Unemployment, public speaking, and coffee

In two weeks I will be unemployed. I have mixed feelings about it. When I imagine not having to use obsolete technology to teach keyboarding to bored students, I feel ecstatic. When I think about not having to work a split shift, working in the morning and then again until 10:20 p.m.—and then being back first thing the following morning, as if I could actually function and do a good job with only five or six hours of sleep... when I think of not having to do that, I feel profound relief. But when I think of not seeing my colleagues Sheryl, Mella, and Denny, our little cabal in the Business/General Education department, then I feel really sad. And when I imagine the final paycheck I will receive on May 2, I feel sick.

Mixed feelings. Happy and sad. Excited and terrified. I'm so disconnected from my body I have no idea what stress might be doing to me. Something is going on, I'm sure, but my brain hasn't caught up yet. I'll probably realize the toll stress has taken when I wake up on May 3 with no hair. Or covered in hives. One doesn't skate blithely unscathed through life-changing events. Death, divorce, and loss of a job rank high on the trauma scale. And public speaking, don't forget public speaking.

Did I ever tell you about my public speaking debacle? It happened in 1991, I think. Here's my suggestion for overcoming one's fear of speaking in public. Join Toastmasters, sign up for a speech contest, and then stand up unprepared in front of 100 people and forget your speech halfway through. To really get the full effect, slink off stage in abject shame. If the ground doesn't open up and swallow you whole at that point, if the hand of god doesn't smite you for being an idiot at that moment, then you realize you can live through anything. You've pretty much survived the worst social humiliation you will ever experience. If I were completely honest, which I sometimes am, I'd say that forgetting that speech partway through was worse than living through the two and a half weeks of my dad dying. Proving again that for the chronic malcontent, self-obsession is the word of the day. Every day.

I've started drinking coffee again. That is one sign that I'm going crazy. Just one cup per day, so far... one very strong cup of French Roast with nothing in it, no milk, no sugar, nothing. There's a joke here, which I will attribute to the great poet and performance artist Linda Albertano: She said she likes her men the way she likes her coffee: cold and bitter. I always chuckle when I think of that joke, which is pretty much every time I drink coffee. It's only funny because I have no interest in being in a relationship with anyone, bitter or otherwise.

Back to the unemployment tornado looming on my horizon. I signed up for unemployment online, although there were some questions in their online tool that didn't quite fit my situation, so I expect I will get a phone call or email from some irate underpaid Oregon Employment Department representative, who will rip me a new one in the process of signing me up. Oh well. I'll bend over and take it. Desperation makes people put up with a lot. Poor people don't argue: they know not to bite the hand, etc. I will be one of them soon, so I'm practicing now. Yes sir, no ma'am. Sorry, sorry. My error, my mistake.

The slippery slope to slovenly behavior

Tonight I'm breathing a sigh of relief after a day of good news. My car doesn't need front end work. My chairperson sent my dissertation proposal on to the Graduate School for review. The Boston police caught the bombing suspect. I got the upper hand with the ants in my kitchen. All around, things are looking up. I hope we won't have to go through another week like this one any time soon. It's been rough.

Last week at the career college, I noticed I was engaging in many last times—activities I will do at work for the last time and never do again. Like discussing chapters from the Business Management textbook with the two Human Resources Management classes. Never have to do that again. (Maybe there is a god!) Printing reviews and finals for all the computer applications classes. One last time, never again. Writing a final for a new class I'd never taught before and never have to teach again. (I found myself thinking as I wrote and formatted the test, Why bother doing a good job? Who will know? Who will care?)

Ah, the slippery slope to slovenly behavior.

Speaking of slovenly behavior, I skyped my sister tonight. We both agreed, it's time I got a new look. I've been doing a pathetic Johnny Cash (circa 1980) impersonation for almost ten years—black pants, black jacket, black hat. It's almost time to clear out the closet and start over. Top to bottom. I do have hair, believe it or not. We both spend a small fortune on coloring our hair. My sister wants me to start wearing dresses. She tried to persuade me by telling me that a dress can hide a multitude of figure flaws. I have no doubt she is right. The problem isn't finding the right clothes. The problem is the whole idea of figure flaws. We don't chastise men for their figure flaws.

Besides, it won't matter what I look like, because in two weeks I intend to retire to my cave and never see anyone in person again. I call it self-employment. If I do it right, I can work in my pajamas for the next fifteen years. I'll have my groceries delivered. I'll put aluminum foil on my windows and an antenna on the roof. I'll sneak out in the dark of night to empty my trash and recycling. I'll contribute to blogs about conspiracy theories.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, (kiddding!) last night I went to a Portland State University alumni/student event at Bridgeport Brewery. It was a presentation by a local recruiter on how to stop sucking at your job search. Her name was Jenny Foss. Job Jenny. She's an attractive, petite woman with an annoying habit of speaking too close to the microphone. She talked for an hour to a packed room about using Linked In to network. Puh, puh... I wanted to rush over and smack her with the mic. Her PowerPoint slides were sparse: black text on a white background, no animation, nothing to keep my attention. I got bored watching her mundane slide show, so I wrote a lot in my journal. I didn't learn anything new, although I came away with copious notes and a few drawings. (One little moment of self-satisfaction: Everything I have told my Professional Development classes over the years aligned very well with Job Jenny's advice.)

Finally she opened up the show to Q&As, and things got more interesting (to me). The second question was from a man who said he was 56 and having a hard time getting a job. I sat up in my chair, trying to get a look at him across the dimly lit room. Did he look old? Do I look as old as he does? Job Jenny said something I didn't want to hear. She said, “You might consider cutting your hair and investing in a new pair of glasses. And dressing younger.” Ahhhhhhhhh!

Hey, Job Jenny gets $1,000 to write a resume, according to one of my tablemates. She must be doing something right.

Well, at least that guy doesn't have to worry about concealing his figure flaws.

I remember reading an article about an older guy's job hunt. He was having no luck, getting interviews but no offers, until finally in desperation he went to an interview wearing red Converse sneakers and a baseball cap. He got the job. Hmmm. Maybe I should try that. Or maybe I should try charging $1,000 for writing resumes. I could live on that.

The end of the world... again

How many times must we go through this? I'm speaking, of course, of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon yesterday. I'd rather be ranting about how my Chair has neglected to send my paper on to the Graduate School, or what a student said today, or what I ate for lunch...  anything but this. But how can I ignore the elephant in the room? I go through my day pretending it's not there, it didn't happen, it's not real, and I end up with a nauseating case of surrealism.

Everyone processes a disaster in his or her own way. Some avoid the topic, some talk about it incessantly. Because it happened on the other side of the country, some may not even care. We came close to having our own Boston bombing a few Christmases ago, when a crazy young man was all too willing to plant an explosive device at the Pioneer Square tree lighting ceremony. Lucky for everyone, the FBI was on to him: The “bomb” they gave him was a dud. It could have turned out differently. It could have rained body parts.

My coping method involves seeking out news accounts and reading them compulsively, over and over. I feel compelled to watch the raw video, as penance for surviving the day with my limbs intact. I spent Monday in a daze, awash in unshed tears, going through the motions of my job (I'm not a real teacher, I just play one on TV). My face still sags. Smiling is an effort. I'm also running low on patience.

Last night a female student in the Human Resources Management class said something about how difficult dating was these days, how her current love interest wasn't working out the way she'd hoped. Her best friend said, “You need some new eye candy.” The first girl laughed and repeated it. “Yeah, I need some new eye candy.”

“People are not eye candy,” I shouted. “It's rude and disrespectful to refer to people like they are objects!”

“Men do it to us,” she countered gamely, appealing to the group for support. The other two women concurred by nodding vigorously.

“I know!” I yelled. “And that is no excuse. People are humans, not objects, and they deserve respect, no matter what gender they are.”

Everyone contemplated me in shocked silence. I think I know that look. I think that look was on my face when my mother, breaking under the weight of caring for four bratty children, finally lost control and started screaming. Just screaming. Loudly. With anger, with frustration, with fear. Those screams lasted a lifetime in my little magic world. Reality as I had known it suddenly took a dip and dropped out from under my eight-year-old feet. Last night I think my students felt the same way. Like, uh-oh, Mom's gone crazy.

Now I am remembering another incident, one evening last week. The three female students in the Word class started trading Mexican jokes. As their laughter escalated, so did my blood pressure, until finally I shouted, “Enough with the Mexican jokes!”

