Category: My life

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A week of chaos

I had my granddaughter for a week while her mom and dad were on a cruise.

I don’t think I’ll ever recover.

Don’t get me wrong — time with her is precious and wonderful and it goes by way too quick.

But I. Am. TIRED.

I forget about the energy it takes to keep up with a 2 1/2 year old. I forgot about the days when you really couldn’t shower until nap time (and sometimes not even then) because you’re picking up toys that have been scattered around the house like a tornado blew through.

And the things is that she is a really, really easy child to deal with. She takes a nap without protest, willingly goes to her room to go night-night (no tears and no fighting it), and very rarely throws a toddler fit.

I think the biggest battle I had the entire week was figuring out what she would eat. I learned to not ask what she wanted – to just give her food and she would eat at least a couple bites of it. I was amazed by how she would hardly eat anything and just live off snacking on Cheerios and chocolate milk, yet she would have the energy of a thousand suns.

In addition to all of this, I was working from home. I didn’t want to take any time off, so I tried to juggle both. I was moderately successful. I got things done, but I couldn’t keep a thought in my head because I was constantly responding to the demands of a toddler: I want more milk! I want more Cheerios! I want to watch Miss Rachel! I want to watch Mickey Mouse! I was in and out of my chair about 358 times per hour, it seemed.

And now the house is silent, but I still have Miss Rachel songs in my head, which is sheer torture in itself (“One little red fish, swimming in the water . . . ” and “I’m soooo happy!”). Her favorite game was going upstairs to say hi to grandpa and look at my Kit-Kat clock that hangs in her room. (She didn’t like the eyes moving from side to side, so she would want me to still the tail and shut it “off.”). While I was working, she would go upstairs and then announce (over and over until I joined her) that she was “downstairs!” “Gamma, I’m downstairs! Gamma, I’m downstairs!” (She doesn’t yet realize the difference between going upstairs and downstairs, so everything was downstairs.). So I’d leave my computer and join her upstairs, and we’d make all the rounds to all the rooms, then we would head downstairs again. As soon as we were downstairs, the upstairs routine commenced again.

I kind of wish I had an Apple Watch so I could have calculated my steps during the time she was here. My phone, which sat on the kitchen counter most of the time, chided me for being inactive.

Smart phone?? I think not.

On Friday night, my granddaughter saw a commercial for pizza and then immediately wanted pizza. Not wanting to go to the store and get some, I did a quick search for a thin crust pizza dough, and I found this one from King Arthur flour. Guys, this thin crust is THE BOMB. Super quick and easy, and my picky little granddaughter actually said “Mmmmm!” when she bit into her simple cheese pizza. I did not let it rise because I wanted it as thin as possible. Here’s the link to the recipe. This is now my go-to for thin crust.

Well, that’s all I’ve got: pizza and adventures with the granddaughter. Will be returning to scanning some fun vintage things in upcoming days.

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The Psychology Behind Car Ads

Back in my teaching days, I would always look forward to teaching one particular lesson about connotative and denotative meanings of words. While the subject itself is rather dull, I taught the concept through the topic of car design. Why did Ford decide to use the name Fusion? Why does a Chevy Malibu sound like fun to drive? Why does a Dodge Hellcat appeal to a select group of people? Even more fascinating is the psychology behind crafting the car ad. I always had a selection of ads to show my students and we would discuss what the target audience was for the ad, along with the connotative meaning behind the name.

In 1955, Ford employed poet Marianne Moore to help them come up with a name for their hot new product, which ended up being the notoriously unsuccessful Edsel. However, Marianne had submitted several suggestions, with some of them being just completely ridiculous. Here are some of her suggestions:

Hurricane Accipter (hawk)
The Impeccable
Symmechromatic
Thunderblender
The Resilient Bullet
Intelligent Bullet
Bullet Cloisoné
Bullet Lavolta
The Intelligent Whale
The Ford Fabergé (That there is also a perfume Fabergé seems to me to do no harm, for here allusion is to the original silversmith)
The Arc-en-Ciel (the rainbow)
Arcenciel
Mongoose Civique
Anticipator
Regna Racer (couronne a couronne) sovereign to sovereign
Aeroterre
Fée Rapide (Aerofee, Aero Faire, Fee Aiglette, Magi-faire) Comme Il Faire

After looking at her list of names, you might feel the way Ford Motor Co. felt when they kept getting these rather strange suggestions thrown their way. In the end, Ford ended up using the Edsel name, and the rest is history.

