To My Husband, the Feminist

A few months ago, while I was still working part-time as an English Composition professor, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who is similarly working to build a career as a writer. We have a lot in common – we’re both married to scientists who have had to support us as we try to establish some sort of career for ourselves in a field that is difficult to break into and isn’t very lucrative. We both have struggled to consistently pull in a decent paycheck. And we both have felt frustrated and guilty that our husbands have been the major breadwinners – we were raised, after all, as feminists. Nobody should have to take care of us, right?

Yet I had to confess to her that I had started to contemplate throwing in the towel on this “career” thing and becoming a full-time housewife – it would just be easier than having to backtrack and start a whole new career AGAIN. I had become fairly frustrated with my own situation by last fall; I had been unable to find full-time employment without a Ph.D. and I was facing the prospect that even if I earned a doctorate, I still might not be able to get a full-time professorship. There’s just simply too much competition out there, vying for a very few teaching positions. And honestly, I was starting to enjoy the days of experimenting with new recipes, taking mid-morning walks, running on the grocery errands myself, doing laundry and reading novels. I could get used to a schedule that involved taking care of all the tedious chores so that my husband didn’t have to worry about anything when he got home – while also having plenty of extra time that I could dedicate to book blogging and Dexter.

This admission felt like a shameful confession, though; I told her I was starting to feel like a “failure as a feminist.” (Read her thoughts on our conversation here.) We women are supposed to be gung-ho career types these days. If you choose to be a housewife because that’s what you enjoy, then you’re not a failure. But what if you start off pursuing a career and then hit a glass ceiling – or a brick wall? What if you just can’t cut it in your chosen career field? You’re good – but not good enough. There’s too much competition and you haven’t managed to claw your way to the top of the pile. What if it’s only at that point that you choose to become a housewife, just because it’s easier? The idea of extra time for novels and movies was tempting, but I knew that I would loose respect for myself if I just gave up the idea of a career entirely.

What compounded my frustration with my job situation and made me truly miserable, though, was that my lack of steady income had started to cause a lot of friction between my husband and myself. He truly wanted me to pursue my dream of being a Literature Professor and he had been very supportive over the first five years of our marriage, as I applied to graduate schools, earned my Master’s Degree, applied to Ph.D. programs and took a couple of part-time teaching gigs to gain experience and build my resume. But when we found out that I had basically no shot at competing for full-time professorships in the New York Metro Area (because most applicants already have their Ph.D.), he wanted me to change my career plan. He would send me emails full of job listings – mostly marketing and public relations positions.

I tried to be gracious, but inside I was screaming, no, no, NO! I’m a TEACHER. That’s who I AM. I am not a marketing strategist; I am not a speech writer. I am a TEACHER. Again, that’s WHO I AM. This has already been decided and established.

Of course, I have already mentioned that I probably rely too much on my “career” to define my identity, but I really don’t know how to avoid doing that. I become extremely invested in whatever I am doing with my time, and I had invested a lot in earning my Master’s Degree and learning how to run a classroom.

But I really did try to be gracious – because I understood his frustration and felt pretty darn guilty. My husband is a feminist, too, and he had not signed up to take care of his pretty little wife in a 1950s-style marriage. (The poor guy had not chosen right for that set-up, anyway – he’s a much better cook than I am. I tend to dry out the chicken, burn the bacon and have absolutely no clue how to spice/flavor anything. I just dump in a bunch of salt.) My husband had married me expecting to get a partner. Someone to help him pay the bills and take on approximately half the chores. Someone to share the weight, so that it wasn’t all on his shoulders. And that’s what I agreed to do when I married him – share the weight. So far, though, I think I’ve been more of a load to carry, as opposed to someone who is helping him carry the load.

So this fall, I had to face the facts – I’ve been both a bad feminist and a bad wife. At least that’s how I felt, since I wanted to prioritize my career over being an equal partner financially with my husband (bad wife) and then I wanted to give up my career when I wasn’t finding success (bad feminist). This was an incredible identity crisis – especially for someone as pie-in-the-sky ambitious as I am, someone so determined to be good at everything she does. I dream big and I talk big; I always imagined myself changing the world. But I’ve learned in the first five years of my marriage that it’s hard enough to make sure the bills get paid – never mind being some kind of social justice superhero. My new job is the closest I’ve ever come to finding a way to make money while saving the world – and we’ll just have to see how much of the world I am really able to save. But up to this point, I’ve been sailing along and ignoring what was probably obvious all along: that there just isn’t a big enough market for Literature Professors. I was sacrificing some of my husband’s trust in order to pursue a dream that at some point became unrealistic.