So, I'm treading on a thin edge, it appears. An incidence of violence doesn't help, but Monday's horrible event isn't what has prompted me to suddenly start speaking my mind. The truth is, I don't care anymore what my students think of me. I don't have to care. I can be myself now. I can say what I want. If I could fit in my Levis, I would wear jeans to school everyday. F--k the dress code. F--k the school. F--k the student evaluations.

I'm exiting their lives in less than three weeks. They will forget me. I'm already forgetting them.

Do what you love and you'll probably starve... or not

The last time I had an entrepreneurial seizure, it did not go well. That was a long time ago (1981) in a galaxy far far away (Los Angeles). Now that I am staring down the barrel of unemployment, I remember my past self-inflicted self-employment massacre, and my terror is compounded. I wish they made bullet-proof vests to ward off attacks of idiocy. Maybe that is what aluminum foil hats are for.

Time out. My neighbor sounds like she is giving a fashion show to her dog. She's strutting back and forth on her hardwood floors in what I suspect is a pair of chunky-wood platforms. I'm too sexy for my shoes. I hope she is getting ready to go out.

Last night I heard her growling in the basement. I couldn't tell if she was just angry, or hurt and angry, so I ran down there to see what was going on.

“There's a quarter stuck in the washer,” she groaned, banging on the coin slot. While she ran to get a knife from her kitchen, I peered at the coin slot. Yep. Jammed good and tight. Wouldn't go in, wouldn't come out. No laundry tonight, Pumpkin. While she poked at the slot with the knife, her little gray poodle patted me repeatedly on the backs of my thighs with his front paws. I ignored the dog, and wondered if perhaps the human might use the knife on me, considering I interrupted her noisy coitus a couple weeks ago by pounding on the wall that separated my angry hammer from her headboard.

We both agreed the coin slot was a lost cause. I suggested she call the landsharks. We adjourned to our respective corners, if not friends, then at least no longer adversaries. Well, her dog likes me. That is a start.

I emailed the landsharks today, just in case she didn't, and earlier today I saw George in the basement, talking on his cellphone while he dismantled the coin box. I was leaving. He didn't see me. When I came back, he'd left a stack of quarters, and a note pointing out the one coin that wasn't actually a quarter. I don't know what it was. It looked like funny money. Maybe Canadian. I left it all there on the washer. I am content to be an observer. I only engaged last night because I thought she might have been injured. Or that she might have destroyed the washer. Actually, I don't know why I engaged. I guess it was a way of expressing my chagrin at interrupting her lovemaking.

Back to the main topic—me. My pending entrepreneurial experiment. I'm having some brain trouble. I can picture actions I need to take, and I've got lists in triplicate, but my brain can't seem to translate the actions I plan to take into actual income. In other words, I can imagine a bank account full of cash, but I can't see how my actions will put it there. I think I have a mental block placed there by years of flogging a business I hated. I used to sew clothes for a living—you could call me a former fashion designer or you could call me a former seamstress, and both would be accurate. The problem was that I hated to sew (still hate to sew), and thus I learned to associate earning with doing something I hated.

But that was years and years ago, way back in ancient times. Surely my brain has evolved since then? Or disintegrated? Or embarked on a new tangent? It's a new millennium, for crying out loud. Nothing is the same. Still, how I handle earning as an entrepreneur remains to be seen, and I know, don't call me Shirley.

Ten years of working for someone else has meant no hassles with invoices, collections, complaints, or worries about when the money will appear. Working for the career college is a different kind of earning mystery, where performing my teaching job has been totally disconnected from receiving my direct-deposited paycheck. Magic. As an entrepreneur, I will have to get my hands dirty again. I will have to initiate invoices, follow up with statements, ask for deposits, handle cash, figure out PayPal... it's all so... messy.

Well, the good news, I am strong enough to handle it, according to Dr. Tony, my ebullient naturopath. Yesterday he dosed me with some white pellets, yanked on my right leg (really!), and pronounced me whole, see you in two months, you are on the maintenance plan. And to really put a shine on the bright side, in three weeks, there will be no more commute to Clackamas, no more in-services, no more split shifts, no more nutty professors, no more whining students, no more outdated textbooks, no more clogged toilets, no more mismatched clocks, no more mind-numbing graduation ceremonies... No more. The few people I've grown to love, I will still stay in touch with after we leave, and the rest, all the rest of it, I am content to let go with my blessing.

May we all be free from suffering, and may we all find peace. Now let's break out that champagne!

How to survive a campus closing

I'll give you a hint: It has to do with spraypaint and glitter. No, not really. I'm just kidding. I know I sound obsessed with expressing my feelings with a can of orange spraypaint, but I'm not stupid. I know that would be vandalism. These days I try not to do anything for which I have to make amends later. Spraypainting you guys suck in 10-foot tall letters on the lobby wall would probably qualify.

The students from the soon-to-be defunct Clackamas campus of our sagging little career college have been invited to visit the mothership in Wilsonville, to meet the faculty and get acclimated to the stuffier air. Many aren't attending due to transportation challenges, which I'm sure will be compounded come next term, when they will be expected to show up at 7:50 a.m. Or at 5:40 p.m. for those night students who get off work in Portland at 5:00 p.m. Rotsa ruck making it on time in rush hour traffic.

Everyone is universally unhappy about the closure, for a variety of reasons. Some students are worried about teachers. Others are fretting over transportation. Some teachers are frantically searching for other employment. Some are feeling guilty they still have jobs. I think I might be the only one who is actually anxious for it to be over. I'm so ready to be done I told a student today that we had only two weeks left in the term. Ooops. We really have three. My bad.

I'm processing my feelings by turning my faculty website into a photo blog. I'm taking pictures—last looks—of all the things that made our campus unique. The dingy front lobby. The mailroom. The worn out classrooms. The odd barbeque we found parked on the roof outside the emergency exit door in the third floor computer lab (What are those corporate sneaks up to on Fridays, when teachers and students aren't around? Planning how they will save their own jobs, with a side of steak and brewskies, no doubt.)

We are situated in an old three-story office building next to a shopping complex and across the street from the Clackamas Town Center Mall, which made the news last December as yet one more (ho-hum) site of a random shooting. Our building is a two-tower faded orange stucco box with angled facets that must have seemed modern and edgy back in the day and now just look cheesy and amateurish. Moss grows on the shaded patio areas that divide the two towers, the smokers' hangout.

Inside, the carpet is old and worn, especially on the stairs. Many feet trod those stairs over the past ten years, mine among them (I rarely take the elevator). The front lobby atrium ascends to the third floor, an echoey cavern of light. Any day now, I expect someone, a student or a teacher, to fling themselves over the second floor railing in a fit of despair. I can't be the only one who has contemplated it. Unfortunately the drop probably wouldn't kill me, so I would just have to lay there while swarms of medical assisting students practiced taking my blood pressure and draining my veins of blood.

Hey, on a lighter note, my committee returned my proposal with three, count 'em, three minor grammar suggestions, which I fixed throughout the paper in less than an hour. I resubmitted the paper with the hope and expectation that my Chair will send it on to the Graduate School for review. That will take another two weeks or so. I will brace myself for their comments, but in the meantime, I will begin preparing my application to the Institutional Review Board, the group that approves applications to interview human subjects. I also found out who my committee member is, inadvertently, because her real name appeared in her comments. I immediately Googled her and found out she's a proud alum of the University of Phoenix.

It's strange how there seems to be two tracks of academe these days: traditional and for-profit. This will have to be a topic for another day, because it is almost midnight, I am missing Letterman, and I'm too tired to think anymore. Stay tuned. And start stocking up on spraypaint, because you're invited! Mark your calendar, May 2.

It's official... life sucks

After almost ten days of jacking us around, not telling us anything, we finally got the news: when the Clackamas campus closes on May 3, we all lose our jobs. Oh, except for the three program directors. And the dozen or so corporate people who lurk on the third floor. I guess when I say everyone, I mean all the people that matter. The faculty, the academic coordinator, and the receptionists. What the hell do they think they are going to be managing now, I wonder? The ship is sinking while they fight over cubicle space.

I know I sound angry. I am. Not for me, but for my colleagues, Sheryl and Mella. Sheryl is a few years from retirement. How easy do you think it will be for a 66-year-old woman with a stale Bachelor's in International Business to find another job? And Mella! Mella transferred from Wilsonville to Clackamas a few terms ago, even though she recently moved to be near Wilsonville. She demonstrated loyalty and commitment to the organization, and it lifted its leg and peed all over her. Sheryl and I have known for a long time that the company wasn't our friend. I think Mella was still hoping for a miracle. It's hard to accept that the company you gave your heart to has ripped it to shreds.

