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?

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.

If you don't stop making that face...

Did your Mom ever tell you, "If you don't stop making that face, it will freeze that way"? When life is moving really fast, people often just get one glimpse of us, like a snapshot. In their minds, that's the way we are -- face, talent, personality, preferences. That's their image of us, our face is "frozen that way".

How closely does my public persona resemble the person I think of as me? Has anyone ever gotten fixated on an inaccurate view of me or formed an image that represents just one side of who I am?

Sometimes, the matter is out of your hands. Parents often think of their offspring as children, even after they grow up, and no amount of rational persuasion or objective evidence will change their minds. Maybe your classmates from high school remember you as that nerdy/freaky/jock/flaky kid even though you've moved past that long ago.

The cast of Star Trek got stuck in the image of the characters from that show, no matter what other roles they played. They got a lot of money and fame for their efforts, but their careers pretty much got stuck there. The movie Galaxy Quest parodied their plight, with a story about a group of actors from a long-defunct television show who could only find work reprising their roles at sci-fi conventions and shopping mall openings.

In the 1960s, four budding musicians and actors signed on for a TV show about a boy band, The Monkees. Their careers were defined by the characters they played on that show for the next 40 years. They got very frustrated at the constraints imposed by their contract, but they raked in a pile of money. That was a good thing, financially speaking, because their most visible source of income in the years to come was band reunion tours and appearances as former members of The Monkees. Was it worth it?

On the other hand, if you don't provide something that your audience, clients, or friends want, you can find yourself all alone.

A folk singer I know insisted so strongly on doing everything on his own terms that he choked off his own career. He didn't care enough about what his audience wanted, and his fellow musicians found him difficult to deal with.

Andrew De Leon, an aspiring singer, gave his first public performance almost as a way to put his dreams to rest, certain that he was going to be hated. The audience responded in an overwhelmingly positive way, and his new-found fans pressed him to release a CD. Now, he's changed genres, blending the operatic style that made him famous with the heavy metal and goth styles that he has admired for several years. Did he perform his least important kind of music so that if he was rejected, at least it wouldn't be for the music that was closest to his heart? Should he please his fans or please himself? You can't blame the fans for wanting more of what drew them in the first place. On the other hand, being typecast in a role that's not really you can choke off your enthusiasm before you can realize your potential.

In my previous job, I became known in my company as a very capable technical editor and trade show exhibit manager. That wasn't inaccurate, but those talents ranked very low on my list of personal priorities. Perhaps I could have pursued my creative writing and visual arts interests in my spare time, but my job left me very little time or energy to pursue the things that I cared about most. My employers didn't require those skills from me, and "creative writer" was not what came to mind when they thought of me. So I provided what my employer wanted, at great cost to my personal priorities.

If you don't care enough about other people's feelings, you're a narcissist, and people walk away from you. If you care too much about what people think of you, you're a people-pleaser, and they take you for granted and exploit you.

There has to be a third way, where you engage with other people while keeping a sense of yourself. You act in a way that shows respect and caring for others, but you respect and care about yourself as well. Reveal your true self, but only as much as appropriate. Actively seek common ground between what you have to offer and what others desire from you. Have boundaries, but give your closest friends a means of access to the self that you think of as "really me".

"Being yourself is not remaining where you are, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure." -- Sydney J. Harris

"As I think more positively, I attract positive-thinking people into my life, with whom I have satisfying relationships." -- Barbara J. Winter

"As I know myself better and act with more integrity and authenticity, I become more capable of entering into close, authentic relationships." -- Nancy McGuire

Chill

Autumn is winding down. The sun can't seem to drag itself more than halfway up in the sky, and some days, it doesn't crawl out at all from under its downy blanket of gray clouds. The trees outside my window have closed up their photosynthesis factories for the season, and the squirrels are topping off their stores of acorns before they bed down for the winter. Slow down, Nature says.

Didn't we used to do that? After the harvest was all in the barns, didn't we put up jam and visit the neighbors and plan next year's gardens? Didn't we grab a few extra hours of sleep or stare dreamily into the fire? Didn't students have a few weeks away from their classes -- time to spend with family and friends?

That's all slipping away now, or at least it seems that way. The relentless grind of the industrial machine demands end-of-year reports. Metrics to be gathered, deadlines to be met. Conferences scheduled adjacent to holiday weekends mean more tourist dollars from attendees tacking a few vacation days onto their business trips. Smart phones and laptop computers let your far-flung team hammer out contract proposals from their seats in various hotel lobbies as they await their airport shuttles. Those few days away from the office just mean a lull in the meeting schedule so that you can finish up that extra paperwork.

Time to reconnect with friends and family, exchange gifts, and sing and dance has morphed into a two-month marathon of jam-packed schedules where every spare moment is crammed with events or commuting between events. Gift-giving requires camping out in front of stores to ensure your place at the head of the predawn stampede on Black Friday -- or foregoing your leisurely pie and coffee after Thanksgiving dinner in order to snag the prime deals available on Thursday evening. Instead of a few precious items, carefully chosen to symbolize a friendship, we fill shopping carts with piles of mass produced commodities. Why drive around delivering plates of homemade candy to your closest friends when you can send them boxes of red and green M&Ms that you ordered online?

The quiet sense of reverence inspired by a candlelight midnight Mass or a Solstice bonfire is drowned out by back-to-back concerts by every performing group in existence -- great throngs of under-rehearsed choristers who are stressed out from generating annual reports and studying for final exams. Every conductor uses the holiday season to stage his grandest effort, but the aggregate is just a cacophonous blur.

Setting aside one time of year for paying special attention to the people we love used to make sense when our communities were small. When we worked, lived, and played together all year long. When the driving force was the connection with each other, and the music and dancing was just a symbol of that connection. Now, the music and dancing have become the main focus, and people are secondary. Commerce has gotten into the act, and so now the holidays are pressed into service as a revenue-generating activity. People are tertiary. Getting together requires airline tickets and tight scheduling and dealing with flight delays and tiny airplane seats. People are quaternary.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm just nostalgic. Maybe the medieval peasants didn't enjoy holidays so much as just survived day to day through the long cold winters. But didn't they dance and go wassailing now and then? I distinctly remember getting small gifts from friends and family that said, "I know what makes you smile." I remember making batches of candy in our family's small kitchen and helping my parents deliver plates of goodies to our closest friends. I remember the intimacy of candlelight church services, and singing "O Magnum Mysterium" with the choir.