If I had given up the dream of being a professor because my husband just didn’t want me to pursue that route, then I would have been a failure as a feminist. But I’ve sense come to realize that switching gears doesn’t make me a failure – it makes me a pragmatist.

And it has nothing to do with my feminism – my husband had to do the exact same thing. He earned his Ph.D. with the intention of being a Psychology Professor and Researcher; he had to start looking for jobs out in the corporate world because he realized that it might take him years to find a teaching position that paid enough money to cover the bills and offered benefits. He had to compromise too – and he did it for me. He wanted to make sure that I would have health care, enough money to pay the doctor’s bills and insurance to cover the cost of all the allergy medications that I take daily. He had to be realistic and gave up his original dream a lot sooner than I did.

So this Valentine’s Day, I wanted to post about my wonderful husband – not because he bought me flowers or candy (which he didn’t, anyway) and not because he brought me perfume and lotion (which he did, for the record) but because he was grown-up enough to give up his dream to make sure that I would stay healthy, and because he was enough of a feminist to let me pursue my own dream for a few years longer than he was able to pursue his. He’s given me things that have been so much more valuable than flowers or candy, and in return this Valentine’s Day, I am finally becoming what he has always wanted – now that I have a full-time job, I can be a real partner.

Feminism is all about equality, anyway.

Wonder Woman & the Non-Profit Sector

It is always the writer’s duty to make the world better.

— Samuel Johnson

I found this quote on the opening page to Writing for a Good Cause: The Complete Guide to Crafting Proposals and Other Persuasive Pieces for Nonprofits by Joseph Barbato and Danielle S. Furlich. This is one of a couple of books that I picked up to help me learn the ins and outs of my new job as a Communications Associate and Grant Writer for a social services non-profit.

Johnson’s quote is an incredibly idealistic statement, but one that I have always believed in one way or another. From the time that I first set my sights on becoming a novelist (something that is less of a priority now, but still a goal) I knew that I wanted to write books that changed people. Books that made them laugh and think and cry and ache inside. Books just like the ones that I would read in bed with a flashlight. Books that created an expansive feeling in my chest, as though there was a balloon in my heart that someone kept inflating a little more, a little more… Yes, I have long thought that the writer’s duty is to make the world better, whether it is by telling an important story in a novel or a news article, or recording a beautiful sensory moment in verse.

So a writer’s job is to create expressive prose and use stories to help readers build a compassionate understanding of people who lead different lives in different worlds than their own – but I have always thought about this as an artistic endeavor. A noble pursuit, but one that often leads to destitution. Plenty of people have lived as starving artists in remote cabins and cold apartment garrets in order to write their beautiful stories and heartbreaking poems – so many works which have been incredibly important to the development of human society. I’ve always admired the authors who have stuck it out under these types of circumstances – but I have to admit that I always end up asking my grandmother or my husband for a little bit more money to tide me over to the next pay check (whenever that might come). I’m not the starving artist type. I can’t write if I’m hungry – thus the need for a “real” job.

As I am reading this book, though, I suddenly find this idealistic, naïve sentiment – that a writer is an agent of change – being paired with a job that actually earns me a decent paycheck. The book talks about transformation through the written word as not just an artistic ideal, but as a “duty.” Like I and all my colleagues can be superheroes, wielding the written word as a mighty weapon. I’ve had enough experiences with saying the wrong thing to know that words can be very powerful – statements and stories can be agents of both positive change and painful (!) negative consequences. But I’ve finally landed a job where my words can make a positive, tangible difference in people’s lives – and I get paid. This seems a little bit miraculous (although I have to take into consideration that much of the actual work of a grand writer is somewhat tedious, so it’s not entirely perfect).

I read the quote again: “It is always the writer’s duty to make the world better.” Talk about stroking the old ego. You’re special, Lauren – you can’t work for an air conditioning company or a corporate headquarters. (Well, that’s what I’ve been saying all along…) You have a responsibility to put your words to work for the GOOD of all mankind.

Here comes the newly empowered Wonder Woman… and her inflated sense of self.

The Introduction for Barbato and Furlich’s book continues stroking my ego:

Let’s deal with an assumption that pervades most fund-raising offices. It is this: Anyone can write. The gobbledygook we all encounter in office memos every day gives the lie to those three words. Yet the notion that anyone can write, and presumably write well, persists. The personal computer, which allows us to move words, paragraphs, and sections any which way and to remove and add words with great ease, has given even more power to the idea that we are all writers… [but] it is an assumption made only outside the world of professional writing: Editors of newspapers and magazines and at book publishing houses are well aware that not everyone can write… [and that] stringing words together with an occasional period is not writing no matter how pretty it looks when it comes out of a laser printer.

