Might as Well Jump

Last week during her talk at the Washington Ethical Society, Mary Herman shared a couple of compelling images from a television show she had watched recently. It's so easy to turn animal behaviors into metaphors for life in the human world, but in this case I think it's apt.

The first image is that of a tree frog. Ordinarily, this little frog lives high in the treetops in the tropical rain forests. Hopping is rather precarious in this situation, so the tree frog has sticky pads on its hands and feet (do frogs have hands and feet? It seems odd to call them paws) that let it work its way from branch to branch. Every now and then, the frog has to beat a hasty retreat to escape from hungry birds and snakes. It needs to put as much distance as possible between itself and the predator, and it needs to do it quickly. So the frog takes a dive. It lets go of the branch it's on and goes into free fall.

Suicidal, right? No. Remember the sticky hands? The frog just waits until it sees a better leaf or branch, puts out its hands, and grabs on. Some tree frogs even have webbing between their fingers and toes that acts as a kind of parachute, buying them more time to look for their next perch on the way down.

Jumping requires letting go. No second thoughts about how far you're going to fall before you land again (or splat). Leaving behind all the tasty tidbits on that branch you worked so hard to climb up to. Once the frog lands, it finds itself in a new situation. New neighborhood, new sunlight patterns, new locations for the food and water, new neighbors to adjust to (or flee). No regrets, life's different now, move on.

The second daring amphibian is the pebble toad, who lives on the rocky heights of the Venezuelan mountains. Again, this is a neighborhood where hopping is an iffy proposition, so the toad climbs the mountain slopes. In one particularly dramatic video clip from the BBC, one of these little guys makes his way to the top of a ridge, only to meet a tarantula coming at him from the other direction.

So the little toad goes rigid, leans back, and bounces down the mountain, off a cliff or two, and into a waiting pond -- more like a puddle, actually. The pebble toad is so small and weighs so little that all the bouncing around doesn't hurt it. It doesn't stop to grouse about all the lost status and progress, it just does what it needs to do and begins again. That's life. This kind of strategy doesn't work if you're one of the big guys. When you're higher up on the food chain, if the free fall doesn't kill you, it will certainly incapacitate you and make you easy prey for something else.

People aren't frogs and toads. We do, however, find ourselves in situations where the real danger is in clinging to the familiar, clutching our hard-earned status, hesitating at the thought that we might fail utterly. Letting go requires knowing how to use the advantages that we carry with us and having the willingness to start all over again in a new situation.

I get up, and nothing gets me down.
You got it tough. I've seen the toughest around.
And I know, baby, just how you feel.
You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real
-- Eddie Van Halen, "Might as Well Jump"

Life is What Happens While You're Making Other Plans

I haven't posted here in a while. I'm in a bit of a transition period, and I'm not sure where it's going. My original intention was to take some time off and get my head together. Then, I would do some networking, send out some applications, and land another job.

So far, my head is a bit more together than it was when I started this whole thing. I am clearer on what it is that gives me a sense of purpose, what it is that gets me "in the flow". I am taking better care of my health, physical and mental. I am no longer a slave to the clock, and I'm not constantly drowning in a sea of stress. I have time to actually think.

I've been doing a lot of networking as well. Informational interviews, attending conferences and seminars, doing volunteer work, talking with friends. Reconnecting with colleagues in person and on social media.

I've been sending out a lot of job applications and resumes as well. I'm keeping my LinkedIn profile current, and I'm posting links on my website when my freelance pieces are published. But after nine months of actively looking, I haven't landed a job-type job.

Instead, I'm finding enough freelance and temp work to keep myself afloat. I have signed on with a temp agency, and almost immediately, they found me a month of almost-full-time work at a decent hourly rate. It  was the same type of work that I left behind -- not the sort of thing that I would want to go back to permanently, but interesting enough to revisit. Counting the commute, it took about 11 to 12 hours of my day, every day, five days a week, just like my old job. But my co-workers were nice, the money was good, and the work was tolerable.

My freelance work is a bit more satisfying -- I'm writing short articles about recent scientific publications, geared toward a scientific audience. I also just finished a magazine feature article for college undergraduates, summarizing the various ways you can discover what kind of a career really motivates you. (Pretty much what I've been putting into practice these last couple of years.)

In between all that, I've been keeping up with the long walks and time with friends and all the rest of it. I've had to drop the yoga classes for now because I've had some other expenses that I needed to take care of, but I look forward to getting back into the yoga as soon as I can.

Last week, I spent four days in Austin. Andrew De Leon released his first album, and a dozen of us
from his little Twitter community came to his release party. We came from California, Maine, Quebec, and everywhere in between. What a grand time that was. Even though most of us had never met in person, we were not strangers. It was like summer camp, making our plans for the day, hanging out, messaging each other -- what time should we meet for lunch? Whose turn is it to drive? This little band of Andrew-fans are my friends in the truest sense of the word.

We had a little pre-party party on Friday, when we stopped by the Moose Lodge just to see if we could find the place, and wound up meeting all of Andrew's family (they were setting up the party). Andrew's mom called him at home, and he hurried out to meet us. He is a total delight, as are his cousins Josh and Eric and his uncle Rey (his collaborators on the album), his parents, aunts, uncles, and all the others. To me, that was the highlight of the trip, since it allowed us to talk, and dance, and laugh on a more personal level. We also met Andrew's friends Jaime and Meigan, who feature prominently in his YouTube chats, the following night. The actual party on Saturday was a great celebration -- lights and music and excitement. It was Andrew's moment to shine.

I also reconnected with a classmate of mine from junior high and high school, whom I had only seen a few times since graduation. Fred is one of the best people I know, and it was such a joy to see him again. He had lunch with my friends and me, and my friends all think he's wonderful. He even stopped by the album release party for a little while, much to our delight.

So right now, the universe is taking care of me. I don't know where I'm going. Maybe this is my life now. I'm OK with that. I have good people in my life, and my bills are getting paid. There's no grand "Ta-da!" moment to mark the end of my sabbatical. Rather, it's a gentle blending of one stage into another. And that's OK.

