I am fortunate to have a job that can be done remotely. I am also fortunate to get paid for doing what I'm gifted to do, work that on most days satisfies me. These working conditions place me with the elite of the world. I have a job; I am fairly compensated; I receive good benefits; I actually enjoy the work. And sometimes I get to work from home.
So if you ever hear me bitching about work, do not hesitate to remind me of my privilege.
I would feel guilty about working from home, except that I've been doing this work for about twenty-four years, and I have paid my dues. For more than seven years, in the beginning of my career, I commuted 3-5 hours every day. In those days I also took in freelance assignments, just to pay the bills. Also, I was beginning a writing career, and I could not pass up any opportunity to get my work out there. So I wrote or edited all the time. On the train. On the weekends. Late at night or early in the morning. On vacation. The laptop came along on Christmas break, no matter whose family we visited, because there was always some deadline pressing.
Still there are deadlines pressing. Still I take writing and speaking gigs, not so much to pay the bills but to finance home improvements and infrequent vacations. I will probably die at my editorial desk. I am a member of the working, shrinking middle class, and many of us must put off retirement longer than we imagined back in our twenties. I don't point this out to receive any sympathy; but such realities give me good reason to enjoy whatever privileges I can.
And on a day like today, when there was a morning physical therapy appointment down the road, and when my one task was to get a file edited ASAP, it makes good sense to save an hour or two of commuting time by moving my office to the sitting room or back porch. Also, when I'm not in the office, the only interruptions are those important enough to merit someone calling me on the landline. E-mail is the same as always, but no one steps inside my cube for an ad hoc discussion. Some days, other human beings are the biggest distractions. At home, the only other human is my husband, who is, like me, an introvert and spends most of the day messing around with photos on the computer downstairs. We say hello three or four times, maybe have lunch together.
Cats are allowed to interrupt me because they have magical powers and I never turn down the opportunity to stroke soft fur while gazing into eyes that pretend to adore me. If I lose a few minutes every hour because a feline summons me, I choose to think of these not as interruptions but little rejuvenations. Pity we can't have an office cat or two.
I also think it helpful to have a few household tasks scattered through the workday. They get me out of the chair and allow my brain to reboot. Nice not to have to haul food on the train, too. When I leave the house for work, I have automatically begun a twelve-hour day, given commuting time plus the inevitable errand thrown in because my train is within walking distance of Walgreens or my dentist or the gym. So every day I go to the office, I pack for a full day--workout clothes, lunch, reading for the train, work materials, canvas grocery bag . . . Every evening I spend half an hour planning the next day's packing. Every morning I embark upon a mini-pilgrimage.
Today, no pilgrimage, just a candle on the little table next to the teapot. Today I am stationary except for a brief trip to the garden for a handful of herbs--another advantage to a day working from home is that I can cook dinner, something I hardly ever do anymore.
See, even when I don't work from home, I'm working most of the time, because my work happens mainly in thought and phrase, and this stuff never leaves me alone completely. I will be brushing my teeth while trying to solve some copyediting riddle; sautéing onions while dissecting a new manuscript into its main parts. I try to leave work at the office, but a good story about the new pope hums in my mind long after the file is saved and closed for the day. An author's Facebook post reels me in, because, in my world, so many authors become friends. This is the kind of work that a person is quite fortunate to take home with her.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
A Case for an Old Western
I have discovered that the old series Wagon Train is on a cable channel on Saturdays. When I can, I tune in. I expected to be embarrassed to see a show I loved so much as a kid. Sometimes I watch a random episode of something I watched faithfully years ago, and I sit there and blush at how lame the show is, and did I really enjoy watching it so much?
But I'm stuck on Wagon Train all over again. Yes, the scripts could be corny and the plots melodramatic. But the stories themselves were entirely character driven, and as a novelist I find this satisfying and fascinating. Each episode is (usually) named for the character whose story will unfold. And every episode has a different main character--someone who is traveling on the wagon train. As a vehicle (pun intended) for stories, a wagon train was perfect. You had a wagon master and his crew, who remained constant; often their conversations opened up the main character's story and interpreted it. But the people around that core group changed constantly because every trip was populated by a different set of people traveling across the country.
The plots, almost without exception, are built from the ground up on characterization. So each episode--and those episodes ran an hour and a half!--explores the character's past, personality, situation, conflict, and choices. It doesn't hurt, either, that a wagon train represents journey, unknown future, process, loss, relationships, hope, and faith. People who traversed the West in such fashion were living on the edge in many ways--leaving behind one life for another, unknown one, taking huge risks, building tentative alliances for the sake of survival. So there is never a lack of conflict; fresh plots spring up all over the place because the life of every person on this trip is both precious and precarious.
