Category Archives: deep thoughts

2012 Retrospective #2 (simplicity)

Post #2 in my 2012 reflections…

Simplicity is one of my core values, one reinforced by my Quaker beliefs.  The best way that I’ve incorporated simplicity into my life in 2012 has been in the home where I live.  It’s uncluttered and open, and thus it’s easy-to-care-for.  It rarely looks messy just because there isn’t much stuff to pile up.  In general, my fridge and cupboards and closets are sparsely-filled.

When I moved, I got rid of stuff.  As I packed, before any item went into a box I asked myself whether it was useful and whether I loved it.  If it wasn’t either of those two things, it moved on.  Broken stuff was discarded.  Anything that I hadn’t used in more than a year went to the goodwill. Also, if something had a bad memory attached to it, it didn’t make the cut.  That last element is an important one–I realized that bad memories can clutter my home just as much as piles of physical objects.

One lesson that I’ve learned from my recent travels, is that there’s very little stuff that you actually need on a daily basis.  So I’ve incorporated that lesson into the ways that I’ve organized my surroundings.  Also, I learned from some of the hotels that I encountered in my travels that sparseness makes feel more comfortable than a space full of many things. (note: I took this to an extreme during christmas when I realized that I couldn’t stomach piles of gaudily-wrapped packages under the tree.  Instead, I used the soft white packing paper that we’d recycled from our move to wrap our gifts)..

Another way that I “keep it simple” is to arrange all of my financial documents to be delivered online (no more paper!), to shop online, and to keep my google calendar updated.  When I bring in the mail each evening I sort it immediately and try to deal with each piece of paper then, instead of letting them linger somewhere in a pile.  That, and I try to keep stuff in the same spot all of the time so it’s not hard to find when I need it (no more searching for shoes and keys and phones).

Most importantly, and this is related to my first retrospective post about finances, is that I resist the pull to accumulate more things.  When I’m tempted to buy something new, I first consider how I might meet that need in some other way besides accumulating more stuff.  Maybe I can netflix or ILL that movie or book (or buy it on kindle).  Maybe I can use a slightly different-shaped pan instead of buying a new one with a specific purpose, or maybe I can downscale my giftgiving to a small thoughtful thing rather than many unnecessary things.  Or maybe I can wear some sparkly earrings with that favorite older dress to a special event instead of buying a new one.

Overall I’ve learned that a quieter simpler life feels better than one filled with busy-ness and things.  Sure I am still often crazy-busy (lining up one to-do after another each evening until I’m exhausted just thinking about it all).  But…I still feel as though this year has taught me much about what’s really important.  And what that is is something that rarely has a shelf-life or a price-tag.  Instead, it’s time spent on the porch swing with a book, or giggling with the kids over a meal, or singing too loud while on a road trip, or a ramble on the beach on a windy day as I am squinting into the horizon.

This sweet hedgehog bell hangs in the doorway to our home.

Retrospective Post #1: Finances

2012 Retrospective #1 (finances)

I’m planning to do a series of reflective posts about last year.  It was a big year for me, primarily because it was my first full year being divorced.  What that meant for me was that it was my first full year on my own, where I was financially and physically responsible for myself and my kids.

That’s a lot to grapple with.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of being on my own was managing my own finances.  First, I set up a rough budget and tried to live with that, being careful of my spending.  I was fortunate to find a very affordable home for our family, which made living within my means easier than I’d feared it would be.  There were many financial unknowns on the horizon for our family and I also had to pay full tuition for my last few quarters of my PhD program, so I had to be quite careful with my spending.  I found that the (free!) mint.com software helped me to keep tabs on all of my accounts, debts, and assets quite easily.

The next step was that I anticipated how much I would owe the government and adjusted my tax withholding accordingly (and was so close in my gu-esstimation that I owed less than $200).  I then filed my taxes on my own (with a wee bit of help from TurboTax), which was a bit complicated because of divorce-related entanglements, but I managed to figure it out and also, several months later, I managed to convince the IRS not to audit me when they questioned my status as Head-of-Household(!).

My employer offers free retirement consultations, so I set up an appointment to ensure that I was taking full advantage of my employer’s matching contributions, and also to discuss how much additional money I should be putting away each month.  While I could definitely be doing better in my long-term savings, I saw a significant increase in my retirement account this past year (it more than quadrupled), so I feel satisfied with my efforts in that arena.