This year off has allowed me to stay away from a lot of the craziness that accompanies this time of year. No annual reports to write, no metrics to gather, no conference exhibits to organize. The television screen is dark for much of the week -- I don't have to put up with the advertising mania if the set's turned off. I can take long, contemplative walks in the middle of the afternoon. I'm living off my savings, so my friends and family understand that my gift giving will be simple, and my travel budget does not include airline tickets this year.

The end-of-year mania sounds like a distant roar from my little refuge. It's like watching a street mob from the safety of an upstairs apartment. Like hearing the throb of a stadium concert from an office on the other side of the college campus. Like seeing a news report of thousands of people stranded at an airport, while sitting in a nice warm living room and enjoying a cup of tea with one friend. I'm not oblivious, I'm just not in the thick of it this year. Thank goodness.

Prison on a Pedestal

I read Chris Richards' concert review in the Washington Post today (Bieber Live: Less Than Believable) about last night's Justin Bieber concert at Washington DC's Verizon Center. The fans had a great night. The business side of the Bieber Empire had a great night. Apparently, The Biebs did not have a great night. Richards wrote, “The star didn’t seem to want to be there. His audience didn’t seem to want to be anywhere else.”

One photo that ran with the article showed Bieber descending onto the stage, strapped into a harness that sported 15-foot "angel wings" fashioned from cymbals, guitars, and other musical paraphernalia. This was no angel, just an 18-year-old kid who had posted a little music video on YouTube just a few short years ago, and who had been transformed into a hugely successful commercial product.

Beiber's fans have created an image in their own minds of what he must be like, incorporating a large dose of their own hopes, dreams, and needs, with a small sprinkling of what's left of the actual human that is Justin. The business end of his mammoth commercial enterprise relies on the human that is Justin to occupy this larger-than-life persona, born of the union between preteen fantasy and savvy marketing, in order to continue generating the huge amounts of money that the enterprise needs in order to perpetuate itself.

Bieber did not work his way up through smoky bars and small-town auditoriums. He is not grounded by a small following of fans who have been with him since the beginning, and who know him close-up. No, he burst into international fame overnight through the magic of social media. His far-flung fans enjoy a one-sided familiarity, the illusion of knowing this person whom they have never met. Like Sovietologists, they search out and dissect the tiniest factoids for some small insight into this mythical being. One wonders if they would turn away in disappointment if they caught an accidental glimpse of the man-boy behind the curtain.

Chris Richards immersed himself in this online world in preparation for yesterday's concert and wrote an article about it earlier this week. Says Richards, "On Twitter, Bieber’s name is tweeted roughly every second of the day, and he’s amassed more than 29 million followers. ... Tweeting at Justin Bieber is like sending a prayer to God. You hope you’ll be answered, but the real comfort comes from believing he can hear you.”

Quoting one of Bieber's Twitter fans: “Dear Justin Drew Bieber...can you notice me and follow me? I EXIST.”

Watching Bieber perform, Richards mused, "Makes ya wonder: Did Bieber even want to be onstage? Were his dreamy doe eyes actually spaced-out stares of exhaustion? His vocals — a mix of live singing and pre-recorded backing tracks — lacked a pulse and frequently sounded Bible-paper thin." The commercial persona had grown so large that it was becoming too heavy for the human being to carry.

I have no idea what this kind of dual existence must be like on this scale. Not even close. I do know, however, what it's like to be burdened with someone else's expectations of what I should be like. I know how miserable I can make myself when I try to be the person that someone else expects me to be. Someone sees some small part of me that they like, or that fits in with their agenda. They don't really know the rest of me -- my hopes, dreams, needs, and desires. Nor do they want to know.

Sometimes, it goes beyond not caring enough to find out. I once dated a young man for more than two years before I could no longer bend and distort myself to satisfy his demands that I become the ideal woman that he had created in his mind. I was just as deluded about him as he was about me. I had mistaken his ego and coerciveness for confidence and leadership. I had thought that he would continue to care about me after I became a "sure thing". Had he bothered to know me on an intimate level, however, I would have ceased to be the blank slate on which he could draw his fantasy woman. Not knowing me was central to his agenda.

More recently, my need for comfort and support in the face of an impending job loss (mine) revealed the weaknesses in my year-long relationship with a man who had made his life into a shrine memorializing a traumatic event from his teenage years -- 30 years before. Again, I was just as deluded as he was. I mistook his appearance of vulnerability and his willingness to talk about his trauma for true sensitivity and openness. When I became the vulnerable one, however, it became apparent that he had no interest in reciprocating my care and concern. The painful story that he had shared with me was well rehearsed and intended to solicit empathy from tender-hearted women. When I allowed myself to step back and observe him, I heard him recite his tale many times, almost exactly word for word, and then bask in the rescue fantasies of his carefully selected audience.

One of my discoveries about the government contracting world is the extent to which contracting companies engage in creating a shiny, enticing product with which to win over the government agents in charge of awarding the contracts. This includes recruiting and hiring highly credentialed people to back up a rosy picture of what the contract could be at its most ambitious and innovative. Once the ink is dry and reality sets in, the job usually turns out to be much less challenging and satisfying than the picture in the contract proposal. The "science communications" job turns out to be aggregating dry prose for quarterly reports and cobbling together exhibits for trade shows. If your manager knew how deeply you yearned to write informative, engaging articles about research and its context in society, he or she would be forced to acknowledge how deeply unsatisfying your actual job was. It would be that much harder to report up the chain of command that all is well, and the worker bees are happily productive. So much easier just not to know. Your boss is not your friend.

I have also experienced real friendship and real concern for others in my life. The biggest difference that I see is that the more I find out about the person, the better I like them. I don't have to agree with the person, nor do I have to share all of their interests. Getting my preconceived notions blown to bits feels like a good thing. Here are real human beings, with all their strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and personal histories, and I like them better the more I know.

I do not normally join celebrity fan groups -- I left breathless boy-band worship behind with my adolescence. However, I am following the emerging career of Andrew De Leon. Like Justin Bieber, he became famous overnight (he auditioned for America's Got Talent, and the videos are all over YouTube). He has a very active Twitter account. His fan base spans around the world.