I'm sure I love this show now partly because I loved it when I was young and living in a region that had been traversed by many wagon trains a century before. My grandmother's grandmother on her mother's side never knew her true last name. She and her brother were traveling by covered wagon with their parents, and for some reason the parents left the children with a family living in the general vicinity of my home town. The parents never returned, and the children took the name of the family who took them in. Such things happened when people made long unpredictable journeys. Families disintegrated in the face of illness, accidents on the trail, sudden loss and poverty, and death at odd times and places. It was a dangerous thing to seek a new life across the known world.
Wagon Train honors the great mosaic of stories that formed during a particular era of this country. It romanticizes an existence that was probably more exhaustion and drudgery than drama. But we forgive such license because it's not the exhaustion or drudgery that interests us. It's the grit, the grace and the hope. And it's easier to receive stories that are shined up a bit. I doubt that any scout was ever as beautiful and clean-shaven and downright sexy as Cooper Smith. But I enjoy tagging along behind him for ninety minutes, trying to experience history in his steps and see the landscape through his eyes.
But I'm stuck on Wagon Train all over again. Yes, the scripts could be corny and the plots melodramatic. But the stories themselves were entirely character driven, and as a novelist I find this satisfying and fascinating. Each episode is (usually) named for the character whose story will unfold. And every episode has a different main character--someone who is traveling on the wagon train. As a vehicle (pun intended) for stories, a wagon train was perfect. You had a wagon master and his crew, who remained constant; often their conversations opened up the main character's story and interpreted it. But the people around that core group changed constantly because every trip was populated by a different set of people traveling across the country.
The plots, almost without exception, are built from the ground up on characterization. So each episode--and those episodes ran an hour and a half!--explores the character's past, personality, situation, conflict, and choices. It doesn't hurt, either, that a wagon train represents journey, unknown future, process, loss, relationships, hope, and faith. People who traversed the West in such fashion were living on the edge in many ways--leaving behind one life for another, unknown one, taking huge risks, building tentative alliances for the sake of survival. So there is never a lack of conflict; fresh plots spring up all over the place because the life of every person on this trip is both precious and precarious.
I'm sure I love this show now partly because I loved it when I was young and living in a region that had been traversed by many wagon trains a century before. My grandmother's grandmother on her mother's side never knew her true last name. She and her brother were traveling by covered wagon with their parents, and for some reason the parents left the children with a family living in the general vicinity of my home town. The parents never returned, and the children took the name of the family who took them in. Such things happened when people made long unpredictable journeys. Families disintegrated in the face of illness, accidents on the trail, sudden loss and poverty, and death at odd times and places. It was a dangerous thing to seek a new life across the known world.
Wagon Train honors the great mosaic of stories that formed during a particular era of this country. It romanticizes an existence that was probably more exhaustion and drudgery than drama. But we forgive such license because it's not the exhaustion or drudgery that interests us. It's the grit, the grace and the hope. And it's easier to receive stories that are shined up a bit. I doubt that any scout was ever as beautiful and clean-shaven and downright sexy as Cooper Smith. But I enjoy tagging along behind him for ninety minutes, trying to experience history in his steps and see the landscape through his eyes.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Ebb and Flow: Learning Wisdom
Do
I catch the wave today?
Do
I stand, ankle-deep, in conversations, discerning the best moment to speak?
Do
I sleep until it is time to awaken, and then rise to the graceful rhythm?
Do
I absorb information, examine it, synthesize it, and then at just the right juncture
form a conclusion?
Do
I dwell in sounds of the day—radio, internet, television, phone—and understand at
which hour it is best to invite silence?
Do
I savor the words and ideas of others and then add to them, at the crest of
thought, my own words and ideas?
Do
I know when to drink, and stop drinking? When to eat and stop eating?
Do
I walk until it is time to sit down? Do I work until it is time to cease
working?
Do
I offer embrace when it is time, careful to measure the weight of need, the
moment of asking?
Do
I recognize when it is time to be brave and when it is better to hold back?
Do
I utter my desires to God? Do I wait for God’s desires to make themselves known
to me?
Will
I catch the wave today—the moment before the swell, or the moment after its
breaking?
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Lost Weekend
I lost myself this weekend. I wandered for hours, every day of the three-day holiday. I slipped through a doorway that took me outward, to an expansive place. I became lost in a project of memory, so involved in thoughts and images that, although I was in my house or on my porch, I was not fully in those places.
