a zinger about ambition, from Seneca (ca. 4 BC-AD 65)

Reading Seneca this morning, I had the feeling of being with a shrewd friend who was laughing at me! And I had to laugh along, because there was a lot of truth in what he said.

“We commonly give the impression that the reasons for our having gone into political retirement are our disgust with public life and our dissatisfaction with some uncongenial and unrewarding post. Yet every now and then ambition rears its head again in the retreat into which we were really driven by our apprehensions and our waning interest; for our ambition did not cease because it had been rooted out, but merely because it had tired–or become piqued, perhaps, at its lack of success.” Letter LVI, p. 111-112, in Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, ed. Robin Campbell (Penguin ed., 1969.

HA! just see all those books on my bibliography about Buddhism, alternative economies, compassion, and “letting go” etc., as contrasted with the exuberant posting when I made a sale on Etsy! We are all the same.

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day 25: it took a pandemic …

… for us to learn to appreciate each other.

Despite all the interesting and dire news circulating today, I’m drawn back to the New York Times magazine’s “Exposed. Afraid. Determined.” feature from last week, because it brings together so many voices we usually ignore and it confers dignity on so many jobs we usually disdain, jobs which have suddenly been vaulted into the news by dint of being classified as “essential”.

True, some of the people are accustomed to being honored: the firefighter mentions how people “want to shake our hands and thank us” and the mail carrier says “My customers are like my friends and family. They buy my kids Christmas presents, or I give them birthday cards.” But what many others say reveals their sense of being disrespected, day after day, by us the uncaring public. And that makes me mad.

In homage to these hard-working people, I reprint some of their words here. We need to read these testimonials and hear what they are telling us. And it needs to be remembered. It should not take a pandemic for us to learn to respect each other as equal citizens, equal people, united as humans by our kinship of intelligence.

“The public sees us as dumb flight attendants, but we are the silent first responders.”

“We are always talking to patients. … That can be a waste of time, but we do it anyway.”

“I’m not going to lie, I’m frightened.”

“As a woman of color, I am used to being second-guessed or having patients ask me, ‘When am I going to see a doctor?’”

“I would be lying to say I’m not worried about exposure to Covid-19. But when I’m in the field, the first thing I’m thinking about is helping our people cope. … That’s the first tenet of social work. We show up. We show up. That’s it.”

“I’ve jokingly told customers that I’ve never been so glad that I decided to not only get into pumping gas but also to come back to the station. I’m glad I did.”

“To say that I’m terrified would be an understatement. I decided to do this interview because I’m hoping that it will literally save someone’s life, that companies will take measures to do everything they can to protect their employees.”

“I don’t think that I’m actively worried, but I feel that I am subconsciously.”

“We are doing this to help relieve stress on the parents, because this is a tough time for everyone.”

***

And here for the record is a photo of the masks produced yesterday, and my own testimonial: “I have never felt more alive.  Or stressed, worried about the collective fate of humanity. So thank you, neighbors, for allowing me to help.”

 

 

day 21: stamina, stamina, stamina then hope

Hello again!  Here are a couple of good thoughts for your Thursday, from rock legend and wise woman, Patti Smith*:

– Stamina is required in the maintaining of hope.

– The important thing is to keep living because only by living can you see what happens next.

Hang in there!

And fyi: here are some more of the premium cotton fabrics available for the face masks I’m sewing for people, upon request ($5 each or $0.00 for medical personnel).  Pick-up at my house in West Seattle. Mail orders upon request, with prepayment and a self-addressed stamped envelope.

 

*Patti Smith, review of Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, New York Times, 8/10/14.  Image above by New York artist Yuko Shimizu, printed with the original review. This picture–and the concept of a person who is colorless–seem prescient in this time when losing your sense of smell might mean you are very sick… but not feeling ill.

And here is a pic of the great musician and poet today, such an amazing woman. Thanks for keeping your beautiful natural look, Patti Smith!

Stamina (Etymology: Latin pl. of STAMEN. The senses arise partly from sense ‘warp (of cloth)’, partly from application of pl. to the threads spun by the Fates.)

