Faith manages, laziness sits on the couch
I have a terrible weakness: I am lazy. There are things I long to change, but when it comes to getting off my butt and changing them, I meet the resistance of my own laziness. I am a world-class procrastinator, and will take any chance to put off actually doing something. My job is a case in point. I suppose I should be fighting harder for it, but the fact is I've had some enjoyable days being able to freely explore any damned topic that interested me on the net, while getting paid for it. Last year when I had my surgery, I took the entire six weeks of leave I was due. I could have gone back two weeks earlier, but I knew I could take two more weeks to recover, not working, sitting on my couch watching Babylon 5 and getting paid, and so I took advantage of the situation. True, I was still in some pain and discomfort and had mornings of intense pain, but I could have pushed it, I just chose not to. This week, another case in point. I should be out on the somewhat icy roads, going to work, but what's the point? I don't have anything to do there. So I'm using the excuse that the roads are still bad and I don't want to drive on them, to stay home another day.
I've been screwing around, not studying for my GRE, either. Secretly I believe that I am not going to be able to go to grad school, for the same old reason - money - and so I drag my feet. I don't have much more to do to complete my application. The first part, the application, transcripts, processing fee and recommendations, are done and ready to be mailed this week. The only things I have left are putting together 10 pages of writing samples, writing an essay explaining my career goals and what I hope to get out of the degree, studying for the GRE, and taking the GRE. I've decided to get off my butt today, and start studying. It's probably going to be another month before I can afford to pay for it anyway, which will give me the time. This is the third time that I have attempted to get a grad school application together. The first time, right after college, I got it done, and was accepted, but I couldn't afford to go. I was offered a $1000 scholarship against $36000 of tuition, and was, at the time, making about $9k a year against $14k of undergraduate loans, so it wasn't going to happen. I was afraid to get into deeper debt - good thing, to, because it did get considerably worse before it ever got better, and it's still not much better. The second time, I was putting one together for the U of Chicago writing program, but chickened out. I told myself I didn't have enough writing samples to put together. I probably still don't. I probably won't get into the program at NC State, and I have no idea how we can afford it if I do. I filled out my FAFSA online yesterday, and they estimated that I could pay $10k for my education. Ha! The program's not that expensive - $4 or $5k. I'd like to take the writing classes as well as get a Mac and finish the courses I've planned to take through Productivity Point on website design and development. I think I could put a good career together combining them, and the total cost (including the computer) is going to be about $10k, which we sure don't have right now. Most of my brain is telling me not to even bother. But the little voice, it says to move on and keep trying, keep plugging, keep giving a damn. So I am. I'm going to make myself do something every day that has to do with my future. It's the only way I'm going to get out of my present, anyway.
Seeing Clearly, Staying Calm
It has become blindingly apparent -- a la a white hot light -- that my company has no use for me. This, in any other circumstance, would probably terrify me. However, here I am, invisible. It appears that I can go on being invisible for some time, as I have managed six months now of almost complete invisibility, marked by occasional instances of being given stay-busy projects. One would think they wanted me to stick around for. . .something. Alas, no one knows what it is.
In the six months since my boss left the company to satisfy his desire for world domination through business development, off to run what amounts to his own company, although it's a new division of his previous employer, I have been passed around to two different supervisors. Management has spent this time "straightening sales out." Since I've been here (May 2001), the sales team and what they do (or, mostly, do not) get accomplished has been the subject of endless debate and constant shuffling of the team. A few weeks ago, it was announced that the sales team is right back to the way it was when I got here. I have gotten tired of asking what that means for marketing, and who my new boss is/will be, and what my role will be. Now I'm working on one busy project, which so far doesn't keep me very busy. This is my day: read email, play online games, visit my blog, perhaps post, surf, play online games, and take an online course if I can. One and one-half days per week, I am engaged in preparing for or working at on-site VMI stocking at one of our client's plants near Winston-Salem. I've also been inputting data coming in from our customer service survey. Next week I will present the results in a half-hour meeting, and then I will be working on completely re-designing the CRM system that I put together last year for my old boss. This is my work day!
I'm not sure what I've done to garner this kind of treatment. I suppose I'm the quiet type, and out of sound, out of mind? I'm not really sure, but the results are humiliating and depressing. I'm supposed to be the Marketing Analyst, but I don't analyze anything anymore and I don't market anything anymore. Our website hasn't had new content on it in four months, I haven't sent out an email newsletter in seven months, and I haven't researched a company in two months for any reason whatsoever. In the interim, sales has been working on new business from existing clients that happened to fall into our laps, making our numbers go up, but it's not quite real as most of those projects won't bill for a few more months. There is no new business. We've had two new major clients this year. Two. I'm waiting for someone to tell me that they are shocked we're not doing any marketing. But the sad fact is, most companies only think about initiating marketing efforts when they either have money to spend, or are desperate. Since new projects have been keeping sales busy, the desperation hasn't hit yet. But two new major players are expanding in our immediate area, including one that is advertising $50k base salaries for label sales people. How much longer will it be before they get desperate again? I can only hope, at least as long as it takes for me to get the flock out of here.
Attune to the inner voice
This weekend, HBO channels started a run of Jane Campion's The Piano. One of my favorite movies, the film reveals more of itself to me upon every viewing. Watching it this past Sunday began an inner meditation on the subject of voice.
