iReality

Wow, it is March. March. Is that possible? Apparently. I am impressed by how time has flown, and put it down to an incredible flurry of activity for me.

I went back, after a hiatus of feeling lazy, to putting together a structure for my novel. I'm also brainstorming with the proprietor of Falkora Jewelry, on some fun social media campaigns to increase her network. She does great sales when she goes to shows and conventions, but as we all know, 140 character virtual tweets are now how we communicatively define our lives.

Seriously, though, I've been having a real love-hate relationship with technology lately. I recently read an article about AT&T and Verizon's predictions that within the next couple of years, we will have serious spectrum issues trying to handle the volume of data being volleyed through the ether by smartphone users. P.S., trying to find that article again to repost it here, I had to wade through about 3,000,000,000 articles about the iPad 3 or 4 or 8 or whatever. Another tangent.

I really hate how slow my android Motorola Citrus is most of the time. We pay for an unlimited data plan, but half the time I feel like I could walk to Google's headquarters in California before their homepage finishes loading on my tiny touchscreen, which is covered in my tiny-hand fingerprints. I also hate myself for caring about something so trivial. What do I really do on my smartphone that's that worthwhile?

I want to be disconnected from this crippling need to constantly be connected, and yet it is supposedly critical to social and economic survival in this world. Isn't it? I don't know.

I would like to be a writer, and a marketer, who makes peace with the monsters of technology. But is it possible to compete in a world of communication, without being constantly in communication?

novel: take-off!

finally, having had the first weekend in many where i have some me-time, i am pushing myself to begin to write my novel. i used to write short stories all the time, but as i grew older i somehow felt less creative, like it had all been done before.

now i feel like i have something to say–but to be fair, last year i didn't feel like i quite had anything to say yet. so. it takes time.

as i have never written a novel before, the idea is daunting, even while exciting. i'm starting by using the snowflake method, which is forcing me to think critically about the structure and message of my writing–something that's never easy for most writers, even though non-writers often seem to think that full novels and essays just leak out of our fingertips, onto the keyboard, without any editing required.

below is an excerpt from the couple of pages i have so far.

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"Happily I go to Amazon.com and start clicking through to the Books section, and then into Astrology. I start scanning through cover images, occasionally clicking on interesting titles like The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, and The Secret Language of Relationships. I’ve actually read this one—or by read, I mean I’ve frequently gone into Barnes & Noble to thumb through it about various astrological relationship combinations. I can’t bring myself to actually buy it, because it only contains about a paragraph on each combination, so you only need it for about five minutes if you’re only reading about your one romantic relationship. Buying it would be an acknowledgement that I’d be requiring it frequently in the future."

sure is tempting to be a temp

ah, the job search. so on thursday i went to the temp agency, in an effort to find employment of some variety while i figure how to become a writer. you know, one that gets paid.

i had a vague sense of what to expect, from having gone to one temp agency once in college with my sister. but it was awhile ago, obviously, and i was a college student then, so i felt i had to prepare myself totally differently this time.

on thursday morning i got up, showered and blow-dried my hair nicely, and put on my khaki pencil skirt, green flower-print blouse, and grey Steve Madden ballet flats with the ruffle accents. luckily the temperature had providentially cooled that morning from its previous 90+ records earlier in the week, so i was able to stay moderately groomed.

i walked outside and got on the 61C bus to go downtown to where the agency was. i had read good reviews of it, so i was expectant of finding at least moderately good employment. all the way down, i practiced in my head the things i would say about myself: "i am hard-working, very professional, a quick learner, and i'm great with customers." which are all true, i can say without boasting, but doesn't it always feel funny to promote yourself to strangers? anyway.

when i got to the building with the agency, i had to take a scary old elevator to the sixth floor. once i got there and checked in, the nice girl at the front desk set me down with a set of forms and told me to fill them out. feeling ridiculously nervous, i set about putting my life's information down on paper, remembering how bad my print handwriting is, because i usually write cursive.