The Pursuit of Happiness

What with all my online and dead-tree subscriptions and social media "follows", I get a torrent of articles every day. Every now and then, some chance juxtaposition will grab my attention and tell me more than either article would have on its own. This happened on my Twitter feed over the weekend.

One article, from The Atlantic, was written by a woman who describes herself as "just shy of 40 years old". She mused about how her definition of happiness had evolved from "the high-energy, totally-psyched experience of a teenager partying while his parents are out of town" to "the peaceful, relaxing experience of an overworked mom who's been dreaming of that hot bath all day".

She cited a study done at Northwestern University that scoured 12 million (!) personal blogs to see what words were associated with happy experiences, correlated with the age of the blogger. Younger bloggers, they found, described themselves as "excited, ecstatic, or elated -- they way you feel when you are anticipating the joys the future will bring - like finding love, getting ahead at work, or moving to a new town".

"Older bloggers were more inclined to describe happy experiences as moments of feeling peaceful, relaxed, calm, or relieved - they way you feel when you are getting along with your spouse, staying healthy, and able to make your mortgage payments. This kind of happiness is less about what lies ahead, and more about being content in your current circumstances."

The examples cited in this article fit pretty well with the stereotype of getting old and boring, slowing down, finding contentment in blandness. No doubt, many parents who are crossing the portal into middle age associate happiness with a nice warm bath and no kids yelling "Mom? Mom? Mom?" from the other side of the bathroom door.

As I ease into my late 50s, I have no desire to resume the energetic pace I kept up 30 years ago. However, staying healthy and keeping up my mortgage payments are more a baseline between me and unhappiness than a source of actual happiness. That's like saying I'm content that I can still dress and feed myself. I may reach that point some day, but I'm nowhere near there yet.

These days, I'm less concerned with owning the newest car, showing my employer that I can give 120%, or trying to make myself look like the models in the fashion magazine (thank goodness for that!). With all that out of the way, I have more courage to pursue my own projects and ambitions. I'm willing to take risks that would have (and did) terrify my younger self. I'm willing to go all out for the things that I told myself I would do "one of these days". Like quitting a well-paying job that was draining the life out of me, with no new job lined up, in order to develop my creative side and look for ways to build a truly fulfilling and useful life. There's nothing like a glimpse of your own mortality to kick you into high gear while you still have a high gear.

Perhaps I think this way because my life hasn't been a long linear progression of advancements and material acquisitions. I've been through downsizings, layoffs, recessions, stagflations, you name it. I've learned the hard way that "security" isn't really secure. You can do your best for an employer who turns around and fires you for no other reason than to reduce head count. You can invest as wisely as you know how for your future, and see it wiped out overnight by high-stakes derivatives traders and greedy bankers. The house you proudly invested in and maintained so lovingly can be transformed instantly into a pile of rubble by an electrical fire, tornado, or flood.

I know people whose main goal is to hang onto the status and possessions that they have built up over the years. Often, there is a subtle sense of terror underneath the veneer of prosperous contentment, born of a realization of just how easily these things can be taken away.

I know other people who accept the impermanence of their circumstances, and of life itself. These people radiate a deep sense of serenity. They know that whatever happens, they will find a way to deal with it. They invest in relationships, appreciate living in the moment, and take joy in working toward their highest ideals. Oh yes, they pay bills and make home repairs and invest for their later years, but those things are merely the infrastructure, not the source of their happiness.

The second article I mentioned was much more inspiring to me. It's a post on my colleague Denise Graveline's blog, The Eloquent Woman. Denise describes a commencement speech by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the 74-year-old president of Liberia. Sirleaf is about as far from the stereotype of Gramma in her rocking chair as you can imagine. She began challenging her country's status quo in the 1970s, and in 1980, she fled the country after speaking out against the government then in power. Note: she was 42 at the time, slightly older than the mom in the first article who finds happiness in the bathtub.

Sirleaf returned to Liberia at the age of 47, and was subsequently placed under house arrest, followed by a prison sentence after she made a speech insulting government leaders. At the tender young age of 67, she took office as the first female head of state in Africa. She is one of three people who share the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work".

Denise quotes a part of Ms. Sirleaf's commencement address to Harvard University's class of 2011:

The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough. If you start off with a small dream, you may not have much left when it is fulfilled because along the way, life will task your dreams and make demands on you.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is pursuing her bliss by leading Liberia into the future. She has risked and lost everything -- several times -- and come back stronger than ever. I imagine that she takes a day off now and then to enjoy her grandchildren, or the simple pleasures of sitting in her garden. But being content with nothing more than quiet nights at home petting the dog? Hardly. Maybe the author of the Atlantic article will rediscover her inner fire once her kids are on their own. Or maybe she will just schedule another spa day and settle down with a good book and a glass of chablis.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I've never been driven into exile or sentenced to prison for my beliefs, but I'm not settling for bourgeois blandness either. I have things to do, people to see, much to accomplish in the time I have left.

Beyond the Formula

I haven't been posting as often lately because I've been pulling together a draft for a book based on my experiences over the past year-and-then-some (among other things). I was making backups of the postings from my old blog, and I ran across this. It was a good reminder from 2009 me to 2013 me, and I'm sharing it with you here. As proof that this sort of thing actually works, the first piece of fiction I published (in Fiction on the Web, the venerable short stories website) was born of a mental riff on "Phhhht".

Thursday, March 5, 2009
It's OK to Play
Every now and then, I get an aha! moment. Not always at the most convenient times, but worth capturing and remembering even so. I got one of those last night as I was reading myself to sleep, and it woke me up again like a persistent toddler about 5AM today. And now, here it is almost 9PM and the idea still sounds good to me, so I'm passing it along to you.

I'm in an extended conversation these days with some fairly serous, highly educated folks, who want to nurture and develop their creative talents. Some do it for their own pleasure, and some as a way of expressing their deep, important capital-T Truths to those who come after them. The pleasure folks seem happy with craft projects and dabbling and just enjoying things in general. The capital-T Truth people are a bit disdainful of the whole thing, because you see, they are past that childlike stage and they must devote their time to perfecting their art. All that inner child stuff and writing with your non-dominant hand and representing your dreams in sand trays is all right if you are a blocked artist, or a mere hobbyist, or a beginner. Once you get past that stage, there is serious business to be done.