Having made multiple trips to the local hobby shop--mine is Michael's, out on Western and 91st Street--I finally sat down with a couple hundred photographs, with empty album pages, craft paper, and accent stickers. Also at hand were the detailed route notes and map from my England walk, and my journal. I pieced together the trip, day by day. It will soon be a month since I returned, but while retracing my steps I felt the recollections gather close, as if it all happened a few days ago.
I don't consider myself a visually oriented person, at least not in an artistic way. Craft-related items intrigue but intimidate me, and my art projects back in grammar school definitely were not placed prominently in classroom displays. But this trip was important as others have not been, and I knew that if I let even another month go by, I would begin to mix up events and days and photos and sequences. Retracing my steps would help preserve the journey. And to do it justice, I needed to add notes here and there, include paper bits I'd collected. A straight photo album wouldn't work. So I might as well approach the project creatively.
After struggling with the first couple of pages--choosing which photos, in which order, on which art paper, in which configuration, etc.--I became absorbed. The energy of that natural concentration held through afternoons and evenings. I organized my memories while The Lord of the Rings trilogy played through in its entirety. I trimmed photos and affixed borders through multiple programs on the classical music station, which gave atmosphere to the otherwise quiet back porch.
It was the sort of creative flow that must be interrupted in order to realize that you're hungry and never bothered with lunch. The kind of absorption that draws you away from the minor anxieties that can nickel-and-dime your energy and keep you awake through the night. This weekend, when I got tired, I went to bed and slept.
This evening, at around 7 p.m., I finished the project. What satisfaction! Now I can share the story with others in an organized way. I don't have to worry about mixing up groups of photos and forgetting which church that was or why I took a picture of this particular wall.
Putting together this scrapbook has reminded me what it feels like to enter the creative flow--and the experience highlights how rarely these days I experience such total and blissful concentration. Well, I guess that means it's time to make some plans.
Having made multiple trips to the local hobby shop--mine is Michael's, out on Western and 91st Street--I finally sat down with a couple hundred photographs, with empty album pages, craft paper, and accent stickers. Also at hand were the detailed route notes and map from my England walk, and my journal. I pieced together the trip, day by day. It will soon be a month since I returned, but while retracing my steps I felt the recollections gather close, as if it all happened a few days ago.
I don't consider myself a visually oriented person, at least not in an artistic way. Craft-related items intrigue but intimidate me, and my art projects back in grammar school definitely were not placed prominently in classroom displays. But this trip was important as others have not been, and I knew that if I let even another month go by, I would begin to mix up events and days and photos and sequences. Retracing my steps would help preserve the journey. And to do it justice, I needed to add notes here and there, include paper bits I'd collected. A straight photo album wouldn't work. So I might as well approach the project creatively.
After struggling with the first couple of pages--choosing which photos, in which order, on which art paper, in which configuration, etc.--I became absorbed. The energy of that natural concentration held through afternoons and evenings. I organized my memories while The Lord of the Rings trilogy played through in its entirety. I trimmed photos and affixed borders through multiple programs on the classical music station, which gave atmosphere to the otherwise quiet back porch.
It was the sort of creative flow that must be interrupted in order to realize that you're hungry and never bothered with lunch. The kind of absorption that draws you away from the minor anxieties that can nickel-and-dime your energy and keep you awake through the night. This weekend, when I got tired, I went to bed and slept.
This evening, at around 7 p.m., I finished the project. What satisfaction! Now I can share the story with others in an organized way. I don't have to worry about mixing up groups of photos and forgetting which church that was or why I took a picture of this particular wall.
Putting together this scrapbook has reminded me what it feels like to enter the creative flow--and the experience highlights how rarely these days I experience such total and blissful concentration. Well, I guess that means it's time to make some plans.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Fourth of July Present Tense
I don't like to dwell on the origins of July 4th--not the origins of its being a holiday, but the reason we have an Independence Day. The facts are glorious, I suppose, in the soft light of nostalgia, but they are bloody and disturbing nevertheless. Anyone who thinks revolution is glorious has never seen one up close. Today we can see, sort of, protests and revolutionary clashes through instant media. But the people who form my typical, daily world are far removed from the kind of situation that led to the United States of America. The only exceptions are the few people I know who have ended up here for political asylum.
Fourth of July, present tense, is just another holiday--even better, a summer holiday--when we eat more, play more, hang out with friends and family more. There are fireworks, a lot of them, and in large concentrations. Also, parades and community-wide parties. It's all about celebration and having a good time while relaxing with your favorite drink and plate of food.
