Where do I get my ideas? Customers return them to me.

I got a new story idea joking around with my coworkers today, and another (partial) chapter idea for the Financial Guide from the Retail Side from customers being weird.

If I ever have to give up my day job, I'll miss these sorts of days.  Sure, there are lots of ideas that come to us through dreams, conversations with friends, travel, walking through downtown, etc. but they're not quite the same as the ideas that come from work stuff.  Whether work means sweating under a hot sun or shivering under the blast of a cranked-up air conditioner, you're in a very different (but still creative) headspace than when you're doodling.  

Although they suffer from being overdone, some of our richest stories are about writers because the people who write those stories are writers laboring with their fingers and hunched spines in seats that become increasingly less comfortable over the course of a long work day.  

That state of working as a physical body is a source of real richness that complements and enhances their stories.  

When a story is all pure imagination without that inclusion/acknowledgement of the sweatiness of things, there's something missing.  I can't always pinpoint stories that are lacking in that element.  They feel flat, but there are lots of reasons why a story can read flat.  Lack of life experience is another big one.  Anyway, writers that write about someone who is a writer can sometimes tap that physically-engaged labor monster within them even if they haven't had work experience beyond writing for a long time.  It's neat when that happens.  The writer's work feels more real to me.  I like that sense of realness whether I'm reading about early fifteenth century soldiers, waitresses solving murders or unicorns rampaging through moth villages.

I think that when both kinds of states of being--the doodle, and the labor monster--are employed in story creation, the story is much better than stories that are spun entirely from one side or the other.  

Naturally there also exist stories that are entirely labor-induced and have very little doodling in them.  A classic situation is where a doctor or lawyer or somesuch writes fiction as a thinly-disguised vent about the day job.  But I don't see as many stories that lack doodling as I do stories that lack that element of work in them.  Maybe that's because work is something we do to survive, connecting us to our flesh and bone and blood, and there are more writers who neglect that physical connection to the world than there are writers who embrace and even incorporate it into their writing.  Maybe they consider that aspect of existence lowly or unimportant, or maybe they just don't give it enough importance in their lives.  Isn't working an eight hour day at the diner, after all, getting in the way of their writing?  Well yes, but ...

Doodling is dreaming, and that connects us to our souls.  Souls are cool and all, but I like sensory detail, and danger, and victory.  For a story to really connect to me, flesh and bone and blood have to be a part of them.  Like a building, I need both the concept and the materials to come together before I can step inside and marvel and what human beings have engineered.  I won't just congratulate the architect, either.  That building wouldn't exist without the people who poured the foundation, pounded the nails and joined and wired and plumbed the thing.  The architect may be the artist, but the workers are the heroes that make hopes into reality.  The best writers are both artists and artisans, and their stories shine because of it.

If I leave the day job (and I won't be doing that on purpose any time soon!) I'll run the risk of losing that meat-and-bones force in my life (again.)  I'll have to find it in other ways, like putting in extra time with the garden and livestock, or start losing it gradually over time as my work experience fades into increasingly pastel memory.  In the meantime, I'll enjoy playing with my new ideas.

Grateful

Another late day at work.  It still feels good to be working even after six out of seven days in a row (tomorrow will be day seven.)  After that long dry spell trying to find a job and not even getting calls, and forget about interviews ... it'll feel good to be working again for quite a while.  I'll hazard that it might not even ever get old to be employed.

I pruned my sacrificial tomatoes (it's okay to do that--really) today and tied them up after having them crawl wild around on the ground for way too long.  These are the tomatoes that I planted out waaay early to see when they'd start actually growing as opposed to sitting there shivering in the cold.  That helped me time when I put out the tomatoes I carefully raised from seed.  All the tomatoes are doing really fabulous.  

Little known fact about tomatoes--if you let them creep on the ground, they'll root as they go.  I haven't let them do this before, but in theory I don't see any issues with treating them like, for example, squash, and letting them ramble on the ground.  I might try this next year.  To keep the tomato fruits clean, I'll probably put down some sort of mulch.  I think straw would work really well.