The aha! came as I was reading David Jauss' "Alone With All That Could Happen". The third chapter -- the one that talks about rhythm and flow. He starts out talking about the writing techniques of varying one's sentence lengths and cadences to influence the pace and fluence of the story, then moves on to the pacing and flow of chapters, sections, entire books. It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to go back to that short story with the ending that doesn't quite work and diagram it to death to see what's wrong with the danged thing.

But then. Jauss starts talking about the "musical unconscious". Stories that exist in a sort of pre-verbal language before the words form around them. Writers walking around going, "aah. aah." because the story has an aah in it, but they don't know if it's a cat or a camera or a hammer. Apparently, he has some scientific studies to back this up. The mind is equipped with an inborn "assembly language" (to lapse into computer-speak), an internal operating code that requires an interface to translate it into English, or French, or Navajo. A rhythm that you recognize but can't quite articulate.

And that's why we dabble and play and indulge the goofy thoughts, odd sound effects, warped observations, Dali-esque dream sequences. These are a way of speaking with and listening to the pre-verbal utterances that come from so deep within that we aren't even aware of it most of the time. Didn't you ever wonder why your best story ideas came at the oddest times and places? Why the title of someone else's play turns into your very different novella. Why your neighbor's whiskey bottle collection in his living room window grabs you by the lapels and forces you to remember something you dreamed 3 years earlier. Why that poem or book chapter seemed to write itself, relegating you to the role of stenographer?

Haven't you ever read prose where the technique was flawless, but it seemed flat, lifeless, derivative? The author has Tolkien's technique down cold, but the writing doesn't draw you into that magical world. The whole thing has a paint-by-numbers feel to it, and you can see the bits of technique poking out like outlines on a badly doctored photograph. Like a Beatles tribute band that gets all the notes right, but doesn't make you wanna dance like John, Paul, George, and Ringo did. Skim through the editors' preferences in Writer's Market and count how many times the phrase "writing class" is used in a snarky way.

No, technique and polishing and crafting all come later. You start with the 3AM idea, the bit of a song stuck in your head, the "aah, aah", the drumming of your pencil on your desktop. You go with the goofy, the skewed, the "where am I going with this". And you let it grow unhindered until it's strong enough to withstand your pruning and trimming. Would you prune a half-inch seedling?

Yes, you can try to emulate the masters. Learn from their success. By all means. But if you don't start with your very own inspiration, anything you do will look like a knock-off. They said it first, and they said it better. You start with your own stuff, and even if what you wind up with is a little rough around the edges, it's yours. Go back and look at those masters. Didn't they speak with their own voices? Wasn't that what made them great?

My Elevator Speech

In the spirit of casting one's bread upon the waters... Here's my "elevator speech", what I'm looking for career-wise. I'm actively looking for work after my renewal year, and it always helps to let people know what you're looking for. Feel free to pass this along, even if you don't think you know anyone who could use this. You never know, after all.

Permission to Speak Freely

A few years ago, I decided to submit an entry to the Washington Post Magazine's annual short story contest. Write a story about the photograph on this week's cover, they said, and they spelled out the rules of the contest, including the maximum word count and the deadline. The photograph showed two people riding in a convertible down a highway in the vast open spaces of the American Southwest, as viewed by someone in the back seat. All right, I told myself, I know this part of the country very well, and I'm very good at writing to fit the space and meet the deadline.

And so I wrote a pretty good story about two sisters who were supportive but not close. The younger one had her head in the clouds and the older one was practical but she hadn't quite given up all her dreams. I closed with a scene of the older sister driving the younger one home in her convertible after rescuing Little Sis from a sticky situation caused by a fanciful idea running head-on into an unforgiving reality.

My story didn't even make runner-up. I was not surprised. In a metropolitan area this large, a pretty-good story has a snowball's chance in hell of making it past the slush pile. Still, I wasn't ready to give up on my pretty-good story. I gave it to my sister and my mom's friend (a retired English teacher) to read. Their response was lukewarm. "Writing little stories is such a pleasant hobby," Mom's friend said. Ouch.

You see, my characters were all bottled up inside themselves. You knew that Little Sis ached to escape the small town where she grew up and go live in the city. You knew that Big Sis gave up a glamorous life for that of a domestic goddess. But neither one of them had room to speak for themselves, and so the whole story felt as though it had been painted in shades of pastel pink and lavender and laced up in a tight corset. It was a "that's very nice, dear" type of story.

I tried again last year, juicing it up a bit for a writer's group I was in. They helpfully pointed out a few places where they didn't quite follow what was going on, a few places where things left unsaid really ought to be said. I got seriously hung up on how much to explain about the big distances and small towns in the Southwest without getting bogged down or turning it into a travelogue. I shopped my pretty-good story around to a few small literary journals, but no one wanted to publish it.

This year, I tried one more time. I signed up for a fiction workshop at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, and I decided to use this story as my project. I even volunteered to be one of the first group to have our work critiqued by the instructor and the other group members. After all, if you're in the first group, they can't compare you to the budding Faulkners and Grishams who are already 300 pages into their debut novels.

The consensus of the group? Open this story up. Waaaaay up. This is a good strong start on a much bigger story. Forget the word count, you're not in the contest any more. Let the characters talk to each other. Show us what they do, how they react. Flesh out the secondary characters. Introduce us to them one by one, and let us get acquainted with each one before you bring in another character. Show us how the characters react to how things look, sound, smell.

So I sat on the story for a couple of weeks, until I suddenly realized that I was going to have to give my revisions to the group that Saturday in preparation for a second go-round. I printed out a copy of what I had, and I began to write. And write. And write. Freed from the word-count boundaries, the story seemed to flow. The scenes in my mind appeared on the paper. I looked up between-town distances and street scenes and bus schedules on the internet. I imagined myself walking alongside the characters. Oh yes, this was much better.