I have no idea what it cost families in our colonies who chose to revolt, or not revolt, against the British monarchy. Certainly a lot of people suffered during the American Revolution, who never saw the end result, who died in a state of confusion and at odds with neighbors, fellow Christians, and in some cases, most of the people around them. It was a devastating time, a messy time with violence, acts of treachery, and treason--but remember that treason was defined by whichever group was talking. Neighbors called one another traitors. Everyone was on the right side of the issue and yet there were at least two right sides . . .
Today, I think we should turn our thoughts of July 4th toward the messy disagreements that tear apart our communities now, because there are numerous messy issues and so many right sides that it's easy to lose our sense of direction altogether. We cluster on our chosen sides in regard to immigration, education, drugs, guns, healthcare, marriage, religious rights, political reform, environmental policies, and so on. We call one another, not traitor but certainly unpatriotic, which is close to the same thing. We accuse one another of not fighting for the community or protecting the right interests. We think we know who the community is, but then it shifts around on us. People change labels, positions, move into new paradigms.
And our sub-communities spend so much energy fighting one another that we fail to see the larger enemies of us all--the greed and corruption that divert political power and resources from the common good, the powerful players who prevent us from identifying systemic problems and solving them.
Maybe to begin, we could refrain from thinking in terms of whose on which side. Could we imagine a huge circle of life, or globe dotted with small, intimate villages? Could we go into each encounter with the idea that this person is simply here with me, in the present tense?
Fourth of July, present tense, is just another holiday--even better, a summer holiday--when we eat more, play more, hang out with friends and family more. There are fireworks, a lot of them, and in large concentrations. Also, parades and community-wide parties. It's all about celebration and having a good time while relaxing with your favorite drink and plate of food.
I have no idea what it cost families in our colonies who chose to revolt, or not revolt, against the British monarchy. Certainly a lot of people suffered during the American Revolution, who never saw the end result, who died in a state of confusion and at odds with neighbors, fellow Christians, and in some cases, most of the people around them. It was a devastating time, a messy time with violence, acts of treachery, and treason--but remember that treason was defined by whichever group was talking. Neighbors called one another traitors. Everyone was on the right side of the issue and yet there were at least two right sides . . .
Today, I think we should turn our thoughts of July 4th toward the messy disagreements that tear apart our communities now, because there are numerous messy issues and so many right sides that it's easy to lose our sense of direction altogether. We cluster on our chosen sides in regard to immigration, education, drugs, guns, healthcare, marriage, religious rights, political reform, environmental policies, and so on. We call one another, not traitor but certainly unpatriotic, which is close to the same thing. We accuse one another of not fighting for the community or protecting the right interests. We think we know who the community is, but then it shifts around on us. People change labels, positions, move into new paradigms.
And our sub-communities spend so much energy fighting one another that we fail to see the larger enemies of us all--the greed and corruption that divert political power and resources from the common good, the powerful players who prevent us from identifying systemic problems and solving them.
Maybe to begin, we could refrain from thinking in terms of whose on which side. Could we imagine a huge circle of life, or globe dotted with small, intimate villages? Could we go into each encounter with the idea that this person is simply here with me, in the present tense?
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Jesus Did Not Coerce People
I'm probably crazy to try to write about this at the end of a workday, when I've got a stiff neck and TMJ and ongoing fatigue and still must commute home. But Facebook is abuzz today with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby. The upshot is that the corporation can refuse to pay for some healthcare services. Those who are angry about it generalize that Hobby Lobby will not allow its healthcare services to provide for contraception, period. Those in favor of the decision point out that a person doesn't have to buy healthcare through the employer and that Hobby Lobby's healthcare provider continues to pay for some birth control, just not the Plan-B (code word for some: abortion pill).
I haven't read the Supreme Court's decision, and because I'm not an attorney, I probably couldn't understand it even if I did; I rely on others for my information--people who can read that stuff and make sense of it and then translate it to me. So, honestly, I don't know what this decision means precisely. And I have been guilty of re-posting others' posts about the decision even though I don't know all the facts. And I certainly don't know which organizations know the facts--everybody speaks with such certainty that even the professional fact-checkers have a hard time keeping up and warning the rest of us. This is a temptation of Facebook: sometimes a person just wants to vent, and there are plenty of ready-made ventings ripe for the picking and re-posting.