Unlike The Biebs, he was not immediately picked up by a high-level talent scout and catapulted to platinum-record fame and fortune. He's back home now, working his way through small-venue performances and sessions in a local recording studio. His family and long-time friends are in close proximity, and he still has time for trips to WalMart and The Cheesecake Factory. He makes videos for his fans, but they are the musings (and belches and funny faces) of a very normal 20-year-old, not the lavishly produced performances of a rock superstar. I find that very reassuring. Andrew is still a human being.

Recently, he released a song, "The Devil's Knight", that he wrote himself. If you had really listened to his earlier interviews, the dark style and lyrics of the song would have come as no surprise. Andrew may have sung opera, art songs, and Ave Maria during the talent competition, but he made no secret of his admiration for Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie as well. He toned down his Goth makeup for his television appearances, but he also let it be known that he was a makeup artist for low-budget horror flicks.

Predictably, some of his fans were scandalized and let it be known that they would no longer be following him. I check in now and then on his Twitter page, and I could see it coming. The fans who had cooed and fussed over him, the ones who tweeted him as if they were sending prayers to a deity, the ones who begged him for just one little reply -- how much of their version of Andrew was really a creation of their own minds? The hyper-religious fans who left him because of the dark metaphors in his song -- well, really, what did they expect? One especially astute line from his song states, "Perfection to the blind, true devil lies inside. No lies when I tell you that my soul is in the night."

Unlike The Biebs, Andrew did not don the angel wings and dutifully shoulder his public persona for the fantasy-fulfillment of his fans. Part of the reason that he did not go further in the talent competitions is that he refused to be the clean, neatly packaged product that fills up the seats in the Las Vegas theaters. Andrew's reaction to the loss of his disillusioned fans? "Apparently I have lost my 'Christian' fans due to The Devil's Knight. How many f***s given? Zero. I still have you guys <3." (That's a sideways heart at the end, in case you didn't know.) Mr. De Leon isn't much of a diplomat. I find that very encouraging.

Update: On November 17, Andrew De Leon tweeted me: "I came across your article about me. I wish more people could be as understanding as you. <3"

The Storm This Time

Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days cooped up indoors, riding out Hurricane Sandy. Looking back, I realize how different this experience was from the time I spent in this same little home in 2003, riding out Hurricane Isabel.

Back then, I had been living in this condo apartment a little less than 6 months, and I didn't know any of my neighbors well. We were directly in the path of the hurricane. The power went out fairly quickly and was not restored for a week and a half. Only one of the building's backup generators was running at full power. One had partial power, and the other had none at all.

Fortunately, my kitchen was on the line to the fully functional generator, but it wasn't safe to use my electronic devices because of the power fluctuations. No television, no email, spotty telephone service -- and no lights in my bedroom. I suppose I could have sought out company in the building lobby, but I was afraid of being so close to the window wall that fills the lobby with sunlight on a normal day. I had never been directly in the path of a hurricane, and I had no idea what to expect. I felt so alone.

Fortunately, I had booked airline tickets many weeks in advance for a trip to see my family in New Mexico. Thus, after a few days (that felt like an eternity), I was able to board the plane right on schedule and fly away from my windswept exile. My sister kidded me that I had to go almost 2000 miles to get a hot shower and cash from a working ATM machine. I was just glad to be back among familiar faces.

This time around, the Washington DC area was hit with a glancing blow. Again, I spent a couple of days housebound, but it was a very different experience. The day before the storm, my neighbors and I chatted in the lobby. I knew that if I needed anything, I could knock on any one of a dozen doors and find a friend to help me. We never did lose power, but I knew from previous storms that our current building maintenance crew was diligent about keeping the generators ready to go. I didn't have plane tickets this time, but I didn't need them. I was prepared and well connected.

I thought that I might work on several projects around the house during the storm, but instead I spent a lot of the time online chatting with friends and family all over the country. I posted photographs and status reports online and kept up with my local friends who were doing the same.

I surprised myself by what I didn't do during the storm. I didn't turn on the television until late in the day. I knew from past experience that all of the stations would be broadcasting nonstop, breathless coverage of the very worst effects of the storm. There's only so much of that I can take, especially if I'm looking out the window to see how much damage is in my own back yard. I didn't watch movies or work on craft projects. I didn't do any writing (although I filled up six pages in my journal the day after the storm).

No, what I did was to seek out my friends and stay connected with them. It was a more concentrated version of what I've been doing lately during normal weather. I'm not nearly the news junkie I used to be, and I have a whole list of household projects that I haven't even started. Sometimes, I criticize myself for not being more "productive". Then I realize that I am doing exactly what I need to do.

When I started this year, my goals included improving my mental and physical health, making more time for the people in my life, working on creative projects, and finding a way to make a living that uses and builds my strengths. I have a pretty good handle on the mind/body thing, and now I'm working on building up my friendships. I'm making small inroads on the list of projects (paying and not), but for now, I'm building and strengthening my own personal community. The rest of it will come in good time.

Pushing Back Against the Haters

Some of my best writing is inspired by the occasional convergence of news items around a common theme. I'm right in the middle of one such convergence, and I just have to share this with you all. I am getting a lot of this from my FaceBook friends, whose news links are a great way to aggregate stories from all over the web. The theme that is coming through almost on a daily basis is this: people are beginning to push back against the haters.

Story 1: A quiet, "free spirit" of a teen girl is elected to her school's homecoming court as a cruel joke. The entire town comes together to give her the royal treatment.

For the homecoming dance Saturday, businesses will buy her dinner, take her photo, fix her hair and nails, and dress her in a gown, shoes and a tiara.

For the homecoming game Friday, residents will pack the football stadium so they can cheer when she is introduced at halftime.

They will be wearing her favorite color (orange) and T-shirts with messages of support. A 68-year-old grandmother offered to be her escort.

"I am in awe, overwhelmed at the amount of support," said Jamie Kline, 35, who began a Facebook support page. "I never expected it to spread as far as it has."

From The Detroit News

Story 2: Someone sees a young Sikh woman who has an unusual amount of facial hair, which she made no attempt to hide or remove. The person posts a surreptitious photograph of the young woman on Reddit, and "wait[ed] for the abuse to flood in." The young woman's friend alerted her to the photo, and she posted a response that was so gracious and kind that the photographer posted a sincere apology.

... I've read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

From Jezebel.com

Story 3: Nate Phelps, a son of the "minister" who runs the Westboro Baptist Church, left his family just after midnight on his 18th birthday, and has pursued a much more loving path in his life. He has had to work hard to heal from the psychological wounds of his abusive upbringing, but now he is reaching out to help others.

