Workaholic

I think I can officially be considered a “workaholic” of sorts.

Job #1: Grantwriter

While I’ve been a fairly polished, organized and artful writer for a long time, grantwriting is a whole new skill and art form to learn. Basically, you’re asking someone to give you a huge wad of cash (the first grant that I’ve been assigned to work on is an ask for $50,000). This means that you need the style and aplomb to convince the grantmaker that the people served by your organization have a particularly compelling need; moreover, that your organization is capable of meeting that need once given the necessary funds. In order to be convincing, you need to write a proposal that is a winning combination of frightening statistics (for example, 40% of residents of the Bronx live in poverty), compelling personal stories, and your organization’s record of success managing funds and meeting the community’s needs. There is a narrative, and then there are forms. Lots and lots of forms. For the past month, I’ve been busy learning how to put all these things together… and I still have a lot to learn.

If I’m honest, though, I actually like it. A friend of mine called to catch up the other day, and when I told him that I was learning the fine art of grant writing, he apologized profusely. “No, no,” I assured him. “I know this makes me an even bigger geek – but I like doing the research. I’m learning a lot about poverty, parenting, the foster care system, autism, etc. And I love writing the narrative. Of course, budgeting has never been my strong suit…”

Job #2: Communications and Public Relations Associate

This job title could mean a lot of things – one of my pet peeves while I was job hunting was the ride range of companies that slapped the title “associate” on any and every listing. From what I can tell, it’s the easiest way to say “you’re not a manager, but you’re still going to be asked to manage a lot.” I’ve seen it applied to secretarial positions, sales clerk positions, copy writing positions, glorified babysitting positions…

Fortunately, what this translates to in terms of my own job is a list of tasks and responsibilities that I genuinely enjoy. I get to play Lois Lane: I write for our organization’s website, email newsletter, and hard copy publications. I also get to manage our Facebook page, monitor the web for instances that we appear in the news, and eventually develop some other strategies for spreading awareness about what we do. I’m learning more about the concept of branding (how you make a name for your company or organization, then present a compelling story) and networking. It’s actually quite fascinating… I’ve even been reading little bits and pieces on branding and social networking some evenings after work. (See? Workaholic.)

“Jobs” #3 and #4: Personal Blogger (on A Little Bit of Wonder) and Book Blogger/Reviewer (on Little Wonder’s Recommended Reading)

Okay, so these aren’t paid positions. I shouldn’t call them jobs – especially if they’re hobbies, meant for my own enjoyment. I shouldn’t feel obligated to blog, right? Except I have a do do do mentality. I’m always working on a project, always designing something, making something, reading something, writing something.

In my world, even the (hundreds and hundreds) of books that I want to read become items on a checklist, and I have to be careful not to get too bogged down with my read more read more mentality, or I stop enjoying myself. I think this is partially a product of my stretch in graduate school, but it’s also just who I am. I have always been eager to read more read more – the term “voracious reader” is particularly apt. It’s like an insatiable hunger. And I have always churned out pages and pages and pages of writing. Back at my parents’ house, I have whole shelves full of journals, from back before I started typing my entries and blogging. There have always been projects that have kept me up until 3 AM – websites or artwork of some kind. I just can’t keep still, can’t shut my brain down. I'm kind of an intense person.

The blogging, then, is great for several reasons; overall, writing focuses my energies productively. My book blog forces me to really think about what I read, keeps my literary analytical skills sharp despite the fact that I’m no longer taking or teaching literature classes, helps me keep track of all my thoughts, and keeps me connected to a literary community. Journaling on A Little Bit of Wonder helps me to think through my life and therefore live more deliberately, and also serves as a sounding board and first draft for things I would like to include in the memoir/novel that I would like to put together one day. All very important things, all things that help me meet my personal goals of being a dedicated reader, disciplined writer and – someday – a published author.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is, I go to work and I write. On my lunch hour, I read and/or write. I drive home, kiss my husband hello, grab some dinner, and sit down at my laptop to write. On the weekends, I throw in a load of laundry, go pick up some more diet Coke from the grocery store, read 1-2 novels, and write. There isn’t time for a lot of variety in my life these days, now that I work 40 hours a week and still try to blog in my spare time (at least six entries a week, between the two blogs).