As I drove away from campus this afternoon, I saw Mella pacing the sidewalk. I pulled my car up next to her. She got in. Her chin was quivering.

“This totally sucks,” I said after a long, long moment of silence.

“Yes, this sucks,” she agreed.

We sat with that for awhile.

“How are we going to make it through the next few weeks?” I mused.

“Suck it up.”

We pondered that for a bit. Then she sighed and got out of the car. She went off to find food before night classes (did I mention she works four splits?), and I went home to take a nap, exit, stage right. On the drive home, I was a little numb, not fully present. I'm not sure how to feel. My eyes feel like they've been weeping, but I don't remember any tears. I'm not sure if I'm happy, sad, or just really, really, really scared.

Part of me is, like, you got what you asked for, Carol. Time to finish your dissertation, time to work on starting a business, time to clean up the Love Shack, time to sleep, time to read, time to rest. But at what cost? I don't want to be unemployed. No, let me be more clear. I don't want to not be earning money. That doesn't have to be the same thing as unemployed, right? Time and money are inverses for me: When I have one, I miss the other. I'm too old to do this again. It wasn't pretty the first time around. Moving in with my mother is not an option. Wreckage of the future! Aaaaagh!

The Director of Education flaked out, couldn't stick around to tell me to my face (I remember when you were an adjunct, Freep). Our boss—I'll call him Denny—(who is going to Wilsonville next term, and who is keeping his job title and pay rate, and who, by the way, is receiving training in online teaching tomorrow [I know, like, WTF!?]) gave me the news. I could tell he felt terrible. Survivor's guilt. The next three weeks will be interesting. He's on the lifeboat, floating further and further away. We three faculty are clinging to the rail, going down with the ship. We aren't bothering to bail, what's the point? (I am already saying cynical things about the organization to my students—we were discussing leadership in the management class today, and I likened our president to the Invisible Man. Har har.)

The next few weeks will be awkward. The chasm between those who are surviving and those who are sinking will grow daily. On that last Thursday, as we faculty sink out of sight, out of mind for the last time, poor old Denny can finally draw a deep breath of relief. Whew, that was hard, glad that's over. Dude. I don't blame you. I might even miss you. It's been fun. In parts. Sort of. A little.

What would be really fun would be to bring some spraypaint on that last day and do a little decoratin'.

Catching the disease of chronic malcontentedness

Everyone is unhappy, mostly about work. Does it seem that way to you? My sister, a published author and expert in her esoteric field of art history, hates her admin job so much she is ready to jump off a bridge. (I told her she would be missed.) Bravadita, my former colleague and now friend, is a talented writer/photographer wasting her creativity teaching bratty, germy children how to read. My friend in Minneapolis, I'll call her Chica, is itching to start her own digital marketing business. And then there's me, of course, on the verge of unemployment, hoarse from complaining about the unfairness of it all.

Is it something in the air? I'd say yes, but there are always exceptions. My friend E. has figured out the secret to happiness: condense your life to a 35-foot motorhome and hit the road. I dream of bundling my mother and my cat into an RV and heading south toward the warm desert air of Arizona or New Mexico. A silly dream: My cat would hate it. He would reward me by upchucking all over the linoleum. And my mother would probably die on the journey. I'd have to strap her coffin on top of the rig and head back home. We'd sail through little American towns trailing a stench behind us, sort of like a modern day Addie Bundren. I don't think my sensitive nose could handle it.

Well, we can't all take to the road in massive rolling living rooms. There wouldn't be enough room. Or enough fuel to keep us all moving. We'd have to hunker down, butt to nose, wherever we sputtered out of gas. We'd slide out our slide-outs and roll out our awnings all along the shoulders and gullies of the interstates. We'd have to live off of stuff people threw to us as they drove by. Here, catch! A bucket of the Colonel's extra crispy and some coleslaw, if you think fast.

I'm just yammering. It's a day for yammering. I'm waiting for my dissertation proposal to be rejected or approved. I'm waiting to find out if I will have a job when the term ends. It's a day for expressing my malcontentedness. It appears I'm in good company. With the exception of E., everyone I know seems malcontented to some degree or another, from mild to extreme, from resigned irritation to raging fury. I'm somewhere in between. My mother, though, is edging toward the boiling point. She's laid up with some weird swollen ankle disease, bored out of her mind.

“You need a new hobby,” I suggested when we talked on the phone.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I pondered, but couldn't come up with anything that she hasn't already done: knit, write letters, read books, do crosswords, play computer games. Maybe I need to get more creative. What if I could get her hooked on World of Warcraft? Or even Farmville. That always worked on our students. But Mom's Internet connection is too slow. (She's the only person on dial-up left in Portland. It takes 12 hours just to download an update to her virus program.) Hey, maybe she could open a phone sex business. Or be a phone psychic. That could be fun. (Hmmmm.....)

I know what she wants. What she wants is go outside and root around in her garden. It's spring. Things are blooming. The air smells like fragrant candy. There are about a billion shades of green going on. But it's been pouring rain off and on all day. I reminded her that we need the rain, that we are six inches below normal. She whined like a child: I'm booooorrrrred! Man, I'm glad I never had kids. I don't know how parents do it.

Change can be good

If you follow this blog, which is unlikely unless you are Bravadita, my sister, or my friend E., you might have noticed that I haven't been complaining a lot lately about the career college and how it is failing on so many levels. That is because the management stopped talking about 45 days ago. When we asked what was going on with “the move,” we were told that no one was allowed to talk about it. I should have realized that for the massive red flag that it was. I was immersed in my dissertation proposal, head down, not paying attention. I should have seen this coming. I was blindsided with the rest... yes, me, the student of management.

On Monday afternoon after morning classes we were called on short notice to a staff meeting. We speculated: news on the so-called move, perhaps? Our invisible president, looking shaky and pale, materialized for the three minutes it took to tell us the Clackamas site will be closing on May 3, that all students would be invited to transfer to Wilsonville, and oh, BTW, all you Clackamas instructors, we'll know if you have a job sometime in the next two weeks. Stay tuned. And no, this is not an April Fool's Day joke. Then he faded away.

Within a very short time, we all knew that the three associate program directors had been invited to transfer to Wilsonville, although two will be demoted to instructor. (They were, like, yay! No more meetings, no more paperwork!) Our boss will retain his position, lucky him—I guess. I heard this from the mouths of the people affected. Still, I'm skeptical. I wouldn't be surprised if we all got to work on Monday to find the doors locked and moving trucks pulling away in a cloud of dust. I don't think the place is long for this world, frankly. Change can be good. Maybe it's time for this school to die. Survival of the fittest, and all that. We have proved time and again our unfitness for purpose.

Sheryl, my indefatigable colleague, at 66 is not ready to retire. She made some calls, sent a few emails. Efforts to find her new employment were launched immediately on her behalf. Even while she whined, she scrambled her network, thereby demonstrating her ability to multitask. Take note: You are never too old to... to.. what? look for a job? She'll play the age card if she has to. Our other colleague—I'll call her Mella—normally an easygoing, optimistic woman—expressed her anger with some choice cuss words. Right on, Mella. Me, I processed my anger by watching everyone else process theirs. I have no cards to play.

On Monday night and into Tuesday and Wednesday, students were informed by management of the coming change. The fallout was swift and vehement. Students who are graduating May 3 had looks of profound relief. Others, especially new students, were furious that the admissions reps hadn't told them that going to Wilsonville would be a possibility. The panic subsided after students were told they would receive $100 Visa cards to help them with gas expenses. Car pool lists circulated. The frothy anger calmed down into a general discontented malaise that permeated the campuses. Students came to class, but no one felt like doing anything.

I kept on teaching. I wrote notes on the board. I covered the chapter. I facilitated the discussions. I answered questions. I encouraged them to focus on their education.

“You are going too, right?” they asked me.

I said I didn't know.

“What will you do?” they wanted to know.

I said I didn't know.

Sheryl's students, weeping at the thought of moving to an unfamiliar campus without her, joined together to write her a batch of recommendation letters. I heard one student even called Channel 6 news. (This could get interesting.)

So now it's Thursday. We irascibly await the news—do we stay or do we go? Mella quietly started packing her gear. Taking her cue, I cleared the miscellaneous bits of paper... pictures, notes, phone numbers, calendars, reminders... off the walls around my desk. I removed the course materials I had created from the shared file folders (take that, you future adjuncts). I recycled stacks of student work from last term. As I rummaged through drawers, I pondered what I will do if management offers me a job. I'll probably take it. But a big part of me wants to say no thanks and walk away.

