Archive: April 2009

A progress report on my three resolutions for 2009:

Every day, I will clean for 15 minutes.
During the week that we installed the first set of kitchen cabinets, I was a complete failure at my list of tasks. I was so exhausted that I could not even fathom dusting the living room or emptying the shredder bin. However, I did still clean for (more than!) 15 minutes every day; it was just in the form of sweeping sawdust, wiping down countertops, and mopping the sawdust-y floor. Even though I slacked off on the daily-maintenance-type tasks, I still fulfilled the resolution, I think.

Also, I will never again attempt cleaning out the fridge (wiping down every surface, cleaning out drawers, etc.) by myself. Good grief. It took me darn near forever, and I could barely notice a difference afterward. Next time, JG and I are going through that misery together, so help me.

Every week, I will write and send my grandmother a note.
Surprise, surprise — during that same week, I completely forgot to send my grandma a card, but I hightailed it the next week, and I am calling it even. I am hopeful that next month will be easier because I have an excursion of some sort for every weekend (wait, am I happy about that?), and I have the boon of a freebie card for Mother’s Day. It occurs to me, though, that I still have to buy that card…

Every month, I will take at least a few hours just for myself.
Check! I spent a whole day discussing medical writing on Saturday! Okay, boo. That was not the point. When I reflect on the past month, I think I’ve found small pockets of solitude that are almost more valuable than a large slot of time in one day. In between the hills of my 3-mile running route, it’s nearly sedating to hear my sneakers against the sidewalk, thrumming me into quiet. I’m reading a lot more frequently now. I’ve joined a discussion group with three other women from my church, and our weekly talks are always insightful. I feel like I have a lot on my mind these days, but not in a worrisome way.

I think I’m becoming better at isolating the times within the day when I can rest my mind without trying to plan and strategize my way to the end. I’m already anticipating the busy rush of the fall and volleyball season, and I hope I can still do that when our schedule is so packed. Overall, and especially this week, I just feel better: quieter, calmer, looser. Maybe I’m not necessarily by myself, but the time I’m taking is certainly for me.

I spent my Saturday at a day-long workshop about freelance medical writing. Although eight hours in a hotel conference room was not exactly a thrill, I strongly suspect that my ideal job is to be an independent medical writer. I don’t need benefits, so I could work from home on my own schedule, and from the sounds of it, make a very decent living. Besides, I got a discount on the registration fee because my job pays for me to be a member of a professional writing association. I ponied up the $85 and set aside the day in my calendar.

To prepare, I ordered simple business cards from Zazzle, photocopied a stack of resumes, updated my LinkedIn page, and picked out a business-casual outfit (black pants, light blue button-down, gray jacket, black wedges). I knew I was dropping myself into an arena where contacts were key, and the only way to get contacts was to talk to people and pass out my cards. I used to be fairly versed in chitchat and schmooze, but I was two years out of practice. Feigning interest in random strangers no longer came easily.

On Saturday, I woke up at my usual weekday hour to get on the road by 7:30am. Painful. The drive was uneventful, except for a detour through a network of one-way streets, and I arrived at the hotel with 15 minutes to spare. I went over my clothing with the lint roller I had packed, confirmed that my phone was on silent mode, and checked my pockets for business cards. Okay. Time to go.

By the end of the day, it was confirmed: I still hate networking. Most of my conversations consisted of the other party being surprised at me. You don’t freelance yet? You only have a bachelor’s? You were an English major? With a chemistry minor? For my part, it become glaringly obvious that I knew nothing about FDA regulations, health literacy, or medical devices. My little-league journal article editing wafted away under the weight of everyone else’s pharmaceutical sales training materials, patient education brochures, and clinical trial reports. I felt very, very small.

I had forgotten how it felt to speak with someone and watch their eyes flutter past my shoulder on the watch for a more important person to walk by. I was caught off guard when people passed out their contact information en masse as though they were dealing cards at a poker tournament. I couldn’t bring myself to pander to the big wigs of the day, and I had to make a conscious effort not to roll my eyes at all of the others’ fawning. I didn’t think that I had transcended networking, as though the glowing quality of my work would speak for itself; I knew I need to do it in order to stand a chance at freelancing. I was in the sort of shock that comes from jumping into an icy lake; the slimy nature of the networking emerged, and I wanted to get out, and quickly.

The event wasn’t all bad. I had a few interesting conversations and exchanged contact information with those people. I learned quite a bit about regulatory writing, although what I retained makes me wonder if I want to pursue it, even though I think I would be good at it. I know now that I need to do a whole lot of research and background legwork before I can even think about freelancing full-time, so my mental timeline has shifted. For now, I plan on looking for part-time freelance work to build my resume and network, gaining more medical expertise, and paying more attention to events that the writing association sponsors.

Even though I had to drive a long way and give up a Saturday, I’m glad I went. In a character-building, bad-tasting way, it was good for me. It was like going on an interview for a job I knew I couldn’t get — at least I went, got practice, and learned something. I just have to do it again.