Now in his 50s, Nate finds himself publicly squaring off with his father and siblings to reverse their legacy of intolerance. He lives in Calgary, where he has become a public speaker who champions LGBT rights and raises awareness about the connection between extreme religion and child abuse. He is currently writing a book about his life and is the subject of an upcoming documentary.

From Salon.com

Story 4: Andrew DeLeon, a teen from a small town near Austin, wasn't into sports or athletics. He became accustomed to being "hated" and "rejected" by the kids in his school, but he summoned up his courage and auditioned for America's Got Talent this year. I've written about him before, and I continue to be amazed by his generous and loving attitude toward his many, many adoring fans. This young man, who is now 20, amazed everyone by singing operatic arias in an other-worldly falsetto voice. Even though Andrew didn't get past the semi-finals in the competition, his fans continue to support him. He is currently paying his dues, performing in small venues and recording songs from a makeshift studio.

Here's his Austin audition, and here's a more recent clip that he made to keep in touch with his fans. The comments on his Facebook fan page and on his YouTube video page are almost entirely positive and supportive (an amazing feat), and he routinely gets messages from depressed, rejected, and out-of-the-mainstream teens who have been inspired and encouraged by his example.

Story 5: Lady Gaga, back when she was just Stefani Germanotta, was once thrown into a trash can by a group of bullies from her school.

“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point,” she said. “I didn’t want to go to class. And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was.”
From the New York Times

Lady Gaga went on to become an immense success as a musician and performer (to put it mildly!), but she hasn't forgotten the pain she experienced during her teens. She and her mother have founded the Born this Way Foundation, which is " is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a kinder, braver world."

Bit by bit, kind souls are pushing the pendulum back from the mean-spirited, winner-take-all attitudes that have dominated our environment for far too long. I hope to see many more such stories, and I will pass them along to you, gentle readers.

Pondering Life in the Real World

Last week, I listened to a thought-provoking talk on the myths that we create to explain the world to ourselves and our communities. By "myths", I mean stories that, although fictional, contain some element of truth, morality, or human nature. During the audience comment period that followed, several people responded that they had no use for tall tales and fiction, preferring instead to deal with the world as it is.

It's a noble thought, avoiding fantasy and make-believe in order to spend more time solving problems in the here and now. The problem I have with this mindset is that it misunderstands the role of story-telling. Far from being a way to avoid reality, myth-making is a device for setting up simplified model systems in order to better grasp some concept that is too complex or emotionally charged to deal with head-on.

Scientists use model systems all the time. When they first delve into a new concept or discovery, they often set up a simplified version in the lab or in a computer program. They control all but a few variables so that they can observe each variable separately to see how it affects the system as a whole. The real world seldom lets us tease out individual variables in this manner, so the model system is a necessary first step toward an accurate understanding of a real-world system.

After the foundations are laid, the model must be validated against a more realistic system. Often, a series of increasingly complex models are necessary before the whole thing is ready for validation in the outside world.

Likewise, our myths allow us to isolate and explore just a few aspects of our complicated existence using idealized worlds and simplified characters. The simplicity allows a clarity that is seldom available in the daily onrush of events and interpersonal interactions. Myths and stories make no attempt to explain all of reality -- how could they ever succeed?

Fantasy stories are a proven tool for talking about topics that are too emotionally charged to address head-on. The television show Star Trek talked about real-world racism using space aliens as stand-ins for present-day humans. JRR Tolkien explored the concept of evil via the malevolent Sauron, the amoral Saruman, and the obsessive Gollum. These stories stood a better chance of getting a point across to audiences who had their guard up against full frontal attacks on their cherished beliefs. Subversive, but effective.

Myths, allegories, fantasy literature -- I suppose some people just aren't into this form of truth-seeking. If they have methods that work better for them, I respect that, and I hope that they respect my love of metaphorical worlds. The real world needs both Muggles and Wizards, after all.

Unopened Gifts

A long time ago, I heard a story (probably fictional) about an elderly couple who had saved their money for years so that they could afford an ocean cruise. They booked the most basic accommodations, and they carefully looked for ways to economize. They had the time of their lives, but they were always conscious of the need to keep expenses to a minimum.

Every evening, they retired to their cabin and made a modest dinner out of the bread, cheese, and apples that they had brought with them. On the last night of the cruise, they allowed themselves the luxury of eating dinner in the main dining room. They enjoyed a wonderful meal, and afterward, the husband asked the server for the check. The server looked at him very strangely. "Sir," he said, "There is no extra charge. The cost of all your meals was included in the price of your cruise."

What is life offering me that I am ignoring because I think that I have to take care of everything all by myself? What opportunities am I missing because I think that they are only for other people?

It's only been during the last ten years or so that I have started to learn to ask for what I want -- or even admit to myself that I want certain things. My upbringing emphasized self sufficiency: accepting and living with whatever role I was given to play, whatever resources "someone else" wasn't using, whatever I could scrounge up for myself. Great accomplishments, brave adventures, unfettered creative expression -- those things were all reserved for "someone else". No explanation was ever given as to why "someone else" was more deserving than I, it was just taken for granted. Like all those unclaimed meals on the cruise ship, the gifts that I could have had either went to "someone else", or they went to waste.

When my sister was getting our mother's house ready for sale, she came across a stash of fancy soaps and lotions that we had bought for Mom over the years. We had thought that we were giving Mom a little something to brighten up her day -- a pleasant scent, a soothing touch for her dry skin.

Mom had saved up all these gifts in their unopened containers, some of them for fifteen years or more. Some of the older items had become unusable. Was she waiting for a special occasion that never came? If she didn't enjoy these things, did she think that we would be offended if she offered them to someone else? Would she rather have had some other gift? We had spent our money on items that never served their purpose because we didn't know that she wasn't using them.

Unopened gifts are not just wasted resources, they choke off the streams of generosity and gratitude. The care and sacrifice that the giver put into selecting the gift fall by the wayside, unappreciated. The chance to enjoy something out of the ordinary goes untaken. The gift-giving stops short, never paid forward to someone else. The possibility of taking that gift and using it to make something wonderful is closed off.