Postscript: The phone just rang. It was Sheryl, calling to tell me that tonight when she went to school for night classes, she saw our elusive president in the parking lot. He asked how she was. “How do you think I am?” she said. “Not happy!” He tried to explain. Sheryl said she straight out asked him if she and I would have jobs next term, and he wouldn't look her in the eye. He told her he had delegated the task of deciding who stays and who goes to his management team (I'll call them Mr. Freeper and Ms. Sic-em). And no severance package, not that I thought we would get one, but it would have been nice, maybe a month of pay for every year of service? Nope. We'll be paid through May 15 and our insurance will last until the end of May. And that, as they say, is that.

Win a few, lose a few

Good news (at least to some, not sure who exactly, maybe just my mother). I just uploaded the massively wretched tome, the first draft of my dissertation proposal, all 172 pages (counting front matter, references, and appendices). The courseroom swallowed it with a slightly longer than normal gulp, and now it's there, posted in cyberspace, visible evidence of my willingness to take the next step in the process of earning this doctoral degree. I'm not sure what I pictured these days would be like, way back in 2005 when I first started this endeavor. I think my original goal was to teach online in an adobe hut in the desert. And to be a more valuable employee to my career college employer. Foolish girl, you say? Well, life was simpler back then, when I was naive and uninformed.

For the past 2,677 days (counting much?) I have lived in the fretful fog of the moment, just trying to get the writing done, take care of my students, eat good food and drink water, live in the present, do the next right thing. I haven't thought much about what comes next, after this journey is over. (I used to say if, but it's starting to look likely that I will finish, barring something unforeseen, like a party bus or an asteroid). Except for a general sense of anxiety and some hazy... I won't even call them plans.. I don't have a clear picture of a future. This is not a bad thing.

Unexpected events happen. Like today, for instance, the maternal unit called to ask me to take her to urgent care. She suspected she got bit on the ankle by a malevolent critter on her back porch, a spider, perhaps. This happened last Tuesday. Her right ankle swelled up like a sausage. Since then, she's been hobbling around in slippers with her walker, not driving, not eating much, popping quarter-tabs of oxy and hoping it will go away. No such luck. So today we spent three hours on a gorgeous Easter Sunday morning getting her through urgent care and over to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for an anti-inflammatory. And pick up a box of generic cheerios, so she would have something to eat tomorrow.

That is what I mean. You can plan all you want, but life does what life is going to do. Other people are busy living, and sometimes their lives collide with my plans. I have no control over events, in my life or anyone else's. In some ways, this is frustrating, but in other ways, it is strangely liberating. To accept the invitation to give up the illusion of control is a rare opportunity to appreciate the moment. To be here now, something I've been practicing for the last seven years. It's easier to accept the gift when the sun is shining like it is today. It's 72°. Rain is on the way, but right now the air is golden and ripe with the scents and sounds of spring. A stellar bluejay stole some moss from my back porch. Nest building time.

A woman who lives at the end of the gravel driveway was walking by as I went out to dump my kitchen scraps in the green compost bin. She hurried over to me, pointing at the back of the Love Shack.

“Did you know you have a rat living under your back porch?”

I started to feel some shame, because yes, I know we have a rat living under the porches, and I don't particularly care. Hey, wait a minute, I said to myself.

“Yes, we have a rat,” I said. “We also have birds, squirrels, possums, and sometimes, raccoons. And moles!” Implying that it's a regular zoo in our six-foot-wide strip of nature, and how cool is that? “Do you have moles down there on your corner?” She forgot that she believes that a rat is a bad thing to have lurking under one's porch.

“We don't have moles, but my neighbor does,” she replied. “And she keeps her yard perfectly manicured. The moles drive her crazy!”

Now we were rooting for the moles. Long live wildlife. Yay for fat rats who live under porches. Yay critters, in general. I'm happy to fatten up a rat with spilled birdseed. Why should this little piece of the planet be exempt from harboring god's myriad creatures? (If there is a god, yada yada yada.)

And the plot thickens. Now I hear the sound of running water. Back in a mo. Ok, I'm back. I peered out my back door. The basement door is open, and there are two short, scratched-up surfboards propped against the fence. It looks like the quiet weekend at the Love Shack is over. My neighbor has returned. Now if I'm really lucky, I'll get to hear her making out with her boyfriend till the early hours of the morning.

Get on down to the spiritual axiom

As the teachers left yesterday after day classes, they wished each other a happy Easter. One said, “Have a happy Easter, if you celebrate Easter,” leaving room for those of us who might be pagans, wiccans, heathens, addicts, non-Christians, and generic ne'er-do-wells.

I said nothing, my usual response to all things religious. I have no opinion on Easter, one way or another. Isn't this the day that Jesus was supposed to rise from the dead? Likely story. More likely the guy just looked dead. What a shock to wake up buried alive in a cave. Roll away the stone, let me outa here! From there, it's not too hard to picture the responses of the locals to his unexpected resurrection: It's a miracle! And the rest is history.

I have memories of some Easters in my history. Well, not really memories, per se. I've seen black and white Kodak photos of my sister and me, sitting on the backyard swing-set squinting into the sun, ages about three and five, attired for church in pastel dresses, flowered bonnets, white patent leather shoes, and little white gloves. My sister displays all her baby teeth at the camera, while my smile is somewhat more circumspect, bordering on insipid.

I remember an Easter procession at the church, in which all the children carried daffodils to the alter, to create a big dazzling yellow cross. I think I've blogged about this before. My daffodil had yet to fully open; I was mortified. That feeling of shame is embedded into my genes.

I'm happy that this Sunday is Easter because the callers that usually call me on Sunday afternoons will be off doing their holiday thing with family, and I will have time to work on my dissertation proposal. Yeah, the massive beast is still hanging around, like a overfed, lazy cat, hogging the blankets and polluting the air with dust and dandruff. No, wait, that's me... huh? The good news is, after 150 pages and at least that many sources, I think I've almost got a good first draft. I hope to finish it and upload the monster into cyberspace sometime on Easter Sunday, if I can keep my neck away from the spiritual axiom.

This weekend the temperature should hit 70° for the first time this year. Everyone is excited, of course. All over town, Portlanders are breaking out their shorts, tanktops, and flipflops, bicycles, skateboards, walking shoes. Overnight my sleepy little village corner will turn into a pedestrian-infested, car-congested carnival of park-goers and cafe-mongers. Their music, their voices, their cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes will all waft into my windows on the not-quite-balmy spring breeze. What can I do, I have no defense. I have to open my windows: My place smells like an old gym sock.

Speaking of people who smell like old gym socks, what is with my obese female students smelling like mold? Really? Is it an environmental problem or a hygiene problem? What would happen if I asked them, “Why do you smell like mold?” They would probably look at me and reply, “Why do you smell like an old gym sock?” Then I would try to explain how I haven't vacuumed in a year because I've been working on my doctorate. They would retort, “Well, I work full-time, and I have three kids, no husband, and I live with my mother!” Okay, enough said. Forget I said anything. I won't ask about your stinky body odor if you won't mention mine.

I imagine all my obese female students wearing pastel mini-skirts, low-cut tops, and platform spike heels, tottering off to church this Sunday to celebrate the rising of an almost-dead guy. I'll be celebrating, too, in my own way, by typing a lot of incoherent words and phrases into pages and pages of white space. It's a religious experience, in a way. Especially that moment when I upload the wretched tome and cry to heaven, “Thank god almighty, free for the 21 days it takes my Chair to read and destroy my paper—at last!”

Even a rabid introvert needs human contact once in a while

My phone rarely rings during the week. When it does, it's almost always telemarketers. Despite the fact that I am registered on the national Do Not Call list, I occasionally get calls from people trying to sell me something. Usually they start out by thanking me for my past support.

“Thank you for your generous contribution to the Oregon Republican Party,” the caller, usually a man, will gush. “How are you this evening?” When I hear that opening, I know I am not the droid he is looking for. I know this because I am not a member of the Oregon Republican Party. Also, I know he is probably calling from Atlanta, the call center capital of the western world, because it is inevitably 4:02 p.m. Pacific time, not quite evening yet, here on the west coast.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I think you want the person with the same name as me who lives on the West side of town,” I say apologetically. The rich, white, conservative contributor-to-the-opposition-party person whose name comes up when I Google my own.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” the polite man with the southern accent will say contritely as I am hanging up my phone.

