Payday!

Hey, I got my first post-layoff paycheck! That's some fun stuff! It's a real check, signed by a real person -- not a direct deposit with online notification. I won't be heading to Aruba with it, but I must say, I recall making every dollar of that check. It's solid.

I'll be offline for a few days, pursuing a venture or two. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Or amuse yourselves here or here or here.
Cheers.

fine dining

One advantage of being laid-off is that often I can share breakfast with Joe, who works from home. We like to arrange a tasty array of fruit, carbs and protein a la the June Taylor Dancers. We pour some fresh Caffe Verona and open up the newspaper. Sips and crunches are overlaid with "hmmms" and "grrrs" as the victuals and caffeine steadily power our brains. We ponder a story placement or length. We consider a photo. I start reading a story aloud. Joe, patiently, puts down the score sheet and listens, then nods, maybe laughs or snorts, as appropriate. We talk about the story. Then we go back to perusing the paper some more. We look up our horoscope and decide whether it's true or bogus, depending on whether we like the prescribed future.
Joe asks me what my day looks like. I tell him. He ponders, offers an idea. We riff on it until it blooms a bit more. I ask Joe about his plans. He tells me. I offer an idea. We riff on it until it blooms a bit more.
Then we clear away the dish and cups and head to our respective desks to work.
Our breakfast together shapes our ideas and our day.

And it's lots nicer than the granola bar and go-cup on the old morning commute.

say what?

The other day a woman came into the knit shop with a quest. She had a lovely, lacy shawl that her sister had made 50 years ago after their aunt showed her how to knit. This woman had spent countless hours poring over knit pattern books trying to find the pattern so that she could make another. She had taken it to her knit group and everyone had studied it, but couldn't decipher the pattern. Could I help her?
I took the shawl and studied the pattern -- loopy and airy, it looked something like knit, but not quite.
"This is crochet," I told her.
No, no, it's knitted, she insisted. Her sister knitted it.
I selected a ball of yarn similar in weight to the shawl, then found a crochet hook. I began duplicating the pattern.
Another woman who works in the shop came over to study the shawl. "Oh, that's knitted," she said.
"It is knitted," the woman said. "She thinks it's crocheted."
They both looked at me. I held out my crocheted swatch.
They stared, mouths open.
"That's it!" said my fellow shop worker.
"Hmmm," said the shawl woman. She took the swatch and studied it.
"I studied books and books of patterns," she said. "I couldn't find it. My sister said she knitted it."
She was seeking an answer, and she found it.
It just wasn't the answer she expected.

help! i need somebody ...

Hey, it snowed today! These snowflakes are actually vintage flakes, from Denver last winter. The flakes today were elusive -- here & gone.

I'm taking a little break from homework to get a little thing off my mind.
People ask me for help. This is fine -- good, even. I'm all about helping people. But there are two kinds of help I'm not keen on: Resistance to help and theft help (those aren't the best names -- I'm a bit at a loss here. Bear with me.)
The first kind of help has to do with employment advice. Folks ask me to help them find employment (I know, I know -- I'm laid off! Why ask me?). But actually I can help them -- except that right after they ask for help, they tell me all the things they're not interested in doing.
Well, I can't help there. Because my approach is this: If a door is open, walk through it. You don't know what lies through that door, and you can't afford to dismiss it without looking. It's like "Let's Make a Deal," where you have to trade in your winnings for something behind one of three doors -- it might be a bright shiny car or it might be a donkey or some other unsavory thing. Except in this case, if you've been laid off, you have nothing to lose. If there's a donkey on the other side of the door, and your mission in life does not include having a donkey, then you just say, "No, thanks." Nothing lost.
I offer this advice, then step away. I don't have time to persuade people of the advantages of this approach. They can do it or not. They can continue to pursue a dream job that may or may not exist right now, or they can take opportunities that come their way.
Tomorrow (well, today), I am walking through a door that opened. I don't actually have a chance to do the thing behind the door right away, because I have some other commitments. But I didn't say no. I said, "I have some other commitments, so I won't be able to work for you. But I'm really interested in finding out more about what you're doing. Can I come anyway?" And they said yes.
So I'll go and I'll learn and I have every reason to believe that I will gain from the experience. Learn what you can and don't say no. That is the gift of being laid off; you have time to explore. And, for me, maybe later the knowledge that I gain and the people that I meet will become a larger part of my life. And if not, I haven't lost anything but a few hours.
I am, as regular readers of this blog know, working in a yarn shop two days a week. This is a good thing; it is moving me forward in ways I can't explain quite yet. This door opened almost immediately upon my layoff. I walked through it. I have a PhD in literature and rhetoric. I could be doing other things. But this is a thing that moves me forward while allowing me time to pursue other endeavors. And I have learned a lot -- things I can learn only by working in a yarn shop.
And the yarn shop brought me to the other kind of help I'm not willing to give. Someone came in to ask for advice on a pattern I've been working on. I was working on it in the shop, so the person knew I was familiar with it. This pattern does not belong to me; it belongs to the designer who developed it and who sold it to a magazine that now sells it online. It has a trick or two that I'm willing to help a crocheter work through. But it quickly became clear that she wanted me not to tell her how to get past a tricky spot, but to tell her how to do the whole thing. I can't do that. I told her how to get it online, but then she told me why that wouldn't work for her. That was the end of the help I could offer.
Joe and I met with our financial adviser today. She seemed surprised that we weren't more stressed about the fact that I don't have regular employment. Well, here's how it is: We can do our work and be stressed or we can just do our work. Stress is counter-productive. I have my moments (btw, the picture on that post is of the bit of crocheting that I'm talking about above). But they are fleeting. Mostly, I focus on things that are moving me forward, and I have faith that one or all of them will pay off in time.
Faith is good. Nurturing it is the help that people need.