1. pl. The original or essential elements or form of something, esp. an organism; rudiments.
2.  pl. The innate strength or vitality of a person’s constitution, formerly supposed to govern or affect length of life.
3. sing. or (orig.) pl. The ability to endure esp. physical strain or fatigue; capacity for resistance or endurance; staying power; perseverance.

from  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5^th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), vol. 2, p. 2997.

day three: remember your “heroic truth” (and snarl against hoarders)

Ok, we’ve read all the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic; our minds are thoroughly alerted and alarmed to the perils out there in the world and Shelter-in-Place remains the rule. (When my husband left to the local Safeway, I said, “Be careful!” as if he were going to be wandering the streets of some faraway ghetto or jungle.)  Life feels different. Harder and more uncertain. Like a war is beginning, or something is changing forever.

Today we need some encouragement (and to send out a collective snarl against evil-doers). First, let’s take the the high road. From the Meditations of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), Stoic philosopher:

“If you apply yourself to the task before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activities according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which you utter, you will live happily. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”

“Hasten then to your appointed end and, throwing away idle hopes, come to your own aid, if you care at all for yourself, while it is in your power.”

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Book III, 12, 14.

In other words: be kind to yourself, but exercise self-discipline. Speak carefully and stay busy. Create now. No one can stop you from living according to your own rules.

Finally, there are some seriously annoying people out there doing seriously obnoxious things in this moment of public health crisis, from that jerk in Tennessee to the Senator in North Carolina. The law will punish evil-doers, one hopes. In the meantime, all of us have by now experienced toilet paper shortages caused by fearful fellow citizens.  Argh!  So a big THANK YOU to Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey, whose work nails the ugliness of hoarding.

Be strong, stay busy, and see you tomorrow!

 

day two: time for a talking goldfish, and more viral humor!

First, here’s the viral humor (we need it), brought to us from a friend in cyberspace.  (Thanks, Tom!)

Second, a good message from one of the books I love, as promised yesterday, to help us cope with this weird health crisis. The story below tells of an encounter between a typical bureaucrat and a magical, yet very anxious goldfish.

“One day, when I was walking along a road, I suddenly heard someone calling me. I looked around, but saw nobody. When I looked down, it turned out to be a carp calling me from a dried rut. I went over to it, and asked, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ The carp, gasping, replied, ‘I am a minister of the God of the East Sea. I was swept here by a rainstorm, and now I cannot get back. I will soon die, unless you bring me a pail of water and put me in it.’ I said, ‘Of course, I can do that. But you must wait until I persuade the sovereigns of the states of Wu and Yue to allow me to use water from the Xijang River.’ Hearing this, the carp said, ‘Distant water cannot quench present thirst. You’ll find me in the dried fish market tomorrow!'”*

This cryptic fable was written some 2,200 years ago, by a writer unknown by most of us  (Zhuang Zi, c. 369 B.C. — 286 B.C.) who is very famous in China as a chief representative of the Taoist School.

You gotta love a talking goldfish, of course! How even cooler is it that this goldfish is shrewd and critical. For our purposes, the fable provides moral urgency and a sober punchline. “Distant water cannot quench present thirst.” Take it to mean anything you need: if you’re angry about the government’s actions, it works for you. If you’re in despair over getting access to a mask or test, it works for you.

However, it could be a more uplifting lesson too. If you, like me, are staying home to “shelter in place” and allow the coronavirus time to sweep through your region without adding to the casualties, give yourself credit. You are, in effect, giving water to present thirst. You’re feeding the quotient of healthy people so that we can resist the invisible enemy.

Thank you for helping, in any way you can!  And hang in there; we’re in it for the long duration, I think.  I’ll be back tomorrow with another good thought (and more humor, I hope).

*Zhang Fuxin, The Story of Zhuang Zi, trans. Zhang Tingquan (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2003), pp. 183-184.

“wrapped and rapt”: exquisite words (about a mole!) from Brian Doyle

With all the worries of coronavirus and economic catastrophes on our minds, and living in “Ground Zero” of the pandemic–Seattle–as I do, I think it’s normal to freak out at least a little about the news these days!  Last night I had a hard time falling asleep, so I picked up Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song.

Oh, I am so glad I did! I never met him, but if he was anything like his writing, Brian Doyle must have been a dear, warm-hearted person. He died in 2017, at age 60. Thanks to Margaret Renkl for bringing One Long River of Song to our attention, in a December 2019 New York Times book review.