I’m a little bit concerned that as long as my blogging and writing are a priority, I won’t be able to develop much of a life that exists outside of all my “jobs.” Thank God for my husband, who is a much more individual than I am. He gets me out of the house most weekends – this weekend, we managed to go out to Greenwich Point again on Saturday and take a seven mile walk in our neighborhood on Sunday. But I worry that I’m neglecting him for most of the week. And I don’t know when I would have time to socialize, even if I did feel like making friends in Nyack (which I’m still not quite ready to do… not quite yet). I think at some point, something is going to have to give – especially when we want to have kids (in three or four years, perhaps). But even before then, will I really be able to maintain such a rigorous writing life?

Yet all of these things have become really important to the way that I now define myself as a person and maintain my goals. I don’t really know if I can keep up the pace, but I’m going to be disappointed if I can’t… and I feel that by giving up some of my blogging, I would be greatly diminishing the likelihood that I will actually ever produce a novel or a memoir – I can’t simply rely on my grantwriting to keep my creative narrative skills sharp. So, I’ve got to find a way of balancing all the writing with more exercise, socializing, etc… and once in a while, I’ve got to find a way to take care of other random but important responsibilities. I’ve got to find time, for example, to take down my Christmas tree one of these days.

The Penguin Plunge

When my husband and I lived in the Washington D.C. metro area, we were in graduate school and needed to find an apartment with relatively low rent. We ended up grabbing a deal on a one bedroom, one bath with a den – plenty of closet space and the all-important extra room for my book collection, carefully shelved behind glass doors. Our rent was around $1000, which is cheap for the D.C. area, but the appliances all worked and everything was clean, so we didn’t ask too many questions.

It turns out we had moved into a somewhat notorious apartment complex – famous for the arsons that were taking place a few blocks over from us and the car thefts that were pretty run-of-the-mill. We personally experienced the car theft, in fact – twice before we moved out. (Those are actually pretty funny stories, despite the fact that the incurred repairs cost us a lot of unexpected cash… you’ll never meet a dumber set of car jackers than the teenagers who took our Plymouth for a joy ride. Except perhaps the thief who tried to steal our vehicle when it had a dead battery, then ended up leaving us his own car key on the seat. Too bad we didn’t know where he was parked.)

Let’s just say that being a little blond white girl, I didn’t really feel all that comfortable going for a walk by myself when we lived in the suburbs of D.C. Of course, I could drive over to the park in historic Greenbelt and sit reading at one of the picnic benches without fear of being harassed. But there were times when I tried to walk in my own neighborhood and a truck full of greasy, shifty-eyed men followed me, which understandably made me quite nervous.

So when we moved to Nyack eight months ago, I suddenly felt FREE. In this little river town with a cobblestone library and row after row of Victorian houses, I can wander through the neighborhoods without my husband acting as a chaperone. I can walk to the post office, the Starbucks and any number of mom-and-pop restaurants, coffee houses and gift shops. There are even a few art galleries and several antique stores. I feel a little bit guilty and un-politically correct for saying it, but I’m back in the tax bracket where I feel most comfortable and safe. It immediately felt like home, the very first time that we drove through Nyack – its quaint little shops remind us of Ann Arbor and Birmingham, which are two of my favorite places to hang out near my parents’ home in Michigan.

Beyond just the picturesque and charming setting, though, Nyack makes me happy because it is the kind of community that makes me comfortable – and even glow with pleasure. You can tell that they have the kind of neighborly attitude that we missed when we left the Midwest – in fact, they’re a little more neighborly than the residents of suburban Detroit. Nyack seems like Avonlea – like I could walk down the road and find Green Gables or the White Sands Hotel. All throughout the summer, the merchants put on street fairs featuring dozens of out-of-town art vendors. There’s a weekly Farmer’s Market that they set up in the parking lot of the bank. My husband and I haven’t become a part of the community yet – we’ve been too busy getting settled with our jobs to go out and meet people – but I love to watch as the residents put on events, invite people in to their beloved little river town, and take care of those who are a part of their community.

For example, we’ve stumbled across a couple of events in town designed to raise money for cancer survivors and local children with hefty medical bills. It was last fall when we first saw the community coming together like this – we were out for a walk in the evening and saw a procession of tiny flickering lights that began at the riverside playground and wound up the hill toward town. We asked what the rally and parade were for and learned that the event was in support of local residents battling cancer, survivors and their families. The candles were in memorial of those who had lost their fight against the disease, and you could purchase your own to help raise money for those who are still fighting.

