselves. Were they here for the event? I imagined walking over to them and introducing myself. Hi, I'm Carol, are you here for the SBA thing? I remained seated, watching. Pretty soon two young women—one dark-haired, one blonde—arrived carrying clipboards and stacks of handouts and SBA magazines. They talked with the waitperson and in a few minutes, lo! a table (a glass-covered door set on a folding table) was prepared for the group in the middle of the large, cavernous room next door. The room was lined with dark wooden booths, occupied by diners, who ate quickly and left when one of the SCORE mentors began talking. (More on him later.) Tall factory-style windows let in grimy sunshine; everyone was a silhouette to me, as I sat facing the windows. Outside, a huge yellow roadgrater tore up the street, grinding back and forth for the next hour. The wood-slatted floor gently shook.

The dark-haired woman introduced herself and talked about the mission of the SBA. We went around the table introducing ourselves. A variety of businesses were incubating: a maternity boutique proprietor, a computer wizard, an office furniture mogul, a real estate broker, and a purveyor of prepared foods for single moms. Plus me, marketing research geek. There were exactly as many SCORE and SBA representatives as there were potential clients. Six of each, to be precise. After introductions, the SBA leader told us to mingle and talk with the SCORE reps.

I scooted over one chair and talked with the loud SCORE guy, whose name was Bill. I didn't want to; I could predict what I was going to get from him: a lot of palaver. But it would have been rude to get up and leave him for the tall, slender, blue-shirted mentor further down the table. Besides, he had identified himself as a marketing expert. There's always more to learn. Said the recently minted Ph.D.

Bill was a husky, older man with pale gray bushy hair and unkempt mustache. I told him I was starting a marketing research business. (I did not tell him I have a Ph.D. in marketing.) He immediately began lecturing.

“Here's what you gotta do,” Bill said. “You gotta specialize.” I took a breath to respond, but he ran me down. While I waited for him to pause, I noticed his bifocals were dirty. He was five weeks past heart bypass surgery, so I forgave him his dirty eyeglasses. However, while he talked, he continuously scratched his forearm, leaving a litter of dead skin on the table top.

As he talked and scratched, I couldn't help it, I started laughing. Luckily, every other thing he said was something he thought was hilarious, so my laughter just spurred him to keep talking. And scratching. Then to my horror, to punctuate a punch line, he took the hand he'd been scratching with and used it to tap me on the shoulder. Ew, ew, ew, his flaky dead skin! On my shirt! If I were murdered later, he would have a hard time explaining the presence of his skin cells on my shoulder. Assuming he's in the FBI's database, of course. Ew! What a time to be reminded that anytime I am in a crowd, I am immersed in a putrid cloud of other people's dead skin, spittle, and phlegm!

I'm not a germaphobe, really. There's a bigger problem illustrated by this interaction. Unfortunately for me, Big Bill is the kind of man I seem to attract. Like the megalomaniac multi-level marketing guy I blogged about last year. Big, blustery, loud, talkative, egocentric blowhards intoxicated with the sounds of their own verbiage. I believe they mistake me for a weak, easily controlled, unresistant patsy, simply because I am quiet. When I don't respond with praise and awe, they don't ask questions to find out what I am thinking. They just keep spouting their verbiage, no doubt thinking to themselves, She's a dimwit, but maybe I can get her to sign up for this multi-level marketing scheme! The possibility that I am a discerning introvert with a professional interest in the idiosyncratic behavior of other people apparently does not cross their tiny one-track minds. And they rarely give me a chance to get a word in edgewise; their conversation is locked up tighter than a frog's sphincter.

Bill gave me his card. If the past is any indication of the future, then I'll find myself being mentored by Bill, almost by magic, as if I had no hand in the outcome. Luckily, if you follow the stock market at all, you know that past performance is never a guarantee of future results. I won't call Bill. I will find another mentor, if I need someone, a person who knows how to listen. And possibly who doesn't have psoriasis, although that's not really a deal-breaker. (Gosh, when I think of all the slivers of cuticle skin I have left in my wake, I shudder with disgust and shame. Dermatillomaniac, that's me.) No one is immune to the plague of being human. Not me, not you, not even SCORE mentors. Sad news: It's 100% fatal. Good news: We have today. It may not have been my favorite day, but I was fully present for it. That's a victory, for me.