In the passage below, notice how the narration moves over the subject first in a scientific, analytical gaze, to such an extent that you do not initially realize what he’s talking about. At the beginning, the perspective lies extremely close to the body. Plus the words refer to ambiguous visual and metaphorical effects (tiny, stubbish, fleshy, rudder, adamant, ship, prow). Then we realize what it is, a mole!  Later, the narration focuses on the subject’s life style (largely solitary) and suddenly the subject is us! We homo sapiens are living like moles do, in families that come together and then disperse. We all suffer, we all love, we’re all alone. All of us call this earth our home.

From Chapter, “The Deceased”:

I measure the body with a ruler. The deceased is eight inches long and five inches wide if we count arm-span. There’s not much in the way of arm-span. Mostly the arms are hands. The hands look eerily like baseball gloves. The teeth are tiny but populous and adamant. The tail is stubbish and not a tail you would boast about if you were in a pub and the talk turned to boasting about tails. It’s more of a fleshy rudder than a tail. The eyes are small and black and open. I look in vain for ears. The nose is epic and tremendous and clearly what the face was designed to carry much like a ship carries a prow. I refrain from trying to ascertain gender, out of respect for the dignity of the deceased.

The deceased is, I believe, Scapanus townsendii, the Townsend’s mole, native to this region, found everywhere from swampland to small mountains.

[…]

This tribe of mole is thought to be largely solitary, I read, and I want to laugh and weep, as we are all largely solitary, and spend whole lifetimes digging tunnels toward each other, do we not? And sometimes we connect, thrilled and confused, sure and unsure at once, for a time, before the family cavern empties, or one among us does not come home at all, and faintly far away we hear the sound of the shovel.

I should toss the body over the fence, into the thicket, as food for the many, such being the language of life, but I think of how we feel when we are tucked tight in bed, inside the cocoon of the blankets, wrapped and rapt, and I wonder if moles love the grip of the earth that way, love the press and the dense of it, its inarguable weight, the blind swim through the dark, would love finally to dissolve in it; and I bury the body.

–Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019), 16, 17.

morning routine, 1 year, 2 months & 19 days later

Hard to believe it’s already been 1 year, 2 months and 19 days since I first shared details of the “morning routine.”  That routine was a wonderful ally during a year that brought a series of huge changes, including the departure from South Bend, IN–our home of 27 years–a road trip / cross-country move with our dog, the end of one professional Identity, and the creation of a new life in Seattle, a hometown I hadn’t lived in for 34 years.

Three days after we arrived here, on July 5, 2018, I made my first official visit to the Seattle Kung Fu Club via the West Seattle Water Taxi. What an ecstatic, strange, and sobering journey that was!

Ever since that day, I’ve practiced a new routine of physical conditioning. The mental conditioning continues as well; in October I began learning Qigong from Jean Clough, at the Fusion Kung Fu and Movement Arts.

Seven months later, I am happy to announce the results are wonderful. A new, more flexible routine has become my ally. It is not any shorter, but it is guaranteed to work, day in, day out.

The flexibility comes from the fact that the morning routine is not always done in the morning anymore, apart from the 30-minute standing meditation. I have not found anything as powerful to battle the morning funk / angst / depressing thoughts. When I do practice this simple exercise, I always feel warmer, stronger, and happier. (It requires standing with heels touching, knees slightly bent, and feet splayed at 90 degree angle, hands relaxed and listening to your breathing, calming your thoughts, for 30 minutes in silence. Sometimes I read a line or two from a favorite book on this list.)

The exercise routine has changed considerably, although I still try to do at least 20 push-ups a day.  As a student of the Seattle Kung Fu Club, I now do 21 preliminary exercises before practicing the Wu Form of T’ai chi, which I am gradually learning. The exercises are amazingly long and rigorous–we do 12 sets of each, on both sides–and they never fail to make me feel warm, strong, and powerfully rooted. (Details upon request.) Together with the Wu T’ai chi form, it takes about 90 minutes to do. Sometimes it feels frivolous or a waste of time; yet when I finish, I always feel happy and grateful, and I often have a new idea…

Last month, SKFC leaders invited me to be part of the short T’ai chi demo that will be performed for guests on February 16 and I accepted of course (yikes!).  As one who never played team sports as a girl (or ever!), it has been an interesting thing to watch myself enter such activities. I do not like doing things I’m bad at, like striking heavy bronze cymbals out-of-sync. I do not like being the slow person in the performance, the one everyone has to watch. I feel strange standing around like an extra on a movie set. Yet over the days of practice, I have come to feel immensely happy to be part of this group; I love moving in sync with the others, and feeling the energy flow between and around us.