This story is often used to show how some executives can be completely tone-deaf when it comes to marketing and understanding what people want in a product. However, reading these letters and that story in general is how I became rather fascinated by the psychology behind marketing.

By the way, you can purchase the book that Marianne Moore ended up putting together of her letters between her and Ford Motor Co. It is called Letters from and to the Ford Motor Company.

I once was part of a focus group when I was just out of college. I had a friend who took part in focus groups often as a way to make money, and she convinced me it was very little work for decent pay, so I signed up for one. We were tasked with discussing the renaming of a local hospital, and the whole process took about four hours. We had to listen to their vision for the rebranding, we had very lengthy discussions about different names. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember one of them being Heartland and another being Crossroads as alternatives to the name they did go with, which was Avera. Ironically, that was the name I liked least of the four they presented us because I thought the name sounded like aloe vera, which I guess was probably part of the point. Healing vibes, right?

And now when new car models come out, I think about all the thought and energy that went into that name. It’s got to be getting tougher to name cars these days because – let’s face it – all the good ones have already been taken. Thunderbird . . . Rocket . . . Mustang . . . Falcon . . . Puma . . . names that evoke speed and power were some of the first ones to be used. And we have a Montana, a Colorado, a Santa Fe, a Durango, a Tucson, a New Yorker, a Dakota, and several other place names that are already taken, so obviously car companies are going to have to get more and more creative as time goes on.

My favorite part of the car lesson was the end, where students would be turned loose to design an ad around a fictional car, the name carefully chosen for its connotative meaning. I love seeing the creative names they’d come up with; however, every year there was always a jokester or two that tried to slip something rather inappropriate by me and I always had to give a stern lecture at the start of the project: be appropriate or you’ll be doing it over. I remember getting a car design that was entitled “The Milf.” One was called the “Shaggin’ Wagon.” Many teenage boys tried to work the number 420 or 69 into their model name. But overall, the majority of the names were fun and they made me laugh.

That’s not to say that the real car companies didn’t try to inject a little sexual connotation into their advertising. Behold, the series of 1968 Dodge Toronado ads that liked to recycle the phrase “bold, brawny, and massively male” throughout the texts of the ad series.

I mean, they weren’t even TRYING to market this car to women.

Some other gems:

So not only are they pretty much claiming that their car is as fast as a plane, but they are also claiming it is aerodynamic. Uh . . . I beg to differ. Look at what the inset picture is bragging about: push-button driving! The fifties were so fantastic for this reason.

I always loved this ad because of the incongruity of the picture. The kids are already playing in the water, dad is getting the floaties out of the trunk, but mom just sits there, so in love with her new red Chevy that she doesn’t even want to get out of the car. This was great marketing to women – the color, the perfect family image (always one boy and one girl), and a mom who has been entrusted to drive the car. Bravo, Chevy!

This ad has A LOT going on, and it’s an older ad from 1937, hence all the text. Ads now have little to no text because they know that we’re too busy to read anything. This one’s like a novella. First, the picture. What . . . is . . . happening? Woman driving, which I think is interesting for the year. She is obviously living out some cowboy fantasy here as her car flies over the hills on a ranch somewhere. The best part is the panel of “experts” that Chrysler has picked to offer choice words about their product. We have Lady Mendl, a designer and stylist; Tony Sarg, an illustrator and author; Irene Hayes, a florist; and Isabella Taves Miller, a fashion promotion editor. Why wouldn’t you trust the opinions of such high society?

It’s easy to get lost in some of these old ads, but if you have some hours to kill, check out this site, which has TONS of old ads scanned in that you can search by make, model, and year.

Even after teaching this lesson for 20+ years, I still could not figure out the justification for calling a car a Gremlin. Small and fast, I get it, but do you really want to market yourself as a small, quick, and UGLY product?