then i handed back in my forms along with my resume, after which the receptionist set me up in the next room at a computer where i was to take a test on Microsoft Word & Excel, and a typing test. i was tempted to ask her if she got her job as a receptionist for a temp agency, from the temp agency itself, or from another temp agency, but i resisted.

instead i sat down to take the world's most impractical test. indeed, i felt like i was taking the GRE again. mind you, this is no slight meant on the agency itself; as i said, it had glowing reviews from previous clients. but the tests are designed to gauge your proficiency in typical daily computer-related functions, and in my mind, they were hardly reflective of what you would actually have to do at an actual job (much like the GRE).

the tests asked you questions in paragraph form, about how you would complete certain tasks. the questions were fairly drawn out, and identified features of Word and Excel with confusing names, that the average worker knows perfectly well how to use, but cannot name. i can't even recall the bizarre names given to certain features, but they were things like "navigation review home" and the "customize tablet." and they would ask you how to do simple things, but give you ridiculously complicated multiple-choice answers to choose from, when really you know you could do the same thing by right-clicking on the word, rather than by going through six panels of menu options.

for tests that are designed to show in the most practical way how effective a potential worker could be, this seems to be highly impractical. Microsoft Office applications are purposefully designed to be as visual and user-friendly as possible, but only a couple of the questions actually used a graphic as an aid for what the question was about. if they opened the actual Word program, however, and asked the test taker to click on the appropriate area to do a certain function, i feel a much larger percentage would have been able to answer correctly. and isn't that more productive in identifying good workers?

oh, and the typing test. that was great. my mom thought it was hysterical that they still give typing tests, but that's an aside. i don't care. i'm sure typing is still something necessary to test. at any rate, the subject of the paragraphs you were supposed to type was all about how the economy has been failing, and job security is no longer a given. isn't that a terrible subject to make people seeking employment, have to type about? everyone knows happy workers are more productive–wouldn't it be a better test of a worker's optimum abilities, by having them type about a vacation they're about to go on? just a thought.

really, i had thought i knew Word and Excel well enough, but after those tests, i was somewhat humbled. i went back up to the front desk to tell the receptionist that i'd finished. sheepishly i began to comment that i guess i didn't know Word and Excel as well as i thought, and she interrupted me to say "oh no, you did just fine. look–you scored 3.4 out of 3.5. you're in the 90th percentile." she paused and smiled at me, the corners of her mouth twitching. "you're pretty well qualified."

what? i'm not sure how to feel about this. oh well. at least that hopefully means i'll get a call soon for a job offer. i feel bad for other people having to take that test, however. i'm sure they're being poorly represented.

oh, and they didn't interview me at all. they said the companies themselves interview directly, which makes sense. but i guess i need not have prepared the mental speeches. oh well, those will come in handy soon.

anyway, so here i am, sitting and writing because i have nothing else to do and no idea how to get my name out there as this amazing writer (note to self: become an amazing writer). i'm eating from an industrial-strength bag of swedish fish™ as a consolation prize for not having work yet. wish me luck!

what are your epic employment/unemployment stories?

the 18th century: does it even matter?

so some of my friends have been wondering why this blog ended up being called "the 18th century guide to modern living" when i don't often write about the eighteenth century. well, the answer is that sometimes i do write about it, but that the eighteenth century isn't literally the focus. it's more of the inspiration. it's not all about substituting "s"s with "f"s, or about wearing tight knee breeches.*

in college i truly indulged my lifelong love of jane austen, and around her i built my knowledge of the eighteenth century in literature and history courses. from them i developed concepts of social justice, community activism, education between the sexes and between social and economic classes, and the modern application of those values. i also credit my dear alma mater, gettysburg college, for giving me a profound sense of my ability and responsibility to critically engage with the world.

but the eighteenth century’s sense of interconnectedness has incredible relevance to the modern world. it emphasizes that we are all part of a larger whole; that our self worth is reflected in the worth of the community to which we belong. modern crises in economy, education, environment, and human rights, require actions that are guided by moral character; we have the power and the responsibility to positively apply the insight gained through understanding our connectivity.

exploring these concepts in a historic and modern context is imperative in order to prepare ourselves to think critically about how we will conduct ourselves in our professional and personal interactions. austen was one of those people who cared about such things, and taught me to care.

these are lofty words, but i think you'd better start off high, or your standards will be too low to get anywhere worthwhile. so now i like to write about a dozen different topics–gender, marketing and consumerism, education, really anything that looks interesting. i never forget, however, that in the back of my mind i'm always shaping how i interpret social justice from my mental 18th century guide to modern living.