What I’ve learned: it’s not about me anymore. There is a great pleasure that comes from being nobody special, an extra, a warm body. I am pleased to be able to use my abilities (sometimes wobbly, often imperfect) to honor someone else.

Happy Year of the Pig!

patience, grasshopper

Like me, you may feel frazzled some days by 9:38 am. Already today I have discovered a fraudulent charge to my VISA card and had it, albeit grudgingly, expunged by an employee of Chase, and I’ve been told that “all agents” of the Social Security Administration are too busy to explain why I no longer exist, despite working since age 15.

OK, first world problems. I know.

Still, I hate that such petty annoyances have the power to raise my pulse rate and darken my mood. So to calm myself down and help you, dear readers, here’s a little quote from a useful article and some photos from out my window at a pretty scene on Elliott Bay to help remind us of the fleeting nature of … well, everything.

This is from “Smarter Living,” a feature of the New York Times on p. 3. It’s from an article by Anna Goldfarb called “How to be a more patient person”:

“Patience, the ability to keep calm in the face of disappointment, distress or suffering, is worth cultivating. The virtue is associated with a variety of positive health outcomes, such as reducing depression and other negative emotions. If you find yourself getting exasperated often, here are ways to keep those impulses in check.”

She lists three: Number one is “Interrupt the cycle and evaluate the risk” which has great examples: “For example: If standing in a long line drives you crazy, an appropriate mantra might be, ‘I’m in no rush at the moment.’ The idea is to take a step back […] It will soon pass, and, in all likelihood, you’ll forget it ever happened.”

The other two tips are: 2) “Reframe the experience and connect to a larger story.” Which at first glance, may seem almost identical to number 1, except Goldfarb’s example makes things personal and thus powerful: “Take, for example, someone irritated by a nitpicky co-worker. Instead of dwelling on your irritation, you could think about the times you’ve been the one who has frustrated others. ‘Give grace to others’.”

3) “Train, don’t try.” This one incited me to write this blog post. Sometimes if you write down the words, and go public about it, it sticks. (And you feel guilty when you fall short of the ideal). “It’s important to do it habitually,” the researchers say.

Before signing off, here are three positive things that have happened already today:

1. The scene out my window created a beautiful image for these thoughts. If you read the images, you’ll see the ferry first seemed to sneak up behind the big ship, then passed behind it, and moved smoothly beyond it, out of reach.  Yet as the Zen master would remind us, “it is not gone.” It is merely out of sight, which is irrelevant to the Universe.  Our tiny beings and limited perceptions allow us to know so little. (In this case the ferry’s off to the West, chugging along the route to Bremerton or Bainbridge Island. )
2. While researching the feature called “Smarter Living” for this post, I discovered an article that echoes my frustration with the Social Security Administration. I’ll try again tomorrow.
3. A new order just arrived!  Someone requested a “Frankenstein Patchwork Pillow” (model 3, “Happy, happy creature”), bringing the production forces (me) into full swing at Honey Girl Books and Gifts. Thank you, Amaya and Elena, for your orders. It is a delight to create something beautiful for you!

To all you impatient people: Hang in there, everybody, and know that you are not alone. But try to get a handle, ok?  🙂

 

 

 

if you want to live a life you’ve never lived…

“if you want to live a life you’ve never lived, you have to do things you’ve never done,” say the wise in every tradition. Whether it’s applied to education, or business, or moving to a new place, change is all around us.

Change is us.

The sooner we realize that, the sooner we will get out and do stuff. And dare to laugh and allow our imperfections and just-beginning steps to be seen, because life is not so serious after all!

I am happy to say that I did something new today: I attended a free workshop on marketing, sponsored by the Seattle Small Business Development Center. The drive was very cool: first, instead of going up and over the West Seattle bridge to I-5, you go under the West Seattle Bridge and bump over a bunch of railroad tracks, vying for position with massive trucks hauling containers newly unloaded from the ships that arrive in Pier 5, of the Port of Seattle. The landscape reminds me of an Ayn Rand novel, such as the opening scene in Atlas Shrugged, which rolls into Philadelphia on a freight train. With the old steel mill on one side, and the huge salt-water port on the other, it’s a bustling, massive hive of people at work, operating machinery, building, and shipping.

“The thing that came next did not look like a building, but like a shell of checkered glass enclosing girders, cranes and trusses in a solid, blinding, orange spread of flame.