I get a real kick out of those times when I can do something small that makes a big difference in someone's day. Running an errand that saves someone a long side trip, checking on a friend's house while they are out of town, opening the door for someone who has both hands full. I get a bigger kick out of doing small things that open up the door for someone else to do bigger and better things. Giving an inspirational book or art supplies to a creative person, being there to listen when a friend is working through a big issue. It would make me sad if my friend refused my gift. Am I being blind to the gifts of love that my friends (or life itself) is offering me? Am I closing myself off to some great thing that I could do because I won't ask for or accept the help I need -- a gift that the world is yearning to give?

Bedraggled Victory

Last night, I got absorbed by a late-night show called "The White Room Challenge". Four young interior designers were each given a stage set-like space (three walls and a ceiling, open to the front) and a few basic pieces of furniture, all white. They had 15 hours, a warehouse full of accessories and paint, a field trip to a candy store, the services of a crew of carpenters, and $2000 to spend. Their assignment was to create a child's room based on a theme of candy. Whatever else they did, they would be judged on two things: did it look like a child's room, and how cleverly could they incorporate actual candy into their design.

The four designers must have been chosen very intentionally, because each embodied a specific mindset almost to perfection. One designer, a young woman whose specialty was art installations, set to work almost immediately. She decided to keep the walls and furniture white, to set off the bright colors of the candy. She nailed the furniture to the wall -- chairs and tables all jumbled up into the air as if they had been swept up by a tornado. Strips of wallpaper, sheets of candy dots, candy strewn on the floor, giant puffy white flowers -- the room was a riot of whimsy. The judges said that it looked as if a birthday cake had exploded. The whole room radiated the chaotic joy of childhood, but it wasn't a room that a child might play in, it was an avant-garde art installation. All execution, no planning, nowhere for the eye to rest. That designer was the first one eliminated from the competition.

One designer, a young man, had a much more specific, detailed vision for his white room. He wanted to make a fantasy land where a young girl could retreat from the rest of her family and indulge her imagination. Red theater curtains allowed just a glimpse into the space within. An orange candy sun shone in a deep blue sky. A white couch sported giant red painted ladybugs with chocolate-kiss spots. A giant tree with green candy leaves sunk its plywood roots into chocolate-candy soil. The designer was absolutely confident that his room would win the competition. You couldn't fault the guy's planning and the detail of his execution, but the room looked weighty and claustrophobic. The colors were too intense, the elements were too large, there was no playfulness. The room was trying too hard, the concept was too heavy. That designer was the second one eliminated.

A third designer, a young woman, immediately latched onto the concept of a giant friendly robot. She painted the tables and chairs in bright colors and stacked them on the back wall to make the body. Colorful geometric patterns painted on the side walls became a pair of arms, reaching all the way to the front of the room in a gigantic "hug". The robot was big and friendly and you couldn't help but smile, but there was no candy. As time grew short, the designer crafted gears and pulleys from pieces of candy -- a very clever idea, but clearly an afterthought. In her enthusiasm for her own idea, she had lost sight of what her client (the judges) had specified as the main theme. She came in second.

The winner was a young man who set out to make a young boy's room. His theme idea was to make candy rain from the sky. He asked his carpenter to make 100 strings of hard candy to attach to the ceiling, creating a candy deluge. The carpenter set to work, but he warned that he might not be able to finish that many strings in the time allotted. Meanwhile, the designer painted his space in bright greens and blues, and he carefully crafted a candy sign that said "Yummy".

At the end of the first day, the designers were escorted off the set -- time to rest and recharge imaginations and allow glue and paint to dry. The following morning, the designers came back to complete their projects.

The "candy rain" designer saw that the carpenter had only been able to make a few candy strings -- a slight spotty drizzle rather than the glorious deluge he had envisioned. His "Yummy" sign was ruined -- the glue had foamed up and spread all over the place. He had spent too much time on his main pieces, which were now unusable, and he had only made a bare start on the rest of his room. The young man burst into tears, convinced that he had failed utterly.

After a while, he pulled himself together and began a modified, simplified version of his original plan. There would not be hundreds of tiny pieces of candy hanging from the ceiling, but rather, a dozen or so giant jawbreakers hung like colorful planets in one corner. Giant lollipops formed asterisks along the back wall. Giant rainbow-colored sticks of candy formed a thicket near the floor.

By the time the 15 hours were up, he had created a simple, cheerful, aesthetically pleasing space. The candy was fully integrated into the design, and it looked like candy rather than mechanical parts, trees, or chaotic clutter. The judges' only criticism was that the room looked a little too adult, but they praised him for staying focused on his assignment and for his ability to recover quickly and adapt his design after his initial failure. Out of the four designers, he was the one who "got it" -- not only the idea that the judges had asked him to convey, but the prize as well.

I have heard that some of these reality shows and contests are scripted -- real life is either too boring or too complicated to package neatly into a one-hour time slot with time out for commercials. Was "The White Room Challenge" scripted to make it turn out so neatly? I don't know, and I don't care. Watching these four designers and their four different approaches has gotten me thinking about the way I tackle challenges and problems -- and recover from my own messes. The edgy-arty people, the supremely confident people, the grand strategizers, the one-brilliant-idea people -- these people are sometimes celebrated by business theorists and self-help gurus. Sometimes, though, it's enough to just roll with the punches, pick yourself up, and muddle on through.

An "Everything-Else" Anecdote

In typical fashion, I thought of a pertinent anecdote the morning after I published my blog post. It's worth passing along, though, so here it is -- a "definitely not me" moment that helped me see what is "definitely me".

Several years ago, I had a job that involved writing articles for a government agency's in-house newsletter. One morning, I sat in on a town-hall type discussion between the Cabinet undersecretary who oversaw that agency and a group of professional women who held civil service jobs with that agency. These women were at the middle management level, and many of them had advanced degrees and many years of work experience. The undersecretary asked if there were any specific practices that these women felt were holding them back in their careers. I don't know if the women had discussed this in advance, but one issue immediately took center stage.

The women complained that they would get training and certifications that had been recommended by their higher-ups, and then return to their same jobs and responsibilities as if nothing had happened. The undersecretary asked if the higher-ups had sent them to these classes specifically in preparation for a promotion, or if there were specific job openings that these women were preparing to apply for. Well, no, the women conceded. Had they been networking with their colleagues in other agencies in order to identify opportunities for advancement? The women looked confused. (This confused me. Was this a new concept for them?)