I had a rough Saturday. I was cranky enough from not being able to sleep in, two hours of driving, business-casual dress code, and 90-degree weather, but the station wagon parked in the street, blocking two feet of our driveway, sealed the deal. Coherent sentences were beyond my reach while I leashed up Ted for his walk, and JG volunteered to come along. I protested that he didn’t need to, but my case didn’t last long. It was too hot. I was too tired.

For the first half-mile, I vented — the day had confirmed that I still hated networking events, one of the speakers was grossly incompetent, and I was stuck in local traffic for half of the drive. JG let me go on until I finally paused. The frustration drained away, and all I had left was fatigue. “How was your day?” I asked JG.

It was busy, he said. Between taking Ted to and from the groomer, assembling cabinets, vacuuming, and mowing the lawn, he’d barely had a chance to sit down since waking up with me at the crack of dawn. We were both worn out, which made spending the day apart even worse, but our walk around the neighborhood with Ted seemed to smooth out the rough spots. However, we still had all evening to ourselves, and there were fixings for pizza ready for us. The day could be salvaged.

The rest of the weekend was remarkably restorative. We made pizza for dinner and fell asleep embarrassingly early to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. On Sunday, we played hookey from church. I slept in and put my brain on hold during a glut of design television. I made a tuna noodle casserole and called a friend to catch up after dinner. It was lazy, drowsy, and drifty. That is, it was just what I needed.

The best part was that JG made a mid-morning brunch of egg-white omelets and bacon, and everything was the way I like it: there were mushrooms, spinach, and cheese in my omelet, and my bacon was still chewy. To grasp the true significance of this phenomenon, one must understand that JG and I spar over bacon almost every time we eat it. He likes his bacon crisp and shattery, and I like mine pleasantly pliable. In order to satisfy both of us, JG made a point of removing my portion of bacon from the heat and leaving his strips to crisp up, as gallant a gesture as I have ever heard.

At those first bites, it was as if that blue plate of breakfast was a note from JG saying, “I’m thinking about you, I know what you like, and here it is.” I was sitting at the coffee table in my yoga pants, watching the rest of our unfinished movie, drinking a glass of orange juice, and eating a vegetable omelet with chewy bacon, and it was exactly, perfectly right.

I’ve joined Lara and NPW in the ranks of being a book reviewer for HarperCollins! A couple of weeks ago, I received a fat envelope of books in the mail, and my first subject was The Winner Stands Alone, by Paulo Coelho.

In summary, I really enjoyed this book. The main plot line concerns a serial killer at the Cannes Film Festival, but the themes of wealth, fame, and love are embedded throughout. My only hesitations in recommending it are that the language tends to be heavy, and the plot can be slow, but it’s very thought-provoking. The questions the author poses in the minds of his characters are definitely worth consideration. I would read it again.

The story takes place over the course of 24 hours at the film festival, and each chapter notes a specific time of day. The main thrust of the plot comes from Igor, a Russian businessman at the festival with a mission to retrieve his ex-wife by “destroying worlds” for her, which is just his way of saying “murdering people.” Coelho ruminates about fame, beauty, and love against the flashy backdrop of the film festival. The language at times is aloof and philosophical, so I would not say that it was that realistic in terms of dialog, but it’s certainly evocative and effective. At one point, Igor questions his motives behind the victims he is sacrificing for his love:

Besides, what exactly were good intentions, virtue, and integrity? … Soldiers who go to war may kill in the name of an ideal they don’t properly understand, but they, too, are full of good intentions, virtue, and integrity.

No, that’s not true. If sin achieves something good, it is a virtue, and if virtue is deployed to cause evil, it is a sin.

These intentions don’t stop with Igor; the themes of motivation, actions, and consequences run throughout the entire story and with every character. The narrator is an omniscient third person, so the reader gets to see what everyone is thinking. As the chapters skip around to various people at the film festival — a model, a new actress, a director, a star — Coelho asks, what is each person willing to do to get ahead? Sleep with someone important? Launder money? Change a name?

The Winner Stands Alone has its difficulties in that there are many characters to track, certain plot devices are startling and anti-intuitive, and there are moments when it feels like the action is at a standstill. Despite that, the story drew me in, and I found it hard to put it down. Between the style and the story, I’m hesitant to describe it in one pat label: it’s not really about the film festival; it’s not quite a murder mystery because the culprit is revealed at the start; and it’s not a philosophical meditation. If it’s possible to be all three, I think it is.

I don’t think this book is for everyone. Its reflective style is not that light or exciting, but I think it’s worth a try. Give it a hundred pages or so, and if you don’t care how it ends, put it down. For what it’s worth, I really wanted to know how it ended.

Finally, a tangent: In 2007, one of my new year’s resolutions was to read 4 books every month, and it was a complete failure. However, that January, my 2-year work anniversary at my old job came up, and as part of the office “celebration,” my manager asked my co-workers to give me book recommendations to help me along. It was so cute — I got a whole cheesy PowerPoint slide deck with everyone’s book suggestions, and some of them were ones I had already read and loved. In any case, one of the books was The Alchemist. I always wanted to try it, but I never got around to buying or borrowing it, so when I saw this other novel by the same author on the HarperCollins list (here we are, at the point of this digression!), I figured that I could give it a try. Now that I’ve finished The Winner Stands Alone, The Alchemist is definitely on my to-read list.