Overall, while there were some facets of my finances that still warrant improvement, I’m calling 2012 a success.  I sat down and crunched some numbers a few days ago and realized that I began the year with a negative net worth, and am ending it in the black–and all of this while supporting my kiddos well (and even paying for my son’s first semester at a private college).  Whew.

I know, all too well, what it’s like to not have paycheck-enough to stretch to the end of the month.  I know, too, how careful I still have to be with my finances so I can keep my bills paid and not feel stressed by those expensive emergencies that crop up now and then.  Also, I recognize just how precarious my own financial stability is in today’s economy.  But…even as I realize that, it’s a good feeling to mark 2012 as being the year that I established a strong foundation for my future financial security (and for that of my children, too).

Photo of my daughter, when she was about 3 or 4 years old.

Recursion

Sorry for anyone who’s getting pinged every time I post.  It seems that the IFTTT.com service that I’ve been experimenting with the past few days has set up a loop of posting and reposting my Facebook links to my blog.

That was not part of the plan.  But yet, it’s a rather interesting thing to have my blog and my Facebook in a link-laden recursive conversation with each other…without my involvement.

creating the post-divorce Christmas card

I used to send out Christmas cards every year.  In fact, it was one of the things I most looked forward to about the holidays.

Composing the newsy letter with updates about each family member and a photo in front of our family tree, meant so much (although in the one below, we are so much bigger than our tree, you can’t really even tell that we are standing in front of it…).

About 5 years ago the cards stopped.  Mostly it was because of graduate school–all Christmas break I would be feverishly applying for grant monies to fund my next year of studies.  Cards fell by the wayside.  That, and I never was quite sure how to explain that our family had left the Mormon church and that my (now ex-)husband was excommunicated.  How would that fit into a tidy narrative that included my kids’ swimming lessons?

Then after the divorce I wasn’t really sure that there would ever be a cute family narrative again.  The kids were teenagers anyways, and not very interested in wearing a Christmas sweater or a velvet dress and posing in front of the Christmas tree (although I have to say that I do like last year’s “goofing off in front of the tree” photos very much).

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”pilgrimgirl” id=”72157628152003563″]

The other issue that was rolling around in my head, is how best to discuss my new partner in my Christmas card.  Do I make some type of official, “hey, guess what,” sort of declaration, or do I just include him in my family update without any mention of the change?

Though the card is still in “draft” stage (pending approval of the kiddos, who haven’t yet seen yet what I wrote about them), I opted for fairly brief text, listing just a few recent highlights on each person.  It’s succinct, but it also catches everyone up on the exciting happenings of the past year (new address, new schools, new jobs, etc).

The photo part of the card was a bit harder than the text.  I messed around last night with a bunch of photo collage templates to see if I could do something artful from our travels this past year.  But after I did this for over an hour I realized that no one that I was sending this card to would care much about a view of the alps or of Tuscany.  I am pretty sure that they’d like to see us and not what I ate for dinner in the Netherlands.

So…my plan is to herd everyone in front of the tree after Gameboy returns from college on Thursday evening and snap the annual holiday photo.

Because it feels like some traditions should stay the same, even in the midst of so much change.

Note:  I recently opened up my Christmas card address book and realized that it’s five years out of date, and so many of you have moved in the meantime.  Please email (janaremyATgmail) me your new address if you would like a card and you’ve moved since we were last in touch via post.

on teaching…

I used to teach religion classes to Mormon teenagers every morning, and that’s how I learned that I wanted to be a teacher.

Although I was up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 every morning to commute to my teaching gig and it was a thankless and unpaid position, I loved it.  I came home alive and ready for more.  Late into the evening I would stay up scheming ways of edu-taining my students–so none of us would be nodding off in class, and I loved that challenge.

After from teaching in the college classroom this afternoon, I’m feeling that same adrenaline surge.  Today my students gave some two-minute lightning presentations.  It was a daunting task–to get up in front of the class and try to hold their attention while speaking about the implications of the involvement of the federal government on the environment of the American West.  But they did well, even through a bit of nervous shakiness and laughter.  And I came away marveling at the fact that they are doing hard work and, above all, learning.

Teaching with a Typewriter…

This semester I’m teaching a class with a strong technology component.  So far my students have used flickr, wordpress, SIMILE timelines, Wordle, Wikipedia, GDocs, Blackboard, and Prezi.  On my midterm evaluations several of them commented that they had technology-fatigue after learning so many different tools.  As a result, I decided it was high time to get old-school.