During second go-round of critiquing, I got many comments on how much more developed the story was, how the imagery was coming to life, the characters were more three-dimensional. But more questions arose. Did the sisters fight? Why was Little Sister's reaction to her big letdown so muted? What happened during the all-day bus trip? The two-mile walk? Was The Guy really a cad, or just a decent guy who let a little fling get out of hand? "Let the photograph go," the instructor said. Did I really need that last bit about riding the 200 miles home in an open convertible, or was it just something I saw in the photograph?

The people in my story needed biographies. The scenery needed a set design diagram. This theme came out for several of my fellow authors' work as well. Even though the final story might be short, the author must be very clear about who the characters are, why they do what they do. And this might require writing backstories and detailed descriptions that never appear in the final version.

Before I could edit and craft my story, I had to let it expand to its fullest extent. Great billowing clouds of expository prose. Adjectives and adverbs. Similes and sensory input. I had to know the people and places, the sights and smells and sounds as well as I knew my own friends and the inside of my apartment. Lay it all out in all its sprawling verbosity.

And then -- craft, edit, polish, distil. How do you describe the little "tells" when people are restrained on the outside but seething inside? Can a lifted eyebrow tell a reader that my character is furious but won't admit it? A clenched jaw, a lowered voice. Eyes briefly lowering when a character is lying. Search out all the excess adjectives, adverbs, and cliches, and find a way to show instead of tell. Delete the throat-clearing setups, the fluff words, the subjunctives and participles and other various ways of tap dancing around the main point. Oddly enough, Twitter is a lovely way of stripping out the extra verbiage. 140 characters makes you say what you mean.

This would have been torture while I was still developing my characters and plot. It would have been wrong. Like trying to make topiary from a one-inch seedling. No, the plot, characters, and scenery have to be fully grown, solid and strong, then you have at it with the crafting tools.

If I'm a person who doesn't express all the colorful scenery inside of me, how can this come out in my writing? It's very scary putting it all out there like that because now you know that all those passions are in my mind. I have to speak freely about what sex feels like, what anger and betrayal feel like, what it's like to dream. To be down but not out. Some of my old wounds might begin to hurt and bleed again. But I can't talk to you through a gauze curtain. If I paint only in pastel shades, how can you know how much I care? Am I brave enough to open up and talk about these things? To add bright colors to my pale palette? I'm going to have to do this if I'm going to write fiction that's any good. Or nonfiction. I can't hold it back and still be compelling. That's going to take an awful lot of courage on my part. I hope I can do it.

Books that Matter

On the theory that a good nonfiction book needs a bibliography, here's a start on mine. These are books that have influenced and inspired me. They are the books that I will never sell at a yard sale. I don't usually read books twice, but these books are the ones I read over again, flag the pages, underline passages, and write in the margins.

Taking Creative Pursuits Seriously
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. A twelve-step program for sidestepping creative blocks, self-censorship, and false criticism. Requires about 8 hours a week if you're going to take it seriously, and it's easier to go through the program with a weekly group to hold each other accountable. If you really engage in the chapters and exercises, you will definitely move outside your comfort zone -- and that's a good thing.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamotte. A funny, very personal account of the writer's life. The personal anecdotes convey wise lessons in perseverance, overcoming one's inner critic, and getting your work out into the world.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. A writer's life is not all flashes of inspiration and muse-driven all-nighters. Writing well requires writing, rewriting, revising, revamping, and rewriting again. Every day. The payoff? The art we make is "as true to reality as it gets".

Self Discovery
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. Employee performance reviews and professional development programs so often focus on helping employees address their weak points. Since nobody can excel at everything, wouldn't it be better and more satisfying to focus instead on the things that you are best at and that come most naturally to you? Team up with someone whose strengths complement yours, and now you've got a strong, motivated team.

Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny. The title of this book put me off at first, but I soon got over it. Stanny is not writing exclusively about high-powered female executives. Rather, she has some very apt advice to offer women on taking our own goals seriously and presenting ourselves confidently. Earning a six-figure income was not a goal of mine when I first read this book (in fact, it seemed ridiculous), but eventually, I did clear that six-figure bar by asking for what I was worth.

What Color Is Your Parachute? by Nelson Bolles. I have an ancient, pre-Internet edition of this reliable old standby. The self-evaluation exercises are just as good now as they were then. Do you like working outdoors or indoors? With people or alone? What do you value most: security, money, recognition, adventure...? What would it be like to base your career on things that you actually enjoy doing?


How the World Works
American Mania by Peter C. Whybrow. What if an entire nation were the subject of a centuries-long genetic experiment? Whybrow posits that this is exactly what is going on in the United States. From the ancient wanderers who crossed the Bering Strait to the world citizens who maintain their tiny flats in New York City, the US has been settled and populated by the adventurous and the dissatisfied. The result is a type of collective bipolar disorder marked by euphoric highs and catastrophic crashes.

Bright Earth by Philip Ball. Visual artists are visionaries, but they are also creatures of their time. This history of the evolution of color in art covers pigments, dyes, and printing techniques. From ground-up rock pigments for cave paintings to color palettes for computer monitors, from a nobleman's display of wealth to an evocation of pop culture, Ball explores how color perception and use varies with culture and time.

Faster by James Gleick. Every aspect of our 21st-century society is infected with the need for speed. Channel-surfing, multitasking, stand-up meetings, and sound bites characterize an environment that stresses us out, eliminates time for thoughtful analysis, and leaves no margin for error.

Fire in the Mind by George Johnson. European-American culture is so steeped in scientific data and analytical reasoning that we often forget that there are other ways of looking at the world. Johnson, a science writer who lives in Santa Fe, NM, contrasts the core tenets of the scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory with those of the nearby Native American and Catholic Penitente communities.

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. Remember printed telephone directories? Film photography? The Sony Walkman? These items went from indispensable to obsolete in the blink of an eye, not because of some public campaign to abolish them, but because their replacements worked their way up from nerd's toys to market dominance.