Ada is mute, communicating to other people via a sign language only she and her daughter understand. Her daughter serves as her precocious translator, unable to communicate Ada's intentions in anything other than an demanding, pre-adolescent wheedle that can't possibly transmit adult intentions and subtext. Ada's true voice, however, speaks only with the aid of her piano. Playing it, her voice wanders and meanders within a dense, darkening forest of desires repressed. I think of other instrumentalists and writers who speak with what some might perceive as a second voice, but which I believe is the true representation of the inner voice. Anyone who has gone to a musical concert and found themselves profoundly moved, such that it feels as if there has been a permanent change in one's insides, must understand what I mean.
It's quite easy to discover that some of the most profound artists are not given to speech-making: stumbling acceptance speeches at the Oscars, Van Gogh's suicide attempts, and Miles Davis' primeval grunting responses to would-be interviewers immediately spring to my mind. As I conjure up a list of just those acting artists I admire, I realize they don't give much press: Billy Crudup, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Sean Penn, and Robert De Niro are a few who come to mind who have articles written about them, often without their input at all. Jack Nicholson is famous for refusing to do press. Although we see him as a gregarious man, I think his reputation in life is more a reaction to his keeping quite, letting the occasional smirk or twitch of the eyebrow lead the interviewer where he will. I imagine, although I'll never know of course, that we might be surprised to know him in real life, expecting some of his more forceful (wait, they're all forceful, aren't they? never mind . . .) characters to issue forth. You know whom I'm talking about. Not just Jack, but those countless unnamed character actors whose performances are indelibly printed upon our psyche, whose names we barely know at all.
I myself can admit that my truest voice is not the one I speak with, but the one I write with. This voice transmits through my hands, via the pen or the keyboard, and flows easily, marching in parallel step with the voice in my head. When I write, I feel my voice speaking the words as I hear them in my head. Not so when I actually speak. Oftentimes I feel a profound disconnect between what I am saying in my mind and what I am speaking with my teeth, tongue, palate, and vocal cords. Although as I grow older my speech gets closer to my true voice, my speech is halting and, some have said, considered carefully. To me the contrast between the two is so profound, I feel it better on occasion not to speak at all, rather than be misunderstood. I've had conversations that I wish could just slow down long enough for the person to wait for me to write my responses rather than saying them; obviously not a feasible process. It does explain why I've had better conversations with friends online or via correspondence than on the phone. That's where my voice is most at home.
Someone, I believe it was Henry Miller, said that one is only a true writer if one is compelled to write even in the complete absence of any reward, glory, fame, or love. In other words, if one would still write when there was nothing to be gained from it, then one is a writer. Lately my inner voice has been intruding so much that I've taken to carrying a spiral notebook around with me everywhere, in case something demands to come out. Sometimes it speaks in the middle of the night. It has been silent for a long, long time - almost a decade, I would say. But upon taking up my poetic pen again, I find my voice stronger and surer than ever. Am I a writer yet?
Love is the Vein of Gold in the Rock
Richard and I have been having a hard time lately, financially. Isn't everyone? Some problems we've had sometimes seem to grow multiple arms and heads overnight. Sometimes it seems as if those monsters will never be tamed. We go one step forward and two steps back. In other words, any progress we make seems to take us backwards. We have some big dreams right now. Getting married in Vegas, and buying a house. These are expensive dreams, too. It's been hard.
Buying a house is mostly my dream. I think Richard would be perfectly content to stay in our apartment forever, even though we need more space. He truly doesn't need much. But I need to know that the roof over my head is MY roof. It's not just some nesting instinct taking over because I'm creeping closer to 40, either. I've never lived in a house that belonged to me.
I know nothing is permanent, and all of life is change. But I want a place that I've paid for, that I know belongs to me and will still belong to me for quite some time. It's not just the great American dream. It means one has a place in the world where one will always belong. For all the places I've been, no where has ever been home. The closest place, Asheville, is only home to bad memories and the desperate, raging urge to go on with my . . . destiny, or journey, or whatever. When I'm there, I can only feel the familiar ache of entrapment in a nightmare that my mother was too weak to step out of. As beautiful as it is, it will never be my home. Wolfe understand that, obviously, even though Asheville haunted his work. The places where you do most of your growing-up; those places serve as the cage you must break free of, in order to grow. Asheville was one of those places for me; Chicago, too.
However, even if that dream never comes true, it doesn't matter, because Richard is my home. He fears losing me. But he doesn't know I've always been his. It just took me a long, long time to find him. Our love is the vein of gold, buried deep in the rock of our lives, that could only be evidenced if it was broken open. It's very, very deep, and I'm not very good at bringing it to the surface to show it to him. But I swear, it's a part of me now, forever.
Bits and Pieces
Things I'm happy about:
Richard loves me; Penny loves me, too; we'll be ordering the deluxe edition of The Two Towers very soon, so I can spend the next year watching it a million times; the first season of MI-5 is now available on DVD; and the Carolina Panthers are one game away from the Super Bowl!
It's the little things in life that make life worth living. Of course, a perfect pass into an open field resulting in a rock-solid catch, leading to a victory trot into the end zone, after a nail-biting quarter of overtime in which it seemed neither team wanted to even win, also helps a bit.