Then today, we were out on a walk in the unseasonably warm March weather, when we came across dozens of people emerging from the park wearing beach towels. Yes, beach towels. I did a double-take, then insisted that my husband and I make a detour to explore what was going on. Down by the Hudson River, we found residents of our new home town decked out in everything from Speedos and bikinis to full scuba gear (no joke). There was a bandstand set up and several tents with refreshments – and everyone was standing around drip, drip, dripping. It turns out that this was the local Penguin Plunge, a dip in the river organized to raise money for two local children with serious medical conditions and not enough money to pay the bills.

I love that there were people of all ages jumping into the river today, just blocks from my apartment – there were even three little boys dressed in Batman raincoats and hats who looked as though they might have made the plunge in their superhero attire. And I LOVE that the residents of my new home are stepping up to raise money for other families. When we lived in the suburbs of D.C., we were surrounded by people who couldn’t make ends meet – but from what I could tell, their typical reaction was to smoke more weed (which we could smell drifting from one apartment to the next, and into our kitchen, where I had to constantly keep a Febreeze candle burning). I’m sure that there were plenty of hardworking people who lived in our apartment complex, but they kept to themselves – they were probably intimidated by all the car thieves and arsonists, too.

Here in Nyack, I almost feel like I’m back in the Midwest again – and it’s a welcome change from the East Coast mentality that we experienced (although not from everyone) in D.C. As we walked through the crowds of dripping teens and adults down at Memorial Park today, I found myself wishing that we knew someone there, someone to that would call out a hello and welcome us into a circle of bystanders. Someone who would offer me a cup of coffee and would try to convince me to participate in the Plunge next year. I found myself feeling a little bit more willing to go out and meet people soon. Maybe I need to take a plunge of my own.

Solitary

This post is dedicated to my closest and dearest friends, who are now not only located in Michigan and Washington D.C., but spread as far as Seattle and Amsterdam. I’d also like to extend a special welcome to those participating in the blog hop from SheWrites.

Sometimes the mornings seem bright, the sunshine reflecting off the Hudson River and rebounding off the nearby cliffs, massive rock outcroppings that are draped with giant white icicles right now. The sunlight dazzles my eyes as I drive to work, but I don’t mind – I feel a little bit more alive because of the warmth, the brightness.

On those mornings, I feel excited about ideas that I am generating for different projects at my new job. I feel empowered because despite the set-backs with my career in the academic world, I haven’t given up – I’ve successfully changed my course and even become excited about the things that I can do as a professional in the non-profit sector. I daydream about art projects, blog tours, and unique donation appeals that we could set up on behalf of our organization. After driving through the sunshine and running through ideas in my head, I even feel excited to begin working on grants once I get in to my office – and grants are not generally exciting things to write.

And then sometimes I feel exactly the opposite of excited and optimistic. On those mornings, the sunlight seems to burn in my eyes, causing them to water and making it nearly impossible to see well enough to negotiate traffic. I feel discouraged at the amount of effort everything takes – and I’m not even thinking about all the projects that I am beginning to accumulate at work, now that I’ve been employed for a month. When I feel discouraged, it’s because I’m thinking about all the effort that I really should be putting in to the rest of my life. The relationships. With other people.

I work for a non-profit organization – don’t I do that because I love people? Because I want to help others?

Well, yes. But.

When my husband and I lived in Michigan, I was a social butterfly. I loved being around people – all kinds of people, all the time. During high school and college, I had quite the full social calendar.

More than that, though, I valued truthful relationships. I built and maintained close, strong friendships with my best friends from elementary school and high school, my college roommates, bible study friends, and my husband (then boyfriend). I was lucky to accumulate, in a few short years, perhaps more honest-to-goodness friends than some people ever have in an entire lifetime. The kind of friends who will take care of you when you have a fever and you’re throwing up, or will get up at six o’clock in the morning to help you clean up the bathroom after the toilet has flooded. The kind of friends who will tell you when you’re being a jerk, have it out with you and then share a box of chocolates and a bottle of cheap wine with you afterward.