an abundance

Look! Every leaf from every tree all of a sudden between today and yesterday! Whoosh!
That's how it's been with me and job possibilities. They are raining upon me. It is an abundance and makes me want to dance about -- though the ground is slippery and I have to watch that I don't take a tumble. My original post-layoff plans are still simmering as well, and I'm still taking that bird-by-bird approach.
There is one job that I especially would like to do -- it promises to be engaging and challenging and employ many of the things that I love to do, as well as allowing me to learn new things. And lest you think it's all about me, I feel I can do good things for both the company and its consumers. The job is kin to this :


an autumn rose blooming amid the tumbling leaves. And I'm ready to plunge right into it..



or maybe this metaphor is better:


(and, yes, I took all but the rose picture today -- crazy nature. I took the rose picture Wednesday, but it's still blooming ...)

not my type

I met a buyout buddy last week for lunch, to talk over life after being laid off. He was about to head out for the last-day canvassing before the election. After Tuesday, though, he was taking a break from the newspaper. He's found that he's still too wrapped up in it -- he cares what's happening with it, and it stresses him. So he's taking a break until he can read it without caring about the story behind the story.
I'm having the same issues. I can see the nips and tucks and desperate measures playing out on the pages. I can see work that is undone or overdone. I can see typos and missteps and odd judgment calls. It's hard not to care, after all those years.
It is part of the newspaper's job to engage readers, to make them shout at the page, write letters to the editor, engage in a dialog.
That's not what's happening with us. We care too much about the type itself on the page, how it got there, why it is where it is.
We need to let go. This is probably some step in the grieving/ recovery process. We need to fully separate. Then maybe we can engage again, on a different level.

having a ball

Hey, look at that! I had to make three lame things before I made that (ok, technically speaking, I didn't have to make three lame things before I made that -- it just happened that way.) This is a clear ornament wrapped in sparkly yarn crocheted into a lacy snowflake pattern. I made it up -- not the concept, just this particular wrap. There are books of crocheted ornament covers -- many in questionable colors (think royal blue and that yellow that appliances used to come in). I wanted a pretty simple, pretty dazzling design, one that I could teach to others who have minimal crochet experience.
It takes a while to develop something simple. I kept trying to get to the end before it was ready. Finally, I let it ease into itself, stretching around the glass. Once, I let it go too far, and I had to ratchet it back again. Easy-like, of course. That's real glass.
And then, it was done. Fits perfectly, like I'd planned it that way. So what if the most interesting part is on the bottom. So what if I have little kinks in my back -- kind of like those little chains in the crochet. It's something I've been meaning to do and it's done. And tomorrow I might just do another.

