waiting

Waiting for my prof to post final grades. For those of you reading along, we finished finals last Monday. Before turkey day. The deadline to submit grades is 10 pm tonight. I called the registrar b/c my teammates were calling me wondering what happens if they aren't submitted by the deadline. "Nothing" was the reply. Our grades just post later. But I want an Oompa Loompa now daddy. Tell me what my grades are, now!

I have an A so far in both classes (same prof) but the team paper is worth 40% of our grade in one class and 25% of the grade in the other. My worst-case-scenario spreadsheet (yes, I am that big of a geek) tells me that my team can get an 85 on the paper and I'll still get my A's. Laugh all you want – my teammates did when I told them about the spreadsheet – but being a geek comes in handy sometimes. At least I'll know what to expect when my Oompa Loompa arrives. I earned one 95 and three 100s on my personal papers so I'm pretty confident in the writing. (I wrote the paper.) It's the content that makes me edgy. In a nutshell it lacked the well, substance, and say, direction, that most papers I write usually contain. It was more like this blog. Long on rambling and short on substance.

Must concentrate on work now. Grades and Oompa Loompa's will have to wait.

finalist!

Just back from lunch downtown at The Brown Palace. I'm a finalist for a scholarship and the committee members wanted to meet the finalists before making a decision on the winner. There are three finalists. I think I can take one of them. She's a second year (meaning she graduates in June) and comes from money, if my rich-dar is working correctly. The other one is tricky. He's heavily involved with the organization already. He knew many of them before we got there. I knew the chairman and kinda sorta knew a few other gents. He's interested in an area of business that this org focuses on, so (IMO) he's my real competition.

They're announcing the winner next week. At lunch. After I start my PT job. So now I have to be one of those employees that starts a job and runs off to take a 3 hour lunch the second day. Good timing. What can I say? No? Yeah, sure. I'm not coming to the lunch that you will most likely announce me as the scholarship winner. (oh please oh please oh please oh please)

Gaaa, I hate this part of working for someone else. I emailed my new boss to let her know the scoop. Hopefully it won't be a problem to take a long lunch or just work another day for those hours. She said they were flexible. Let's just see how much so.

too much

Too much going on but not enough to keep me motivated. When did I lose my motivation? Where did it go? It's enough to think that there are wee motivation gnomes sneaking about, lurking, waiting to snatch my oompf. Don't want to bother finishing two design projects that bore me to tears. Don't want to bother cleaning the house (OCD me, I know!). Can't bother to put up the holiday decor or any kind of tree. Don't want to bother cleaning out my closets filled with crap that has multiplied like gremlins in the dark. Don't want to bother putting some shit up on craigslist to get it out of here and earn some cash. Don't want to bother calling Goodwill to pick up the room full of shit in the spare bedroom. Too much hassle. Too much work.

I broke down and applied for a part time job. And I got it. I'll work 20 hours a week on campus. It's convenient and I can walk to class after work. I need something to maintain a steady income for those months when the projects slow down but my bills don't. To tell the truth, I need something to make me feel like a real person again. Being a self-employed married to a real-employed makes one feel, well, less. Less sure. Less independent. Less confident. Less useful. When I had real employment, I could spend money willy-nilly. Want new shoes? Buy 'em. Lunch with my friends? No problem. Ski passes? Check. Plane tix home for no reason? Sure.

Is this a woman thing? Are women more likely to feel less like a contributor and more like a dependent when we are self-employed? Really, now, it has nothing to do with self-employment. Being self-employed has only magnified the truth. Over the past eight years, I've given up all control or interest in our household finances. I told myself that I wasn't good at it, so I should let the Mr. handle things. But really, I was just lazy. And now I can't write a check without asking where the checkbook lives. This scares me.

Julie (one of my team members from class) thinks I'm this strong, confident, take no shit, have no fear, bad ass. How disappointed she would be if she learned the truth. How disappointed the world must be to know the truth: I'm really just a girl who struggles to get out of bed, rages against her insecurities and fears being found out.

Feeling small and scared today. I just want to opt out and let things go on the way they have been going on. But I know that I can't keep going on like this. Must find that motivation I've lost. Must make the changes happen. Dog knows that no one else will.

peas and quiet

School's over for the quarter and I have a blessed six weeks before I must return to syllabi, team projects and irregular eating habits. Lo! But I agreed to compete in a school ethics case competition, which means no break from the team projects. Our ethics case is quite interesting... something about AIDS drugs and pharma profiteering. Yum.

Of course, I have actual work to do, you know the stuff that people pay me to do. The stuff that helps me pay my mortgage and wine bills. It snowed this morning, a clear sign that the Universe does not want me to work today. As I awoke to the quiet stillness of a fresh blanket of beautiful frozen moisture, I realized that I'd rather do Thanksgiving prep than work. It seems as if my work motivation is already on holiday. Every time I sit down to work on a project, I start to get droopy. So I take a nap. A few hours later, I try again. More droopiness. More naps. I keep telling myself that I have an excuse: I had a root canal yesterday, and prior to that I was hopped up on Vicodin (sp?). I have a good reason, right?