The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. Why are some towns "cooler" than others (and I'm not talking about the weather)? Why do creative people gravitate toward certain types of workplaces? How can cities and employers attract and reward people who live by their creative wits?

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Connectors, mavens, and salesmen -- each has a role in discovering a small idea and "taking it viral". Why do some ideas catch on and not others? What are the early symptoms of a big change? Fashion trends, crime waves, and "The British are coming!" all factor into this fascinating analysis.


Other Worlds
Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. This is the first DFW book I ever read, and I was hooked. Lenore Beadsman, the only semi-sane character in this book, navigates the bizarre disappearance of her grandmother and a couple dozen fellow nursing home residents, a brother who stores drugs in drawers in his artificial leg, her pet cockatiel rising to stardom on a Christian television network, and a host of other increasingly wacky plot elements that somehow all come together at the end.

Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien creates an entire world, complete with centuries' worth of history, languages, and an army of characters. That he not only sustains his plot over a couple thousand pages, but immerses you entirely in his vivid landscapes and the lives of his characters is an astounding feat. Grand themes of good and evil, deep friendship, and the call of duty are woven deftly into a riveting story.

Moonheart and Spirit Walk by Charles de Lint. If I ever go missing, you might want to start looking for me in a section of Ottowa bounded by Central Park and Patterson, Clemow, and Bank Streets. I've taken up permanent residence in Tamson House or one of the myriad Otherworlds to which it serves as a portal. Don't expect me to come home.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Underneath the city of London is a parallel society where Knightsbridge becomes a night's bridge that swallows the unwary in its darkness. The Angel, Islington is an actual angel. A girl name Door can walk through walls. Richard Mayhew, a humdrum citizen of London Above, comes to Door's aid and is drawn into the life of London Below as a result.

Spritual Matters
The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong traces the histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to illustrate how believers' concept of God has shifted and changed over the centuries. This book explores how man creates God in his own image, and must re-create the image when it ceases to be useful.

The Feminine Face of God by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins. This is a compilation of the moving and heartfelt accounts of women who, faced with deeply unsatisfying beliefs and cultural practices within their original religions, went out looking for an experience of the transcendent that they could call their own.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong. In this broad survey of the clash between modernism and fundamentalism in the western world, Armstrong shows that the fundamentalist movements within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have more in common with each other than they do with the more moderate expressions of their source religions.

Life as a Needlepoint Project

Last night, I was chatting with a friend on Twitter, and we started talking about how to know what you really want out of life. It's an ongoing process for me. Every so often, I have to spend some serious time taking stock of where I am, getting my bearings, and figuring out what's next. I'm now in the process of transcribing my journal notes into a digital document, with the intention of combining them with my blog postings and making the whole thing into a book. I'm working on my mid-December notes right now, and I came across an extended metaphor that I thought was worth posting here. This explains my process much better than a series of tweets ever could. Or at least it explains me to myself. I hope it's helpful to someone else, but really, it's enough just to remind myself of where I've been and how I tend to navigate long ambiguous processes.

Life as Needlepoint
If I work on kits, they turn out looking really nice. Someone with a real talent for perspective, shading, and composition has produced a canvas painted in great detail, picked out just enough yarn in all the right colors. All I have to do is fill it in. I get a little impatient toward the end, filling in background and putting in the finishing details, but I stick with it until it's done. But it's still a kit.

When I design my own stuff, I get an idea in my head. Then I go online and look for someone else's images that I can combine and adapt in my own way. Drawing is not one of my more developed skills, but I can do collages. If I work from photographs, I have to simplify them down to work with the stitch-pixels of a needlepoint tapestry. I try to work with the yarn I already have, but I always wind up buying more because I need some other colors, or I run out of background yarn.

It always takes more yarn for the background than I think it will. If I have to buy more yarn mid-project, the color never quite matches. I have to be very clever to work that in in a way that doesn't just announce "I ran out of yarn." Complex backgrounds help with that, but you don't want to clutter up the design. Better to get enough yarn in the first place. Learn from experience how much you need.

PhotoShop lets me play around with the designs and colors -- much better than crayons on paper. I only have a black and white printer, though. And I just sketch my design onto the canvas in black sharpie. I suppose I should paint the colors onto the canvas in acrylic, but I'm too impatient. I just sketch the broad outlines and keep a picture handy to refer to for the details. That lets me experiment and change things on the fly, but it also means my designs are much less refined than the kits. Experience is making me a little better about putting in shading and details. I don't know if I will ever have the artistry of the kit designs. I don't know if I want that.

I look at some of my past projects, and the best ones are the simple designs. Not too jam-packed with detail. The Alphonse Mucha design was fun, but it's cluttered. The moon behind the clouds and its partner sun in a red sky over water are very appealing. Maybe my style is Art Deco or Craftsman?

I have a pencil sketch ready for a 25" x 25" canvas. A female crescent moon embracing a male sun. Two shooting stars in the corners and a starry-night background. The night sky will have to be aubergine instead of navy if I want it to go in my bedroom. Do I dare try to do realistic faces? Will it ruin the design if I try to make the colors harmonize with my green-and-brown decorating scheme? If I'm going to invest the effort, I want to know.

It seems as if all the pieces fit in better when I'm working on a kit. Everything works, it's smooth. But it's a kit. Finding kits that I haven't already done and that I want to work on is getting harder and harder. Not that many people do needlepoint. I don't want to do pictures of cute kittens or country scenes or religious platitudes.

If I want to have a design that really means something to me, I'm going to have to make it myself. I can use bits and pieces of what's already out there. I can use my experience to plan and anticipate. I can be diligent about my preparations. I can know what I'm strongest at and learn from my failed experiments. I can push the envelope a little.

The results might not be as detailed as my grand imagination. I might have to compromise to get the pieces to fit, or to have a design that integrates with my decor. I have to balance living with my constraints against having something grand enough to make me happy.

