The chronic malcontent feng shuies the crap out of the Love Shack

The umpteenth time I checked the course room today, there was a message from my Chair: “Unexpectedly out of office. Back Monday.” After a stab of disappointment, I felt oddly relieved. For the rest of this week, I don't have to fret about receiving feedback on my dissertation submission. I mean, I can fret if I want to, but even I am able to recognize the futility of fretting. So I did what any self-respecting adult would do when faced with an unexpected delay: I feng shuied the Love Shack.

I mean no disrespect, and I'm sorry if I offend you, but it's the perfect time to take my housecleaning one step further. I've vacuumed, I've dusted (in places), I've washed the curtains (you know that is a big deal if I keep mentioning it in post after post). I started really looking at the amount of crap I have on my shelves (and I have a lot of shelves)... I mean, really looking. Wow, there's a Microsoft Office 97 book. Really? PowerPoint 2002? Two copies! Who knew!

One thing led to another and the next thing I know, I'm looking up feng shui on the Internet. Score! I found the Bagua, that diagram that divides a space into nine zones. I sketched out a floor plan. Wait, should I make my back door the entrance wall or my front door the entrance wall? Hmmm.

While I was pondering this mystical question, someone pounded on my front door. I froze. Curiosity almost made me go move the curtain to see who was there. But I held very still, like a rabbit in a burrow, and whoever was there went away. People who know me know to come to my back door. The only time I open my front door is to collect my mail. Okay, that answers my question. The back door is the entrance wall.

I returned to my diagram. Darn, it's not to scale. Oh well, close enough to find out what my feng shui condition is. Uh-oh. Looks like Zone 4, Wealth, is in the empty space by the front door. That's not good, is it? Maybe if I switch the diagram and let the front door be... oh, no, that's even worse. Now Wealth is in the bathroom! I'm flushing my prosperity down the drain! I knew it! I switched my perspective back to the back door as the entrance wall. Maybe I can put a money tree by the front door or something. Or a mobile made of Monopoly money.

My analog TV, converter box, antenna, and old-fashioned DVD/VHS player circa 2005 sits in Zone 9, the Reputation sector. This zone also contains the cat tree, a wondrously shaky multilevel contraption I built myself. Wonder what that has to do with Reputation?

Love and Marriage (Zone 2) is in the bedroom. I guess that isn't so bad, except I've been happily single for 10 years. Maybe this refers to my cat. He's sacked out on the bed right now. We're like an old married couple, mostly. He sleeps a lot, farts occasionally, and I do all the work. Yep, sounds about right.

Health and Family (Zone 3) is occupied by a long stretch of heavily laden lime green bookshelves. I wonder what that means. Maybe it means I will get a good workout if I get rid of some of these books. And whatever is left will go to my relatives when I die? I fail to see how that is helpful.

Uh-oh. Creativity is in my bedroom closet. I guess that explains a few things. What goes in the Center? Some of the Bagua maps put Health in the middle, some just say Earth. Get it straight, you feng shuists. Hey, the center is where I sit right now, typing this post and trying to figure out what the center is all about. Oh, man, this is getting too meta.

Zone 8, Knowledge, is where the cat food sits. Career, Zone 1, is where the back door opens. There's nothing there except a fire extinguisher and an umbrella (not to be used together, I don't think). The last zone is Zone 6, Helpful People and Travel. And that is in the bathroom. Well, the bathroom has to go somewhere. It's better to put Helpful People in the bathroom than Wealth, right?

I don't know what it all means, but I'm pretty sure my feng shui score is crap. No wonder my life is shite! I need to boost my feng shui rating. Okay, what should I do? Going to the Internet again... okay, according to one site, in my living room, I need to have family photos (check), harmonious colors (check), and a comfortable chair for every family member (check). The cat has an abundance of comfy places; in fact, the whole damn house is decorated for his pleasure. Seriously. I don't even take showers so I don't have to move his favorite window seat in the bathroom. Uh-oh, the feng shui tips say to hide my TV and electronics. Then how would I watch Scandal and Once Upon a Time? Nope, the TV stays put.

The tips for the bedroom warn us not to have photos or religious icons “watching” us while we sleep. I don't know why not, I don't do anything interesting while I sleep, do you? Avoid cluttered views. Oh dear. The walls in my bedroom are covered with shelves, no lie. Books, tools, sewing crap, clutter. And yes, the closet door is open and you can see piles of laundry and mismatched, outdated, thrift store clothes hanging on wire hangers (I know, I know). Let's see, what else am I doing wrong? Don't put your bed under the window. Nuts. Well, it's only the Love and Marriage zone, who cares? Not me.

I'm more concerned with the Wealth zone. Let's see. I need to correct the subliminal messages in my home that are detracting from abundance. And I need to start a gratitude journal. Really? Argh. And I need to stop feeling and acting needy. Ahhhh. I knew it! It's all my fault! If I just weren't so damn needy, everything would be hunky-dory! Abundance and prosperity would easily and effortlessly flow to me and through me... if I weren't such a greedy, grasping self-centered loser!

Okay, I've had enough of this feng shui shite. I don't need my furniture and accessories berating me for my bad attitude. I'll just get one of those laughing buddhas or something. Wait, is that a different religion? Is feng shui a religion? Now I've probably offended the feng shui gods. Oh man. Let me hunker down in Zone 6 (the bathroom) and wait for some helpful person to come along and rescue me. I'm so screwed.

The chronic malcontent deals with it

Waiting sucks. I don't know what to do with myself. I've washed just about everything in the apartment, except the cat. I've checked the course room twice a day since last Wednesday. I'm spending too much time surfing news sites, looking at pictures, reading about the government shutdown, wondering how many revisions I will have to do, how long it will take, how I will find the will to dig in deeper.

Today I went out in the rain to renew my car registration. Every two years we have to take our cars to a Department of Environment Quality test station so they can make sure our carbon footprint isn't too big. My old Focus passed the test, no problem. Yay. A car that fails DEQ implies a moral failure, I'm pretty sure, so I was feeling smug. I was out of there in less than 15 minutes, $143 poorer and wondering, if I can't find work A.D. (after degree), will I have to park the car and start transiting with the masses? I'm not afraid of mass transit like my friend Sheryl. But mass transit is a devious invention cleverly devised to keep poor people poor.

Where would I be transiting to, though, is the question? Sheryl hasn't found work yet. I doubt I will be any luckier. No one wants to hire old women. Not when there are so many chirpy young people around who are eager to do the job. Maybe we should do what they used to do in Japan: take the old folks up the mountain and shove them off a cliff.

Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill are my heroes: two older gals who are still tearing up the airwaves. The only waves I can tear up are the ones in my microwave oven, and even that is iffy sometimes. Sometimes pressing the button gets you nothing but dead silence. The monster is old and tired. I am referring to the microwave.

After the rain stopped, the sun came out and the temperature dropped. I yanked on my (tight! ow!) spandex jogging gear and trotted up to Mt Tabor Park. I shuffled carefully along the slippery leaf-strewn roads, avoiding the muddy trails, very aware that one slip, one fracture, would change my life forever. There were about twenty Canadian geese honking and pooping happily in the reservoir. Big gray clouds intermittently hid the sun. These clouds are the storm cells that come in with colder air. I can see Bruce Sussman's weather map in my mind...yep, these are those patchy storm cells that can dump cold rain at any moment and then trudge on toward Mt Hood to lay down some snow. I hate snow. Not that you asked, just sayin'. It's 48° right now in Portland, and 83° in Phoenix. Enough said.

A boring day. I've lost my momentum, my mojo, waiting for feedback on my personal albatross. I might actually have to get out the sewing machine and start—gasp!—mending or making things. If you knew how much I hate to sew (long story), you would realize what a big deal this is.

I could start working on my business again. It's there, in the back of my mind, all the time, like an unhealed wound. No, that's a terrible metaphor. Let's say... the idea of working on my business is like having a grain of kitty litter stuck in my sock. A nagging irritation difficult to ignore (especially while I am trying to jog). I have some ideas, I have some half-formed plans, but I have no enthusiasm while waiting for feedback on this dissertation. I am frozen in time, like a decrepit bug stuck in amber.