In other words, Lauren, you are special. You don’t just string words together and add periods here and there for effect. You have a craft. A craft that may not pay very much when you produce fiction, but a craft that is appreciated in other sectors. A craft that will earn you respect and a paycheck, now that you've found this job, because not very many others can write as clearly and as persuasively as you can.

I don’t need to feel important for what I do, though – I need to feel that I’m good at what I do. I’m the kind of person who, if I decide to spend my time doing something, wants to be really good at it – whatever it may be. So now I have this image of myself as Wonder Woman, with several lofty long-term goals. I shared those aspirations with my boss on Friday, and with an enthusiastic smile she told me that she’s “all for it.” I don’t think she was just humoring me, either. If you’re really good at your job as a grant writer, it is possible to achieve the kinds of things I mentioned to her:

My Long-term Goals

1. Get our organization into national publications like the New York Times and Time Magazine (more publicity leads to more donations, which means that the organization can help more people).

2. Get our organization funding from wealthy, high-profile grantmakers like Oprah. Yes, I said Oprah. I’m going for the big guns.

I may not get the president of my organization all the way to Oprah’s television studio in Chicago, but I’m not going to worry about mud on my face for posting these ambitious (ridiculous?) goals, either. You’ve got to aim high to get anywhere in life. It’s kind of like Les Brown said: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” Except really, he got it backwards – you should aim for the stars, which are infinitely farther away. Hopefully if you aim for galaxies far, far away, you’ll land on the moon, which is still a pretty big accomplishment. C.S. Lewis, my absolute favorite author, similarly said, “Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Well, Wonder Woman can fly, can’t she? So here I go, the new author-superhero, launching myself into the work of grant writing. Hopefully I’ll make it far out into space – and with any luck, my inflated ego won’t weigh me down too much.

Changing the Roll

Stop for a moment and picture those public restroom toilet paper dispensers that hold four rolls of toilet paper. These machines allow the maintenance staff to load up the TP once a day, which is of course handy for them. But what about the poor saps using the public restroom? Have you ever been stuck trying to rotate these dispensers and start a new roll?

Moving the new roll into place isn’t really so difficult – the problem is that you have to reach up into the dispenser and try to peel the wrapper off the roll, then try to find where the new roll of paper starts and pull it off from the rest of the roll. Of course, you can’t see what you’re doing very well because the roll is up in the machine, which is made of semi-opaque plastic, so basically you’re sitting there, picking at the toilet paper and hoping desperately that you will be able to find the start of the roll. Eventually, you may get frustrated and decide to just rip at the toilet paper wherever, shredding it and pulling it off in uneven clumps, but at least getting some TP off the darn thing.

It occurred to me today that starting a new job can be a little bit like using one of these dispensers.

At first, things start smoothly. You rotate the new roll into place. You meet people, get an ID badge and a corporate email address and a phone extension. You check your email – only two messages, one from your boss and another from the only co-worker that you know. You are handed a packet of materials to read, in order that you might familiarize yourself with your new duties. You start slowly, wanting to absorb all the information so that you will be fully prepared to do your new job to the best of your ability.

Then you sit through a two day New Employee Orientation, which is a little bit like pulling the wrapping off the new roll. It’s necessary in order to get to what you actually need to get to – the job underneath. (I could say more on NEO, but I will refrain for now. No matter how yawn-worthy, these types of orientations are necessary.)

After orientation is over, you plunge into the world of your new job – you’ve suddenly got a to-do list. Actual responsibilities. But without having performed these duties before, you’re a little unsure of how to go about doing them. The best way to learn, though, is to just do them. This is like picking at the roll of TP, shredding it at times. There will probably be a bit of a mess at first, a few less-than-successful attempts, but hopefully after a bit of picking at it, things will start to unroll properly. You’ll get into a groove. You’ll know what you’re doing.

I am about to begin the picking and the shredding – wish me luck.

A Gothic Tale

I have been dreading the prospect of being chained to a desk from nine to five. I have avoided traditional employment in the business world for most of my life. But once I started applying for corporate public relations jobs, I was anticipating that once I became an office drone, I would at least be able to write some sardonic blog posts about the monotony of it all. It would be commentary hopefully as depressing and hilarious as Office Space. After two days at my new job, though, I am starting to think that I may not have much of a reason to complain about monotony – and I certainly don’t think I’m going to experience any depression over the futility of my work.