I have to try new things, supported by the old standbys. I have to have the diligence to rip out the parts that don't work, redo them, and keep moving ahead. Some of my projects wind up in a box. They didn't work, for one reason or another. Some are just abandoned sketches, some are small completed squares. One is a large canvas, eventually completed just to say that I completed it, but it no longer goes with anything. I should give that to a craft sale or something. Let it be useful for someone else. Some of my designs are good, but they don't go with my stuff. I should let those go. Maybe take photographs to remember them by.

I want to know as much as possible before I invest the money and effort in a large project, but I can't know everything in advance. I take my best guess on what is worth moving forward on, and I plunge in. I take stock at various points -- move ahead or drop it? Change the plan? Once I'm in it, sometimes it's worth it just to finish up for the sake of finishing up.

That kit I did of the butterfly on the parchment scroll was beautiful and complex. Lots of work, but worth finishing. Even all the detail-work. And then it sat in a box for years because I didn't know what to do with it. Finally, I said what the heck, bought a simple frame, blocked and mounted it myself, and hung it in my bedroom. And it's perfect. (OK, maybe mounted a little crooked, but that's wabi-sabi.)

My best efforts involve learning and borrowing from what others have already done or what others are better at than I am, and then customizing and re-assembling the pieces to suit the image that I have in my mind. I can play around with ideas and attempt small trial efforts that are intended only to help me think things through. Eventually, though, I have to just plunge in and begin. I have to simplify the grand mental images to fit my talents and limitations without losing the delight in making something really wonderful. The simple designs usually look the best, anyhow, and "simple" is not the same as "amateurish".

I have to make a design that fits in with the parts of my life that are already in place (the parts that I want to keep, anyhow). Inevitably, some aspects of my project don't look like I wanted them to. If it's bad enough, I have to rip that part out and do it over again. If it's good enough, I keep it and enjoy the serendipity. As much as I would like to complete my project using only the resources that I already have, it never really works out that way. I have to go out and get what I need to move ahead.

Sometimes it's worth it to persevere and just finish for the sake of finishing. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes, by the time I finish something, circumstances have changed and the finished piece no longer has a place. Sometimes, a finished project is just what I need at the time, but circumstances change and it no longer fits in. Every now and then, a finished piece that I didn't have a place for at the time re-emerges from the storage closet after many years, and it's exactly what I need right here, right now. I don't really know in advance how things will turn out. All I can do is make the best preparations I can, and then begin.

It's Not How Far You Go...

I've been taking yoga classes for just over two years now. A lot of my ideas for blog posts pop into my head during yoga class, inspired by a bit of poetry, a bend or twist that I never dreamed I could do, or just lying quietly on my mat at the end of class.

I did quite a bit of yoga back in the 1970s, and I was very proud of how flexible I was. It was all about reaching a little further, clasping my hands around the soles of my feet, getting my forehead to reach the floor, any way I could. Meditation and insight didn't factor in back then. Here it is, almost 40 years later (ack!), and I'm taking a different approach. I started classes because I had a sedentary job that left me too drained to even think about going to the gym after work. I was living pretty much completely inside my head, and I needed to get my body into the act as well. Yoga seemed like a nice, gentle way to ease back into my physicality.

Those first classes were miserable. My muscles ached, I couldn't hold the poses, I couldn't keep my hair out of my face (that's still a problem sometimes). I missed half the classes that first session because of an infection on my knee. My teacher was a patient, gentle soul -- a woman about the same age as I am, her middle-aged roundness disguising her amazing strength and flexibility. She took my classmates and me through the basic techniques slowly, thoroughly, explaining how the various parts of the body worked together and making sure that we lined everything up just so. She was always ready with a funny observation to help us smile as we held our wobbly Warrior 2 poses and teetering Tree poses.

It was humbling to start all over again like that. I couldn't bend and stretch like I used to, and it wasn't just age and inactivity. Taking the poses with strength and alignment makes for more gradual progress, but greater confidence and bigger after-class benefits in the long run. The muscles begin to develop and strengthen, not just stretch. The posture gets better, the balance is more secure. Gradually, the effects become apparent.

I'm taking two classes a week now, and the basic poses have become much easier for me. Downward Dog is a delicious stretch rather than an endurance test. My Warrior stands just a little stronger now. I remind myself of these things as I venture into more advanced poses in my Level 1-2 class. Half-handstands on the wall? One side of my mind says, "The heck you say!" while the other side says, "Well, let's try this and see what happens." Tonight, I tried my first supported half shoulder stand. Head, shoulders, and spine positioned just so on the mat, muscles engaged and pulling in the proper directions. Lift the butt off the mat and rest it on a block. One leg goes up, then the other. How about that?

After that 40-year hiatus, my body had almost completely forgotten those haphazard poses I did in my younger days. I had to begin again from scratch, but this time, I have the patience to build my skills bit by bit. Line things up just the right way instead of going to extremes. "It's not how far you go, it's how you go far," my teachers tell me. I practice improving my posture as I sit at my desk or wait for the train. I practice standing on one foot as I brush my teeth. I concentrate on my breathing when I'm stressed out. Instead of "doing yoga", I'm "living yoga". Or trying to, and getting progressively better at it.

That's kind of like what's happening to me after this year off. I had to break apart all the schedules and structures that had bent and twisted me into such an uncomfortable shape. I spent some time with hardly any structure at all, and then slowly put the pieces back into place. Before, I was organized, efficient, and productive -- but I was doing it in a way that eroded the very things that make me unique and creative. Now, I sometimes wonder where the day got away to, and I'm distressed by how little I've done -- until I remember that I have restored the things that keep me in proper alignment and make me strong. The yoga classes and long walks to clear my mind and keep my body healthy. The good night's sleep and nutritious food. The writer's workshop where I'm honing my skills in the company of a dozen delightful fellow writers.

Gearing myself up for the next phase of my life is not a sleek, elegant process. It's slow and stiff and wobbly. I'm staying with it, though, because I know that I will pick up momentum over time. I'm being very mindful of how I put the pieces into place, making sure that things are lined up just so. Strengthening myself in the basic things so that I can be strong and confident as I move into more adventurous things. I'm making myself schedule information interviews (which are a lot of fun once I'm actually doing them). My resume and website are up to date, and I'm pursuing job leads from various sources. I'm letting my professional network know that I'm alive and well, and back on the market. I'm less like a bullet train and more like a hiker following a badly marked trail, but I am making forward progress. And like they tell me in yoga class, "It's not how far you go, it's how you go far."

