9 to 5 Poet

On Sunday, after we returned from Puerto Vallarta, I did some laundry.  Then, after putting a load in, I started to do some writing, which required headphones from my iPod.  But I couldn’t find my iPod — until I remembered where I last saw it.  In the pocket of my gray hoodie. The same hoodie that was now swimming in the soapy brine of my washing machine.  When I fished it out, it was thoroughly soaked.  Apparently, when you submerge an iPod in cold sudsy water for 10 minutes, it dies.  Who knew?

So, I’ve been living iPod-less for four days. It feels like giving up caffeine or crack.  I used my iPod for two basic functions:  music while I exercise (to take my mind off of exercising) and music for my 25 minute bus commutes to and from work. 

I only exercised on Monday (due to some writing deadlines I’ve been pushing), but I actually had to think on my half an hour walk.  Not hum along to Ani or Tori, but think about what I was seeing and feeling.  It was nice to notice the landscape in my neighborhood, the two squirrels trying to “do it” in the road, the sky growing pink above the Basilica. 

My bus commute has been more challenging.  I obviously travel the same route every day.  In the morning, I share the bus with many of the same passengers.  It’s kind of boring.  I realize that my iPod allows me to withdraw from the world.  Pretty much everyone is wearing one, so we can all retreat into our little self-pods and ignore each other.  At times this is valuable, such as when the crazy guy is ranting three seats away.  But last night I listened to a son describe to his father the picture he drew in day care that day. I got to see their physical resemblance and watch as the dad draped his arm over his son. Would I have missed that in my musical solitude?  Probably.

So, now I’m stuck.  Do I buy another vial of musical heroin or do I live with the silence? As soon as I realized my iPod had died, I was scoping the websites for the best deals.  I think I’m arguing for an iPod-less life, since I really don’t know if I should spend the money on a new one.  And I like being able to think and hear my thoughts.  (Even though that scares me and I don’t really care for the banality of most of my thoughts.) 

I’m interested to hear from other writers who choose to pod or not pod.  Why do you pod?  Do you limit your podding?  Why don’t you pod? What’s the trade-off?

Most importantly, do you think I should get an 80G iPod, because I can find it really cheaply, even though I only have a 60G hard drive on my laptop or should I just get the 30G and live with less?

I’ve been doing a lot of writing and online research for the last couple of weeks, for my freelancing gig.  I have spent hours in front of my computer, after already spending eight hours at work in front of a bigger computer.  Don’t worry, I’m enjoying it.

One of the things that makes it so enjoyable (other than the writing is really fun) is that my father turned me on to Pandora.  Now, please excuse the plugging of an ad-supported website*.  But I don’t think that I could survive the hours in front of my computer without it. 

With Pandora, you can create free internet radio stations that you (or anyone you share it with) can listen and enjoy.  You just plug in an artist or a song title that you like and then Pandora searches for music that fits the same musical “type.”  It’s part of a musical genome project, which traces the commonalities between music.  It’s brilliant! 

I have six stations right now — acoustic female singers like Ani Difranco, acoustic male singers like Greg Brown and Simon and Garfunkel, feminist punk music like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, classics like Frank Sinatra, goth and industrial like The Cure, and soul/rap like Jurassic 5 and Lauryn Hill.  If I get sick of one station, I transfer to another.  And I think (but don’t quote me on this) but you can make as many stations as you want.  I’ve discovered a lot of new artists that I now like and I’ve powered through my freelancing with a song in my head.  Actually, lots of songs in my head.  If you like music and have a good internet connection, I would highly recommend it. 

* I have not been given any restitution for my recommendation. I just really really like the site. A lot.

On Saturday, I received my “pretty” print from Today is Pretty.  It is, to overuse the word, very very pretty.

I hightailed it to Target today and picked up a cute little floating photo frame and hung it this morning.  The wall is in my entry way, just as you come in the door.  It matches the red kitchen, to its right, which unfortunatley, has no more wall space. 

In other random news, I’m about a little over half done with my freelancing gig. It’s totally time consuming, as we can see from the little blogging, but so much fun.  My day work has been slower than all get out, so it has been so nice to have a diversion at home to keep my Capricornian-brain whirring.  I’ll be glad when I’m done before I go on vacation, but I’m loving it now.  I’m such a geek.   

I’ve called myself a working writer before, but that’s because I work at a full time job and write on the side.  But now, I can call myself a working writer — someone who gets financially rewarded for writing.  I’ve been hired for my very first paying freelance job!  A good friend of mine from college hooked me up with a gig and I get to work at it over the summer.   It’s perfect timing, because my job slows down in the summer (due to the students being done with school), so I’ll have energy to devote to other work.  I am really excited to try something new, and of course, get paid for it.   If it works out, I may try to actively seek out more freelancing later.  Woo-hoo!

My level of discipline has suddenly plummeted. 

Rather than writing poetry on the bus, I’m obsessively completing crossword puzzles.  (I bought a book of 500 at the campus bookstore on my Monday.)  I can see black and white little boxes in my sleep.  I keep itching to do another, as soon as I finish one.  I think they could be habit forming.

Of course, I’m also spending more time outside, taking walks and playing catch or frisbee with my husband.  When I’m inside, I’m watching TV or watching more TV.  So You Think You Can Dance  has a two hour premiere tonight, which is practically a holiday in our house. 

And my reading habits have changed.  In the past three weeks, I’ve read two different mysteries.  The first, admittedly, was an assignment for writing a review for the Uptown Neighborhood News. But it whetted my appetite for more mysteries!  Unfortunately (or fortunately for my review) the first was way better than the second. 