But I must carry on. Little children in India are learning the design programs that I use for work. One day they will take my job from me and only ask for $2 a day. This makes me think that I'm in the wrong business. (Actually, every time I pay the dog acupuncturist, I think I am in the wrong business.) I think I'm thinking about making a potential career change. (Or just running away from home.) In the past six months, I started realizing that I'm not 100% in love with what I do. Some days I'm not even reaching the 50% threshold of enjoyability. Then a funny thing happened. I took this class in school and we started talking about sustainability and corporate responsibility. From there I started reading about environmental damage and global warming, deforestation, chemical spills, plastic toxins, and so on. It really can mess with your head if you start thinking about it too much. That led me to the a-ha realization that as a graphic designer, I design materials that (get ready) people. throw. away. Ta-da! I make things that go from my computer, to a printer, to a mailbox, to a trashcan, to a landfill where it will sit for eternity or until space aliens discover our dumps and think they found a time capsule. Oh sure, some people hold onto this shite or recycle it, but for the most part, they toss it.

Then Paul Dolan came to speak in our class. Paul's at Mendocino Wine Company now, but he took Fetzer wines 100% organic when he was CEO. He spoke about organic wine growing, sustainability and lessening the footprint we leave behind. He also said that only 13% of Americans drink wine. This is a sad, sad little number. I am proud to call myself a member of that 13%. So I thought to myself, self, how can I be in the wine business? I love wine. I love organics. I love drinking wine. More importantly, I love thinking that I could make a difference in the world. Paul believes that if we can convert viticulture to organic and make money in the process, it will convert agriculture to organic, which will change the world. Most agriculture (and viticulture) is fertilized with petrochemical-based products. The pesticides and herbicides are toxic. We are pouring poisons into the earth without concern for the consequences. But what if we could increase the number of wine drinkers in this country to 15%? And a third of them drank organic wines? What would that look like? Wouldn't it be fun to try?

What if it wasn't wine? What if it was another sustainable product like biodegradable or compostable plastics. Or recycled products? Or renewable energies? Why can't I do something good for the planet and make money at the same time? Why am I limiting myself to an either/or situation?

My husband, of course, is alarmed. We staked our lives on my business. I quit my job and we've been living some lean years while we increased brand awareness and earned more business. I've got some projects coming up that could really put this company on the map. Maybe the way to go is to convert our company to a sustainable company. I could only use recycled paper. Print with soy-based inks. Do more electronic documents. I don't know if that is enough. I don't even know if that would satisfy me.

Oh, dog. What do I want to be when I grow up? I think I'll wait until I get through graduate school before I figure that out.

Zinsser would be insulted

William Zinsser wrote 'On Writing Well,' a little used book from my undergrad days. It's often been helpful for answering hard grammar and stylistic questions, but for the most part, it lives on my bookshelf collecting dust. Zinsser preaches word economy. Don't sugar coat it. Get it out. Be direct. Less is more.

This weekend I pulled it out again to use on a team paper. The paper was a cluster, as all team projects are, because the person who needed to get his part to me to edit waiting until Friday at 6 pm to send it. I offered to edit the entire paper, give it one voice and to correct any imperfections that needed correcting. Everyone else got me their sections on Tuesday. I had their parts mostly finished and was waiting on this past piece. What I got was, well, unexpected.

Let me first say that I know that I'm not the best writer in the world. I spell words wrong, I miss typos, I have dangling participles. But for the love of all that is holy, I am a great writer compared to some. This weekend I met that someone and his style of writing was crap.

Direct quote: "Some of the homes within a mile or two of Coors Field, a for profit business investment that has brought may benefits, working parents but no lock on the front door."

What. Is. That? It's not a sentence. It's not even a complete thought. Coors Field is a building. The Colorado Rockies are a business. (Not to mention, Coors Field was paid for by tax dollars.)

But this is just the beginning. After spending - not kidding - seven hours editing the five pages of poorly written, run on sentences, non-sequiturs and incomplete thoughts, with 10, count 'em, 10 different references to authors, I finally had something that I wasn't embarrassed to show in public. I cut the authors down to six. I deleted 90 percent of his writing and rewrote the lead and the end paragraph. I kept some random things that I thought he would want in there just to let him have some dignity.

His response? There are too many references to authors. It seemed like a name dropping competition. Mmkay? And I took out his "baby" of a topic, Coors Field, which he still referred to as a for profit business. And shouldn't we talk more about Denver in the readings instead of just showing we did the readings? I'm sorry, what was the name of the section again? Oh yes, "Impact of the Readings."

Oh, and don't forget that he is the only one who knows what the professor wants and clearly I just don't understand. This is the part where I bite my lip. I must refrain from telling him that I do understand what the professor wants or I wouldn't have received 100% on my papers when he only got 85%. I found out later that another team member had already told him what I got on my papers. Yet still he thinks he knows better.

