productive relationship

i'm committed to trying to have a productive relationship with life. it is 12:55am as i write this, and i hope not to wake my husband as he has to go to work in the morning. writing for me feels like a productive relationship. most times, so does teaching at the community college. with both, my bank account often doesn't completely register my productivity. but i keep trying.

i'd like to move to omaha where my family is in case i am pregnant now or someday, but lincoln may be our home because my husband has found a niche in the world of science that he values and finds very productive. i'm sending out resumes and cover letters, seeing if i'll get some summer teaching gigs, maybe going to substitute teach again in the fall, and shuffling registrations. i'm registered for a writers workshop at the end of june. originally i registered for the commercial novel workshop promising insight into the various commercial genres. i was interested in publishing women's fiction. but i can't get past the fact that the teacher is a former soap opera actress, and her writing seems to read as such. so i'm going back to a woman i've worked with before who's more literary and thus harder in terms of my goals, but i've got to have self-respect in the end.

sometimes, i wonder, though, if i should do something practical. teaching was supposed to be my move in that direction while giving me flexibility, but we'll see how that pans out. i enjoy it, but i'm not hired full-time. maybe it's the stars. maybe a baby will be on the way and will make this all make sense, in the form of a brand-new human or maybe a brand new book.

i do, in the meantime, try to find a brand-new job, too. i applied for a position as sales associate for a cool-seeming, direct marketing firm called nobrainermail. they do direct mailings that are personalized to the audience and creative. they would be fun to work for. i tried to sell arbonne, though i don't like to talk about it. and i was tremendously successful selling cutco knives.

the mix of adventure and practicality and devotion and romance and questioning of my 20's will hopefully add up to something. i was so proud of almost every move i made then. majoring in spanish was brilliant because i'd learn another language and travel. minoring in english was brilliant because i got to read and talk about the best writers and try to write great things. by the time i went to grad school in english, it wasn't at all about making a brilliant, practical move but about the survival of my soul.

getting out into the marketplace is an odd experience. my dad had heralded law school all the way. two of brothers listened right away and were very successful as bankruptcy attorneys. another brother tried his freedom and went to law school finally at 50. my sister started her own business with her husband, a brilliant brainchild of creativity, entrepreneurism, and a product from his home country of pakistan. another brother is a nurse. and finally, another brother stayed in school learning and doing lots of things for a long time like me, wanting to be a writer. he has written and made a lot of art and even made the practical move of being an IT guru and making money in the meantime.

i came back to nebraska, married my high school sweetheart, and wedded myself back to the land where they're hiring accountants, accountants, accountants, and insurance people. i've applied to insurance jobs remembering this is what ted kooser did to make an income while he wrote poetry. i registered for an intro to accounting class today on a whim, trying to feel unguilty about taking more english classes in the fall.

the truth is i'm making lemonade. i did choose things that i love: writing and teaching. the teaching part came as a surprise, but i shouldn't have been too surprised. i thought i'd love law school back when i was first learning and forming opinions about controversial issues.

i had an idea in bed from which i sprung to write this about attention-givers and attention-getters. teachers get to do both, though getting the attention is tricky there because you're dealing with a bunch of teenagers and trying to get them to learn something when they all watch different tv shows and yet expect you to entertain them. but that's not necessary all the time, i guess. it is a tricky world trying to please them. i feel like i could do a better job with the arts and humanities kids. having an audience that i can identify with would help.

oh, god, speaking of the arts and humanities kids, i'm going to the pool with leah tomorrow and have hardly graded enough papers. i might have to postpone. though it sounds like grand fun. i think i've been having too much grand fun lately. but it's hard to do alone. i feel guilty that way long-term. i'm not giving attention. if i had a baby, it would be "quality, developmental time." that's what i'm trying to give to my writing, though a job offer seems like it could snatch that up at any moment.

i guess i should be grateful for no job so that i could get to this point, which mostly feels good, but what is this point? what is the point of this point? i have lost something like 30 pounds in the last year, getting into yoga and trying to get ready for baby-having. that is an accomplishment. i've taught at scc pretty well, increasingly well, at least most of the students liked me and wrote well, so that's something. i'm still developing curriculum, management, and approach. i subbed pretty well. i think i only had like two days from hell. and yoga really helped me to deal with that.

i miss my family. i guess they don't realize how much because most of them have their own families or are in school or working a lot. but seeing them together was the highlight of my life. my siblings were grown and didn't live with us, and when they would come over, it was like i had a whole family and not just a sometimes sad home with me and my dad missing my mom. that's a very sad thought and is making me cry. perhaps i'm getting to something emotional now.

i love that clint came from a stable home, even if they weren't always happy. i think they were, but his parents, particularly his mom, worked so hard to keep it all together. i was always annoyed as a kid with friends who didn't realize how hard their parents worked to keep things together. but i guess the whole point of being a kid was that you weren't supposed to notice that because you were supposed to be so happy doing your own thing.