But I do know that Christianity in this country has long had too much power, that large Christian groups have held hands with governmental ideologies too often, and that many Christians in general--and in particular those who feel threatened by "non-Christian" ideas, organizations, and vocabulary--have come to feel entitled to set moral standards for everyone who lives here.
How did we come to this? I guess it began when Christianity became state religion in Rome centuries ago. The power the church gained corrupted it so much that a whole new movement started whereby men and women fled to the desert to escape the church's sins and excesses and give themselves mainly to prayer and meditation. The monastic movement tried to correct the problems of Christians wielding political and financial power, but of course the whole world couldn't live in the desert. Not even the entire church could survive that way.
Christians are often the first to point out that the people who founded this country were trying to escape religious persecution. That's a generalization but true enough. What we don't seem to recognize is that so much feverish activity of religious people wedded to political parties creates whole new forms of religious persecution.
I need to severely truncate this post, sliding by long discussions about politics and religion, and just get to the point that always centers and stabilizes me when I begin to get crazy and bothered about other folks' bad behavior. That centering point is this: I try, not always successfully, to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus never coerced people. He simply didn't. He didn't force himself on others, didn't force belief on them. Yes, with religious, powerful people he could get pretty direct and say things that would scorch their pious sensibilities. He did challenge people. He asked hard questions. He made demands of those who had committed to his cause.
But he never forced anyone to act a certain way. And I don't think he is pleased when any of his followers do. Whenever I try to manipulate the actions of others--through my judgments or conversations or the use of whatever power I have--I'm not being Jesus-like.
I believe Christians--along with everyone else--should participate in government and commerce. We must participate in society in helpful and reasonable ways. That means that we make room for others to act according to conscience. That also means we help protect others. Where freedom and protection meet is a tricky place of discernment and tension--I want you to be free to live your life and at the same time prevent you from harming other lives. So we'll always be debating and running back and forth and trying this solution and that. Of course it's complicated.
But this one idea--Jesus did not coerce others--this helps quite a bit when I'm in that place of discernment.
I haven't read the Supreme Court's decision, and because I'm not an attorney, I probably couldn't understand it even if I did; I rely on others for my information--people who can read that stuff and make sense of it and then translate it to me. So, honestly, I don't know what this decision means precisely. And I have been guilty of re-posting others' posts about the decision even though I don't know all the facts. And I certainly don't know which organizations know the facts--everybody speaks with such certainty that even the professional fact-checkers have a hard time keeping up and warning the rest of us. This is a temptation of Facebook: sometimes a person just wants to vent, and there are plenty of ready-made ventings ripe for the picking and re-posting.
But I do know that Christianity in this country has long had too much power, that large Christian groups have held hands with governmental ideologies too often, and that many Christians in general--and in particular those who feel threatened by "non-Christian" ideas, organizations, and vocabulary--have come to feel entitled to set moral standards for everyone who lives here.
How did we come to this? I guess it began when Christianity became state religion in Rome centuries ago. The power the church gained corrupted it so much that a whole new movement started whereby men and women fled to the desert to escape the church's sins and excesses and give themselves mainly to prayer and meditation. The monastic movement tried to correct the problems of Christians wielding political and financial power, but of course the whole world couldn't live in the desert. Not even the entire church could survive that way.
Christians are often the first to point out that the people who founded this country were trying to escape religious persecution. That's a generalization but true enough. What we don't seem to recognize is that so much feverish activity of religious people wedded to political parties creates whole new forms of religious persecution.
I need to severely truncate this post, sliding by long discussions about politics and religion, and just get to the point that always centers and stabilizes me when I begin to get crazy and bothered about other folks' bad behavior. That centering point is this: I try, not always successfully, to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus never coerced people. He simply didn't. He didn't force himself on others, didn't force belief on them. Yes, with religious, powerful people he could get pretty direct and say things that would scorch their pious sensibilities. He did challenge people. He asked hard questions. He made demands of those who had committed to his cause.
But he never forced anyone to act a certain way. And I don't think he is pleased when any of his followers do. Whenever I try to manipulate the actions of others--through my judgments or conversations or the use of whatever power I have--I'm not being Jesus-like.
I believe Christians--along with everyone else--should participate in government and commerce. We must participate in society in helpful and reasonable ways. That means that we make room for others to act according to conscience. That also means we help protect others. Where freedom and protection meet is a tricky place of discernment and tension--I want you to be free to live your life and at the same time prevent you from harming other lives. So we'll always be debating and running back and forth and trying this solution and that. Of course it's complicated.
But this one idea--Jesus did not coerce others--this helps quite a bit when I'm in that place of discernment.
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