*although i am a firm endorser of tight knee breeches.

communication across the ages

i've gotten back into writing in my paper journal again, as well as in this journal. i fell out of it for over a year, mostly from feeling that i hadn't anything to say which couldn't be shared with the whole world, if i cared to...but now it is useful to have somewhere to put my private thoughts once again. not that they are so very private, mind you, but, well–you know, half the things you say in your head wouldn't be of interest to the general public, and i probably spend too much text already on writing things here that are of interest to no one save myself. but that's a topic on which i've already meditated, and the truth is that i like having both digital and paper options available to me.

for one thing, the ease of typing allows my thoughts to flow quickly without losing them while i write. writing by hand takes a little bit more of a process–and yet i do find that i write more creatively sometimes by hand. this is an interesting phenomenon that has been noted both, i believe, in scientific study as well as by the average layperson. i remember reading an article in the atlantic last summer (while i was in the library up in salisbury, ct, while at mt. riga, incidentally) where friedrich nietzche's friends noticed that, upon switching from pen and paper to typewriter, his prose had become terser than ever. 'our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.' isn't that fascinating? what have we lost–or gained–then, by the switch from processing our thoughts with writing tool in one hand, to processing them with both sets of fingers touching keys?

that is why i prefer to maintain both, when i can. people should be made to reflect on their thoughts through both mediums, so that nothing is lost in translation, as it were.

a bit of blogging philosophy

what is the worth of blogs? i mainly created this as a way for friends to keep up with my...relatively?...diverting life, but it occurs to me (ok, not for the first time) that most of what is written here is interesting to no one save myself. so is that the case for most blogs, or are my personal accounts just not that exciting? are blogs really about getting your thoughts out there for friends and the world at large to respond to, or more about the pleasure of seeing your thoughts in (digital) print? blogging is odd when you consider it in that form, then–egotistical and yet not guaranteed to reach an actual audience.

and yet, does the author always want an audience? of course they must–or else, why create the archive? sorry. i still remember reading derrida for english critical methods class.

on an even more random note, i also keep coming back to the dream i had so many years ago. it's not that i keep having that dream necessarily; but the intense happiness, the freedom of driving my own destiny–the images always seem to be at the fringes of consciousness, sneaking back in when my thoughts start to wander.

writer's block

i feel uncreative. it used to be that my mind would be wandering aimlessly and i'd suddenly have this spark of inspiration, and i'd run over to my computer and quickly write down whatever phrase had come into my head. i could sit and write for hours; the stories seemed to pour out of me in a river of words and everything was fresh and new.

now i sit down and try to write and nothing comes. blank. even recording my day in a journal or in a blog seems trite and mundane. did my life become less exciting, or did i just use to see reality differently?

what is more, lately i look back on most of the things that i wrote and now they seem like crap to me. at least my thesis has some merit–not a whole lot, but some–and i would love to sit down and rethink it. but my fiction, my characters, my plots that i imagined were so unique and witty–they were all just imitations of already published works, other people's genius, poorly mocked by me. i am not a Poet, it seems.

how do writers write as they do? where does that holy fire come from–the flame that supplies all of the energy and wit that becomes translated into the classic novels that stagger me by their greatness? i could never write like austen, or doestoevsky or shakespeare, or faulkner. actually i could write like faulkner but i believe in punctuation. no, that's not fair. he won a nobel prize. anyway, lately i feel bummed that i'm not writing inspired, passionate works about the meaning of life.

maybe because i haven't found out yet what it is.