The chronic malcontent grudgingly admires her clean curtains

I'm waiting for comments on my first draft of my dissertation manuscript from my Chair and the nameless, faceless committee. As I wait, I'm noticing how my mind is trying to kill me. For example, my mind has convinced me that my document has developed a plague of typos, grammar errors, and formatting problems. When I uploaded it, it was clean, sparkling, shiny, as close to perfect as a first draft ever gets. Two days later, it had lost some of its luster. Four days later, it is shredding around the edges, tattered and stained. Every day I wait, my mind brainwashes away my enthusiasm and hope. Now I am starting to believe the paper will never pass muster. What was I thinking? Yada yada yada.

You see how my mind rolls? Nuts. I'm completely nuts. Nothing has changed. The paper is the same paper I uploaded last Tuesday. It can't develop issues. Unless my Chair or the nameless, faceless committee person pokes around and inadvertently deletes a style. That could be somewhat disastrous. (My Word skills are above average. I don't trust their Word skills.) But in any case, the content should remain intact, right? The words are not morphing into Pig-Latin when no one is looking. My errors are not proliferating like bacteria in a petri dish.

My mind is also trying to convince me that all the work I've done the past week to clean up my decrepit hovel is worthless activity. I guess that means unless I'm writing the dissertation or working to drum up clients for my frozen-in-time research business, I'm slacking. Washing the heavy linen drapes (made from paint dropcloths) doesn't count, apparently. Vacuuming the hairball infested rugs doesn't count either. I only vacuum twice a year, so this is a special occasion, yet I am unable to rejoice. Five loads of laundry in two days! Do you know how many quarters that is!? Surely that must count for something. Nope. Even after the curtains are rehung (looking two shades lighter!), I am consumed with feelings of inadequacy. What the–?

Well. You can probably tell what is happening. It's all this waiting. Waiting is upsetting my already unstable mind. I daydream about some future day when I don't have to do this anymore. My mind, though, refuses to let me believe it will ever come to an end. Maybe my mind is trying to protect me from disappointment. Like, don't think about how it will feel to succeed. Just keep your head down and keep slogging. Don't think about what you will do when it's done (take a nap, take a bath, take an art class). Sooner or later, one way or another, someday, it will be over.

You know something is wrong when ants gather on your toothbrush

I suspect consumer products firms are making products that require the purchase of more of the same products. What do I mean? Well, vitamins come to mind. How do you know they actually work? What if they make you feel lousy, which inspires you to buy more vitamins? Ever think of that?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe humans can ever get along long enough to conspire on anything more complicated than texting a vote to American Idol. Something has happened to make me consider changing my mind.

Every day this week, I've found a little cabal of ants crooning in a daze on the bristles of my toothbrush. I shudder to imagine how many times I've brushed my teeth without checking for the presence of critters. (Ant-flavored toothpaste, anyone?) So, what would you think if you found ants gathering on your toothbrush? Wouldn't you think there was something in the toothpaste that ants found attractive? Like, maybe, sucrose, sucralose, or some other ingredient that by any other name would be just as sweet as sugar? Eew. I'm officially grossed out. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that dentists are in cahoots with Proctor and Gamble.

This isn't the first time I've had misgivings about consumer products. I've long suspected facial tissue manufacturers. It seems to me that every time I blow my nose, I feel compelled to sneeze, which means—you guessed it—I must blow my nose again. I have allergies to a lot of stuff in the Love Shack, for instance, dust, hairballs, mites, pollen, cat hair, and did I mention dust? I sneeze a lot, especially on special once-a-year occasions like vacuuming days. Sneeze, blow.... a-a-a-choo! Blow again. Well, a genius brain like mine eventually spots the connection between sneeze and blow... hey, maybe there is some sneeze-inducing compound on the tissue! Their slogan oughta be Pollen-infused Softness. Or how about, Fresh as a Stamen. Or maybe, Carpals and stamens, for those personal moments.

While I wait for feedback on draft one of my dissertation, I decided to clean up the apartment. I started in the bedroom. I washed the curtains. I folded the laundry and put it away. I stripped and flipped the mattress and replaced the summer percales with winter flannels. I swept up the little drifts of diatomaceous earth that I used a few months ago to barricade the cat's water bowl from the ant hordes. I moved everything off the carpet and vacuumed up the ankle-deep layer of dust, detritus, cat litter, and hairballs. I stopped every 15 seconds to sneeze, blow my nose, sneeze, blow my nose. My sinuses quickly swelled to fill up all available space in my cranium. Eventually I had to breathe through my mouth, and thus was able to stop sneezing for awhile. I don't clean very often, and this is why. It's an ordeal that lasts for about three days after I stop cleaning. The nights are especially long when one cannot breathe.

I'm not counting, but I'm pretty sure I've sneezed at least 20 times since I started typing this post. The mountain of used tissues takes up much of my desk. (I like to use them twice before tossing, you know, really get my money's worth.) Now my eyes are swimming. I'm having a hard time seeing the screen. It's time to find a drawing to illustrate my misery. And then I'm going out for a walk. The pollen in the park can't be any worse than the dust mites in the Love Shack.

The chronic malcontent feels resentment at a sorry-ass data entry snoid

While I wait for my Chair to chew up and spit out my dissertation draft, I have the pleasure of doing... nothing much. I wasn't going to blog today; I have some important things on my to-do list (clean tub, take nap, put away laundry). However, something happened today that I need to whine about. I have spent the last hour pretending that it didn't affect me. But I can't seem to focus on getting anything done, so clearly it affects me some. After all, when you decide to clean the tub, you must have laser-like focus, otherwise someone could get hurt. Know what I mean?

So, here's my rant. I checked email this morning, like I always do, and found a terse note from my big megabank, which has hosted my money since it took over Security Pacific back in the early 1990s. I have never had a problem with big megabank, and I still don't. But imagine my shock and horror when I read the email telling me that my account was now at $0.00. Yep. Not even any pennies. Zip. Zilch. Empty. All gone.

Hoping it was a phishing error, I logged into my account. Nope. Zero. And the culprit was in plain sight. September's rent check (which [full disclosure] was a replacement check [minus a $30 stop fee] for a check that had gone AWOL, not my fault!)—Septembers' replacement rent check had been posted in error: instead of $695, some drunken data entry snoid probably somewhere back east had added an extra zero, causing $6,950 to be extracted from my checking account. Well, I don't know how you roll, but I don't normally keep that much in checking, so bam! That misbegotten nameless bank hoovered out all my funds and then proceeded to tap my savings account to make up the difference.

After a few tense moments, I found an 800 number. I wrestled the voice mail system into providing me with a live person by shouting “Fraud! Help! Help! Help!” into the phone. The neighbor probably thought I was being robbed (although he never showed). Finally a polite young gal got on the phone and calmed me down. She could see immediately what had happened.

“I'll put in the order to reverse the transaction,” she said sweetly. “And I'll credit back the $10.00 overdraft fee.” Ha. Like I cared about a lousy $10.00 when $6,255 of my money had been siphoned out of my accounts in the blink of someone's bleary hungover eye.

“How long will that take?” I asked, thinking of all the October automatic payments that will soon be hitting my account. Please tell me a few hours.

“Up to five business days,” she said cheerfully. “And now, if you have ten minutes, would you like to talk to a financial advisor about how to invest that money in your money market savings?”

I almost said, what money? Seriously? You are trying to sell me more services, when I've just been electronically violated? Jeez, it hurts to sit down, and she's telemarketing me! God grant me strength. Well, I had a good excuse to refuse her offer: my breakfast was overcooking. In my freaked out haste to alter my circumstances, I had forgotten that my veggies were sweltering on the stove. Oops. Well, at least I hadn't cracked the eggs yet.

So the remedy for my tattered bank account is “pending,” and I'm realizing that living in an electronic world has its curses as well as its blessings. But we've always been at the mercy of data entry errors. It can happen to anyone at anytime. Banks track their error rates. If they are really good, they keep it to 2%. That's why they have fancy validation procedures, to make sure this doesn't happen. Imagine if I had had a business, with irate employees and bounced payroll checks and vendor payments. We would lose all trust in business. Not that we had much to begin with.