Can We Talk?

My year off is officially over. I'm still at home, but I'm actively looking for work. Maybe that will be a job in the conventional sense of the word, or maybe it will be a more creative way to bring in income. I'm not sure. I've tried telling myself that I ought to be checking the job ads more assertively, mailing brochures to potential clients, making cold calls and all. But it just doesn't feel right. I have chastised myself, telling myself to just get over my inertia and start the wheels moving again. Don't be such an introvert, I say. Which is kind of like telling myself to stop having such blue eyes or stop being so short.

I have found a much better source of motivation, though. It comes through in the morning when I am writing in my journal -- or sometimes at 3AM when I am wishing that I could get back to sleep. In the deep stillness of my room, little ideas make their way to the surface. Concrete, definite actions that I could take. Actions with energy and enthusiasm behind them. Actions based on what I do naturally, what I enjoy, what gives me satisfaction.

There's a stillness born of time away from the daily commute, the meetings and deadlines and periods of boredom interspersed with crises. In that space has come an appreciation of things that I have been doing for years, but have not integrated into the way I make my living. With that realization has come a desire to more fully integrate the marketable skills with the calling of what is most important to me.

I have come to acknowledge more fully my talent for talking about scientific and technical issues in language that is engaging and easy to understand. I might not get the story first, but I get it in context and I do my best to get it right. That's a real talent. It's much harder than summarizing one's research in the specialized language of one's own field. It goes beyond opening up a stream of data in the hopes that the more information you throw at people, the more likely they are to come around to your point of view. It's very different from "dumbing it down". Good science writing requires me to respect my reader's intelligence and convey an accurate, nuanced picture in language that is both precise and accessible.

Good science writing is an act of empathy. When I'm conducting interviews for an article, I have to do my homework ahead of time to know who it is I'm talking to and have some basic knowledge of their work. I don't want to waste this person's time asking basic questions that could be answered easily with a little online research. It's incumbent on me to know and convey to the person I'm interviewing the purpose of the article I'm writing and to ask for information that makes my article into something worth reading. I'm responsible for communicating to my source just why it is that he or she is exactly the person who can best help me learn and convey the specific information I'm going after.

I have to use my skills in asking questions to encourage my sources to talk about the most interesting, relevant, or important parts of their work. I have to listen carefully to what my sources are telling me. I can't assume that I know in advance what they are going to say. I can't shape their answers into what I think they should have said. I can't be reluctant to ask for clarification -- even if I think I understand what they meant to say. This requires a certain humility on my part -- a willingness to relinquish any concept of myself as an expert and to let my sources speak for themselves. My expertise comes in organizing and conveying the voices of all my sources as accurately and understandably as possible.

Empathy requires me to know something about the audience I'm writing for. What this audience is most interested in might not be the same thing that most interests my sources. Depending on the type of article I'm writing, I might have to spend some time educating my audience, but I can't be overly didactic without losing their attention. Everyone is busy these days, and a multitude of information sources compete for my reader's attention. I have to make it worth my reader's time to read my writing. I have to show my readers something new or present a different point of view on something familiar. Some part of what I say has to be relevant to the world they inhabit.

I have to be trustworthy. If I come across as selling a particular point of view or advocating for a particular cause, I might capture the attention of those who already agree with me. But I will lose those readers who disagree with me -- the very readers who might have an "aha!" moment or engage others in a constructive dialogue after having read my article. On the other hand, false balance is just as misleading as blind advocacy. On some issues (climate change is one notable example), the scientific consensus is so strong that giving equal weight to a small opposing minority is a distortion of the facts.

Trustworthiness also requires clarity. "Baffle them with bullshit" is not an acceptable approach here. Few intelligent readers come away convinced that because an issue is presented in dense technical prose, it must be important and correct. On the other hand, talking down to one's readers, using lazy metaphors, or affecting a false hipness only makes the writer look incompetent. The goal is to convey a message and convey it well.

Conveying a message also requires an understanding that we are not completely rational beings. Two reasonably sane, intelligent, well-intentioned people can look at the same set of facts and draw very different conclusions. We all operate within our own social, historical, and experiential frameworks, and we interpret what we see accordingly. A good writer must provide enough context and perspective to inform, but not overwhelm, her readers.

Our emotions affect how we react to information, whether or not we are aware of it. Thus, humor, diplomacy, and yes, empathy are far more than ways to "spice up" an article. They are necessary elements in connecting with one's audience and opening a space for dialogue -- or perhaps drawing the lines for battle.

The work I enjoy best draws on all these skills, but some of my previous jobs have required a "just-the-facts" approach. For some purposes, that's enough. An activity report for a government agency is not the right place to hone one's skills in humorous narrative nonfiction. But since I have all of these skills, it's up to me to find an outlet for them. Leave the cut-and-dried work to those who excel at it.

Lately, I've been exploring social media (FaceBook, Twitter, and the like) as a means of staying in touch with the people I've met through my travels, career, and various stages of my life. This has evolved into a means of conversing with people whom I have never met face-to-face, but with whom I share common interests and affinities. I'm exploring the nuances of brief written communications and asking myself how well it is possible to know another person through electronic interaction alone. Electronic communities are changing the way we understand friendship and the way information (or misinformation) spreads.

Increasingly, interest groups, businesses, and other organizations use these channels to shape what we think and how we talk to each other in ways that go far beyond the pop-up ads and "you might be interested in..." suggestions. Skilled communicators realize that this is where their audience is, and they seek out the people they want to reach in this way. Perhaps the entire message can be conveyed right there on the spot. Perhaps a brief note on Twitter alerts readers to a more detailed account elsewhere. Perhaps flinging an idea into the fray sparks a conversation or elicits a wealth of crowd-sourced information, an exchange of diverse points of view. In any case, it's a matter of going out and engaging in dialogue with readers where they are rather than passively waiting in the backwaters of the information stream.