The undersecretary explained that continuing education and training was a long-term investment. This wasn't like school, where you automatically advance a grade when you complete your assignments. By keeping your skills current and expanding your capabilities, you will be ready when an opportunity does present itself. By taking an active interest in your own personal development, you will make it more likely that your name is the one that comes up when your higher-ups are looking to fill a position. However, if your agency is one where these higher position openings are few and far between, you may need to seek advancement opportunities in other agencies.

What! The look of shock on these women's faces came as a total surprise to me. Had it never occurred to them that they could work in other agencies, or even move into the private sector? Apparently not. Judging by the number of women who expressed disbelief and dismay at the very idea of leaving their beloved agency, this was a very new and unwelcome idea.

I had never experienced this degree of job security -- where the expectation was that you could just show up and check off the boxes, and the conveyor belt would automatically carry you higher, with no further effort on your part. Having gone through temporary positions, layoffs, freelancing, and flat-out unemployment, I have learned that keeping one's skills fresh is a never-ending endeavor. The payoff might not be immediate, but if an opportunity comes up and you're not prepared, then there's no payoff at all. I have learned that sometimes the only way to move up is to move out, and the best way to move out is to know people "out there". If the prepackaged deal chafes and constricts, then you have to design your own package. It hadn't occurred to me that experienced professionals could get that far into their careers and not know that.

"Not-me" experiences are worth remembering, because they help to bring the "definitely me" picture into focus.

"Everything Else" Provides an Outline

One way of discerning the shape of an object is to fill in the space where the object isn't. I generally try to "stay positive" in my thinking, but I'm going to provide some outlines by listing some ideas that no longer work for me:

Your life's work is your job. Your career and a large part of your identity are defined by where you work, who you work for, and what you do for income. Your job is a prepackaged set of duties, defined by your employers on their terms. You are expected to help them advance their enterprise. The effect this has on you is of no consequence.

Work is hell. Part of being an adult is resigning yourself to work you don't enjoy because it brings in the money you need to buy the stuff you think you are supposed to have. It's not supposed to be fun, that's why they call it work. Just be glad you have a job.

Pie in the sky by and by. If you make enough money (after you finish paying for all your stuff), one day, you will be able to retire. Hope like hell that you are still healthy enough and rich enough to work in a few of the enjoyable, fulfilling things that you never found time for when you were working.

School is meant to prepare you for work. The reason you go to college is to put you onto a career path that brings in lots of money, so you can buy lots of stuff and eventually retire. All those humanities electives and extracurricular activities are a waste of time, unless they help you meet important people who will help you make a good start to your career. You don't have to enjoy your studies or like the career you are studying for, just as long as it makes you rich.

Busier is better. Life is just one big contest to see who can put in the most hours on the job and who can cram the most tasks into their day. The people who hold staff meetings by cell phone while driving way over the speed limit from company headquarters to the branch location are the ones who get promoted.

You have to be a team player. As in, "take one for the team", not "your team is there to back you up". Show up for all the company social events, wear the polo shirts with the company logo, skip your kid's baseball game for the all-hands meeting, make sure that you speak to the CEO every chance you get so that he remembers who you are.

Getting kicked off the team is a fate worse than death. The company provides you with your identity. If you think that the company is about to downsize, you must redouble your efforts, work longer hours, multitask better, and score as much face time as possible with anyone holding the rank of vice president or higher. If you are laid off, no one will ever hire you again. You will go bankrupt, your family and friends will leave you, and the rest of your life will be miserable.

Never hire anyone over 30. New college hires are inexpensive, plentiful, healthy, energetic, and accustomed to pulling all-nighters. Hiring people right out of college cuts down on your employee development costs, since you're letting the kids' parents pay the tuition for all the latest and greatest technical training. Once this training becomes outdated, hire some new kids. Corollary: If your hair is turning gray, you must dye it so that no one will ever know how old you really are.

As I said, those are some of the ideas I'm throwing onto the scrap heap. My hope is that once they are cleared out of the way, the picture of what I do want can emerge into sharper focus.

Strange and Familiar

I never could understand why people would want to retire and move away somewhere they had never lived before. Why would you deliberately send yourself into exile? I'm still just under three months into this grand experiment, but I'm beginning to get a small glimmer of understanding.

Some places still call out to me in memory. I can smell the wood smoke from the fireplace in the big dorm at my childhood church camp in southern New Mexico. I can feel the warm breezes and hear the feral roosters crow on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. I can feel the awe of watching the sun shine under a cloud bank over the ocean near Sagres, Portugal.

Some memories are even more vivid. The first time I returned to the campus of Arizona State University, maybe a year or so after I graduated, my pulse actually quickened and my adrenaline rose as I walked down the Palm Walk. My body remembered my frantic dash along that sidewalk to turn in my doctoral dissertation a few minutes before the deadline.

Some of these places call out to me after extended stays or frequent visits. Like old friends, we can meet again after many years, and it's as if no time has passed. Some places call to me after only one visit. Our acquaintance was brief, but there was a connection. I don't know a soul in several of those places, so I am sure that it is the place itself that calls me.

On the other hand, I can return to some places and feel very little at all, despite long years of familiarity. Maybe I can still find my way around (sometimes not, though), but there is no call, no pull. We are casual acquaintances, nothing more. However much these places factored into my daily existence at one time, those chapters are finished.

I had that feeling of blankness recently as I took the Metro train to meet some friends for lunch in Arlington, VA. For 12 years, I rode the train every weekday, back and forth to work. I knew how to find my way around this underground system before I learned to navigate the surface streets. I still know what part of the train to get on so that I can get off the train in just the right spot on the platform. I still know where things are in the neighborhood where I used to work, but there is no pulling at the heart strings. I feel the old connection to my friends, but I would be just as happy to see them in a different setting. The people matter more than the place.

The town where I grew up is like that. On my most recent trip, my sister and I had a wonderful time reconnecting with people we hadn't seen in years. I treasure the time I spent with those people, but I would never go back and live in that town. My chapter in that place has been finished (at least as far as I know). Driving down the familiar streets, I get the definite sense that I am now an outsider.

The happiest of all circumstances, of course, is when both the people and the place are dear to you. That can happen by luck, but intention plays a big part in making the connection a lasting one. That, to me, is what home is.