And I can't even register my phone number on the Do not call list, because the darn government is on holiday in Tahiti. So I keep getting robocalls from the credit card consolidation companies. What is up with that? If they did a little homework, they would find out I haven't had a credit card in years. Well, what the funk. Enough ranting. Am I sufficiently calm to begin the task of scouring the tub? I wouldn't want to try it when I'm tense with fear and resentment. I might do something crazy.

The chronic malcontent slogs through another day

Some days I have a hard time making eye contact with people. I thought today would not be one of those days. Today I uploaded draft one of my dissertation manuscript. Yep. All 12.5 MB, all 382 pages. Of course, that includes 50 pages of back end stuff, but still, it's a hefty gulp of... something. I was going to say something snarky at myself, like I usually do. For some reason, I changed my mind. I realize I should feel a sense of accomplishment. Maybe that sense that I should be celebrating just prevented me from downgrading my achievement to a modest 4 on the Richter scale of self-denigration. Whatever.

Anyway, my refrigerator is empty except for four apples, one zucchini, a bottle of olive oil, a jar of mustard, and some maple syrup. Maybe you can figure out a recipe from that, but I'm a lousy cook. So I just went to get food. If you know me, you know that is not as simple as it sounds. First, I don't eat normal food. By normal, I mean regular food that someone like my mother would eat, for instance. Yogurt. Kraft Mac n Cheese. Pudding from little cups. Me, I aim for organic everything, all fresh, nothing processed, no dairy, no wheat, no soy, no sugar, no corn. That limits my options; on the upside, it keeps things very simple. But I always feel this undercurrent of resentment frisson through my body when I walk past the ice cream case.

Second, I'm not earning much money since I got laid off from the job in May. I get an amount every week from the Tuition Unemployment Insurance program, until the end of November, when my doctoral program officially runs out. So, the whopping $84 grocery bill made me sob a tiny bit. Finances always make me want to cower under the covers.

And third, and here's the clincher for me, the well-meaning older lady who commandeered the bagging operation at the store was inept and... well, she seemed just plain not present. Rather than show compassion for a kindred spirit, I felt compelled to show her the proper way to bag my groceries, all the while being completely unable to look her in the eye. The best I could do was focus somewhere over her shoulder.

Now, in my defense, I will say that my eyesight for objects three feet or closer is none too good when I am wearing my out-of-door driving glasses. She would have been blurry anyway, even if I were able to look her in the eye. The pressure of other customers coming through the line, the $84 grocery bill, and her inability to properly bag my groceries... on a good day, I would be able to sail through it. I thought today would be a good day. Unloading my dissertation off my plate and onto my Chair's plate should feel pretty damn good. Especially considering the long hours I've been putting in on the darn thing.

I applied for an extension to my program a couple weeks ago. The powers that be at the online university granted it to me yesterday. That's good news. My new drop dead date is June 2014. If I am not done with this thing by then, then I might as well quit on it. I will have no excuse. Unless I drop dead. I guess that would be an acceptable excuse.

The bagger lady wasn't looking at me, either, by the way. She was gazing off at the checker, maybe hoping to be rescued from the insane customer who pulled all the groceries out of the bag to rebag them properly. (That would be me.) I have a lot of experience bagging my own groceries. You could say I'm an expert at it. I buy the same crap twice a week and I always go through the self-service checkout. If they had a self-service checkout at this store I went to today, I would have used it. They have organic gold beets, organic green beans, and organic crimini mushrooms. For those things, I put up with the human-operated check out line.

The box of organic salad (washed three times!) goes on the bottom. The two dozen eggs go next, side by side. Then other stuff can go on top. The bagger lady didn't want to understand. I know that feeling. She was checked out, just hoping the horrible customer would go away. So she put the second egg carton in the bag, but didn't take the time to lay it flat. I was like, wha? No more, like what the funk, lady? Really? How can you possibly think that would work. I managed to simply say, “It's got to lay flat.” I could have gone on. But I stuffed the other crap in the bag, grabbed it, shouldered the other bag, got my receipt, and stomped out the door.

If I could, I would never go back there again. But that's just plain silly. It's not them. They are not at fault. Inept employees are everywhere. Mentally invisible people are all around. It's not them, it's me. For some reason, I'm on edge, and I wasn't expecting it, not today. I was blind-sided by my own insanity. Again.

The past month has been hard. We had the wettest September on record. I have been writing long hours every day, every day of the week, hunched over my computer in my gloomy dank dusty cave. I drink way too much coffee, a really crappy, cold, black, bitter brew. I forget to eat. My friends are leaving me alone. My mother lets me call her. It's like I am encased in a bubble. A ridiculous Ph.D.—A.B.D. bubble. All but dissertation. An eight-year slog.

My little fledgling business is frozen in time. My websites are neglected. I have a comment that needs moderating. Email that needs returning. I can't remember the PIN to my business bank account. It's like I had a dream that I was self-employed. It seems so far away, after these weeks writing, writing, writing on this massive document that represents something I stopped wanting six years ago. But like all amusement park rides, once you get on, you cannot easily get off. There are consequences if you try to get off a roller coaster early. Free fall being one of them.

I just got a robo-call from “Jessica” from Cardholder Services telling me that I need to do something about my credit cards. Sigh. It's time to put my number on the Do not call list again. Thank god I have no credit cards, else I'd be booking a flight to sunny Scottsdale right now. Thank god I have paid cash for this doctoral adventure, so I will owe nothing when it is finally done. And it will someday be done. Maybe that is what is bothering me. I've been doing this so long, I am fearful of what comes next.

Ah, well. The slog continues, one day at a time. Today I am doing what is on my list. I'll worry about tomorrow's slog tomorrow.

You can stop wondering. I'm alive.

A few people keep up with me via my blog, and when I don't post for a while, they wonder what's up. At least, I hope they do. I feel like I haven't blogged in a long time, but maybe that's just my time perception playing tricks on me. I'm so immersed in writing Chapter 4 of my dissertation, I am losing track of reality. I suppose that is normal when one is writing something rather large and long. Large and long. Is that best I can do? I'd like to wax poetic. (Is that the right cliche? I don't wax anything. I don't dust, I don't vacuum, I don't wax... another story.) I'd like to wax poetic about how great this paper is going to be. And it might be... my Chair called the first draft of this chapter “fantastic,” which is nice to hear, but she says that about other things, too, so I am not getting too excited just yet.

I had all kinds of things I was going to update you on. I am behind on my whining. I have a backlog of complaints, beginning and ending with the weather (which sucks). But now, other than the weather, I can't remember anything on my list of complaints. That doesn't mean I don't have a litany of troubles to share, but my brain is so fried after a day of writing, snacking, writing, napping, writing, petting the cat, writing... honestly I'm exhausted. I can't remember what I'm mad about. It's a wonder I can type.

You know what it is? It's an epic battle between my right brain and my left brain. One side is focused on content. The other side is focused on format. The two halves do not play well together. You might say, well, Carol, why don't you write the content, and then format it? Hey, great idea. And that's how I end up with holes everywhere. You can call it white space if you are feeling generous. I'm pushing the boundaries of APA, I'll tell you. Tables that cross pages! There's no other way, not if I want to keep the font at least 10 point. Or distribute magnifying glasses with every copy. And to make matters a little more interesting, my Chair said figures need to have a title at the top. Nuh-uh, girlfriend. The caption serves as the title, look it up.

Now I'm getting warmed up. Starting to feel my blood start to steam a little, feeling that old familiar ire rising up my... no wait, that's just acid reflux. I still can't feel my feet, though. It's cold down near the floor. I've got my rice-filled foot warmer ready to heat up in the microwave as soon as I move to the TV area of the Love Shack. I haven't had dinner yet. It's sort of too late for such a pedestrian event. I wish I had some ice cream. But I don't eat that seductive poison anymore. I had another food-related migraine yesterday, my second this week. Hummus from the health food section at the grocery store. Five ingredients, I thought I'd be safe. Nope. You'd think I'd be skinnier, considering what I don't eat. But of course, that would be ignoring what I do eat, which is a lot. Vegetables and eggs. Salad and chicken or fish. Apples and almond butter. That's it. In large quantities, twice a day.