Discuss. 🙂

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The Beauty of 50+

Last year I turned the milestone age of 50. This year, I turned — wait for it — 51. I remember when 50 was drawing near that I found myself not dreading it as much as I did when I turned the big 4-0. Forty was when I had to start wearing readers and coloring my gray hairs on a regular basis. Forty was when I felt my body start to slow down a bit; it wasn’t as easy to lose weight. Everything began to gather an extra bit of “padding.” Life was busy while I raised my teenage boys and kept on going in my teaching career.

Fifty kind of just appeared because I didn’t think about it as much. Two months after my big birthday, my college roommates came for a girls’ weekend. All of our birthdays are close together; Alex turned 50 on January 3, Suni turned 50 on January 9, and I turned 50 on February 3. So by the time the girls’ trip came about, we were all officially entrenched in our new decade. We had such a fun time shopping in Chicago, going out to eat, and even taking in an Elvis show at Buddy Guy’s Legends with my husband’s band playing. We spent time doing absolutely nothing, and that was perfect. We didn’t really have to pack our time together with activities; in fact, most of our time together was spent at my house.

In my younger years, I was a little obsessed with audio and video recording moments with my life. This obsession has become a little bit of a blessing and a little bit of a curse, for it is completely cringy to observe the idiocy of my younger years. I thought I had life all figured out — and I had no freaking clue. I know that is just the way life goes, but it is hard to watch it now.

And yes, I took plenty of videos of my college roommates and me, and it is interesting to compare us at age 21 to age 50. Back then, we were so worried about what we were going to wear to the bar and spent SO much time getting ready. Was our hair OK? Did we have the perfect shade of lipstick on? Was so-and-so going to be at the bar, do you think? There was so much mental energy that went in to just fitting in – but also wanting to stand out and be noticed by that perfect guy.

Fast forward to age 50, and none of that matters. All of us have been divorced, and two of us are currently remarried to the people we feel we should have married the first time. When we go “out on the town,” the focus is being together and laughing and remembering good times we’ve had in the past. I give zero craps about whether I’m in fashion or if my hair is perfect or if my makeup is on point. Friendships that have lasted over half of your life are rare and precious, and that becomes increasingly obvious as one ages. Our time together is definitely focused on each other rather than ourselves.

This past February, my husband’s band had a week-long gig at Busch Gardens in Tampa, and my best friend from high school decided to also fly down there and spend several days with us there. I marvel how I can rarely see these friends, but when you’re with them in person, it’s like you’ve been with them every day. You fall back into old patterns. Our time together was a breath of fresh air, and I am so thankful for the ones that stick around throughout time.

Cheers to being 51!

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Year 1 DONE!

As of December 2024, I have been an official resident of Illinois, having bought our house at that time. Of course, we lived here longer than that, but we were house hunting and living with friends during that time. The time has gone by very quickly, surprisingly enough, probably because we were spending the past year trying to figure out how all our stuff fit into our new space. Some of it did, some of it didn’t, and we are still in the process of sorting through boxes.

Moving after spending years in the same location is hard because you’re forced to finally deal with all that stuff in the basement and in closets that was easy to ignore. Boxes of pictures, for instance, or sentimental items from high school. It seems inconceivable to throw all those things away, but I tell ya — when you are in the depths of moving and the truck is getting full, it’s mighty tempting to turn off the sentimentality and just chuck it all. I didn’t, of course (although I did throw an entire dumpster’s worth of stuff away), and that is why I find myself in the “too much stuff” predicament. We’ve already made one Goodwill haul and need to make another one soon.

The holidays presented an unwanted gift to my husband and me, as we both ended up with pneumonia. That made the actual holidays and New Year’s fly by, as I was struggling with just surviving while also trying to create the holiday magic for everyone. In spite of how I felt, I was able to create some delectable lasagna on Christmas Eve and prime rib on Christmas Day, so pneumonia lost and I won. Kind of.

When I turned 50 last year, I vowed that I was going to get healthier and stop putting things off that I needed to pay attention to.