What's Next? Inklings

Following up on yesterday's post: the "big yes" tends to come after I do my homework. What do I want? What don't I want? What must I have, and what can I trade away for something I want more? Here is what I have so far (at least the bit I'm willing to share):
Must-haves:
1. Work that serves a meaningful purpose. Writing/editing reports that hardly anyone reads doesn't cut it for me any more. Cranking out proposals that generate business for the sake of enriching the guys at the top doesn't cut it either. Am I doing something that provides goods, services, knowledge, or understanding that makes peoples' lives better? Does my writing help someone look at an issue in a new way, explain a complicated concept in terms they can understand, organize a tangle of ideas onto a framework where you can see how things fit together? That's a must-have.

2. Work that pays the bills, with something left over for fun. Face it, big cities tend to be expensive places to live. But the energy, creativity, diversity, and opportunities of a big city feed me in ways that small towns somehow don't. Also, when I'm not earning enough money, I tend to think about money much more than when I'm earning enough. I have a very real sense of what "enough" entails for me, and it's not unrealistic. I've been at that level before, and I can get there again. (The American myth that more is always better is simply not true. There is such a thing as "enough".)

3. Work that engages my attention, curiosity, and imagination. I've had that kind of work before, and I found myself working really hard and putting in long hours, but not minding it. There's a whole different feeling after a long day doing something you love, compared with even a relatively short day doing something that drains your soul. Show me something new, let me research an interesting idea. Show me the story-behind-the-story. Let me tell the whole story, warts and all. Let me get you interested in something you hadn't paid attention to before.

4. Work that I can do for as long as my mind and my body will let me. The idea of enduring years of drudgery so that I can spend my declining years playing golf holds no appeal for me. I may slow the pace down as I age, but let my work be so fulfilling that I can do it the rest of my life and not regret it.

5. Work in pleasant surroundings, with pleasant people, and with the occasional change of scenery. No more gray cubicles, please. My little office corner at home has a window with a big oak tree outside. Mourning doves and squirrels come to visit. I can go wireless and sit out on the balcony, weather permitting. I have time for discussion groups, lunch with friends, and trips downtown (where something new is always happening).

As you can see, I'm not quite to the point where I type a few terms into an online search and find my bliss. I probably won't ever be at that point. However, I have a good idea of where to go looking and who to talk to to bring my picture into sharper focus. The outlines are a bit blurry now, but I can make out some general shapes.

Defying Categorization

I'm still reading Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and I was somewhat confused about Cain's description of novelty-seekers. Cain describes this as a trait most often shown by extroverts, who require stronger stimulation to maintain their interest. She describes introverts as sensitive, easily over-stimulated people who minimize the risk of surprise in their daily lives, but then she goes on to say that many writers, artists, scientists, and other highly creative types are introverts. How can a person be devoted to creativity if he or she does not seek out the new and unexpected?

A few years ago, I did some research for a talk I was giving, and I delved into the scientific literature on circadian rhythms and their effect on various levels of dopamine, serotonin, and other chemicals that affect how we react to the world around us. I ran across the term "novelty-seeking behavior" and I thought, "hey, that describes me." I love new ideas, new ways of looking at things, exploring new places, eating all kinds of ethnic food. Doing the same thing day after day depresses me.

On further examination, though, I found that the psychologist's definition of novelty-seeking is more akin to what I would call thrill-seeking. I have no desire to parachute out of an airplane, dive off a high cliff, or drive a race car. In my mind, those behaviors go beyond novelty, focusing as they do on the immediate adrenaline rush, the very real presence of danger. Maybe the marketing term "variety-seeking behavior" describes me better.

There is such a person as the novelty-seeking introvert. I knew one such person. This person had been in an uninspiring job for more than ten years because it offered him stability and predictability. He didn't care for ethnic restaurants, and he would have been quite content to live exclusively on burgers and fries for the rest of his life. If you could get him to go to a party at all, he would spend the whole time sitting miserably at the edge of the crowd, completely at a loss for anything to say. However, he was fond of rigorous solo hikes that took him far from the nearest human contact. He described to me in near-rapturous terms a winter hike where he became hypothermic and suffered frostbite. A bungee jump off a high bridge was an ecstatic adventure for him, an almost spiritual experience.

Thrill-seeking introverts, sensitive extroverts, seeking the new and different without courting danger, seeking the safe and secure without being boring. I suppose what this all means is that no matter how you try to put people into little boxes, we will always come up with a way to defy categorization. Each one of us is a custom design, and the world needs all of us with our various quirks and talents.

Ground Training, Test Flights, and Flocks (or Not)

"The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for." -- Joseph Campbell

I have been calling this year of mindfulness a "sabbatical" or a "reboot break", but I'm not entirely satisfied with either of those terms. A sabbatical implies that my employer is giving me a leave of absence, after which I will return to my job, rested and refreshed, maybe having completed some preplanned project. A reboot break also implies a return to the same operating system, having flushed any unneeded bits of detritus out of my own personal cache. "Flying lessons" comes closer to it, implying an application of all I have learned up to now and an eventual launch into something (I'm not sure exactly what) for which I am well suited.

Like a bird learning to fly, I am doing something that many of my fellow creatures have done before. Watching other birds is helpful, but it's not going to get me off the ground. I have to actually flap my metaphorical wings and see what works for me and what doesn't. However, I can learn from the example of others -- my intentional and unintentional teachers.

Many of those teachers come to me by way of books. Karen Armstrong's books, A History of God in particular, have shown me just how much our concepts of what life is really all about are a mirror of our culture, our place in history, and our individual experiences. Knowing this has freed me to do my own refinements where the picture that has been handed down to me doesn't ring true. The Feminine Face of God by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins provides practical examples in the stories of several women who set out on their own search for what they hold most true. Julia Cameron's books (for example, The Artist's Way) provide even more specific "wing-strengthening" exercises, designed to break apart preconceived notions and bring forth what truly resonates for an individual.

I'm in the middle of reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Speaking by Susan Cain. Reading Cain's descriptions of the Harvard Business School (with its extreme emphasis on extroversion), the constant chatter of open office plans, and groups that go with the loudest voice rather than the best idea has reinforced my hunch that my own discomfort with these environments is not a shortcoming, but rather an integral part of my inborn temperament. Reading her sketches of highly successful introverts feels like stumbling upon a meeting of the elders of my native tribe.