Oh, and I'm drinking coffee again. Cold, and bitter, the way I like my... never mind, old joke. I'm up to two cups a day. I don't drink it all, I just use the brewing time to think. I'm really not myself. Friends who dare to call have met my dark side. I blame the coffee. I haven't been out of the house at all today. I hear the rain intermittently pounding the pavement. I don't want to look. Now it's almost ten. I've done a good job of whining while bringing you up to date, don't you think? Now I need to search for a drawing that somehow encapsulates the essence of this day's whine. Then I can go eat my apple and watch TV and forget about this paper until tomorrow, when I will get up and do it all over again. Until it's done.

Whine on, whine on harvest moon

This morning I ran errands and basked in the last of the warm summer air. I could feel the hint of fall in the breeze. I hate that. You probably like fall, many people do. Enjoying brisk mornings and warm afternoons, prancing through piles of golden leaves, carving festive pumpkins. Right. All I can picture is braving cold downpours, splashing through chilly mud puddles, and peering through raindrops covering my glasses. Ugh. Fall. Bleh.

That's what I was thinking as I drank in the warm air this morning. Afterward I came home and uploaded Chapter 4 of my dissertation to the course room. It took 10 minutes to upload, that's how big it is. 30+ megabytes of images and text. Three hundred pages that I hope will make sense to my Chair. Good gawd. Oh well. One more chapter to go. I'm dreading this one. This is the one where I have to sound really smart, the one where I succinctly and concisely and intelligently explain what it all means and what we should do about it. Sigh. Suddenly I feel really tired. Where is all that righteous energy that fired me up to start on this crazy journey back in 2005? Where is all that fervor and froth, now when I need it the most? All I can do is say, meh.

There's a harvest moon tonight, according to my mother. I can barely see it through the wretched holly tree that I wish would shrivel and die. Mom says people are crazier than normal under a harvest moon. Is that true? Do you feel crazier than normal? I feel crazy all the time these days. How do you know what is normal? The world seems pretty normal. Another mass shooting, check. Massive flooding, check. Budget cuts, check. Hurricane, check. Officer-involved shooting, check. Earthquakes, yeah, a few, check. Politics as usual, check. Ho hum. Is that all there is, as the song goes. Remember that song? No, you are probably too young.

I get melancholy this time of year, more morose than usual. The surge of satisfaction I felt at posting Chapter 4 was short-lived and quickly forgotten. I seem to be naturally predisposed to cling to the negative... no, wait a minute. Hey. Aren't I a closet optimist? Yeah, that's right. I forgot until I was about to type the word shunning. What am I shunning? (Have I ever typed that word before today?) According to the Happiness test, I'm not a pessimist, I'm an optimist. Oh no, now I need to rethink my opinion of fall. Aaaaah. I'm losing my mind. Who am I, if not the chronic malcontent? Argh. I despise fall. It makes me feel uncomfortable feelings and think uncomfortable thoughts. I hate that. Time to watch TV.

Tomorrow I will dive into Chapter 5, the last chapter. If there is a god, which I'm not convinced there is, then the approvals will flow toward me with ease and grace. I'll put it all together into one massive masterpiece (bigger is better, right?), defend the crap out of it with a superior PowerPoint, they'll confer and grudgingly give me the secret handshake, and then it will be done. I'm already dreaming about the month-long bath I plan to take. Right after the month-long nap. And if there's not a god, well, wake me when it's over.

Will I ever stop doubting? It's doubtful

I'm in maniac writing mode, trying to finish Chapter 4 of my dissertation to upload to my Chairperson this week. This thing just keeps expanding. It's a bloated blob of muck now, completely out of control. I keep stirring it with my stick, trying to make sense of it all, hoping it will come clear.

The cat helps when he can. He just commandeered my chair, so I have to write standing up. The weather took a turn, my feet are cold, my ankles are swollen, and my Chapter 4 is a bloated fetid stinking mass of shite.

My cat poked me in the butt just now and said, “Are you okay?” He is watching me type. He doesn't like it. He would prefer I pay attention to him. I want to post something before I fall asleep on my feet, so I keep typing.

He pokes me again. This time he says quite clearly, “Do you work here?” What, does he want a drink? Sure, dude, I work here. What'll you have? He just wants me to stop typing and give him a rubdown.

It's probably not as bad as I think. I'm just feeling insecure. I live with doubt. I know I'm supposed to be a scholar, and I am almost there, sometimes. But this is new to me, and there are so many details to consider: content, structure, formatting... My fear is that I'll format the crap out of it and it will look like a million bucks, but the damn thing will make no sense. Completely miss the mark. Take off on a tangent, maybe one of those tempting frothy emotional appeals, and zoooom, it's gone, into the stratosphere, leaving the Problem Statement, the Purpose Statement, and the Significance of the Study behind in the mud. My mind is not a great place to be right now. I'm doubting everything. I look at words that I've typed a billion times—Administrative. Systems. Quality—and I wonder, did I spell that right? How many words have I left out? What am I not seeing? Dang it. I need to see it.

I once heard somebody say “I'll see it when I believe it” in reference to some seemingly impossible task. I'm sure he heard it from someone else. He's long gone so I can't ask him where the phrase came from. I'd really like to know if he ever believed it. People say we create our own reality. (Now there's a scary thought.) But I do know my mind is usually out to get me. Hence the constant state of doubt.

The cat looks permanently parked on my chair. Time to turn on the TV. There's nothing on, but I can immerse myself into something other than myself for a while. That will be a relief.

The chronic malcontent makes the best of a curry powder migraine

The most creative time to write a blog post is when one is having a migraine, don't you think? That is, if you get the classic kind like me, in which half your vision falls away. The aura usually starts near the middle of my left eye. For the next 20 minutes or so, it will slowly migrate outward. Meanwhile, I've got a blog post to write!

The typewritten word takes on new meaning when you aren't exactly sure what you are typing. It could be poetry for all I know. Sadly, probably it's not a lot different from the usual drivel I write: I notice I frequently leave out words. It's so humbling. I used to be an excellent writer. I mean, I could spell the crap out of words like onomatopoeia.  Luckily there is a spellchecker in Blogger.

Whoa. Now I can't see my fingers. Good thing all this transcription (ten interviews in two months, four in just the past weekend) has honed my typing skills. I'm probably at 75 wpm with a gajillion errors. Maybe I'll try typing with my eyes closed and see what hapens. Happens. That's what happens.

Some people get migraines from stress. Sometimes hormones play a role. (I don't have any of those left, so I know it's not that.) Migraines for me are caused by chemicals in food. I'm not sure what chemicals. Usually there's a 15-24 hour lag time. I can't remember what I ate yesterday. Not much, since I was freaking out over something that happened with my data collection method, which I may or may not share with you at some point. Suffice it to say, it was sufficiently serious to upset my normally healthy appetite, a very rare occurrence for me.

So, what did I eat that is causing this brain fart now? Hmmmm. About an hour ago I cooked vegetables in curry powder. Nothing new, I use curry powder every now and then, not skillfully, but what I lack in skill I make up in exuberance. This time I added a second kind of curry powder that I got at Trader Joe's. The label didn't list any preservatives. But it was not organic. Could that be the culprit? Pesticides? Herbicides? A one-hour lag time is not impossible. It's happened before.

Now the aura is multicolored, looking rather festive as it moves out from the center of my left eye toward the periphery. The icons on my desktop are refracted and swirly. Cool. No, I should say, psychedelic, man. Did I spell that right?

The data collection methodology crisis was averted. My Chair left me a loophole and I leaped through it with neither style nor grace. As my beloved sister says, just get it done. I'm getting it done. Just a word to the wannabe-wise, remember, your Chairperson is not your confidant. Neither is she your friend. Enough said.