Those are the telemarketing calls I like, the ones that are obvious cases of mistaken identity. Or the ones that go something like, “Are you looking for new siding?” That one is easy to terminate, too. “No, sorry, I'm a renter,” I say blithely. Bam! Ten seconds, tops. My all-time favorite calls are marketing researchers, of course. What do you mean, will I take a 30-minute survey on Minute Rice? Of course I will! Oh, you mean you want me to actually be a user of the product? Oh, sorry. (Thank and terminate. Click. Buzzz.) Darn it. No, I don't smoke. No, I don't watch cable television. No, I don't use mayonnaise. Argh! No one wants someone who spends all her time writing a stupid dissertation!

Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes not. Today the phone rang at 4:02 p.m. I picked it up and responded with my usual wary drawl. “HELLLoh.” When I didn't hear my mother's smoker's tenor: “Hello, Daughter,” I knew it was a telemarketer.

After some clicks and some brief pockets of dead air, a woman finally said, “This is bla bla calling from Life bla bla bla bla. How are you this evening?”

Because this was the only human contact I've had all day, I felt an urge to connect. “I'm doing great, thanks for asking! How are you doing?”

There was a long moment of silence as she processed the maniacal tone of my voice. “I'm fine, thanks for asking.” I suspected she thought I thought I recognized her voice. My Aunt Sally, maybe. I could practically hear her brain chugging away: Will this nutty prospect freak out when she realizes I'm not her Aunt Sally?

“What can I do for you this evening?” I said eagerly, anxious to hear the marketing message. I am a student of marketing, after all.

She launched gamely into her spiel. “Have you heard of Life Alert Systems?”

“Life what?” I said with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Life Alert Systems is a medical alert system specifically designed to help seniors remain independent—”

“Hey wait a minute!” I interrupted. “How old do you think I am?” I admit my voice had just a hint of belligerence. And a touch of wounded vanity. And a teensy weensy bit of righteous indignation.

“Uh... This is for seniors 65 and older?”

“Sorry, that is not me!” I declared decisively. I didn't tell her my age, of course. Telemarketers are like squirrels: You shouldn't feed them if you want them to go away.

“Do you have anyone in the household over the age of—”

“Nope, sorry, there's just me.”

“Well, okay.... good-bye.”

Wait a minute. What? She gave up? She didn't even try! Well, admittedly I was working up a frothy case of buyer's resistance, she could probably hear it in my voice. But isn't that what she's been trained to overcome? If she was a really good salesperson, she would have done her best to sell me, despite my objections, even if it seems at first that I'm not in the target market. Everyone my age has an aging parent. She never asked. I actually think my mother should have something like Life Alert (“Help I've fallen and I can't get up!”) She could have asked me a few well-placed questions, I would have answered, I would have let her ramble on a long time before I eventually let her go. No matter how much I wanted to connect with her, though, I wouldn't have committed to a purchase over the phone. I never do, because to me that is debting. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to talk! Hey come on, where are you calling from? What's the weather in Atlanta? Don't go!

Dueling stereos and the wretched dissertation proposal

It's war at the Love Shack. Dueling stereos are shaking the woodwork. I'm being pummeled by New Order, bass on high. I don't know what my neighbor is playing, but I can feel it through my feet. I'm hoping she's getting ready to go out. It's about that time on a Friday night.

Last night around 1:15 a.m. I'd just gone to bed, when I heard a pounding somewhere in the building. My cat and I looked at each other. What the–? I got out of bed and staggered into the living room. The pounding was louder. I heard muffled giggles and a man's voice. Oh boy. My neighbor Joy is  living up to her name. I considered doing a little pounding of my own, and I don't mean that in a self-sex kind of way. However, after a moment, I decided against ruining their mood and went back to bed. They were done, anyway, if they were at the giggling stage. I presume. Hell, it's been so long, what do I know.

I'm taking a break from the gigantasaurus I call the DP, short for Dissertation Proposal. You thought I whined a lot during the concept paper. That was banana cream cake compared to this. The concept paper is to tell the Graduate School what you are thinking of doing. The Dissertation Proposal is to tell them what you plan on doing, down to the most minute detail. There are three chapters in the proposal. Chapter 1 introduces the idea, Chapter 2 justifies it and situates it in the existing body of knowledge. Chapter 3 is a blueprint of the study. When I say blueprint, I am being precise. I must plan every breath, every grunt, every fart. All this planning is starting to get tedious. The more specific I get, the more I want to just say F--k it, just let me wing it! It's qualitative, for gawd's sake. Another word for herding cats.

For a closet optimist I don't really put a lot of store in the future. I pretty much figure we're all going to hell in a handbasket (thus the name of this blog), that it's all hopeless, meaningless, and not a little ridiculous. Why plan for a future that will inevitably suck? But I must write a detailed plan for my dissertation study, as if there will be a tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that.

I rebel at the thought of having to follow a written plan. I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of gal. I'm the pot-stirrer who lobs a rock in the pot to see what will happen. I don't write up a hypothesis before I take an action and then dutifully measure the outcome. I just throw the rock (or the comment) and stand back to watch. This is how I run my classes. Some instructors prepare daily written lesson plans. The copy machine spits out these little gems of efficiency while I'm checking my mailbox. I turn away with a sigh. If only I were that dedicated. If only I cared. I know what chapter I'm supposed to cover, that's the best I can do. I just start asking them questions and let the process unfold. I don't check to see if they learned anything. That is what the test is for.

This morning I attended a Webinar on using “icebreakers” to help a class connect and learn. It was sort of fun. All my learning at the rinky-dink online school I attend has been asynchronous, meaning I have no real-time contact with anyone. There are no team projects. Everyone moves at his or her own pace, struggling through the assignments in isolation. Now and then someone will post a desperate plea in the discussion folder: Help! What is the ANOVA assignment all about? Can someone please explain statistics to me in brief and simple terms? So being online with 900+ other learners listening to some woman explain her PowerPoint show made me feel like I was riding something large, rocking along with a crowd of enthusiastic educators toward a bright and shiny future. These were people who really cared about teaching.

Not really my people. Another story for another day. My head is pounding in rhythm with my neighbor's bass line. I finally took pity on my cat, who is trying to sleep in the next room, and turned off New Order. Just like I have to write this dissertation proposal, planning in excruciatingly detailed every move I will make when and if the day comes I actually implement this study, just like that I have to bend over and take what the universe gives me today. Take two Advil and grab your ankles. This may hurt a bit.

I hide my anxiety with maniacal laughter

Three weeks into the term. The evening Human Resources Management class, the one that was having trouble last week, got on track and started steaming ahead, all systems go. The young man who had the agenda, who just couldn't make room for anyone else's vision, finally came to his senses, after a weekend to ponder his plight. He opened the team meeting with a sweet and heartfelt apology, which worked wonders, and that was that.

The daytime class, on the other hand, hit a wall today. It was painful to watch. Teresa, who had been absent last Thursday, was back, and true to form went head-to-head with the young slender blonde (I forget what I named her in a previous post... Lisa? Leisl? Lulu? I can't remember. Let's call her Lulu today, that name seems to fit.) Lulu is just young and stubborn enough to not know when to back down. In other words, she hasn't learned yet how to pick her battles. So when Teresa smacked her down with some verbal abuse disguised as teasing, Lulu rose to the bait and blurted out what could have been the undoing of the team.

“We got along fine without you last week!” she declared hotly.

Teresa didn't hesitate one moment. “I can leave if you want,” she said. But she didn't get up.

Lulu backed down. “I didn't mean it like that.”

For a moment the team teetered on the brink of disintegration. When Teresa didn't leave, Dina or whatever her name is—the older gal who is the only one with a lick of sense in my opinion—cautiously shifted the topic to the project. Steve, the only man on the team, remained stoically silent throughout the altercation. Pretty soon all four adjourned to the computer lab to work on their proposal. I stayed behind, which I usually don't do; I was very tired and not interested in watching the group fight off a meltdown.

After class, after the others had left, Dina said to me, “Well, that was intense.” That, I recognized, was her careful request to be heard. I listened, giving my best imitation of someone who cares, while she described trying to get Steve and Lulu to help her write the proposal for their project. “Lulu kept checking her phone, and Steve spent the whole time looking up Keurig coffeemakers!” She resented having to be the mean mom to the two members of the team that seemed to be willing to participate. Teresa was off typing something else, although she spent a fair amount of time in the hall trying to make an appointment with a doctor at OHSU. I couldn't help but overhear. I'm sure everyone heard. Not our business that she is married! Who would have imagined it: Pondering Teresa as a blushing bride makes me stop and wonder if there is any sense in the universe. Maybe I'm just not getting the joke.