i liked school in that i was successful at learning things quickly, and i liked getting praised. at the christian school, the teachers were very nice, and i made a few friends that i did things with on weekends, but i wasn't necessarily popular. i didn't have the same kid-happy-glow as the rest because i'd dealt with the loss and suicide of a parent. i didn't go to the church like everyone else in my born-again, pentacostal, evangelical, charismatic school. that made me a bit unpopular. or self-conscious, at least. i was self-conscious about learning about god and jesus and the rest. i enjoyed the story-telling part of what we learned and the singing, but when it got to the doctrine, i had too many questions. i used to enjoy praying for people. but then when i learned that god wouldn't forgive people for not knowing about jesus and that he wouldn't forgive my mom, i thought what's the point of going to heaven, then? later i decided there wasn't a hell anyway. but i digress into my religious/spiritual evolution. did i ever get away from god? i don't think it was possible to remove myself from that concept. i was agnostic for a long time, then atheist, then transcendental, and now here i am. a frequent yoga doer with much more religious tolerance because i love my yoga teacher and her spiritual inclinations. but i was spiritual all along. in that either i had a spirit or cared about other people and their feelings. that should qualify. i was interested in truth. god would appreciate that.

man, i love writing, but sometimes i have no idea where it will go so i'm afraid to do it. i probably could sit and write all day just like i could sit and talk all day, but for what? you could say attention getting, but really as i'm doing it, it's attention-giving. giving attention to the meaning of my life and my mind. that feels so important. like if a bomb hit, i'd be glad clint was sleeping peacefully, and i was doing this. i wouldn't regret not having graded the papers or the fact that i didn't have much of a savings. i've managed to mostly get to the point of no credit card debt. my student loans are in order. my obliteration wouldn't leave any with any debts, and my words would be in order. god knows we'd still have the internet, so here it is.

i've liked the idea of writing down my life for me and maybe for my family and friends and also for my unborn children. i guess i sort of wish i could find my mom online like this or something. i think that was a motivator. but it doesn't just come from a place of pain. it also comes from a place of wonder.

part of the wonder is that sometimes it seems that if i truly cared about living a good life i would become an accountant or a lawyer. and the rest of the time it seems i'd be doing exactly what i'd doing. mary pipher and others have said that the thing about writing is that you get to live life twice. i think that's cool.

i also think my dad's cool. i want to write about my dad because i spent so much time not understanding him and scouring his flaws for why my mom killed herself and some of my siblings were mad at him, and why such a man would leave a marriage of 20 years and 5 kids to marry my younger mother and in many ways ruin her son's life and hers. not that any of that was on purpose. i can't actually blaim him for ruining her life but only her. and i think she made that decision just in a weak time.

do you want to know what i think about my mom? here goes. she tried to get approval at home. the person with the most power in her home was her dad. her dad was a wwII vet who was a likeable, drinking, sort of blue-collar guy, though he did teach welding, led his union, and had great benefits. my grandma was the epitome of love, and yet he cheated on her. my mom tried to figure out why and concluded it was only because my grandma was fat, which may have been true (as per the reason, despite it's bullshit, though we all can be prone to that, myself included, but i don't like to think of myself like that). my mom figured out she needed to be pretty and thin. maybe it helped that she was naturally that way or something, but she worked on it. i think she also worked on having a bubbly personality that got her dad's attention. we all try to figure out what our parents expect of us. anyways, she left home at 16 and married the first guy, had my brother at 17, and eventually realized she wanted a man with ambition.

her husband was going to work for union pacific, which her dad worked for, and she wanted a different life. as for her own career development, she had a kid at a young age, and after divorcing her first husband (who also reportedly impregnated another), i think she focused on her biggest assets: her looks and personality. she worked at jobs, too. and when she met my dad, i think she was perhaps a bit of an emotional wreck, as many pretty women without careers are, and she saw him and his success and personality and seeming stability and stuck her sights on him. the romance flourished because for both it was based on extremely romantic desires. it was also damaging, though. my mom was raised catholic, and i'm sure she felt guilty.

i don't feel like going on about this anymore, but rest assured, i've examined it. too much. but then everyone's got to think about and examine their parents. my mom just happens to be a mystery of sorts because i could never ask her about herself. i did love her very much, more than anyone at the time. when she died, i hardly knew my dad and was afraid of him, which was mostly how he'd raised his first crop of kids. i had to get to know him. yes, it's too bad he didn't read parenting magazine, but the man i ended up getting to know is someone who will fuel me with inspiration and appreciation for the rest of my life. it's hard to explain that to people who expected him to be different. i expected that, too, for a long-time. deep down, though, he's a romantic. he's also managed to be very practical, and i appreciate all of that. always doting and devoted he's not, but we can't be all things. and he is those things on some levels. sometimes you just have to show up and ask, though. he keeps himself busy with other things so that he doesn't get lonely. it makes sense to me.