Wow, now I'm looking down a deep tunnel. Like reverse binoculars. I can see the words on the screen again, but only in the center of my gaze, not out to the edges. No peripheral vision on the left side yet. It's coming back, though, along with the usual boring headache. Thank god I don't get the debilitating headaches that some people get, the kind that make them bang their heads against walls or retreat whimpering to dark closets. I'm so fortunate. Not only is my migraine only mildly painful, but it is multicolored. Maybe there is a god.

It was 97° here today, by my widget. Maybe hotter, who knows. I'm sure it broke a record. My ankles are swollen. My cat is sleeping in the tub. I've been working on Chapter 4 of my dissertation all week, immersed in the voices of my ten faculty members. Today, though, I've been at half-mast. Much as I love this extreme heat, it's just not a day for reveling. I cannot forget this is a day for reflection and mourning. Usually I go walking on this day to commemorate and remember, but it was just too hot, even for me.

Now the aura is gone, retreated to a buzzing space somewhere in back of my ears. I can see again, although things look painfully sharp. I think I'll dump out that Trader Joe's curry powder. It's just not worth it.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to meet some friends at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Can you say, migraine factory? I'll take my next migraine wrapped in a flour tortilla, thank you. Hold the bright green guacamole.

Trying not to put words in their mouths

Today while I transcribed my sixth interview, a bus tried to cut the corner and clipped a car parked in front of the Love Shack. The neighborhood erupted into activity. Most looked and left. No blood. Ho hum. A couple people rushed around the bus, examined the car, and pounded on my door.

“Is this your car!” shouted a burly man who didn't look like a bus driver. He ran back to the car and held his cell phone up to the fender.

“No, they live down there, in the duplex,” I replied and went back to transcribing. It takes more than an errant bus to keep me from my mission. What's my mission? To finish this wretched dissertation.

Actually, wretched might not apply anymore. I'm coming to rather enjoy this part of the process. Not the recruiting, that still sucks. Not the interviewing. I'd rather be alone. But I really like the writing. The dreaming. The reflecting. The connecting. I don't think I'm very good at it, but I can sense that I have potential. Concepts are coming clearer, like bubbles rising through murky water. Maybe they will surface, and maybe I will be quick enough to grab them and glue them to paper before they pop. And maybe not.

Even though I am not really eager to interview these faculty, I still am enamored with their words. They say such profound things, mostly in very inept ways as they struggle to respond to my questions. And I sit there with the perfect word on my tongue, the word they seek to make their idea crystallize, and I have to bite that rebellious tongue to keep from shouting the word out loud.

It's harder than you think. Conversation is a give and take. I'm not having conversations with these people. I'm conducting interviews. It's a different art. Sometimes the urge to respond helpfully is overwhelming, sort of like the many times I felt compelled to correct a former boyfriend when he kept pronouncing the word chassis as chass-iss. Eventually I gave in to the urge. “It's chassey,” I shouted at him one memorable day. “Chassey!” Of course, after he got over his shock, he never forgave and never forgot. Needless to say, we are no longer in communication.

A few times during these interviews, I admit, I've succumbed to the urge. I can't help it. As a former teacher, it was my job to summarize, to clarify, to helpfully supply the word to finish the sentence, to bring the concept into the light. “Yin and yang,” was one of the concepts I helpfully supplied during my fifth interview. My interviewee's eyes lit up. “That's it!” he cried. As soon as I said it, I was like, oh no, did I just say that? Yin and yang is such a great concept, and I can't use it now, because I put the words in his mouth. Argh. This afternoon I did it again. My interviewee was flailing around for a word, and it just popped out from between my lips, like a bubble: “Trust,” I said.

“That's right, trust. I wouldn't have thought of it, but that is it exactly.”

Just shoot me now. Oh well. This is how we learn.

Summer's last kiss

I took a break from writing to go for a run in the park. Well, I wouldn't call it a run, exactly. More like a shambling trot. I used to be able to run. Then I jogged. Now I trot. As long as I'm not crawling, who cares. Getting outside is good for the brain. And it's the last kiss of summer.

This time of year is always bittersweet. I love the golden light, the warm air, the luscious green leaves. But too soon, it ends. I wax maudlin every year about this time. I got a little weepy in the park just now, as I stood next to a lamppost, creakily stretching my legs and staring into the setting sun. Swallows looped silently overhead, in and around, up and down, snatching at invisible insects. The sky was devoid of clouds, and the sun was huge and red with the ash of Washington wildfires. I soaked it up, wishing I could store that light for later. I'm going to need it in a few short months when I'm dragging with SAD.

It might have been the setting sun, or the fact that I was wearing sunglasses, or it might just have been me waxing weepy, but I kept seeing people in the park who resembled people I knew long ago. I knew it wasn't them, because they looked just like they did when we were teenagers. One was my first official boyfriend, I'll call him Steve. I was 16, he was 19 (can you say underage?). He was a runner, a gaunt young man with a long torso and short legs, and long wavy dark hair that fanned out behind him as he ran. Now Steve could run. No trotting for that boy.

Seeing this modern version of Steve glide by in the setting sun reminded me of how simple things seemed when I was young and stupid. I'm just as stupid as I was, in a lot of ways, and now I'm not young. Being young and stupid is sort of cool if you wear the right clothes, but not if you are old and stupid.

Talking about how stupid I am is stupid. I'm going to stop that now and reflect on other things. Like the homeless person's tent I saw off to the side of the trail, on the flank of the caldera. No wonder I always smell pot when I run past that place. Like the difficulty of dodging piles of dog poop and wandering slugs while one is wearing sunglasses in the twilight. Can't see with them, can't see without them: Be ready to scrape your shoes later. Like the sudden epiphany about how to organize Chapter 4 of my dissertation.

It's not all bad. Neither is it all good. And it's not both, as those who subscribe to yin and yang would have us believe. It's somewhere in between. Yes, today seems like the last kiss of summer, but there will be nice days in the fall, and yes, even in the winter. Life happens, that's all. Good, bad, it is difficult to tell. Today the VP of Whatever emailed me to say that next Friday I can come to campus and interview any faculty who are willing. I think that might be good. But it's hard to tell.

Don't count your chickens before they tear your lips off

This morning I was on hold with the Employment Department to get my PIN reset and thinking that if I had to listen to the same 45-second clip of Kenny G's insipid soprano sax one more time I was going to poke my ear drums out, when I had the inspiration to email program directors at the career college directly to ask them to ask instructors directly to participate in my study. I sent a few emails, and voila! I got two sign-ups today, and the possibility of one more. Very soon, if the data collection gods are kind, I will have seven, maybe even eight interviews. And that is within spitting distance of the goal. In fact, it might be good enough. Sometimes good is the enemy of the best, but sometimes good enough is good enough.

I hate to think I have Kenny G to thank for this. I'd be more inclined to attribute the sudden progress to the depth of my desperation. My new motto is Drill down, baby, drill down! As in, forget the president of the college, forget the VP of Whatever. Go down into the hole and grab those program directors by the scruff of their necks and shake 'em. Say firmly, Look here, Buster, I need to talk to some faculty. Pronto! And watch them scurry. It worked!

So next week I'll scurry to meet them whenever and wherever they decree, no matter if it happens to interfere with my best thinking time (AKA nap time). Things are looking up. And not a moment too soon. I have three months to put this baby to bed or throw myself on the mercy of the university for an extension. I'm sure they will give it to me, if I ask. I've been a good student. (Meaning I've done my work on time and kept my mouth shut.) But how nice it would be to have this done before the end of the year.

I'm already daydreaming about taking the longest nap, the longest bath, the longest geographical. I'm daydreaming about how I'll finally be able to visit my friends (the ones who still remember me).

You know what they say. Don't count your chickens before they tear your lips off. I have a mountain of research to sift through, to make sense out of, to write about coherently enough to gain approval from the dissertation review gods. The culmination of eight years of work is now culminating! Culminating in progress, before your very eyes. It's not really a pretty sight. Actually, it's kind of stinky. I need a bath. The whole place reeks like a gym bag. But who cares. As my sister wisely says, just get it done.