autumn

The changing of the leaves has brought me to ponder this turning of the season in my own life (what? you think I should take up Hallmark-card writing?) But really, how can one avoid thinking about it? We are upon a brand new political season, one that promises hope after a long, hard winter -- though there will necessarily be some turning of leaves there as well. It will be a while before spring arrives.
A friend sent an essay on Autumn from "Let Your Life Speak" by Parker Palmer, who writes: "In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time -- how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the 'road closed' sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown."
Yes, all that -- and the aching beauty of dying in the dye of the leaves leaving.

casting on

So, today at the knit shop someone came in for help getting her scarf started again. She had end-stitch issues that resulted in a snarly mess of something that wasn't a scarf. So we started over. And for the life of me, I could not remember how to cast on. I was completely baffled by it. I knew there was a way to loop the yarn onto the needle. I'd done it a million times. But it wasn't happening. Fortunately, a customer was on hand to take over. She showed the long-tail method, with a little ditty involving going around and behind and through the hole. It worked for both teacher and student. As for me, I can't even recall the ditty right now.
This is what happens when the mind is dazzled by details. Basic information goes out some other hole.
The shop is very busy. In the past couple of days, several people have left a lot of money at the store, in exchange for balls and skeins of lovely, sparkly, fun fiber. Hardly any practical stuff. Some are for presents. Some are presents for the knitter herself (we had one fellow come in -- he was looking for a copy of "Naughty Knits" for his girlfriend). Several have come in to learn to knit (don't ask me! I can't even cast on!), several to relearn after several years away from the craft. The slumping economy is not evident in the knit shop. Some are openly celebrating the election with good gifts for themselves and others. At least one was wallowing in perimenopausal self-nurturing (we support this, keeping the AC low and the mood high). A blind woman came in to see what bright colors she could gather, to make hats to donate to others.
All good. All dazzling. All a new kind of challenge, staying up & alert for eight hours.
So some things slip through the hole. They come back.
I remembered, later, how to cast on. And I cast on 100 stitches to start a new project. The picture there does it no justice -- it's babykid mohair in a lovely moss green. I have 58.5 inches to go.

st-st-stress

Like that thing? It's cool.
I had to do & redo it three times. I'm OK with that.
Yesterday, I would not have been OK with that. Yesterday, even the ding of incoming mail was enough to set me off. Today, not so much.
Stress is the collision of expectation with reality. Yesterday, I expected to be able to do a set amount of work in a given time. And the reality was that the time had to be spent differently. It took me a little while to recover from the collision and adapt to reality. Once I did, life was better.
And today, I was able to do that work. And I was able to do and redo this thing three times.
And did I say: I'm OK with that.

write now

I find I get crabby if I go a day without writing. I've been doing a lot of thinking, but two days at the knit shop, followed by a day of frolicking with the children, kept me from sitting down and actually writing. And, now that I'm here, I find that there's not much to share writing-wise. I had to abandon my fiction-writing plans for a time and my nonfiction is off-blog right now.
Much of my work this week was meetings to set up ventures. This is good. But it's not writing.
Here we go: Let me write to you about a remarkable woman named Karolyn Cleveland. I went to her memorial service on Wednesday. She was 97 and sharp as a tack -- sharper. She was felled by pneumonia which came quite suddenly and took her very quickly.
Karolyn called me last year, to talk crafts. I met her at her new home, a graduated-care facility. She had her own apartment. Her son, who had had an aneurysm, was in skilled nursing at the same facility. Her daughter-in-law, who also had had an aneurysm, was in assisted care. Karolyn visited both daily. She made sure that her friends got out of their rooms at least once a day. She logged miles down the hallways each day. She reminded younger friends of things they let slip -- not by telling them the correct answer, but by encouraging them to stretch their own memories to come up with the answer.
Karolyn drove a car into her 80s. But when her grandson totaled her car, she decided she didn't need to replace it.
When a fiber friend of mine moved to the same facility, I told her to be sure to look up Karolyn Cleveland. My friend moved in on Monday, and Karolyn introduced herself to her on Tuesday. They enjoyed several fine adventures during the few months they were friends.
Karolyn and I had some good conversations about knitting and about charity crafting. She told me once that the folks around her had amazing stories -- but too often she didn't learn them until after they died. Here is the amazing story of Karolyn Meyer Cleveland's life. And here is another.
Thank you, Karolyn, for sharing yourself with me. I'm sorry we didn't have that last conversation. I'll catch up with you later.

holy cannoli!