I would highly recommend State of the Onion (325 pages) by Julie Hyzy, especially if you like female protaganists in your mysteries.  The second, Simple Genius (420 pages) by David Baldacci is kind of cruddy. That’s the technical literary term. The story is good, but the prose and dialogue is so wooden that I felt dirty for reading it. 

Despite these mixed results, I still want to read more mysteries.  So, if you have any recommendations for mystery authors that can write well, let me know!  I think I need to make peace with my tendencies towards frivolity, at least for the summer. 

Total For 2008: 3801 pages
Genres: Memoir (3), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1), Non-Fiction (3), Poetry (4), Comic Book Anthology (1), Novel (2)

Yes, I am still here.  But, I feel like I’ve got a writing hangover, similar to that I experienced after NaBloWriMo.  Even though I tuckered out on NaPoWriMo 5 days early, I’m a little tapped out. I’ve also had to play some catch up on reviews (Page 4 of the PDF for my Uptown Girl review), so I’ve had a momentary retreat from blogging. 

However, I have been doing other things (yes, there are other things) including…

• Seeing a Twin’s Game with my hubby, as well as Mr. Horrorpants and his wife. The Twins are actually on a winning streak, although that phrase will probably jinx it.
• Enjoying the beautiful weather - it’s finally above 50 degrees.
• Recovering from the massive report I had to coordinate at work.  I am so glad it’s done, never to be coordinated again.  I hope.
• Reading my next book to review for Uptown Neighborhood News, State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy
• Watching Season One of The Riches– I have a huge crush on Eddie Izzard now.
• Finishing Asphalt Sky.  I swear to God it’s coming out soon. 

So life is good.  Just not very bloggable right now.  And that’s okay. 

At my workplace, I work with adult learners.  They joke a lot about “the R word,” or reflection.  In many of their classes, they are asked to reflect on ideas. They write reflective papers.  They complete reflective essays in tests.  They’re big on reflection.  Personally, I don’t think reflection is so bad, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in school and asked to reflect on things.

Since we are a Lutheran school, we have voluntary chapel as a service for our adult learners, should they choose to take advantage of it.  I’m not Lutheran at all, but I attend chapel on the days I work, so that I’m supporting a service for our students. (Most of the time there’s only three or four of us present, including the person who is leading.)  Today, the service leader handed out Buddhist quotes to us and asked us to, using that darn R word again, reflect between each reading.  He tried to match our quotes to our personalities.  Here was mine:

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed. — Buddha

Now, I’ve met this very nice gentleman once. But man, has he got me pegged.  I can be a little rigid at times. (Okay a lot rigid. A lot of the time.)  I think part of it’s personality, part of it’s upbringing, part of it’s just habit.  Whatever the motivation, I can be very shielded with people I don’t know, and sometimes with people I do know. 

My rigidity is something that I work on in my writing, for sure..  I always think that I am being so vulnerable and unguarded in my writing, and I’m really just shielding what I really feel with language. I often confuse thinking through an emotional issue and feeling through it.  I’m so much more comfortable with my intellect’s capacity to connect than my heart. 

I guess that this is something that I have come to know about myself and accept as one of my opportunities for growth.  I just didn’t realize that it was so apparent to the outside world.  So today, I want to just reflect (there’s that R word again) on this quote and wonder at the ways I can open myself to the world. 

The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

– “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy

Today, a professor at work sent me this Marge Piercy poem in the campus mail, because we had discussed it in passing two weeks ago.  He couldn’t recall the name or the author, just the ending image of the vases and bodies being of use.   It helped to inform my work all day today, since I hung it above my computer monitor.  I love working at a college.

…only my eyes were showing, through the folds of wool scarf.

…while I was waiting for the bus tonight, my eyes teared up.

…I wiped away the tears, afraid of them turning into tiny icicles, or sealing my eyes shut.

…I thought about spitting on the ground to see if it would freeze, but I didn’t want to waste the heat.

…my whole body tensed into a hard, shivering rock.

…my muscles ached from bracing myself.

…I’m still not warm.

Have you ever experienced a “doomdart”? A doomdart is when a responsibility or obligation you’ve forgotten suddenly and unexpectedly pops into your brain. Immediately after you remember this important but neglected task and you feel a wave of stress and nausea wash over you. If you’re like most people, overloaded and stressed out, you’ve experienced a doomdart, without having a name for it. Dr. Edward Hallowell’s award winning book CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! (256 pages) not only names common problems like doomdarts, but offers tangible solutions to living overloaded lives.

Dr. Hallowell explains that as culture, we have undergone a dramatic shift in our intellectual energy, with the integration of communication technology (like internet, cell phones, and PDAs) and the expansion of the traditional 40-hour work week. As an expert on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), he demonstrates that most of us adopt ADD-like traits in order to function at a breakneck speed. However, most people don’t function at full capacity because their attention is simply stretched too thin.

Dr. Hallowell provides solutions for not only surviving but thriving in a world where we have so many responsibilities and gadgets competing for our attention. Most importantly, he encourages us to be selective in how we choose to spend our time. Are we matching our output with our intention? If we are spending too much time on activities we don’t enjoy, or that don’t give us rewarding experiences in return, we should minimize these activities as much as possible.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who feels stretched too thin, which would be all of us. It’s an excellent description of our modern lives and offers interesting solutions to our dilemma.

Total For 2008: 1079 pages
Genres: Memoir (1), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1)