The passengers could not grasp the complexity of what seemed to be a city stretched for miles, active without sign of human presence. They saw towers like contorted skyscrapers, bridges hanging in mid-air, and sudden wounds spurting fire from out of solid walls. They saw a line of glowing cylinders moving through the night; the cylinders were red-hot metal.” (Atlas Shrugged, 27)

I find this part of town fascinating. To the east and south of here, is the place where railroads and airports converge to move goods from the West Coast to “east of the mountains,” which around here could mean Moses Lake or NYC! Costco and Starbucks have headquarters just to the north. People might find its grey cement pillars and its towering metal containers to be dreary and drab, or the atmosphere intimidating, but I find the whole scene very exciting. There’s so much action!

Anyway, you go through all that industrial area along the Duwamish River to the south, and eventually (if you stay to the left instead of following 1st Ave S. to the right, like I did on my first try) you end up on Route 509 going to Tukwila.  It is a pleasant corporate campus, the Seattle Small Business Development Center. Even though I got a little off track, I still arrived on time and my heart did not start beating too hard, nor did I swear, hate myself, or start sweating.

I only got the slightest bit alarmed. Breathe in, breathe out. (The same thing I’ve done in other stressful situations lately, such as going to funeral mass for my mother-in-law, watching someone get mad, and waiting for the plane in a crowded airport).

Anyway, once I got there I feared the worst, especially when I saw that we’d all been given little booklets courtesy of Facebook. (I am not on Facebook. It seems to bother everybody, for which I always seem to feel the need to apologize. Sorry!)

The happy news to report, however, is that the free workshop on marketing was excellent and I learned a lot. The teacher was engaging and fun, hats off to Jenefeness Tucker, MBA! The people were interesting to meet, bright, enthusiastic, and engaged: we all wanted to be there and we all had something we were trying to figure out. We shared thoughts from our lives, which vary widely. Among the group was a designer of  hijabs, kimonos and other modest fashions; a creator of wedding floral arrangements; two real estate agents; two people who work with realtors by staging homes for sale; an artist who has an original board game; and a business consultant. I was there representing Honey Girl Books and Gifts, as creator of “heirlooms that soothe the spirit”: children’s books, pillows, and quilts.

Which I now realize targets a clientele of educated people, likely women, parents or relatives of children age 8 to 25. She is a little worried about being saturated by cellphones (and likes the cellphone pockets in the pillow backs). She appreciates authentic craftsmanship. She wants to live in a stylish, hand-designed home and create her own family history and traditions. This I offer through quirky quilts and pillows that tell stories or pass along literary and philosophical allusions in color, prints, and varied textures.

The children’s books appeal to people who want their children to discover little-known discoveries from award-winning scholars, illustrated with original artwork. Just good parents, basically, but open to non-Hollywood stories that are produced by real people, not ghost writers and starlets. We are scholar-writers working with young artist-illustrators. (Although if somebody in Hollywood wanted to option The Frankenstein of the Apple Crate, I think illustrator Karen Neis and I’d be open to that!)

Thinking over this workshop and the other things I’ve done since arriving here July 2, I realize that the anxiety dogging my steps over the past couple months is quite reasonable. I’m doing things I’ve never done before, with different kinds of people in new places, trying to create a new business from scratch. At the same time as I’m embracing capitalism and selling stuff, attending events sponsored by the chamber of commerce, for example, and becoming curious about salesmanship, my spiritual and philosophical studies have been focused on Zen, the art of abandoning material achievement: the letting-go of ego and attachment that go with T’ai chi. These lessons are constant and make my mind feel at home, thanks to the time I spend daily on meditation, weekly Qigong class, and the arduous, three-times weekly, 90-minute classes of T’ai chi at the Seattle Kung Fu Club.

No wonder I stress out sometimes. These activities are attached to philosophies that actively oppose each other (competition versus acceptance and action versus stillness). It’s confusing! But doing Tai chi in Chinatown, sewing new things in my studio, and creating a storybook with the kids at the library: those things are simple and clear, just joy.

I remain convinced that one can start and run a small business successfully without joining Facebook, exploiting people, or thinking about money all the time. I am convinced that you can make artworks that speak to people and spread good feelings and curiosity through color, cloth and paper.

It’s a ton of work but it is way more fun than academia because of the speed, and because of the freedom to express your imagination as you wish. In academia, you sit around and talk and have ideas and meet with other people and write reports and then, gradually ever so slowly after months and oftentimes years of deliberation, a change is made. In business, you can have an idea, go get the materials to make it, create it, market it, and sell it in one week or less! And your audience is virtually infinite, you just have to figure out who they are and connect.