This evening. I went online to simplyhired.com and found a job worth applying for. I started gathering my materials. I hate jobhunting. I always feel so inadequate. But nothing ventured, etc., so I went through the motions, skilled at bla bla, adept at yada yada, willing to hardy har har. As I was getting ready to upload, I realized I had given them the outline they requested, but for their duties, not for their list of requirements. Oops. Good thing I saw that before I sent it. Attention to detail... right. It's late, what can I say. I'm tired, I'm bored, I just want it all to be over.

But tomorrow I get to get up and do it all again. Am I complaining about being alive, when we all know what the alternative is? No, I'm laughing, really.

We're not happy until you're not happy

My indefatigable dissertation chairperson saved her comments for Chapter 3 of my dissertation. Why am I surprised: She is a self-proclaimed methodologist, and Chapter 3 is the methodology chapter. It's the plan, the blueprint, the guideline of my study. She marked it up with the Word equivalent of red ink: Lots of purple balloon comments in the margin: Do this part over! Move this here! Call me if you want to talk!

Uh, no thanks.

I've been working on it off and on all weekend, checking my sources and my reference list, trying to make sure everything aligns, reviewing the university's exceptions to APA format to confirm that yes, Abstract and Table of Contents are not bold, but Introduction and References are. I'm tired. But I'm willing to slog onward.

I went online just now to look up “open-ended questions” and “unstructured interviews” in EBSCOhost and ProQuest. EBSCO refused to link to some articles: internal server error (their server, not mine), and ProQuest was down for maintenance. Can you believe it? On a Saturday night! How many graduate students are fuming right now, having stashed away a few hours to work on some obscure topic like interviewing cats about academic quality in for-profit Gainful Employment programs...

Just kidding. My cat has nothing to say about quality, academic or otherwise.

Too many hours to Saturday Night Live. My eyes feel like they've been weeping. I'd remember if I wept today, wouldn't I? I blame allergies. We had two days of sunshine and blue sky. Every leafless tree is quivering on the edge of bursting into bloom. White and purple crocuses and sunny daffodils decorate the rock gardens, and neglected winter flowerbeds are showing green sprouts: tulips, maybe?

It's beginning to look like Spring around here, and it's only mid-March. What the—? Is this global warming? Can't say I mind, really. The sun felt good, even though the air was cold. Well, cold-ish. Well, okay, warm, almost. Like, maybe 60°? Only for a few brief moments, and it was great, but I swear it was 45° in the shade, which is all I have in the Love Shack, lest you think I was basking in the glorious rays while I was editing my paper. Not hardly. I have the heat cranked. My feet are tucked in my homemade rice-filled foot warmer. I'm wearing fleece, a hat, fingerless gloves... the usual, and it will be like this until July 5.

We're not happy until you're not happy. (The best song title I've ever heard.) Sort of sums up the self-imposed plight of the chronic malcontent.

Last week I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony. What a guy. He's got new stuff to try on me every time I see him. I feel like I'm in a Batman cartoon when I venture into his dinky little treatment room. Here, he said, turn over and lie on your stomach. Suddenly—Bam! He dropped the middle of the bench to realign my hips. I sat up, reeling a little. He gently hugged me, and then...crunch! He cracked my back. I flopped back, gaping like a beached trout. Then he grabbed my ankle and told me to hang on to the table. Uh-oh, I had time to think before he yanked my leg and popped my hip. Pow!

Then while I lay there trying to catch my breath, he gave me a remedy that seems to pretty much be targeted at curing whatever ails you. It's called spigelia, and it's potent stuff. Got heart palpitations? (Who doesn't?) Hey, no problem. Sinuses congested? We got it covered. Pesky intestinal parasites? (Yipes! Really?) Spigelia is your solution. Hmmmm. Why didn't he just give it to me when we first met? Why wait three years for the magical cure?

He dumped a few pellets onto my tongue, and of course it worked immediately, as homeopathic remedies often do (at least when Dr. Tony is standing there watching). Then he pushed on my arms a few more times.

“You know that stomach problems are caused by the emotions, right?”

We've had this talk before. I nodded. “So?”

“Think of someone who is upsetting you.”

I thumbed through my ancient dusty moth-eaten mental Rollodex. “I can't think of anybody,” I whined.

“Someone at work.”

“Uh.... maybe Teresa?” She's my shadow side, it's gotta be her if it's anyone. Dr. Tony grabbed my arm.

“No, not Teresa. It's a male.”

I mentally reviewed my student rosters. Who could it be...? There are so few men in my classes, I hardly know these people, certainly not enough to be upset by them... Ch-ch-chug, my brain slipped a gear and came up with a name. “Uh, would it be... Roger?”

Dr. Tony grabbed my arm again.

“Bingo,” he said triumphantly. “It's Roger.”

My mind was saying, oh for crying out loud, this is ridiculous. It can't be Roger. Roger is a young man with entrepreneurial aspirations. He's likable, smart, articulate (although he plans everything he says, it takes forever for him to spit out one sentence), and he's an optimist (another word for born-again Christian). I like Roger a lot. I think he might be one of the brightest students we've seen at the career college. He could do better than our crummy school. He plans to start his own business, and here's the part that gets me: he actually believes he will succeed.

As I thought about Roger, I began to think Dr. Tony was on to something. Roger has something I want, something I've always wanted: success at running my own business. I would quit this lousy teaching job if I could just figure out how to make self-employment work for me. But I'm scared to try. I throw up every obstacle under the sun as an excuse for why my entrepreneurial ideas won't work, while Roger just goes ahead and does it. He's the most annoying creature in the world of business: the naive fool who doesn't know something is impossible, so he just... does it! Argh!

So, my heart, my parasites, my sinuses... all Roger's fault. Maybe I should send him the bill.

They move on, and we stand still

A recent graduate at the career college called my boss to tell him she got married. She also told him to expect a call from an employer seeking a reference. It took me a moment to remember who she was. Students come and go so quickly here in the career college world. Move 'em in and move 'em out. No sooner do I learn their first names, then they are dashing off to a new term, a new job, a new career. They move past me at a hundred miles per hour, while I'm poking along in the slow lane, living from nap to nap.

During my nap today, I dreamed about two students who are long graduated: I'll call them Trim and Toy, two older guys who used to work at Freightliner before they were laid off and sent for retraining. They chose healthcare administration. Trim was tall and thin,Toy shorter and rounder. Sort of a Mutt and Jeff kind of thing. Former coworkers, then classmates, and I think they went on to get hired by some big insurance company. Anyway, I dreamed about them. They had left a voice mail message for my colleague Sheryl, who celebrated a birthday today. In my dream, I paused at the office door, beckoning to Sheryl.

“Listen to this!”

She came trotting over. In my dream she wore her usual half-glasses on the end of her nose. Her blonde hair looked perfect. For an older gal, Sheryl is in pretty good shape.

We stood by the phone, holding in our laughter, while the voices of our former students thrashed through the speaker. Trim and Toy sang a long, complicated jingle about Sheryl, her cat, and her birthday. It was orchestrated with guitars, piano, and bongo drums, and the lyrics rhymed. I thought, Is that what they learn now in healthcare administration?

Dreams were in the zeitgeist today. This afternoon before I left for the day, the program director of the medical department, let's call her Joan, saw me from halfway down the medical wing. She stopped in her tracks and turned. “I had a dream about you!” she shouted down the hall. She clearly wanted to tell me about it, so I waited, trying not to cringe, as she hurried toward me. She reached me and grabbed my bicep.

“I had a dream about you!” Her blonde ringlets danced with excitement. “I dreamed you were a nun!”

Another teacher from the medical department, whose name has escaped me for three years, came rushing over to hear Joan's story about me in her dream.

“You were wearing the habit, the hat, the whole thing!” Joan screamed. “And your name was Sister Carol Ann!”

“That's amazing,” I said, edging away, back toward the relative safety and calm of the business wing.

So, not only am I a closet optimist, I am now so pure that people are mistaking me for a nun in their dreams? Hard to believe it's because of me or my character. I'm sure it's because I often wear head-to-toe black. I look like some weird monk person, silently skulking around the halls with a permanent frown line between my eyebrows. It's no wonder she was confused. Right?

I just uploaded Chapter 3 of my dissertation proposal to my Chair. While she mulls over my occasional, not-so-subtle use of the first-person pronoun, I will be patching all three chapters together, hoping against hope that I've included enough detail, in the right order, followed the correct template, fixed their errant formatting issues, and checked all my references. Here's hoping the dissertation gods take pity on me and let me pass this hurdle in less time than it took to clear the last one (the wretched concept paper). I doubt it will happen that easily, though.