Then we moved to Washington D.C., the capital city of temporary internships and fast-track positions. There are a ton of young professionals who come to D.C. to get a degree or take a good starting position, and then move on to another geographic location – a place that feels more like home. At the very least, a lot of those young professionals eventually move out into the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia. I’m not even sure what type of person actually ends up living long-term in Washington D.C., other than politicians, diplomats and other government employees.

To the point: Jeremy and I went to D.C. to earn our graduate degrees as well, but we arrived with a Midwestern mentality and were disappointed by the region’s aloof attitude. We went there to make friends and settle down, but we discovered that in the over-crowded urban sprawl of the outskirts of D.C., there weren’t too many people that were our age, shared our interests and had time for new/more friends. And as we became more and more absorbed in our own academic and career goals, we likewise felt like we lost the time and interest to “be social.”

It is important to note the difference between having real friends and being “social.” Friendship involves being comfortable with other people, to the point that you can openly say what you think, have the confidence in your ability to resolve conflicts with that person, and dismiss the need for a polite, “grown-up” façade when you are around them. Friendship takes a lot of time and effort.

In contrast, being social is attending various events with other people, enjoying more shallow conversations and jokes, sharing interests without sharing emotions. Each fulfills a need, but in my mind, friendship is far more valuable.

After I started graduate school, I decided I didn’t really have the time, patience or desire to be “social” with random people. It often ended up being more effort than entertainment, and I didn’t have a whole lot of free time to burn. If I really wanted to have either an honest conversation or a deep, belly-shaking laugh, I talked to my husband or I called up someone in Michigan. These are the people who I know I can trust. These are the people with whom I can laugh.

With time, Jeremy and I met a few people through work and school that became good friends and our lives in D.C. were richer because of those relationships.

Then, when we moved to New York, we had to say goodbye. Again.

We have lived in Nyack for eight months now, and I can honestly say that I haven’t made a single new friend. I know one or two of the neighbors and the apartment manager well enough to say hello. Sometimes I talk to the librarians as they are checking out my books. On the positive side, my new co-workers look like promising candidates. But the closet thing that Jeremy and I have to an actual relationship in our new location is one good friend from graduate school that lives right in New York City. While we try to hang out with him as often as we can, though, he’s currently earning his Ph.D., so he doesn’t really have time to get together more than once a month or so. (No hard feelings – I know exactly how that goes. The workload is brutal.)

So in contrast to the extremely social disposition I had throughout my undergraduate career, I’ve become a hermit – and even after emerging out from under the unending responsibilities of graduate school, I haven’t wanted to make the effort to get to know people. I just keep thinking about all the good friends that, despite my best intentions and efforts, have faded from my life. I think about my grandma and grandpa, who have now passed away. I think about the way that before my grandparents died, they lost so many of their friends, one by one.

Then I think about my closest friends, with whom I have managed to actually stay close, despite time and distance. Sometimes I can call Seattle and pour out my heart to my friend just as easily as I could have done when we lived just a few blocks away from each other. But yet miscommunications and misunderstandings can develop between the closest of friends, even those that you’ve known for ten years or more. And what might have been a little miscommunication becomes a lot more awkward and harder to resolve over a distance of five hundred or so miles. I’ve had several long-distance misunderstandings recently that have really shaken me – they’ve made me realize how fragile even the strongest of my relationships truly could be. When you’re main modes of communication are written – emails, Facebook, texting – you have to be even more careful with what words you choose.

So people fade from your life. Do I really want to begin to make friends again, just to watch even more people fade away?

I guess it boils down to a choice, and it’s really a choice about what kind of person that I want to be. Do I want to be solitary, isolated, withdrawn? Solitary doesn’t sound so bad – I’ve got my husband, I’ve got my books. I’ve got a fulfilling job and my goal to write a novel or a memoir some day. But “withdrawn” is a much more ugly word. It makes me pause. I don’t think that my grandma would want me to withdraw from the world – so from somewhere deep inside of me, I’m going to have to dig up some energy, go out and “be social.” Thankfully, I don’t have to do it today – but I better do it soon because in the meantime, circumstances are shaping the person that I become, even in ways that I don’t realize.

The Curtains are Closed

I’ve always been an emotional kind of girl. Over-the-top emotional, you could say—a bit dramatic. Or, as my grandma used to put it, I’m just very sensitive.

I cry easily. And frequently.