So that’s making my life fun. I hope you are taking steps to embrace change and make your life fun too!

And let go of ego at the same time, realizing that it is all fiction.

Just breathe.

Are you confused yet?

Good! Then we’re all beginning together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Photo by Lum3n.com on Pexels.com

 

5 months later. Sequel to April 13 post, “On health (and pharmaceuticals), calm, and joy’s return (no matter what he says)”

 

 

Reading the post of April 13 now, it is painful to witness how conflicted I was. The blog post speaks of a person who was trying so hard to find happiness. In vain. The grumbling negativity she heard daily only compounded the sadness she felt over her employer, the woebegone infrastructure of the town she called home, and the despair she felt from the constant news of local youth dying violent deaths, week after week. No wonder the daily grind was such a grind.

Five months later, I am surprised, actually, to announce that it’s all gone!  No more sadness over the employer, nor sorrow over the town that was left behind. As for the “daily grind”: what daily grind?!  My partner no longer grumbles angrily or blows off my efforts at cheer: he too feels good! It feels like 1979 again, when we first met and fell in love right in this town. Wow!

The insights screaming from this development are clear: as Alan Jasanoff writes in today’s New York Times Book Review: “Nature does not see the brain as a prime mover … the environment always plays a role.”* Instead of reaching for an anti-depressant, perhaps we should consider what’s wrong outside our heads instead.

My case is striking. Five months after eliminating the medications I was taking, there are no adverse effects. It was sometimes a bumpy ride, but nothing good happens without incurring some pain, does it? You just have to hang in there.  Did I sometimes wonder if I should get back on the anti-depressant? You betcha. But I didn’t.  I stuck with my decision, and guess what? The sadness went away when the environment changed.

Our country is so gorgeous out here!  Check out the pics from last weekend’s trip to Grayland near “the other South Bend” on the Pacific Coast. Who knew that rainbows could arise right out of the surf? Or that water on the sand could make such pretty patterns? Or that driftwood could be infinitely fascinating? (Honey Girl loved it too, though she got a bad case of sandy mouth from biting the waves!)

 

 

I do not regret a thing. Neither changing my name, leaving my career, nor opting for a much smaller house located thousands of miles away. Some friends remain; others will fade from memory. Time will tell. The inner turmoil has calmed.  The practice of T’ai chi and meditation continue to provide strength and solace for life’s ups and downs. Instead of toiling over a job I no longer loved, I feel the warmth of a little flame and a growing sense of contentment. It feels like I’ve discovered what the Buddhists call “right livelihood”: a pastime one can pursue forever, with no regrets.

Remembering Epictetus’s advice in The Art of Living, we must put aside questions of popularity and acclaim, and remember that pursuing one’s own vocations—no matter how quirky or unpopular they may appear—is what makes life worth living.  As he wrote in the chapter “Create Your Own Merit”: “Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. … You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don’t be concerned with who is watching you.”**

Living here has helped me become stronger and more committed to that stoic philosophy. My new vocations may be unprofitable, they may remain unknown, obscure, and be forgotten to the world. But they fill me with joy, they lighten my step, and they make me happy.  (FYI: The five new kids who’ve joined “Write YOUR Story” are hilarious! We are already having a great time together and the future looks bright.)

What more could one ask of life?

And yet, academe has not entirely let go of me. Not quite. In a couple weeks, I’ll be speaking (via Skype) to a conference of graduate students at Michigan State. I was originally invited as an expert on the French Enlightenment. I expected the organizers to dis-invite me when they learned that I am no longer wedded to that identity: I quit that job in July!  Much to my surprise, one of the organizers has since become a client of Honey Girl Books and Gifts, and both organizers embraced the idea of speaking on a very different issue. Without dissuading people from a life of study, I will aim to share some of the wisdom I’ve gained this year.

My title?  “The Wisdom of the Side Gig: On finding happiness in and out of academe.”

 

 

The Frankenstein Patchwork Pillow no. 2, “Scary Thoughts”:  on sale now for only $25 via HGBG’s Etsy shop until 9/30/18.

*Alan Jasanoff, “Sick in the Head.” Review of Eric R. Kandel, The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves. In The New York Times Book Review, 9/23/18, p. 21.

**Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness, p. 12.