Let’s just say that “year of 50” slid by and I most certainly did not stop putting things off, as moving provided a convenient excuse to be really, really busy, and once we lived in the new house, that trend continued. Now I am about to turn 51 and that nagging voice in my head finally got through to me. This WILL be the year that I get healthier — both mentally and physically — by taking care of things that I have neglected for too long and developing some new hobbies that I had avoided taking up because of the endless array of excuses that I tended to supply. I call the nagging voice in my head “Madge,” because I envision her to be kind of a rough-and-tumble OTR trucker with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I could hear Madge say something derogatory every time I decided to put off a task, for instance, or do something lazy. “Yeah,” she’d cackle. “Let’s do that! Good choice all around!”

I hate Madge.

However, Madge started to get to me. I started to realize that Madge was actually the voice of reason that I should have been listening to this whole time. However, listening to a nice, nonconfrontational, sweet version of that VOR would have resulted in my ignoring her. My conscience knew that. So Madge was born, and Madge irritates the hell out of me, but she gets my attention. Whenever I feel like cutting corners or putting something off, there she is in the corner, cackling with cigarette smoke being snorted out of her nostrils as she watches me teeter on the cusp of doing something dumb. There’s nothing worse than being verbally bullied (in my imagination, anyway) by a woman who probably needs to work on herself as well. So, in an effort to shut Madge up and make my own soul happy, I’m going to delve back into my hobbies this year.

I want this year to be a year of reflection and introspection. The last few years I’ve been running with the wind and rarely taking a breather to enjoy downtime. This year I am simplifying for my own good. I want to read more — much more than I already do — and maybe start keeping track of what I’m reading. I want to write more as well, possibly developing a novel along the way. I have helped several people edit books over the years, and I’ve always been a bit jealous; seeing my name on a book cover would be a thrill for me, and I hope someday I am able to see that.

I also want to take the time to make some of the recipes out of the WNAX cookbooks that I’ve collected over the years. I get a kick out of reading those books (most of which I’ve scanned here for others to enjoy!). I’ll spare you the details of why I love these books because I have droned on and on about these for years, but they are gems. There is one particular book that amuses me because the design has a pin as a part of it, like this:

Well, one clever lady, Alice Johnson, decided to put a recipe for pfeffernusse cookies inside the front cover – and use a pin to secure it.

And I just. can’t. get. over. the THREE CUPS OF LARD. Yes, it makes a ton of cookies, but . . .

THREE CUPS OF LARD!!

I don’t care how good these cookies are . . . I just don’t think I could stomach dumping that much lard into a bowl and then proceeding to make something with it.

But hey, if you are braver than I, then go to it – the recipe is right there!

Cheers to 2025!

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August Thoughts – Completed in September

Since I started this blog in 2008, I usually would post a back-to-school post, mourning the end of my summer and hoping that I would have the strength to endure the coming school year. This is school year #2 I am not returning to school, and I am still trying to adjust to the new normal.

I still have the compulsion to buy school supplies. I don’t think that instinct will ever leave me.

I still enjoy the personalities of teenagers and kids in general. After years of living in a fairly secluded development, I am part of a larger development that is ALIVE. Today I saw some kids were selling something — probably lemonade on this hot day — and I felt bad when I drove by them twice without stopping while I ran errands. When I knew I was done shopping for the day, I stopped. They were selling lemonade and bracelets that they made. I picked up one of each, overpaid, and told them to keep the change. The looks on their faces were worth it.

I remember the days when my friend Suni and I would hold Kool-Aid stands at the end of our driveways. We had themes, such as Hawaiian hula girls (an idea from Suni’s creative mother, Val) and we were always so delighted when someone stopped for some of our Kool-Aid. We were even more delighted when someone gave us a bigger bill and told us to keep the change. We were going to be RICH! I would be dreaming about all the candy I would be able to buy with that money.

Even though I don’t teach school now, I still get a kick out of the teenagers I encounter around town. I told this story on my Facebook page, but I think it’s worth repeating. I stopped by Starbucks after buying a huge bag of bird seed from the local Tractor Supply. It was sitting on my passenger seat. When I pulled around to pick up my coffee, the barista asked me what the bag was, and I told her it was bird seed. (I always love how so many teenagers have no filter; if they want to know something, they will ask!). I told her I liked to feed the birds in my yard. She said, “Oh, you feed the birds? That’s cool.” All of a sudden another teenage barista came running over to the window. “YOU HAVE A BIRD?” she exclaimed. I hated to disappoint her, but I couldn’t pretend I had a bird with me when I didn’t. “No, I just like to feed the birds in my yard.”