Working like mad! All fun stuff, but mucho work nonetheless. Is being laid-off supposed to be like this? I haven't sent out one resume, but I have work to do every minute of the day. And some of it pays!
Details TK.

4:30-6:30

For years, the hours of 4:30 to 6:30 looked like this:

4:30: Notice the time. Look at the tasks left to do. Determine what can be done in one hour and madly go about doing them.
5:30: Notice the time. Look at the tasks left to do. Pick one that must be done. Do it.
5:45: Jump up from chair like it's on fire. Log off, swearing at the computer that YES, I am SURE I want to log off.
5:47-6: Drive like mad across town.
6: Sign child out of after-school just under the wire.
6-6:30 Navigate after-work traffic, listen to tale of daughter's day.
6:30 Arrive home, think about dinner. Think about take-out.

Now it looks like this:
4:30 arrive home with daughter, who now takes the bus to a nearby express stop.
4:30-6:30 Afternoon light moves across the living room as I crochet and my daughter does her homework. My stepdaughter works quietly in her room. My son practices trumpet not-so-quietly downstairs. My husband works in his office. My daughter and son go out to play. I think about dinner, crochet one more row. I go to the kitchen, get some cooking started. I crochet some more, cook some more. We all sit down to dinner together.

So nice.
And, tonight, afterward, we did this.

busy!

Today, I multitasked: I coordinated some volunteer work for a nonprofit board I'm on. I finished up my revisions and sent a chapter in (yay!). I did some online research for another potential job. I coordinated books and projects for a book event tomorrow night. I emailed with friends. I emailed with work contacts. I did the round of pick-ups from three schools and ferried a child to the orthodontist. I made dinner. I crocheted. I even took a little nap.
Huh, not bad. Until I wrote all that down, I didn't feel like I got much accomplished today.
I did not take a spin on my Trikke or go for a walk. Still trying to fit that in (it's too easy to put that off, even though I always feel better afterward. It's on the list for tomorrow, between some errands and writing and a trip to the dentist).
I did not do any fiction writing. But there may still be time tonight ...

underground

Good golly. Friday was stocking day at the yarn shop. By the end of the day, I was done, done, done. Saturday, I didn't need to see anyone or talk to anyone, so I didn't. I had the house to myself. So for the next 20 hours, I tidied up, I knitted, I read (a terrible book -- it's an ARC of a new book by a very popular writer who is not a very good writer. It's the only thing I did on Saturday that I was obligated to do and it's done). On Sunday, I recovered from my 20 hours of work. And I wrote -- revised, really. I'll write fresh stuff tomorrow.
So, there you have it. Not very exciting. I'll try for exciting tomorrow.
(And lest this sound depressing, I just want to note that I'm not depressed. In fact, I took a moment or two today to glory in the fact that I could just read, tidy, knit for 20 hours. And I didn't have to work at the newspaper tonight. I did my homework. And now I'm going to bed.)

"It's my first day"

Retail ain't for sissies.
To boost my income, as well as my knowledge base, I am working in a knit shop two days a week. The knitting part I know; the retail part I'm a bit rusty on. I haven't worked a cash register since I worked in a shoe store in college -- and back in the day, we pushed buttons and the machine made a ringing sound. The whole computer check-out thing is fine, but the swiping of cards & doling out of correct change is a different thing. It's interesting to broaden one's skill set this far into one's working life. And interesting to say about a hundred times, "Yes, thanks for your patience. It's my first day."
And also: At the newspaper, I sat on my tuckus all day long. At the shop, I stand. All day long. Occasionally, I sit to help a customer with a knitting question, but mostly I stand, stoop, reach, wind (yarn, that is), and generally am up and about. I don't eat, because there's not really time.
I'm actually the go-to crochet person in the shop, what with the book and all. I'll be teaching a few crochet classes a bit later.
But for now, I'm going to go put my feet up.

wordsmithing

Today was a talking and meeting and connecting day. And also some writing. I write something everyday. This feels very, very good. It is like connecting with a part of myself that has been long dormant, trying to find its way out. I wrote some for the newspaper, but the buckets of other work got in the way. One morning, I even got in trouble with the boss for writing. Now, my boss loves it when I write.
Some days, I write a lot. Some days, not so much. But every day I'm thinking about writing and shaping what I've already written. The other night, I logged on to change jsut one word. It was the right word.
Today's new words were the bare bones of a book. Another book! I have five book ideas right now. I have to go back and reread the "bird by bird" entry to remind myself that I can't get down all the words at once. Every bit of drafting, revising and proofing moves the work -- this very delightful work -- forward.