I was especially moved by Cain's biographical sketch of The Woz (Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak to the uninitiated). Wozniak was a shy, nerdy kid, following a passion for electronics that dated back to his early childhood. His father encouraged this passion, telling him that engineers can change the world. He sought out like-minded company, which led him to that fateful 1975 meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. What Wozniak learned at these meetings inspired him to devote many, many before- and after-work hours on what would become the prototype of the Apple computer. Wozniak built on his experience as a young tinkerer and as a calculator designer for Hewlett Packard. He built his confidence with the help of his father, his fellow engineers in the Homebrew Computer Club, and later, with his colleague Steve Jobs. These connections gave him the support and inspiration he needed, but his actual thinking and work was done alone, away from the chatter of the group, and that was the key to his success.

Other members of my tribe offer me their wisdom directly, without the mediation of a book. My yoga instructors offer weekly themes and meditations, ingrained into me by the stretching and bending that follows. The Sunday platform talks at the Washington Ethical Society take my mind in new directions, aided by the comments and conversations that follow. Friends of mine who are more experienced in blazing their own trails provide proof that it can be done, as well as practical advice and encouragement. They also provide a reminder that I'm not really blazing a completely new trail for myself.

Instead, I am turning off of the six-lane interstate highway, switching off the GPS with its constant instructions on when and where to turn. The trail I am following is narrow and barely discernible through the weeds at times, but just when I think I'm hopelessly lost, I see a blaze mark on a tree or a familiar landmark to let me know that all is well. As you see by my metaphors, I'm still hopping along on the ground. You will have to take my word that I am starting to flap my wings and test the breezes. When I start talking about thermals and updrafts, cyclones and gusts and soaring, you'll know that I'm airborne.

Thought for the Day

Believing that a "real" writer/artist/performer should work for the sheer love of creation, without regard to income, home, work space and supplies, or a circle of friends is a lot like believing that a "real" mountain climber should climb Everest without using shoes, a warm coat, tents, food supplies, or oxygen tanks.

The 15-Year Helix

Now that I'm outside the perpetual hurry of the daily commute to the cubicle farm, I'm amazed at how time has seemed to dilate. I have been at this for about a month and a half, but last December seems to be in the far distant past. On the other hand, I can start the day with the best of intentions for tackling my many projects, and then get lost in a sudoku puzzle or some other distraction and look up to find it's the middle of the afternoon. Where did the day go? I'm rather enjoying it, but a little voice in the back of my head keeps asking if it's bad to be having so much fun goofing off. Will I get used to this and spend most of my year off procrastinating, only to face a frantic rush to get things accomplished in the last few weeks before I have to return to the workforce? Will I get bored? Will I lose all my time management skills? Or will I gradually start venturing out, better off for not having succumbed to the compulsion to be "useful"?

This isn't the first time I have been in an in-between place, plotting my next move. Looking back, I realize that this seems to happen every 15 years or so. Just before I turned 25, I left a stable job as a lab tech (in the middle of the 1980 recession, but I was oblivious to that at the time) and I moved from Florida to Arizona to begin graduate school. My bachelor's degree in chemistry had gotten me a technician's job, but not much else. Over the course of a couple of years, I realized that doing the same old thing day in and day out was going to make me start climbing the walls. No matter what I did in my spare time, if my work wasn't challenging and full of novelty, then I wasn't going to be happy. If another diploma was what I needed to land a research job, then I would go get another diploma. And I did.

I loved the research, loved the friends I made, and even enjoyed the two postdoc positions I had to take before I landed a "real" job in industry. But the glory days of big corporate research had ended before I arrived. The focus had shifted to "what can we do to maximize this quarter's profits?" Too often, the answer seemed to be "cut the R&D staff". I celebrated my 40th birthday during a between-jobs period that was to last almost 2 years. It was 15 years since I had embarked on the journey to become a research scientist, and I knew that I was going to have to leave that career, with its boom and bust cycles, and find something else to do.

At the end of 1996, I landed a full-time job as a science writer/editor for the EPA. I followed that with a stint as a magazine and web editor for the American Chemical Society. I definitely felt that I was heading in the right direction. Then the dot-com bubble burst. Suddenly, people realized that it wasn't easy to make money on internet publications, but they couldn't go back to all print either. (They still haven't solved that conundrum.) So I made a slight shift and went into public affairs for the Office of Naval Research. That was (mostly) enjoyable work, and it paid much better than working for a not-for-profit. Leadership changed, the job became less enjoyable, and I found another job for a small science-oriented IT consulting company. Again, the focus of the company changed, the job became more technician-like, and I remembered all the reasons I hated doing technician work.

So here I am again, having completed another 15-year cycle. I left my job voluntarily, like I did when I was 25. (And once again, the economy is in a mess, only this time it's worse.) I have savings that will carry me for a while, like when I was 40. But I'm not focusing on the free fall like I did when I was 40. I have a sense of optimism that feels more like when I was 25.

Someone told me once that life is kind of like walking along a road that spirals around a mountain. You keep coming around to the same side of the mountain, but you're a little higher every time. The view is familiar, but it's never exactly the same. I don't know where the road leads, really. I know quite a bit about where I hope it will lead. Maybe there's another mountain, with a whole new helical road. Fifteen years from now, I'm going to be entering my 70s. When I look back at my current self, will I once again marvel at how far I've come? Will I be in this strange yet familiar in-between place once again? I suppose that all I can do right now is put one foot in front of the other.

Checking One's Wings

In an effort to keep my overstuffed file cabinet from exploding, I'm scanning file folders full of clippings, notes, and other snippets that I thought I might use sometime, but haven't seen the light of day for years. I don't know if I'm any more likely to use them now that they have metamorphosed from yellowing sheets of paper to electrons on my computer, but they do take up less room this way.

I found a wonderful quote that I clipped from a newspaper and taped to an index card. Pearl S. Buck said pretty much exactly what I have been thinking, but she said it first and she said it better:

"It is no simple matter to pause in the midst of one's maturity, when life is full of function, to examine what are the principles which control that functioning."

Updrafts

In my previous post, I mentioned making a list of things that make me happy. One of my goals for this reboot break is to make these things a more integral part of my life. These are the things that lift me up, keep me going, and make me feel that I am being who I was meant to be. (Meant by whom? That's a whole other blog posting.) Here's the list so far, in no particular order:
beautiful surroundings
variety
discovery
being influential
making sense of things
having time to figure things out
deep conversations with good friends
traveling with pleasant companions
shared laughter
inspiring music
stories where the little guy wins
fairness
seeing an answer after a long struggle
truly being heard / truly hearing someone else
seeing things in a new way
absurd humor
living my beliefs, defined by me