How to blend in to your neighborhood

It's pandemonium at the Love Shack. My new neighbor has the bass cranked up on his stereo, same old story, just like the old neighbor. Sound travels through the old walls and floors like bladdity bla through yadada. I can't think of any metaphor that isn't a total cliche, because not only is the bass rattling my brain, but the neighbors in back are having an outdoor party, complete with music and applause. Closing the windows helps against the applause, but does nothing to block the bass coming through the walls from next door. And then we've got the music and laughter coming from the cafe across the street. There's no escaping it.

After a lovely evening at the Portland Art Museum with Bravadita and her friend Jeff, this is what I came home to. Cacophony. The first thing I did was close all my windows and pull my shades. I considered cranking up my stereo—a little New Order might help. What I really want is silence. There is nowhere to hide from this, except into my mp3 player, my refuge of last resort. If I can fill my head with my own music, I won't have to hear/feel the bass thrumming in my bones through the floorboards. It's a different kind of assault, one of choice.

It's hard to imagine writing anything coherent with all this noise going on. I was going to try. But it's after 10:00 p.m., and I just don't have the brain for it. I have a lot to write. And a serious deadline. I need a miracle. But I don't think it's going to happen tonight.

I collected my fifth interview yesterday. That is the good news. But it doesn't look as though any more will be forthcoming. By now, all my former colleagues at the career college have had time to make their decision: Will I help Carol or not? After two weeks, one person emailed me to express his willingness, and I met him yesterday morning on campus. Yes, on the campus where I used to work.

Driving there, parking, walking into the building... it felt surreal, like I was Rip Van Winkle, gone a hundred years, shuffling through the door with bad eyesight and a beard. Don't you know me? They knew me. They were just surprised to see me. And it wasn't the good kind of surprise, like, Wow, here's Carol! How are you? It was more like, Wow, here's Carol, what is she doing showing her face here? A few students recognized me, too, which was awkward. I couldn't remember their names.

The interview went well; I collected some good insights that will make my study stronger. When it was finished, he was clearly done with me: There was no loitering, hey, how's it going, no chit chat. I went out to the receptionist area and paused, thinking that maybe I could go over to the main building and find someone else to interview. Stupid me. I quickly realized everyone was in class. Everyone had a job. Everyone but me. I got in my car, drove home, and went back to bed.

Once it gets quiet, my plan is to begin writing up my findings, and continue data collection if possible. Qualitative research is iterative anyway. See? It's all good. Somewhere.

Give me your tired, your poor, your faculty sob story about for-profit vocational education

I guess after you work at a place for almost ten years, it's hard to let it go, even if it let go of you. I'm speaking, of course, about the career college that laid me off in May. Today Sheryl called me at 10:00 a.m., and I knew as soon as I saw her number in the caller ID window that something must have happened. She only calls me when something is going on at school.

“You won't believe what I just heard!”

“What?”

“Chandra Friggins just got fired!”

“What!”

I was dismayed, not because I care about Chandra all that much, but because she is my official contact person at the career college for my doctoral research study. What will this mean for me? (Everything always comes back to that important question when one is a crazy chronic malcontent.)

I was going to email Chandra tomorrow and ask her what I should do to motivate faculty to sign up for my study. So far only one person has signed up since the invitation went out to all the faculty last Monday, and she doesn't qualify. I'm panicking more day by day as I piddle around in my dissertation manuscript, making placeholders for data I haven't collected yet. Now I get why scientists make up data! I'm seeing failure looming on the horizon, only a few months away. Where, oh where, are all the faculty who care about academic quality? Am I the only one?

Now with this news, I suspect there's some serious sh-t going on at the career college—again—which explains why people may not be super eager to sign up. The news also makes me think interviewing any faculty who teach there is a really bad idea. What kind of responses will I get from people who are terrified of losing their jobs?

Sheryl just called again. Denny, our former boss, and my ace in the hole at the career college, called and told her that Chandra was fired as part of a “reorganization.” Now, anyone in business knows that reorganize is a euphemism for fire, suggesting more heads will soon be rolling down the hallowed halls.

I'm not sure what I'm feeling. Relief and gratitude that I'm not there, I guess. Imagine trying to teach under the karmic weight of all that negativity and fear. Maybe a little glee that the place is falling apart (See! I told you so!). But mostly I'm feeling extreme anxiety. Who will be my gatekeeper now? Should I contact her male counterpart (I think I've called him Fiend in the past. Maybe I need to come up with a new name!)? Should I contact the president of the college? What if he's being reorgged too? What if the whole place is closing? Can I find some of these faculty before they all drift into the obscurity of unemployment?

After almost eight years and $50,000, to have this doctorate unravel in the last four months seems unfathomable. Unbelievable. Unacceptable. After all the stress of toiling to get the concept approved, the proposal approved, the IRB application approved... Is it, maybe it is too soon to fret...wreckage of the future and all that...? No, you know what, no. It's not too soon to fret. I think it is past time to fret. I've been trying not to fret, but fretting is tearing me a new one much like wild fires ravage southern Oregon.

What I have is a classic marketing problem. I'm trying to sell something people don't want. If I were a celebrity... yeah, what if I were, uh, think of someone who is sexy and charming. Jeez, I don't know, I'm the last person to have a list of celebrities ready to mind. Back in a mo. Ok, got it. I had to Google it. Ok, imagine if I were...Oprah! Or... Clint! Or Cameron! Do you think for one minute that people would hesitate to participate in my study? No. They would be, like, I wanna do it, me, me, me!

Clearly I'm not cool enough, my study's not hip enough. I'm lacking the hipness factor. Oh, man. What about the sheer altruistic joy of helping a former fellow faculty member? What about the good feeling of sharing for a good cause? (What cause, you ask? The cause of saving or destroying for-profit vocational education, depending on what side of the fence you are on, I don't care which. Just tell me your story!)

Free iPod! Free iPad! Free coffee and donuts! The doctor is (almost) in! Tell me your story about for-profit vocational education. I promise not only to hang on your every word, but to lovingly type verbatim all your verbal tics and fillers, and then scrutinize them in detail to wring from your precious words every last drop of meaning, both mundane and profound. When will anyone ever again give you such devoted attention?

The chronic malcontent is a networking fool

I am all over this networking thing. I mean, really, I am over it. As in, done, stick a fork in me, no more, please. Last night I went to a fun hotel sort of place in NE Portland and rubbed shoulders in a too-small room with a bunch of organizational development professionals. Orga-what? you say. Right. Who knows what organizational development is, raise your hand? They have a perception problem.

Still, they are by and large a nice bunch of people who were willing to listen to me blather on about my doctoral study without displaying obvious boredom. How cool is that. I'm getting better at talking about it. I should be, considering I'm almost done with the dang thing. Or I should be almost done with it, but that's another blog post.

I collected five business cards of varying value, from a president of a leadership training corporation to a down-and-out therapist who just moved here from Northern California and wants to sell her services to people who can't afford to pay. What could possibly go wrong? I sent LinkedIn invitations to them and got a few bites, so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. I'm up to 50 connections. Whoo-hoo, look at me go. Some of these folks have 500 connections... Well, I'm sure they never write, they never call... have I even known 500 people in my entire life? I doubt it.

Today I met a guy for coffee in my neighborhood. I'll call him Bill. I looked him up on the Web beforehand so I knew what I was getting into. Bill has a business selling a product, but his real goal is to sign up distributors. In other words, multi-level marketing. MLM gives me hives, but I went with a researcher's mind. That is, skeptical. As I shuffled blearily down the hill to the coffee joint, I thought the exercise I was getting would probably be the high point of the entire morning.

Bill was in the coffee shop already when I got there, typing on a laptop at a tiny round table. I recognized him right away, a burly bearded guy who looked smaller than I remembered. I got my iced coffee and sat down. The place was crowded and noisy. I settled in, ready to let him sell me.