The chickens are doing really well too.  Hermia, the little one that I thought might die, is now the biggest one, and she turned out to be a he.  He's now known as Henry--because Henry had six wives.  We might have other roosters, in which case Henry's wives will be dropping in number.  It'll be a few weeks more before we can settle on who is what, as they're still peeping and acting like babies most of the time.  The only reason we know about Henry is because he's been rearing up, flapping his wings and crowing in the evenings.  That's a pretty sure sign of rooster-dom.  Despite their little baby voices, they sure do look grown up.  I won't expect eggs until November, though, and they might wait until next year.  Many chickens don't lay, or lay fewer eggs, in winter.  It's a time of rest for them, and I don't intend on tricking their bodies by setting up an artificial light and heat in winter so they'll lay.  I think the extra developmental time will do them nothing but good.

I'm looking forward to having two days off in a row so I can do some serious gardening, the dawn to dusk kind.  Much as I love working, I do miss puttering around.  I'm sure the weeds didn't miss me, and they will be sad when I get back to them.

I'm really grateful for what we have right now.  It's a very peaceful feeling.

We're Slow (Normal for us) but Live

We have online connectivity at home again. Whew!  

I've been working at my new (old) job for five days now and I've only made a couple of glaring errors, only one of which could get me written up (or fired, since I'm on probation.)  I'm getting some of my old speed back, though, which is nice.  I'm not the fastest cashier in the world by a long shot, but I think I'm pretty efficient w/o being like a machine focused entirely on scanning stuff in.  In a lot of ways it would be easier to be just a machine, but making eye contact, listening to the customers, and having those fun micro-conversations makes work more pleasant.  Hopefully the customers like it too.  

I balanced to zero today.  For non-cashiers, that means you're neither short nor over on cash, various slips, coupons, and stuff like that.  I like my boss, I like my coworkers--it's good to be working again, especially considering our local unemployment rate.  We dipped below ten percent, finally, but too much of that includes temporary jobs.  Some of those temporary jobs showed up outside our house and then later on the highway at the bottom of the hill as large road crews worked on our roads.  Yay for better roads ... except I don't think they were that bad, at least not compared to the interchange near our usual bridge which is riddled with potholes.

I suspect complex budgeting issues created by our government's system of spending are why we're getting all this attention while other areas fall apart.  It might be that the politicians aren't in touch with what people really need and want, but I think it's actually more likely that the political system itself makes budgeting so hard that even experts end up making weird or even bad choices because the alternatives are worse.

But, that's all depressing stuff.  I'd rather celebrate the job thing for now.  I can grind my teeth later when I have less stuff to catch up on.

Yay Interview

I have my first interview after sending out I don't know how many applications starting last August. It's a place I've worked before. I'm hopeful. I was hoping to find something approximating full time and on a regular schedule, but I don't mind retail, and this business is very, very close to home, which is a huge advantage. It also has really good benefits, which is unusual for retail.

Wish me luck!

Posts will continue to be sporadic as we haven't gotten the new modem yet. I know that special orders take extra time, so I'm trying to be patient, but wading through the gizillions of emails I get after just a couple of days ... wow. I thought Wifi time at the library was time consuming before. Now it really takes a serious chunk of time. I'm learning to prioritize, and take most of my emails home unread. If any of them need replies, I send those out the next time I Wifi. If you've sent me an email and there's a long, terrible silence, that's why.

Wah. And Yay. It balances out to a good day, and a potentially great week.

Billions and Billions of job applications

Applying for jobs sure is different these days.

I've filled out a lot of online applications, and it makes me wonder how difficult it is to sort through all of them. Back in the day, someone had to show up to pick up the application, or make special arrangements to apply for a job over long distances. Now, anyone with computer skills can fill out an application. Combined with the job market these days, there must be hundreds, even thousands of applications for every search-able job that opens up.