Her crestfallen face was almost comical. “Oh,” she said, “people always bring their pets through here. I haven’t seen a bird yet. I was hoping you had one.”

That’s the energy I miss. If you looked tired and worn out, they’d tell you. If you looked nice, they’d tell you. If they thought your lesson sucked, they’d tell you. As a rather reserved introvert, that took some getting used to. I had to let go of my pride and get used to standing in front of the peanut gallery every day and being able to take their criticism AND their praise.

I think I will forever be in the middle of that paradox – loving the idea of teaching but hating the red tape attached to it.

I have been gone nearly every weekend for the past few months as I have traveled around with my husband’s band. To say that I am exhausted from being on the road is an understatement. It is fun seeing different towns and seeing old friends at different events, but man, I miss having lazy Sunday mornings where I could relax with a good cup of coffee while snuggled in bed. The schedule will be slowing down slightly in upcoming weeks, so I hope I am able to get some long-awaited projects done.

I’m slowly discovering where the antique stores are around this area. I visited a couple a few weeks ago and picked up a couple of treasures. I saw this rooster tray the first time I visited one, and then I brought my husband back to the store later so he could see it. I knew that since I kept thinking about it, I probably should just pick it up, and now it has become part of my kitchen decor. There is something about funky 1950’s chickens that I just can’t resist.

At another nearby store, I ran across a bunch of boards that had retro matchbooks on them. There are few things I love more than retro advertising, so I picked up a couple of the boards and have a strong urge to go back and get the rest of them. Zoom in on the pics if you can; there are some fun designs. I do want to unstaple some of them to flip them around. Some of them don’t have the most interesting side facing forward, in my opinion.

Although I’ve lived in my house for 9 months, I have been undecided about a decorating strategy. My old house was all 50’s, and because it was a 50’s house, it all fit. My current house was built in 2005, and a lot of my 50’s stuff just doesn’t fit in well with the more modern feel of this house. However, I love old advertising, and I love funky little things that you can’t find at Home Goods or TJ Maxx, so I have decided to start collecting some of those items and using them to enhance these spaces. Funky chicken is now adorning my kitchen, and the matchbooks will provide entertainment to anyone using our bathroom off the kitchen.

I’m all about bathroom entertainment.

Until next time . . .

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Settlin’ In

*****NOTE: I originally wrote this post in March. I had forgotten I wrote it and noticed it just now when I came here to write a new blog post. Although we have now lived here for 9 months, the sentiments are still the same. Therefore, there will be two posts dated today. **********

I have lived in this house for three months now, and I am gradually getting to know the area. Still haven’t met the neighbors yet — cold weather kind of puts a damper on that — but I trust I will meet them as the weather warms up.

There are things that I love about living here, such as the convenience of living near pretty much any store I want to go to (something I definitely have not had for the past 23 years). I am getting used to the commute, which can be surprisingly good or frustratingly slow, depending on the day.

I think the biggest thing I’ve needed to get used to is “the fire.”

When my husband and I were traveling to this area often, before we lived here, we would drive by “the fire,” which is visible from the interstate, and we wondered what it was. We would describe it to people and ask what it was, but no one seemed to know.

“The fire” is a natural gas plant and it’s about five miles away. I’ve never lived close to industry like that, and we are learning that living next to one provides some dramatics. About a month ago, I heard a dull roar outside and I was curious as to what it was. I opened my front door and exclaimed, “Holy crap! Come look at the fire!” Usually, you can not see the fire above the houses in my neighborhood. That night, though, the flame shot up in the sky. My husband I watched it for a while and then I said I wanted to get a picture of it closer. When we were about on the edge of town, the fire died out. According to my local Facebook groups, the event triggered multiple 911 calls, as this area is growing rapidly and there are many new locals, like me, who have never seen that before. (No, I was not one of the 911 calls . . . ). Here’s what it looked like that night:

The other night I could hear a low rumble when I woke up at 2:30 a.m. I pulled my bedroom shades up and could not believe what I was seeing. I ran downstairs and took this picture from my front door — a sight made even more ominous-looking because of the low cloud cover that morning.