Ask my dad – who didn’t know what to do with his teenage daughter when she would, in the midst of an only mildly upsetting conversation, suddenly burst out crying and manage to tell her bewildered father between sobs, “I know it’s silly to be crying about this, but I’m (hiccup) about to have (sniffle) my period and I can’t (gasp) seem to help it…” I was lucky if I could get all of that out before I trailed off into a low moan.

Or ask my husband how emotional I am, poor guy. My dad only had to deal with me for a few very turbulent teenage years, but for some reason, my wonderful spouse has signed up to live in the eye of the tornado – for another forty, fifty, even sixty years. Maybe he’s secretly masochistic.

I posted a few days ago, though, on the inescapable grief that I believe is now a part of my personality, my very identity—and this is a new level of emotion. The deep sorrow that I feel over the loss of my grandparents, the aching disbelief that Hank and Marge White have simply ceased to exist (at least as I knew them)—it is something that affects not just how I feel in the moment, but how I make decisions and how I think about myself.

I have had my heart broken once or twice, I suppose you could say—in the more traditional sense of the word. I have loved two different males (boys? men? something in between—guys?) that did not love me, and I thought the lonely ache of that would be enough to choke me, paralyze me.

But even then, my loving grandma (and my very giving mother) stepped in to reassure me, comfort me, and bolster me up. Grandma was steadfast and particularly vocal of her belief that if the gentleman in question was worthy of me, then he would come around—and if not, good riddance. She had some high expectations for those adolescents, if she thought that they were capable of seeing me the way that she saw me. It should go without saying that this kind of romanticized perspective would be nearly impossible for a teenage boy.

I’m not sure if all her loving comments were really all that comforting, but at least someone was around to hear me sob and wail and complain. I’m not only emotional—I love an audience. Or at least I used to.

This new, deeper grief has changed me, though—or maybe I changed before my grandparents passed away and I just haven’t realized it until now. Either way, I no longer want an audience. I don’t want to cry in front of anyone, even my friends. I don’t mind when I break down in front of my husband, but even so, I’d prefer to keep it to myself. I hold it tight in my chest, wait for the moments that I’m alone.

Before I got a job, I used to lie in bed for a while after my husband would leave for work, stare at the picture of my grandparents hanging on the wall, and despondently weep. But I knew that they would be upset to see me stay in bed all day, so I would get up and find things to enjoy—for them, if not for me. They would want me to be happy, to enjoy life.

Now I cry when I am in the bathroom, as I’m putting on makeup in the morning and thinking about how my grandma and I used to visit the Clinique counter together. I cry when I am in the car, driving the Saturn that used to belong to my grandfather. I named it “Henry” after him, and call it “Hank” and “Grandpa.” I talk to the car, imagining it is him, and let myself weep on the drive home from work. But I don’t cry very often when I am around people—even my family, who are all quite used to my emotional outbursts.

This sorrow is private, more private than anything that I’ve ever experienced before. (And yet, I’m blogging about it—a big step for me at this point in my life. It's taken me months to feel ready to address this subject on my blog.)

I know that this desire for privacy isn’t really a strange thing for many people—most people don’t share their deepest emotions with the general public. But I used to be a bit of an exhibitionist. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I simply couldn’t contain my emotions – they’d come pouring out of me, no matter where I was or who I was with. I could be working the cash register at the campus coffee shop with tears pouring down my face.

(Yes, that actually happened a few times. I couldn’t seem to stop the saline, which made it hard to find the right button and punch in the amount for a latte or a raisin bran muffin. I probably gave several bewildered customers a discount or something.)

The fact that I’ve been so reserved, that I’ve kept my grief to myself, is a huge shift in my personality. And I wonder what it means. I’ve changed—but I don’t know how I feel about this new, more private personality. I think it’s partially connected to a larger change in how I relate to people; I’m much less friendly and open then I used to be. But that’s a subject for another post.

The fact remains that I was once a performer, up on the stage, often sharing my latest heartache with anyone who would listen (and that included friends, roommates, friends of friends, roommates of friends, classmates, fellow coffee shop workers, the delivery guy…). But now I’ve climbed down off the stage, or at least lowered the curtain. The exhibition is over, and all that’s left is a hollow ache inside.

I’m missing my favorite audience member—my grandma—and without my most ardent admirer, I think my career as a (live) performer has come to a close.

I’m still a writer, though—I guess some things never change.