First of all, I don’t work in an office building; I work in a yellow brick mansion constructed in the late 1880s. Formerly our organization’s functioning orphanage, the beautiful manor house has been converted into the administration building. Its three-story façade is impressive and even a bit intimidating; it reminds me of Manderley in Daphne de Maurier’s novel Rebecca and Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Although many of the rooms have been subdivided into offices with drop-down ceiling panels and fluorescent lights, graceful arched doorways and the original (albeit somewhat chipped) pattern of floor tiles remain intact. Some of the larger offices and public spaces still have beautiful leaded glass windows and to get to my office, I have to climb a wide, winding staircase with an iron scrollwork banister. The property is set right on the Hudson River and the windows along the western side of the mansion look out over the water and at the sheer face of the Palisades Cliffs, which right now are partially covered in snow and looking even more stark than usual. The atmosphere has a slightly romantic, slightly ominous feeling; when I am sitting in my office and the wind comes across the river, the mournful blustering sound of it makes me feel a little isolated and forlorn. I do not mind, though – I felt a shiver of excitement today as I listened to it, imagining that I really was tucked away in a corner of Thornfield Hall and hearing the wind come across the barren English moors.

A little atmosphere can go a long way to breaking up the monotony of office life, so instead of a sardonic blog post about my first day at work, I could write you a haunting Gothic tale – and I can even include a ghost story. While the building was still functioning as an orphanage, there was a fire on the third floor which trapped and killed several of the children. Instead of rebuilding the destroyed section, the organization simply had it demolished it – I suppose it was cheaper that way. All that is left of the former level now are staircases that climb up to a non-existent third story, which is strange enough. But some employees swear that even though there are no longer any children in the building, they have sometimes heard in the stairwell a little girl calling out, “There’s a fire! There’s a fire!” from somewhere above the second story landing.

My Gothic tale also contains a mystery – the mystery of the previous Grant Writer’s identity and disappearance. As I am introduced to other employees, my co-workers keep informing people, “This is Lauren. She’s taking Natalia’s place.” People nod, smile, and welcome me. No more is said about Natalia, though, and this brief but constant allusion has made me curious – who is/was this woman that I am replacing? How old was she? What did she look like? What happened to her?

Natalia is such a pretty, exotic name that sparks my imagination on its own, even without the mystery of her disappearance from the organization. When my brother and I were young, we used to watch a movie from the early 1980s called Condorman. Starring a young Michael Crawford, Condorman is a wonderfully ridiculous flick about a comic book illustrator who is mistaken for a CIA agent and must help Natalia, a glamorous KGB agent with almond-shaped eyes and full lips, defect from the Soviet Union. While Crawford bumbles through the adventure, Natalia remains striking in every scene and cool as a cucumber. I have therefore always been fascinated and a little bit in love with that name.

I am doubting that Grant Writer Natalia was quite as exotic as Michael Crawford's sexy KGB agent, though. I was able to discover only a little about my predecessor while cleaning out my new office – she had left behind some cobwebs and some odds and ends, most of which I swept into the dustbin. I was amused to find a Xerox of her hands, though, set on the copier in such a way as to make a heart.

Natalia had also bequeathed me a bunch of colorful paperclips in the shapes of stars, hearts, musical notes and fists making a thumbs-up. Finally, I found a stash of fortunes from Chinese fortune cookies, but none of them were very interesting. I was a little bit disappointed – I was hoping that she had saved fortunes that were particularly unusual and might yield a clue about her personality. They were all trite sayings like, “Happiness isn’t an outside job, it’s an inside job.” I suppose these fortunes do reveal something about her – she is the type of person that enjoys platitudes. So, what I had uncovered about her thus far was that she likes cute paperclips and clichés.

I decided to ask my co-workers about her, which finally dispelled the mystery. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask,” I said, letting my voice trail off for a moment. “But Natalia – what happened to her? Why isn’t she working here any more?”

There was a pause, and then one of them said, “Well, Natalia… she got fired when…”

My breath quickened: I was about to hear something juicy.

“Just kidding,” he said with a laugh. “She decided to back to graduate school.”

I let out a slow, slightly disappointed breath. My Gothic tale has lost a little steam at this point, since the disappeared young woman hasn’t met a mysterious or tragic end of any kind. She picked up and went of her own free will, leaving behind her paper clips, a Miami sweatshirt, and a cheap, dusty fake chrysanthemum plant. But I still have my ghost story and the sound of the wind across the water.

As you can see, my job hasn’t robbed me of my imagination or the literary side of my identity as of yet. The atmosphere of the organization has, in fact, nurtured my story-telling nature. If my soul is sucked away by this desk job, it will have more to do with an encounter with the ghosts of the orphans than the monotony of any desk work…