He launched in on a well-rehearsed series of stories about his experience in the marketing world. I wish I had a good audio memory. Now it has all blended together into one long fairy tale, the essence of which is: I'm a great and powerful marketer, I teach other people how to market, I have a successful business, and you are a somewhat pathetic beginner/novice/loser who could learn from me. That's pretty much what I gleaned from the first hour. The whole time the custom-imprinted logo of his company faced me on the lid of his laptop, white text on shiny red. Upside down to him, right side up to me, like a mini-billboard. When, oh when is he going to get to the pitch, I wondered?

Finally I got tired of waiting and gave him the opening he needed.

“What does the product look like?”

Bill's eyes lit up. He reached down into his laptop bag and pulled out some samples and a price list. I won't tell you what it was he was selling, because I wouldn't want you to feel compelled to look him up and laugh at his tiny head or something. The price list was confusing, as I expected. You subscribe for a monthly fee, you get points, that then allow you to get certain discounts on product. Huh? Why don't you just spell out the price? What's all this nonsense about points? Sounds like a timeshare or something! It made no sense to me, but I just listened and let him get on with the pitch. I knew he wouldn't spend a lot of time selling me on the product, not if he was any good. And sure enough, here it came.

“Down here is the option for people who want to be their own boss,” Bill said, circling a big $395 with a black pen. “Or you can buy in for only $50! But you don't get the website.”

“How many distributors do you have?” I asked.

“I never disclose that information,” he said quickly. “That would be like opening up my bank statement to you. Let's put it this way, I'm making my mortgage—and then some.”

I stared at him, thinking, what? Dude, I guess if your mortgage is $10,000 a month, I might be impressed, but you live in Vancouver. I didn't say that, but that's what I was thinking. Like most people who get suckered into an MLM, he's not making much money. He's probably buying his own product, in typical MLM, eat your own leg fashion, while the few greedy bastards at the top rake in the dough. There's a cliche for you!

To his credit, he did ask me a few questions about myself, but like so many... salespeople/guys/self-centered blowhards... the few answers I gave launched him back into storytelling mode, which after an hour and a half was getting a little tedious. Luckily he had another coffee commitment to get to. Whew.

The value in the experience for me was to realize that, while networking has its place, I need to be judicious about who gets my time. Meeting someone to listen to an MLM sales pitch doesn't give me a lot of value. Meeting me was the best use of his time, because he's signing up people. But me, I'm a researcher. I need to do the work, and that must be done alone. Alone, alone, alone.

So, I'm done with networking for the time being. I'll go back to the OD people, because they are interesting folks who aren't interested in selling me anything. They are refined academics. They smell good. I'm the predator in that crowd. I just need to learn their preferences, figure out what bait to use, let them get close. The other kind of networking is like going swimming in a tank full of stinky hungry sharks. I was prepared to lose a little skin. Today was the first bite, not all that painful. I survived to tell the tale.

I sent Bill a short email, thanking him for taking time to meet with me. I checked my email just now and there was one from him (not a reply to mine), an obvious boilerplate marketing email, big bold Arial fonts, with his logo looming at the top, and lots of colorful links to his website. My name wasn't anywhere to be seen. Yep, that's Bill, building relationships, one skeptic at a time. Rock on, dude.

The adventures just keep on coming

This morning I rose before the sun for another adventure in downtown Portland. I still can't believe I did it. I don't mean attending the event, which was a digital marketing “breakfast” at Portland State's Urban Center, no, that was easy. All I had to do was sit there, swill coffee, stare out the window, and draw pictures in my notebook. No, the hard part was getting up at 5:15 a.m. when it is dark as sin outside, preparing a hasty meal, and rushing to the MAX station to park my car and shuffle onto the Green Line... a replay of last Friday's events, except without my trusty companion Sheryl. I always have an out-of-body experience when I get up before it's light out: Is that me getting out of bed? Is that me fixing food at this ungodly hour? Am I really leaving the snug and cozy Love Shack to brave the MAX line journey downtown? Again!?

The show wasn't all that inspiring, and the food was the usual coffee, pastries, and watermelon chunks, but what do I expect for nothing except time and lost sleep? There was no fee to attend. The bus tickets were a gift from Bravadita. It was an experiment. An experiment in adventuring, urban style.

The meeting room was small, but I had a great seat by the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The mini-blind was rolled up far above my head, so there was nothing but glass and the view of the plaza outside the Urban Center. Water in the lovely Joyce N. Furman Memorial Fountain rippled ceaselessly down a cascade of steps. I could only find one photo of the fountain, and the site was a bit funky loading. You can look it up if you want. It is an interesting feature of the all brick plaza.

If you look at this photo, you'll see a little bit of the plaza. Look in the upper right corner, see those big windows? I was sitting the fourth window from the left, just out of camera shot. See that streetcar below? I saw several of those chug along while I was trying to learn about digital marketing. The streetcar was way more interesting to me for some reason. I had no idea there was so much machinery on top of those things. Every time you see cops and villains duking out on top of a train, it's always a smooth surface, good for fighting. Not so with these streetcars. Just in case you were thinking of engaging in a little fisticuffs on a moving train.

My brain has been mush all day, thanks to the early start. There's so much to talk about—the dearth of faculty for my study, the likely ending of unemployment benefits, the looming monster of my dissertation. So much to complain about, worry over, mangle between clenched teeth. But I'm too tired to work up a really frothy sweat. Lucky you! Maybe tomorrow. I've got another networking event planned for tomorrow night—I'm going after the organizational development crowd. They won't know what hit them. And then Thursday morning, I have a coffee date with a guy I met at the networking event I dragged Sheryl to on Friday. He's going to try to sign me up for his multi-level marketing company. I can hardly wait.

A little networking in the morning is good for the chronic malcontent

Early this morning I dragged myself out of bed, fixed some food and shoveled it into my mouth, and dashed out the door to pick up my friend Sheryl at 7:00 a.m. for our great adventure. The weather was perfect, high clouds, blue sky, a cool breeze. No reason to back out and go home.

I parked my car at the MAX station and showed Sheryl how to validate the ticket I gave her.

“That's it?” she said skeptically. She lives in deathly fear of mass transit.

The train came along in a few minutes, the Green line to Portland State. The train was packed with riders. We had to stand up all the way to downtown Portland, hanging on to bars and straps while the train swayed and clattered along the Gulch. We chatted nervously, thinking of what was to come.

We got off at Mill and walked a few short blocks to 200 SW Market. Hey, I know that black cube, the square squat building covered in black glass... I used to work in that building, about twelve years ago, when things weren't going so well. I was a part-time admin for a software start-up company. The job sucked, and to save money, I walked to work from my place in SE Portland, hiking across the Ross Island Bridge, an hour each way. Now there's a commute that will put hair on your chest. Hey, I got laid off from that job, too. Unlike the career college, though, the start-up (should I say, the close-down) actually gave me a little severance.

Sheryl and I went up the escalator. I was worried I wouldn't find the place, but it was just inside the front door, a largish meeting room set up with a huge square made of tables and chairs, with a large projector screen pulled down at the far end and a small coffee service set up to the left of the door. There wasn't a lot of room, except in the center of the table area. That area was big as a prom dance floor and just as empty. About 15 people were milling around along the walls, talking with each other in small groups. They were getting down to the serious business of networking.

“This is it,” I said to Sheryl. To myself, I added, Do or die. I led the way through the door.

A large bearded man wearing a name tag (Jim so-and-so) planted himself in my path. He held out his hand. I automatically put mine in his.

“Are you here for the networking meeting?”

I introduced myself and Sheryl.

“Do you have a business card?” he demanded.

I had some cheesy cards I made myself, the latest in a long line of tentative designs. I whipped one out and handed it to him. Sheryl looked chagrined; she didn't have a business card.

Jim put my card in a fishbowl and explained that there would be a drawing later. The winner would get five minutes to make his or her pitch to the crowd. I think Big Jim was expecting us to look excited and hopeful. Huh. Not a chance. More people were crowding in behind us. Sheryl and I looked at each other and edged past the crowd into an open space along the wall.

My first instinct was to look nowhere but at Sheryl. I quickly squelched it. Eye contact, that was my goal, even if I... I almost wrote barfed, but that is really too extreme a word. I would be more likely to leave than to barf. I do have some sense of social propriety.