So, last week I brought in my Royal typewriter to class for the students to use for a short in-class assignment, where they would write a twitter-length summary of the day’s reading.  I learned that not one of them had used a manual typewriter before–most of them couldn’t even figure out how to load in a sheet of paper and no idea what the ding of a carriage return meant (much less how to pull on the lever to move the carriage back to the other side of the page).  Only one of them had the finger strength to consistently hit the keys hard enough to make an ink impression on the paper.  Afterwards I wondered if perhaps they were scared of breaking the machine–despite my encouraging them to pound on the keys.

Bringing a typewriter was a bit of a stunt, but I think it also underscored how useful technology can be in the classroom.  In their reflective writing after the exercise, most praised academic technology (although they still have a strong distaste for Prezi).  None of them want to have to type out an assignment manually again, although one of them said that if she could “choose” to use a typewriter on a school assignment that it might be fun.

As an instructor I’m doing all I can to not only teach the students the ins-and-outs of technology, but to foster an environment where the students are constantly working at the edge of their knowledge–to keep them actively involved in what we’re learning together.  Because of that, I expect them to feel frustrated with and even tired of technology.  I expect them to fail sometimes when they try something new (or in this case, when they try to use a tool so old that they might not have ever encountered one in real life before).  More than showing off mastery of a technological tools, I expect the students to be curious and experimental.  I want them to play with and explore the use of tools in ways that are unique to them and aren’t a carbon copy of the way that I use them.

That was not funny…(a Halloween rant)

I don’t care much for Halloween.  I don’t mind the little girls in their faery costumes and the boys dressed as ninjas or the doorbell ringing all evening long.  But, I do have a lot of fears of violence and things that “go bump in the night” so I find October to be a generally tedious month where I’m flipping off the radio every time there’s an ad for a spook-tastic theme park.  I don’t like being scared and I don’t enjoy gory anything (in fact, I often find such things to be “triggers” for the very real horrors that I experience day-to-day).

So last night when I went to a local market (Wholesome Choice in Irvine) to pick up ingredients for dinner, I thought little about the creepy Halloween display in the doorway of the store.  When I first saw it a few weeks ago I remember thinking it in poor taste–it featured a life-size grim reaper character with a large scythe.  So when I entered last night it was with barely a glance at that decor while I attempted to navigate my shopping cart through the crowded entryway that included a crowd waiting in front of the bakery area for the next batch of fresh bread.  I was looking in that direction when I realized that the creature from the Halloween display was now leaning over my shoulder, with his arms upraised to scare me.  I screamed and shuddered, as I processed the fact that this was a store employee wearing the grim reaper costume (not a mannequin) and that he was standing in the doorway display to scare passersby.  I also realized that the bakery line was actually a crowd of onlookers who had gathered to see the customers entering the store being “scared.”

They were laughing, uproariously, after seeing how badly I’d been frightened by the grim reaper character.

I stopped right there and stated loudly, “That was not funny.”

This made the onlookers laugh even harder.

“That was not funny,” I stated even more emphatically.

One man started arguing with me.  “It was funny,” he explained.  “And it’s getting even funnier now.”  He was laughing so hard that it was hard for him to respond to me.

I stepped through the doorway and hovered in the produce section and watched more people enter the store.  As I did so I realized that nearly every woman who entered got the same fright treatment and the gawking laughter.

The women who were scared weren’t laughing.  Most of them immediately put their hands to their hearts or to their foreheads, as if in pain.  And then they walked through the laughing gauntlet with frowns on their faces.

As I continued pushing my cart through the store, every few seconds I would hear another scream from the front of the shop and then more laughter.  I didn’t know what to do so I started tweeting what I’d experienced.  I wanted to track down a manager.  I wanted to stand in the front of the store and warn other women entering.  I wanted to take that scythe from that grim reaper and hit him over the head with it (and also do the same to that man who kept laughing at me as I became more angry at being frightened).  But I was still shaking so hard I could barely type.  I couldn’t even remember what I’d come to the store to buy.  I pushed my cart aimlessly through the aisles wondering what to do.

Most of all, I was trying to figure out why that had been such a scary experience for me, and why I couldn’t shrug it off as a Halloween prank.  And I wanted to find a quiet place and sit down and cry.