It's no wonder that I dropped the gloves when he wrote the conclusion. These are not sentences, I said. You can't introduce new facts in a conclusion. You can't ask a question in a conclusion. You are concluding the paper, not starting a new section. No, you don't need a whole page for a conclusion. A paragraph will wrap it up. Conclude it. Or as Zinsser would say: Less is more. Cut out half and you're on the right track.

on self confidence

“In my experience, each of us has the potential for a renaissance, an age defined by a creative, purposeful and engaged life. It doesn’t matter whether the creative work we choose is painting, dance, fiction, poetry or music. What matters is pursuing it mindfully. How do we get from beginning some new activity to a personal renaissance? Learning what things stand in the way of our comfortably engaging in some leisure activity, and how to break down those roadblocks as we experience them provides the practice we need to deal with our more familiar stresses and fears. Once examined through this new lens, many of our “problems” fall by the roadside. We can, it turns out, pursue art for art’s sake and art for life’s sake, and it matters little what that art is. Any creative activity can have a powerful effect on our lives if we pursue it mindfully and recognize the ways in which old familiar fears and habits can be set aside to make room for the personal renaissance we seek.”

Ellen J. Langer, On Becoming An Artist.

I'm sure I'm not the only creative person in the world who feels guilty for pursuing my creative side. Note to self: get over it. Be creative. Be authentic. Be original. When I hide my light it only smothers me. Am I worried about making others feel insecure and small themselves? Maybe. But it's not my responsibility to lift up the entire world. I can only work on improving myself. Last night at happy hour, I tried talking to a woman who might be on my new team for this school competition. (the competition is like of like a Geek Off with other business schools and there's a prize for the winning team) It was like pulling teeth to get a conversation going. It was one of those one-sided conversations where I kept asking questions because she would only give one word answers and never ask me a question. Finally she said that maybe she shouldn't be on the team because she's not as competitive as I want her to be. Where did this come from? Before last night all I knew about her was that she was in my class and she laughs loudly. I responded that I was just trying to make conversation and get to know her. (Sorority conversation lesson #1: When you only have one or two things in common with someone, you pick one of the two talk about and try to build on that.) Am I too bold, too excited, too competitive? Maybe. But maybe, she is the one who is timid and scared. Do the timid sit around and wonder if their mousy non-actions have offended other people? Probably not. So why do I worry if trying to talk with someone with low self-esteem was somehow insensitive? Now I'm thinking of removing myself from the team because I don't want to 1) be the problem on a team, and 2) be on a team with someone who can't carry on a basic conversation. Both would prove to be painful and waste of my time. I don't want to hide my creativity, my passion and my enthusiasm just because one person can't handle self-confidence in others. The joke is that we are all insecure in some way. I just get past it by working on something as best I can. I have little patience for those who hide behind their insecurities and won't contribute because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Everyone has to contribute on a team. That's the point. We all have to play the game.

avoidance

I've avoided posting for over a month. Not because I have nothing to say, but most of it revolves around dog poop, tech support, school, work, husband, food, recycling. Yawn.

Now you get a post from me because I'm avoiding my paper, which is due tomorrow. It is only 1-2 pages. No biggie. It's a "writing for change" letter regarding some matter we are passionate about to someone who can theoretically do something about said matter. Yawn.

I'm also avoiding panic by writing this post. I want to panic because Sir Rockafeller turned 11 years old this Halloween and, well... you'd be a little stiff in the hind legs at 77, wouldn't you? Today's been a bad day, he's been miserable, his hind legs aren't working for him. This means no jumping, running, playing or general doggerness. Yelp.

Please don't panic. Please don't panic. I will call the vet first thing in the morning and they will give him miraculous drugs that will make his hind quarters feel like new again. A few days in the crate for a nap and he'll be fine. He'll be fine. He'll be fine. He has to be fine. I don't have it in me for anything else.

But my paper, lo! It is a fine piece of crap that I am writing this evening. I'm writing to the CEO of a quick-casual restaurant asking them to avoid plastics in their serving of dine-in and take-out foods. Plastics make their way into the waste stream and sometimes real streams. Once in the waste stream, they live in a landfill for the next 1,200,000 million years (give or take a billion). If they get into a real stream, they end up in the ocean, where the waves grind them down into tiny little pieces, much like sand on a beach. But this is a beach made up of grains of PS, PP, HDPE and other non-biodegradable plastics. (Don't forget the sun tan lotion and a cocktail with one of those festive little umbrellas.) I just did a whole book report on Alen Weisman's The World Without Us and learned these scary little facts. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But read the book because it will change the way you look at grocery shopping, driving a car and eating anything that could have come in contact with the air, soil or water.

No more avoiding, I need to complete this masterpiece of shite and finish reading 237 pages for class tomorrow night. Yawn.