I looked around. Bam. Eye contact! A small man wearing big dark-rimmed glasses took the hint and gamely approached us and introduced himself. Steven, an industrial engineer, looking for employment. I got his card and stared at it blankly. Then I gave him one of mine.

Some seats had been staked out with purses and briefcases. Sheryl and I moved along toward the front of the room. We sat down in a row, the engineer, me, and then Sheryl. We found out that seating is everything. The guy at the head of the room welcomed us and then pointed our way. Time to talk! Poor old Sheryl was called upon to introduce herself and explain what she was all about—in no more than 30 seconds. She valiantly stood up and told the room her tale of woe: 20 years in education, laid off, looking for work.

Then it was my turn. I spewed something about my new businesses, making it up as I went, stammered a little, but apparently managed to sound more or less coherent. I know this because Sheryl told me so later. I was having an out of body experience, so I wasn't actually there during those 30 seconds.

But once it was over we got to watch the networking pros do their thing, and some of them were very good. There's a formula to it, we discovered: state your name and business, speak your tagline (enthusiastically), explain what you do and who you do it for, list the benefits, state what you want, and close by repeating your name and company name. Bam! And be ready with a stack of business cards when everyone rushes over to talk to you after the introductions are done.

And that was the gist of the event. A large table of 30 people introducing themselves, one after the other (somewhat tediously at times), followed by a little frenetic speed networking, and then the event was over. Some of us lingered. The employed people went to work. I felt a little like a trick-or-treater with a bag full of candy. My haul was business cards: I got seven, plus one for the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, who apparently have twice-monthly networking events at the crack of dawn, and they are open to the public (thanks, Big Jim).

We found our way back to the train station, waited for the next Green Line, and retraced our route back to the parking lot where my car awaited. I tool Sheryl home. I thanked her profusely for being my companion. She went off to take a walk. I went home to bed.

And that is the story of my networking adventure.

I had a victory moment, one shining glory moment, when it all came together, when I really understood the power of connection. A woman who owns a coaching business came over to me after the introductions and asked me about my business. We started talking about marketing research, and it became clear to me that she thought it was too hard and horrible to do herself. I explained what I could teach her in a one-hour webinar. She started to light up as I described the problems I could solve for her, how it's not that hard, and she said.... where can I sign up for your webinar?

I had to tell her the webinars were still in development. She turned away, clearly disappointed. But I was triumphant. I had one on the hook! I had her hooked, just for a moment. Then I had to let her go, but how cool is that? I almost sold her. And all it took was telling her how my product will help her solve a problem. After I woke up from my nap I sent her a LinkedIn invitation. Maybe I'll get her signed up yet.

Why it's good sometimes to walk toward the thing that scares you

I found out from my academic adviser that I have until the end of November to complete my doctorate. Here's me, eyes rolling back in my head, hands beseeching the universe, in the moment before I open my little pursed lips to scream.

Let me digress for one moment and complain about the spellchecker in Google blogger. The word adviser...I'm used to spelling it with an o, as in advisor. But Google is flagging it as an error. Apparently both spellings are correct, but adviser is more common. Huh. My university spells it advisor. What do they know.

Well, I hope they know that they are most likely going to have to grant me an extension come November, because four months to write a qualitative study seems close to impossible, considering I haven't even collected half my data yet. If I were feeling really perky and optimistic (which I'm not), I would make some inane comment about how great it is to be unemployed exactly when I need every minute to write this paper. Wow, talk about serendipitous timing, right? You'd think I'd be grateful that the career college laid me off when it did. Am I grateful? Well, maybe a little. I feel grateful not to be teaching keyboarding anymore. I feel grateful every morning at 8:30 a.m. when I leisurely claw my way out of bed. I feel grateful that I can stay up as late as I want. Usually.

I say usually because I did something I'm sure I will regret: I agreed to attend a Portland Connect networking event at 2nd and Market downtown with my friend and former colleague Sheryl... at 8:00 tomorrow morning! Argh. I must be nuts. To make things more exciting, I refuse to try to park my car downtown, so I am going to pick her up, drive to the closest MAX station, park, and drag her onto the train. (Sheryl is not an avid fan of public transportation.) This should be an adventure. I wouldn't be half-surprised if Sheryl cancels on me. I wouldn't be all that shocked if I overslept.

A friend of mine makes a practice of doing the thing she's afraid of. That is what I am doing. Networking at any time of day is not a thrilling prospect. Networking at 8:00 a.m. sounds like complete and utter torture. Sheryl will be my security blanket, my teddy bear. When I get anxious I can always talk to Sheryl. And if I'm really brave, I can introduce Sheryl to all the strangers we meet. I can do that for her when I can't do it for myself.

We'll see how it goes. If it goes. I wouldn't bet on it. Stay tuned.

What I have learned about the dissertation journey

Earlier today I logged into the online course room and clicked the Accept button to give permission to the university to suck $794 out of my bank account. This gives me the privilege of earning one more credit and the delight of toiling another 12 weeks toward the goal of earning this wretched Ph.D., which lies somewhere off in the hazy distance where it's been for the past seven years like a ship that never comes to port. Ho hum. After seven years, I'm tired of waiting. The glow has faded. It's just a job, and not one that pays well. Actually, it's sort of like being a slave. A slave to a scholarly pursuit.

This evening I logged into the university course room again, after a technological meltdown resulting from a fight between Wordpress and Mailchimp, during which I inadvertently closed all the windows. Bam. Problem solved! Should have thought of that sooner.

On the university website, there are a handful of discussion folders in which students post questions, concerns, complaints, kudos. The only folder I visit is the one marked Dissertations. There are roughly 300 new posts a month in that folder, mostly along the lines of Oh, no! I'm starting Comps in a week! What can you tell me about Doctor So-and-So? Help! As if Doctor So-and-So is going to help them at all with Comps. Come on, people! It's a test!

I've lurked in this discussion folder for seven years, reading posts from all kinds of people on all kinds of topics. When someone successfully passes Comps, forty people shout out, Way to go! Congratulations! When someone's cat died, a crowd of students rushed to offer condolences. When someone is put on academic probation (which happens regularly), the students rally around with email addresses for the ombudsman, the dean, and the accreditation agency, urging unflagging persistence, don't back down!

I've seen people come and go. Some of them graduate and, before their email is disconnected, they come back to wave good-bye, to collect their litany of congratulations, and to exhort the rest of us to keep moving forward, never give up, we can do it, rah rah rah. Some of those left behind mention these winners in later posts, usually in response to a post in which a lost soul is bleating for help with their wretched concept paper or their confounded dissertation proposal. Call Dr. Nina! Call Doc Crock!

We've had our share of wackjobs. The discussions are like any other comment thread, where people say what they mean without really thinking about it, and other people take offense and retaliate, which provokes another attack... it can be just slightly less vitriolic than the comments I enjoy reading at the end of a Yahoo! article about the latest doings of the White House (but not nearly as entertaining. Just sayin.')

So immersed was I in the discussion folder, I almost failed to notice that my Chair had updated my first assignment. I haven't even posted an assignment, so I opened up the Activities tab to read her comment. The IRB has approved my revised recruiting methodology! Congrats!

Well, isn't that nice. I can now ask the administrator at the career college to forward my email invitation to the cowering, resentful, bitter, fearful faculty that remain after the closure of one campus. If I'm lucky some of them will express their willingness to participate in my study. They ought to have some interesting things to say.

Oh, what have I learned about this dissertation journey?

• You are on your own. No one cares.
• It always takes three times as long as you think it will.
• You can't force anyone to participate.
• Just do what your Chair tells you, don't whine and don't argue.
• If you feel compelled to argue, be ready to cite APA page numbers.
• Don't use their templates, because they don't know squat about styles in Word.
• Don't waste time in the dissertation folder reading the complaints of your classmates. Get busy.
• Don't think about how great it will be to finish. It will just depress you, because you aren't there yet. You still have to write the manuscript and defend it.
• If you have a cat, put your nose in its fur and be here now.
• If you don't have a cat, borrow one. Seriously. It may be the thing that gets you through.