My classmates trade names of good editors. Their posts lead me to wonder if they actually do any of their own writing, let alone their own thinking. Not me, by god. I'll sink or swim on my own. Editor? I don't need no stinking editor. I may eat those words later, but for now, I'm just hoping I retain enough brain cells to be able to spot those increasingly frequent moments when I leave out entire words, write fragments, and fail to make my subjects agree with my verbs. I weep to remember the days when I used to be a superb speller, when I had a vast vocabulary, when I intuitively understood the secret rules of grammar. Sigh. On the bright side, my memory is failing, so soon I expect I won't be able to remember anything. That will be some kind of relief.

My sister is in Germany, riding bikes with her love in the slushy streets. It's nice to realize that somewhere people have lives and are living them. I hope I won't be standing still forever. I plan to finish this doctoral journey one day soon, and find a life and live it. Maybe not Germany, but maybe someplace more exotic, like... Palm Desert or Yucaipa.

I'm not ready to be unemployed

After a hellish first week, the new term at the career college is.... I can't think of any words to describe how this new term might unfold. I can't say off to a rousing start. The word stumbling comes to mind, but that might apply more to me than the term. Not sure that is useful. As a descriptive term, I mean. Maybe the word hopeful applies: I think we may have more students, judging by the voices echoing down the halls. I wonder if any of our friendly, helpful admissions advisers told the new students that our campus would be moving to a new site in a few months.

To be honest, we still don't know if the move is happening. Rumor has it that the lease is up in April, but I suppose the management could decide to rent month-to-month until they found a suitable location. I'm not feeling all that positive about the possibility of moving. Last week I overheard two students say the reason why they chose our site was because it was near their homes. Location, location, location.

It occurs to me that anyone who hasn't read my blog before wouldn't have a clue what I'm talking about. I'm writing as if I'm narrating an ongoing soap opera for a devoted audience, when in actuality I know that my regular audience consists of a handful of people. I mean, I can count the number of you readers on one hand. The rest of you are drop-ins, looky-loos, accidental tourists traipsing through my blog on your way to someplace else. I can tell what you search for when I look in the stats, and I know you won't find it here. Sorry. Thanks for dropping by, though.

If you stick around, you'll get the whole sordid story of the dinky career college for which I work and its imminent demise. Although, now that I think about it, the demise has been imminent for the years. I guess that doesn't qualify as imminent anymore, does it? It's like going into hospice and outlasting your caregivers. People get a bit peeved. Enough already, just die, would you? Jeez.

I'm not ready to be unemployed. I tried to figure out how I would live if I had to work a minimum wage job. (Oregon minimum wage is $8.95.) My lifestyle would be severely impacted. Like my friend Bravadita, I would have to give up my car. I would have to find a house-share situation. I would have to stop eating organic. Any one of those outcomes would make me want to jump off the Fremont Bridge. I'm such a hothouse flower. I remember when I used to drive a school bus. I remember when I packed books in a warehouse for a two-week temp job. I'm too old for that now. And too damn well educated. No one would hire an aging, unemployed Ph.D. from a crummy for-profit online university to work in a warehouse.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, hey, where is that optimist that lurks inside you, Ms. Chronic Malcontent? Here's the deal on that. The Optimist is not chronic. She is both rare and shy. You may not see her very often around this blog, since the Malcontent is a bully. But maybe if you clap your hands three times and say I do believe in magic, I do, I do, I... well, no, maybe not. I don't know. I'm just writing drivel so I can move past my resentment and get on with writing Chapter 3 of my dissertation proposal. That, after all, is what I live for these days. Work is just that interval that comes between sleeping and writing. Maybe someday this will just be a bad dream, and I'll be able to just sleep and write.

And there she is—don't blink!—the shy Optimist, hovering by the water cooler, waving her tiny hand at us.

Put four students in a team project, add a deadline... and hit BLEND

Here I am, skulking back to my blog after being outed as a closet optimist. I've had some interesting feedback on the whole sordid expose. My sister laughed (kindly). She didn't sound all that surprised, once again proving I don't really know myself, have never known myself. She copied my self-portrait and drew a smile and a dimple on my malcontented face. How's that for sisterly love! Pretty cool.

It's humbling, but maybe it's also a little bit liberating, to discover this not-so-new, not-so-secret side to my personality. Liberating because if you don't know who you are, you could be anybody. All this time I thought I was a frustrated creative, a plodding malcontent, an irritating pot-stirrer, a rabble rouser. But turns out I could be totally wrong! Maybe I'm really a successful, well adjusted, creative, productive member of society. Maybe I'm a secret millionaire, so secret I haven't discovered it myself yet. Maybe I've written ten books and I'm working on my eleventh! Whoa. Maybe my thighs really are thin, maybe my hair isn't gray, maybe I'm not growing a mustache! I mean, there's just no telling who I am these days, if the once and former chronic malcontent is really a hidden optimist.

We started a new term at the career college this week. I have six preps, 26 contact hours, and not very many students. One class has one student, one class has two. The others have a handful each. The two classes that will be most interesting (for me) will be the two sections of Human Resources Management, where I require the students to work together as a team to choose and produce some sort of group project. This is the same process I used last term in the Organizational Management classes I may have blogged about previously. This term, I think one class is going to pose some problems. There are four students in the class: three women, one man. Two of them know each other, the other two are retreads from another time, another campus. And one is a chronic malcontent.

How do I know? Because I dislike her intensely. Her (not real) name is Teresa. She's my shadow. She represents all the things I dislike in myself, that I'm afraid to look at, afraid to express. She's obese and messy (like I fear I will become). She wears glasses (like I do) and her hair hangs down in strings around her face (like mine used to). She wears sloppy clothes (like I do when I can), and her fat-girl pants are usually halfway down her butt, so we would all be able to see her butt crack if she weren't wearing a grimy-looking thong (have I ever worn a thong? Maybe in my drug-hazed youth). She drags herself to class with a scowl, avoiding eye contact. Mostly she's silent, but every now and then, someone will say something (usually me) that rouses her ire.

The task today was for the group to begin the brainstorming process. I served as scribe, standing ready at the whiteboard, stinky marker in hand. “Who needs help?” I prompted. “What needs changing?”

Steve, the token male in the group (family man, toy collector, future accounting major and entrepreneur) cleared his throat and said slowly, “Gas prices need changing.”

“Oh, should they be higher?” I chirped.

“No, lower!” he said with some heat. His emotion roused Teresa, the sleeping giant.

“Gas prices are so high because the Middle East countries aren't producing as much oil,” she said proclaimed hotly.

The older gal, Dina, who is back at the career college after several years in the workforce, looked at Teresa and said with just the slightest hint of contempt, “We don't buy much oil from the Middle East anymore.”

They bickered about U.S. oil production for a few moments, until I leaped into the fray, verbally speaking.

“If this topic is interesting to you, you'll probably want to do some research, so your project is based on facts rather than just opinions. Okay, any more ideas? Who else needs help? What else needs changing? What can you find out?” I raised the marker, ready to write.

Everyone slumped back into their stupor. They stared blankly at the whiteboard. Lisa (20-years-old, size zero, bottle blonde) checked her smartphone. Steve gazed out the window. Dina drummed her fingers on the table. Teresa hid behind a wall of hair, her back to the board. Clearly the team has not started the first step of the group process (forming, storming, norming, and performing.)

I blame myself. If I were a really good teacher (which I'm not), I would devise a team-building activity for them, so they can get to know one another. Part of me wants to help them, ease them into the group experience. The other part of me just wants to sit back and watch the train wreck. I'm like the scientist poking the frog with an electrode. If I put four uninterested students in a pot of hot water (a forced team project) and turn on the heat (a 10-week deadline), what will they do? Will they climb over each other to claw their way out? Or will they help each other? Stay tuned. This is bound to be fun (for me).

The Chronic Malcontent is a... what!? No way!

Yesterday I drove to the campus in Wilsonville for our quarterly in-service. Some time back one of the program directors thought it would be a good idea if we had in-service on the day after the end of the term. Sadly, faculty weren't consulted, and now we have three fewer hours to finish our grades and prepare for the new start on Monday. More like four hours if you count the time lost driving to Wilsonville. Luckily, I have the weekend to grade and prep, right? More like, luckily, I still have a job.

This post isn't about how frustrating it is to be required to sit in workshops for three hours when I could be grading Access exams, although it's always satisfying to vent. No, this post is about something that happened in one of the workshops.