If this is so interesting to me in my personal interactions, why not investigate ways to build this into my profession as a science writer? After all, one of the reasons I took 2012 as a year off was to discover ways of integrating the various values and interests I have into a means of supporting myself while contributing something worthwhile to the world.

Racism Through a Child's Eyes

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day, and I want to share three memories from my years growing up in southeastern New Mexico. This is how my child's mind dealt with issues of race, using what I saw and heard all around me.

Colored people. In the 1960s, "colored people" was the polite term for those we now call African-Americans. When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I heard the term and formed a mental image of brightly colored blue, green, and red people, like the colors in my crayon box. I never saw any people who looked like that, however. One day, I asked my mother what color colored people were. She looked at me strangely, as if I had asked an odd question. "They're just negroes," she said. Well, that was a letdown. I had seen negroes before, and they were just sort of brown.

Speaking Spanish. The town where I grew up is about 100 miles north of the Mexican border, so naturally a lot of my schoolmates were of Mexican heritage. Many of them spoke Spanish at home and on the playground. My teachers would always scold them and tell them not to speak Spanish at school. They were probably trying to keep them from excluding the rest of us from their conversations, or maybe indoctrinate them into some common culture. In my child's mind, however, I thought that Spanish must be a language made up of dirty words. Why else would our teachers be so stern when they scolded my friends?

Mythical Meskins. During my early years in grade school, the older kids would tell us about the mythical creatures they called "Meskins". These were mean people who hid in bushes, and they would jump out as you passed by and cut you with their knives. Many of my playmates had dark hair and skin, and they had surnames like Garcia, Hernandez, and Reyes. In my mind, these were two separate and completely unrelated observations. It never occurred to me to make any connection between the playmates I saw every day and the mean people hiding in bushes, whom I never did encounter. When I was old enough to realize that "Meskins" was a racial stereotype of Mexican-Americans, I was also old enough to know how hateful it was. I had been right all along -- my friends and playmates were nothing like the imaginary predators that I had been told about, and I feel very fortunate that my friendships were never poisoned by the hateful stories the older kids told.

This Is Your Life

In a delicious little piece of serendipity, my eye was drawn to this poster, which appeared in the margin next to a wonderful web video on creativity that a friend sent me. This poster is the "Holstee Manifesto" and it encapsulates the philosophy of the Holstee company. Their story (copied from their website):

In the heat of the recession in May 2009, brothers Mike and Dave and their partner, Fabian started Holstee. More than a company, or clothes, the trio wanted to create a lifestyle. Starting in the summer of 2009 they dove head first into the world of design and production. After six months and a huge learning curve, Holstee launched its first line of Recycled Tees made of 100% recycled plastic bottles that were milled, cut and sewn within 150 miles of each other in North Carolina. Starting with this first round, 10% of all sales were lent to entrepreneurs in extreme poverty through non-profit micro-lending organizations like Kiva.org - a tradition they are proud to still embrace.

These guys are the anti-Dilberts. May their philosophy take hold and flourish!

Taking Stock

It's a new year. First Monday of the year, most people are back at work. I'm taking stock of where I've been and getting a little more concrete about where I'm going. Over the past year, I've:

• rested and recovered from a stressful job
  
• educated myself about making a living as a self-employed person
  
• read several books on discovering and pursuing one's bliss
  
• attended seminars and programs related to possible directions for my career
  
• read several well-written novels -- for enjoyment and to see how it's done
  
• gotten into the habit of daily walks and twice-weekly yoga classes
  
• lost enough weight to drop one full jeans size
  
• decluttered my kitchen and done several small maintenance projects around my home
  
• completed a small mosaic tabletop and a tapestry toss pillow
  
• started making a small table out of my old college textbooks
  
• started the design on my next tapestry
  
• discovered a couple dozen online friends from around the world who share a common interest in the ongoing saga of Andrew De Leon
  
• bought a guitar and started relearning my notes and chords
  
• published two short stories
  
• written a feature story on science careers (will be published soon)
  
• learned to use Twitter and become a lot more proficient in using Facebook
  
• kept up this blog and a daily journal, and begun putting these together as a book
  
• completely redesigned and updated my website, with a lot of help from my sister Linda, a talented graphic designer
  
• rediscovered the joy of spontaneous day trips, local musicians, and three-hour lunches with friends
  

Last March, I posted that I felt unfocused and directionless, like a river that had overflowed its channel and spread all over the place. Since then, I've started carving out some new channels for myself. I spend some time each day writing and doing physical exercise. I am still a member of the discussion group that's been meeting twice a month for the last ten years. My eating and sleeping habits are much healthier. Several of my friends have commented that I look happier and more relaxed. Someone even told me that I look ten years younger! (The top picture is me in January 2012, and the bottom picture is from November 2012.)

Over the next several months, I will be contacting several organizations that I have identified as potential outlets for my writing. I'm checking out several agencies that specialize in writers and other creative people. I'm signed up for a six-week writing workshop, and I bought a book on "how to blog a book".

I'm also paying more attention to friendships and spending time with people I enjoy. I'm more receptive to going out and doing things now than when I started this adventure a year ago.

I'm currently conducting an impromptu survey of friends from my various social circles asking them to complete the sentence: "Nancy is my go-to person for _____." Interestingly, none of the responses so far mention my technical knowledge, editing skills, time management abilities, or any of the other talents that were so useful in my previous career. Instead, the responses mention wit, insight, humor, creativity, rationality, carefully considered opinions, and the like. I'm taking this as a sign that I need to build these elements into the line of work that I pursue. If people are already looking to me for these things, then shouldn't I be including them in the efforts where I spend most of my time and energy?

If 2012 was a year of healing and exploration, then 2013 will focus on love and money, and how best to integrate the two. I need to make a living, but I also need the dear people and passionate pursuits in my life. I can't call my book "Eat, Pray, Love" -- that title is already taken. Perhaps I should call it "Heal, Explore, Thrive". That seems to capture the adventure so far.