bird by bird

Anne Lamott wrote a fabulous book on writing called Bird by Bird. The title comes from a story about her brother, who had a report due on birds the next day. He despaired as to how he would complete it in time. Their father suggested that he just take it "bird by bird."
I have taken this advice to heart beyond writing, as Lamott herself suggests in the subtitle, "Some Instructions on Writing and Life." I have numerous plans, much I want to do right now already, OK, yesterday would have been better. I can't do it all at once. And the first task I set out for myself (a book proposal), I completed before the layoff even and it was met with enthusiasm, with a request for a follow-up sample. As with all things (and most especially home-improvement projects), everything takes longer than one might hope. I am writing this forthwith, and moving some other projects along in the process. They will all take time. Longer than I might hope. But all I can do is one bird at a time.
To remind myself, I have knitted a bird (the pattern is in Folk Hats. The wee fellow hangs over my desk, where -- when I glance up in moments of overwhelming so-much-to-do-ness -- I can see it.
Today: I spent lots of time with the kids; I revised my chapter; I threaded about 30 stitch markers. These things all move me toward tomorrow.
Bird by bird.

brisk

Autumn arrived in a hurry today. The dog was particularly animated, infusing all of us with an energy we didn't realize was lurking below the surface. There's a "got to do something NOW" quality to the air, what with the election signs dotting the lawns between the flutterings of ghosts in the trees. Change is nigh.
A rather slender Saturday paper provided reports on deep-fried mac 'n cheese and pecan pie at the State Fair. Page 3A had a picture of Obama and McCain, nicely balanced. Carnivorous plants ate up the front of the Home & Garden section.
The pool is officially closed. We're holding off on turning on the heat. It could be a cold winter.

terminated

A friend sent an email:

We were talking with a couple who are journalists for the Idaho Stateman (another McClatchy paper). We had several conversations about the state of the newspaper business. In fact, both of them were in the process of re-tooling just to stay employed at the paper. The husband moved into management to head up the online division. The stresses they operate under would probably sound familiar.

Like everyone else, I worry about the consolidation of the newspaper business into basically three hands: McClatchy and Murdoch and Sam Zell. For over a century, Mencken-era journalism was dependent on the nobless oblige of the wealthy families that owned and operated this country's newspapers (Bancroft's, Graham's, Sulzberger's, and their counterparts at the local level). Local ownership sold out years ago, and now we are beginning to see the same thing at the national dailies (e.g., Bancroft's selling their stake in the Wall Street Journal to Murdoch). Let us all hope for the sake of the country and the 1st amendment that the Sulzberger's do not sell off the NY Times.

Jeffrey Brown (NewsHour) recently did several pieces on the state of the newspaper business.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june07/media_01-01.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june08/pittsburgh_04-18.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june08/latimes_01-21.html

Check out the links. Let me know what you think.
Here's what I think:

Thanks for the links. These are fascinating conversations. What's most fascinating to me is that they don't happen in the newsroom. There's not enough time. Journalism is really vital to our democracy. When countries go over to dictatorships, the first thing the do is squelch the media. Journalists keep politicians accountable for their actions.
What makes journalism strong is the believability of their stories. The people who ensure that strength, that truth, are the editors. Inexplicably, newspapers are killing off editors. Even if they go to an online venue, without editors, their product will erode.
I got my termination papers today (that's what it said: "terminated.") The reason given was "position eliminated." My job title when I left was copy editor. I was also a section editor and a columnist (two columns, actually). My books editor position will not be officially replaced. My copy editor position was spread over four part-time and/or temporary copy editors.
The wealthy families actually gave the journalists far greater freedom than the big companies do. The big companies are ad-driven. They run newspapers like they'd run a widget factory. The wealthy families didn't need to be ad-driven. They were truth-driven. Other newspapers gave journalists an edge of competition; with the mergers, there is no compelling drive to get the story. And with reduced staff, their jobs tend to focus on reporting news, with very little room to investigate news.
Yes, it's a very dangerous situation.

I'm going now to brush up my short story for a fiction contest. Less dangerous.