It's a whole new kind of slush pile.

Also, I used to be able to shake hands with a manager when I picked up an application, and talk enough to let him know I can communicate with other human beings in a reasonable fashion. That would be hard, if not impossible, to discern from an electronic application. So how would someone decide who to call, out of all those applicants? You couldn't call them all. I happen to have work history, which probably helps (maybe) but what about the kids just hitting the market with no job experience? How can they convey that they can not only text each other, but say hi to a real human being and maybe even get work done that involves other real people? GPA?

I'm intrigued by the idea of people leaving different impressions through electronic applications. Spelling/grammar will be part of it, as will references and such, but handwriting analysis is out the window. Does experience give HR specialists a feel for this sort of thing? Does HR read tea leaves?

The Ticking Clock

I've been doing a lot more reading than usual lately, and I found a standout.  I haven't finished it yet, but the depth of setting in Burke's In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead had me sitting up and taking notice.  In some places the setting overbalances the other book elements, but I didn't mind.  I ate it up.  I can't say too much more about this, because this is for a class and I'm not supposed to discuss it in advance.  I can't recommend it until I've read the ending, either.  This is just a note, and a heads up to setting junkies.

In other news, I applied for a secretarial/admin-type job today, and tomorrow I'm going to take a typing test.  I don't think I've taken a typing test since high school!  I'm 99% sure I can easily pass this test, because the wpm requirement is relatively low and I'm allowed 5 errors in five minutes.  Alas, I have an Achilles heel when it comes to tests.  If it's a timed test, I get really nervous.  An hour in which to do an essay, no problem.  I'm your gal.  A class period to complete an exam that the instructor calculated would take the whole class for an average student, piece of cake.  If I hurry and I know my material, I'll have time to do the extra credit question.  Given twice the number of math problems a genius could handle in two minutes and allowed one minute to go as far as I can ... I tend to panic.  I haven't frozen before, but my performance plummets and I get the shakes.  I hate tight time limits and pre-ordained 'failure' (a guarantee that it's impossible to complete the test.)  There's only one thing I despise more in a test--a race against others.  Fortunately, I'm not in a race against others.  I don't have to be the fastest typist to impress a potential boss.

To prepare, I've been practicing on a typing program I originally got for the kids to teach typing, and I've been going over lessons that cover my weak spots, namely, left-handed capital letters (I often mash the shift key at an odd angle with my right hand, producing lots of errors including non-capitalization and double capital letters) and double quotes (I have a lazy right pinkie, same problem as capital letters that land on my left hand.)  Fortunately my typing speed is enough above the minimum that only complete and utter adrenaline shakes will cause me to fail.  Unfortunately, complete and utter adrenaline shakes are not out of the question.

Wish me luck!

Things that go bump

It took me several hours, but I finally developed a raw document that will eventually be shaped into what I hope will be a decent resume.  Yep, that time in my life has come again where I'll be looking for work.  I don't know what yet, but I'll know it when I see it, or maybe they'll know me when they see me.  

In the meantime, I'll be writing as per usual.  

Settling back into home life has been weird.  Even though I was in Ireland only a short time, I think because it was so intense and there's so much going on with family and the future, I won't settle back to 'normal'.  Developing the new normal will be interesting.  I remember when I was working part time at the crazy fun place, establishing a new routine helped me step up, and then when I actually achieved routine, my productivity overall sank a bit.  I think this will be the same thing again.  I'll step up to meet the challenges, and as soon as things are settled (aka, in a rut) I'll start missing those opportunities to write for fifteen minutes here or read for a half hour there and I might only glance idly at the latest community college classes.  

That right there is a good reason to stir things up every once in a while.  I think right now most of the country is stirred up, due to the change in presidency, and the economy, and everything.  If the country is anything like me, that could be a good thing.

In the meantime, it can be stressful.  Thankfully, every time I sit down, Carey finds me and sits in my lap.  I think she missed us while we were away.

Good luck job hunting to all of us!