Because, perhaps it reminded me of this experience from not too long ago:

I’d dropped my daughter off at the church’s childcare area so I could attend a talk with other women from my congregation.  The talk was by a local author who was a hero of mine (Emma Lou Thayne).  It would be the first time that I would hear her in person.  I had a book of hers in my bag in hopes that I could get her to sign it at the end of her talk.

So perhaps that’s why I ignored the feeling of discomfort at seeing the childcare being staffed by two teenage boys rather than by adults.  I didn’t recognize them as part of our congregation, but saw other women dropping off their children and figured that it was fine.

About 30 minutes into the talk, a member of the bishopric (the clergy) pulled me out of the meeting, and motioned for me to walk down the hall with him towards the childcare area.  As we walked he explained that the boys in the nursery had been nephews of a woman in our congregation and should not have been left in charge of the children.  My heart started thumping hard in my chest.

“They had your daughter in the middle of the room and were throwing things at her–small toys.  They were making her cry and then laughing at her as she got more and more upset.  They encouraged some of the other children to throw things at her, or to poke her.  Another mother dropped by to check on the children and stopped them and called in the bishopric.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And then I remembered a scenario that plays out over and over again when I take out my outrigger canoe in Newport Harbor alone.  Invariably, if it is a weekend, that will mean that there are a handful of rental duffies in the harbor being piloted by groups who are drinking too much.  Despite the area being a “no-wake zone” where speeds are supposed to be kept to below 5mph, the renters don’t adhere to the rules when there’s an opportunity to harass a lone female paddler.

Sometimes the men (and it is always men) humor themselves by yelling rude taunts at me,

“Show me your tits!”

“Watch for sharks!”

“Paddle FASTER!”

“How well do you swim??”

This latter one is probably the scariest.  It’s usually accompanied by a gunning motor and a veer of the boat in my direction.  They are always laughing.

I swim well.  And I can often paddle my lightweight canoe faster than the duffies with their bloated load of drunken passengers.  But I also know the power of boat motors with their scythe-like propellers, and that they can be lethal for anyone in the water nearby.  With just a few feet between me and them, the danger is utterly real.

And it is not funny.

It is not funny to hire a costumed killer to stand in your store and scare women.

It is not funny to taunt someone smaller and younger than you.

It is not funny to pick on a stranger simply because she is alone or more vulnerable than you.

I scare easily because a lifetime of experience as a woman has taught me that I should be afraid of the dark, of teenage boys, of men that are taller than me, and of partiers steering rental boats.  Being scared hasn’t stopped me from paddling my canoe alone, but it did stop me from using church-sponsored childcare staffed by strangers, and it has now stopped me from shopping at my neighborhood grocery store.

I’ve tried to imagine a scenario where a store manager came up with the idea of frightening female customers as they entered the store and thought it would increase sales or customer satisfaction, and I cannot come up with any justification for spooking customers that makes business sense.  So my conclusion is that was ignorant and mean.  Moreover, I cannot conceive of a reason that I would continue to trust a store manager with such poor judgment to sell me the kind of high-quality food that I want to nourish myself and my family.

 

 

7 things I’ve learned from logging out of FB

A few weeks ago, in a contemplative moment, I realized that I missed reading novels.  So I thought a bit about why I just didn’t seem to have time for novels anymore, and made a decision.  I would experiment with only logging on to FB whenever I had finished reading a novel–as a reward for finishing something important.

It’s harder than it sounds to do this, mostly because so many of my web apps now integrate with using a FB login.  And if I’m logged out of FB then I’m logged out of them, too.

So here you go, Seven Things I’ve Learned From Logging Out of Facebook:

1) I need to reconstruct my logins for various web services (everything from goodreads to blogging) in order to access them while being logged out of FB.

2) More than before, I’ve been noticing those ubiquitous FB “Like” buttons everywhere.  That my medical provider has one on their site is creepier than zombies.

3) I like novels (better than I like FB).

4) Logging out of FB during election season couldn’t have been better timing.

5) I’m carrying on conversations outside of a for-profit proprietary software platform.  Even in real life sometimes.

6)I can still post on FB through my twitter and instagram feeds.  So I don’t think anyone has even noticed my absence.

7) When I’ve finished a novel I’ve found that haven’t had much interest in logging into FB anyways.  Instead, I’m grabbing the next book from my nightstand.