We are usually given a choice of workshop topics. The options for session 1 were LinkedIn or Positive Psychology Part 1. The options for session 2 were Multiple Intelligence or Positive Psychology Part 2. You've heard me talk about my tendency to look on the dark side. You know I call myself a chronic malcontent. It's not that I'm not satisfied with my role as... resident cynic. But lately I've been pondering the idea that if you keep doing what you've always done, you will get what you have always gotten. Bad grammar, I know, but you get my drift. The so-called Law of Attraction and all that stuff.

So I chose to attend the Positive Psychology sessions. I went in with an open-mind, to learn, like an anthropologist peering through tall grass at a newly discovered indigenous tribe. What will I hear, who will I see? Is everyone here part of the happy tribe? Or will there be any other malcontents lurking in the bush?

About twelve people attended, mostly folks from the medical department. If you know anything about medical faculty at a career college, you know they are the most outgoing (loudest), most people-oriented (drama, drama, drama), most compassionate (nosy parkers) of all the departments. I sat next to Molly (not her real name) who has oddly enough become a friend of sorts. She is the type of person the moniker Little Mary Sunshine was coined for. Seriously, she's over the top maniacally ebullient, all the freaking time. She likes me because she saw me drawing goofy characters in my notebook at a previous in-service. Her 21-year-old son is an artist, which is to say he lives at home and does nothing. I guess she recognizes something in me that reminds her of her son.

Our facilitator Trish (older gal, wheezing with the dregs of the flu) showed us a TED video of a self-styled positivity guru Shawn Achor, and then challenged us to take a pledge to do five things for 21 days. “It will change your life,” she wheezed. I list them here in case you want to try it yourself: (1) make a gratitude list, (2) journal about a positive experience every day, (3) exercise, (4) meditate, and (5) perform a random act of kindness.

“Get with a partner now and practice this together,” Trish directed in a cracked version of her school teacher voice. I turned to Molly and asked how her son was doing. “He joined the Furry Convention,” she said in frustration. “He made his own costume!” We were in a computer lab. While the other medical faculty were flailing about doing sloppy jumping jacks and knocking into things, I looked up Furry Convention. Wow, cool. People make costumes and hang out. Why didn't I know about this when I was 21? I didn't say that to Molly. “Best thing you can do is kick him out of the house,” I said bluntly.

“Ok, class!” Trish wheezed. “Now I want you to take the Optimism test.”

The pessimistic cynic in me mentally rubbed her hands in glee. At last, a test to prove I am a malcontent. All this positivity stuff is great, but I really just wanted validation for my self-inflicted moroseness. I registered on the website and dove into the 32-question questionnaire. The medical faculty were cackling loudly. Trish was talking over them, trying to sell us on the idea of being more optimistic. I said to Trish, “If you want me to fill out this survey, I'm going to need you to stop talking.”

“What?” Trish said.

“Stop talking!”

There was an awkward silence. We all got down to it. The questions came in pairs. Many of them were about relationships. Nothing seemed to apply to me. I floundered in confusion at first, but rallied and forged ahead, finishing first. Clicked the button: Calculate. A moment later, a series of graphs appeared. I stared in shock. Out of 8 possible points, I had scored a 7 on optimism, and a 2 on pessimism! No, this can't be! I'm the chronic malcontent!

I furtively hid my graphs and leaned over to see Molly's results. She scored a 2 on optimism and a 7 on pessimism, the exact opposite of me. No way!

I had to read the fine print and think past my defenses. Eventually, I understood. The questions were worded so that one of the pair represented a permanent situation, while the other one reflected a temporary situation. The idea is that optimists will consider positive situations enduring and permanent and judge negative situations temporary and fleeting. Apparently I have been looking on the bright side all along. I just hid that fact from myself. This is not unlike the day I looked in the mirror and realized I had grown a mustache.

What can I say. The jury is in. The former malcontent is outed. I've been a closet optimist all along. Please don't tell anyone.

Ants

One of the consequences of embarking upon the journey toward an advanced degree is that some parts of life must inevitably receive less attention. The chore of writing coherent sentences is all consuming. There is little time left for things like personal hygiene, housekeeping, or car maintenance. You already know I live in squalor. I've written about the dust balls and cat hair before. But I don't think I've mentioned the ants. Have I mentioned the ants?

I'm beginning to suspect my sole purpose in life is to transport ants from one location to another. I'm really good at it, mostly (although I will say that not all of them survive the trip, most notably the ones that inadvertently trod upon my neck). They load up the gangway to my shirt while I'm washing dishes at the kitchen sink. Then they sample the various activities of my scarf, hat, and pants. At their own risk, of course. Then I walk into another room, where they disembark on my computer keyboard or my television remote control. They are thrill-seeking tourists, looking for that next adventure. And I'm just the human who can give it to them.

I've spread a concoction made of mineral oil and cayenne pepper along my kitchen counter, but I always miss some spots. These become ports of entry for intrepid scouts, who navigate between reeking hot puddles of pepper, like humans traverse Yellowstone. It's comical to watch them stop, back up, turn, start up again, stop, like little matchbox toys. Sometimes they are boxed in. Then they just have to sit there. I don't usually save them. But when I return to the kitchen the next day, they are gone. Who rescued them? Maybe there is a superhero for ants trapped on kitchen counters. Save us from the evil human!

Sometimes they organize a coup. They try to take over the kitchen. The little buggers have almost succeeded a couple times, especially when their spies locate the cat food. The supply lines are long and thick as your finger, little workers trundling back and forth. Must bring home the bacon! Feed the children! I would invite them in as guests, but my cat is less hospitable. He won't fight them, or eat them (I assume they aren't that tasty, although I'm sure I've accidentally cooked them into my scrambled eggs a few times). The cat gives me the evil eye when his food dishes are overrun. I can't live long with the evil eye.

I don't like killing anything, even ants. I also hate eating meat, but that is another story. In the flora and fauna of the Love Shack, I let spiders live, as long as they aren't in my bed. I save bees, hornets, wasps, and yellow jackets. I even save flies, if I can catch them. Any one critter, I will attempt to rescue and put outside. But when critters attack in hordes, I can't save them all. Moths and ants overwhelm me with sheer numbers. I'll tolerate a few, but eventually the tolerant giant is moved to retaliate.

Out come the big guns. No, I'm not talking about pesticide sprays or ant motels. I'm talking about the oldest remedy for what ails you: alcohol! Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle sends them to ant heaven. I mop up their sopping carcasses with a paper towel and toss them to their final resting place in the trash. Then I spray bleach on the battlefield. And finally I salt the earth (all entry points I can locate) with the hot pepper oil concoction. That buys me a few weeks of peace and ant-free scrambled eggs. Such is the life of a (slightly crazy) doctoral student.

Is it spring yet?

I've been sneezing off and on all day. It could be a reaction to the piles of dust and cat hair that continuously roil about the Love Shack. It could be a reaction to something I ate. I suppose I could be coming down with the creeping crud that has been plaguing the career college for the past few weeks. But I think it's none of the above. The air in here is always filled with dust and cat hair, and sometimes sawdust, paint fumes, and burned fish, depending on what I've been doing. I haven't eaten anything out of the ordinary lately, and I don't feel sick. So what could it be? I have a theory.

Today the temperature topped 60° in parts of the metro area. Just for a little while, but the balmy temperature, combined with sunshine and blue sky, I am positive, enticed a billion little spores and mites and bugs and pollen bits to launch themselves in a celebratory frenzy: Oh joy, it's spring! And my sinuses responded.

This happens every February. February is the wicked witch of winter. February waves her wand and beguiles all the gullible little bulbs and ferns into believing it's safe to raise their little trusting faces to the sun. (Awww, isn't that cute, my bulbs are sending up green shoots. What was it I planted in that pot, again? I have no recollection. Last November seems an awfully long time ago.)

I bet you can guess what happens next. Yep. Sometime in early to mid-March, a nasty Arctic cold front will sweep down from the Gulf of Alaska and blanket all the trusting little crocuses and daffodils who were stupid enough to believe February's lies with inches of snow and/or ice. Bam. Fooled you. Then the Love Shack becomes an igloo, a dark, frigid igloo, and I wish I could hibernate until summer.

I grew up here, and I know this place, even though I spent 20 years in Los Angeles. I know February promises the impossible. Everyone who has been here for a while knows that summer begins July 5. I never remove my flannel sheets before June. I keep my heating pad handy year round. I wear fleece every day, even when the sun is shining, and a hat and fingerless gloves. I know this place. Although I guess I don't know everything. It's possible some of my misery is of my own making. Next time when I look for an apartment, I won't choose a place on the north side of a mountain.