From what I understand, the fires escalate when there is excess gas to burn off. I don’t know anything other than that, but it has been interesting to see what “the fire” looks like every day.

I have slowly begun to explore some of the antique shops in this area. I have become a lot more selective about what I buy, though, because moving tends to make you realize that you have TOO MUCH STUFF! I did visit an antique store about 30 miles away a few weekends ago and I scored some great tablecloths, including a brand-new-looking Simtext tablecloth that came with four napkins. All the cloths were reasonably priced, so although I only walked away with one that had a label, all the cloths were in great condition. They’re a little wrinkly in this pic, but you can see the patterns:

A couple of months ago, my husband’s aunt passed away. When we went to her house to get some sentimental objects, like photographs, we were walking through the basement when I saw a cracked ice table (no chairs) with legs that were so totally atomic and rocket-ship inspired. I will take a pic of that soon after I get the table back together, and I will probably be offering it for sale because, c’mon, no one needs TWO cracked ice tables, no matter how cool they are. I had never seen a table with legs like that and I just could not leave it behind.

So, like I was saying, I have learned to not keep so much stuff. <eye roll>

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Hi, I’m an instructional designer

Yes, that title means that I GOT A JOB.

I have tried twice to write a blog post in the past couple of months. I even had the same title for the last two attempts: Free Fallin’. That is how I felt this past summer as I worked to get a job and was getting nothing but crickets for most of it.

I never finished and published the last two blog posts because I felt like I was just whining – whining about being done as a teacher and the mixed emotions that caused, whining about the job search and how frustrating it was, and whining about stressed I was.

No one wants to read that. I was bored as I re-read my own writing, and that is always a good indication that such writing does not need to be read by anyone else.

They’re still there in my dashboards as drafts, and I will probably keep them as a reminder of what this summer was like. I am hoping that I do not have to be unemployed again anytime soon.

Like Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Toward the end of August, just as school was starting and I was reeling with feelings of panic about how I was going to stay afloat with no job, I got a call just as my husband and I were starting off for a visit to Chicago. The call was from a place I had interviewed at the very beginning of August. Although I had asked for and received an update about the job a week after my interview (the VP of Professional Development was on vacation and would be making a decision shortly), another week went by without any word, and I figured that they had gone with a different candidate. But on August 24th, they called and offered me the job, and I happily accepted. I even pulled over on the side of the road to get my laptop and digitally sign and return the offer letter before they could change their minds.

Feeling relieved does not begin to describe what I felt. Days after I had gotten my last teaching paycheck, I got a job! I started on September 7, and it has been a month and a half of absolute joy and relief. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I honestly mean it. I hadn’t worked in the corporate sector for 24 years. On my first day, my boss took me out to lunch and said that she did not want me working on weekends or even thinking about work. If she happened to send an email on a Saturday, she said I was under no obligation to read it or answer it. Work-life balance is very important to her, and I am still trying to get used to having a job where work-life balance is valued. In teaching, it was expected for us to work nights and weekends to keep up with everything. It was accepted even though it is a horrible habit to get into. At my current job, we leave work AT work, and that is exactly how it should be.

I have lived in small towns for most of my life, so you can imagine that working on Michigan Avenue in Chicago is a bit of a change. My commute to work for the past 17 years was 7 minutes long. Now my commute is 45 minutes on a good day. We are able to work whatever hours we want to make up a full day, so I have started to leave for work at 5:15 a.m. to get to the office at 6:00 a.m. That lets me leave work at 2:30-3:00, which is just as the rush hour traffic is starting to ramp up. Although I don’t like the traffic, I only have to deal with it two days a week because I am remote the other three days of the week.

I love to people-watch, so some mornings I will go to the Starbucks that is across the street from me and I’ll sit facing the traffic so I can watch the city wake up. The Starbucks I go to is attached to a hotel, and it is fascinating to hear all of the languages spoken by the patrons who filter in from there.

There is always something happening on Michigan Avenue, and I love going for walks during my lunch break to see what is going on outside. I never feel unsafe, though, because the cops are thick around there. Every day there is at least one cop car right outside my building, just hanging out and waiting for stuff to happen. Some days it is hard to see the realities of life when a homeless person winds up sleeping in front of my building; I am certainly not used to that sight. But most of the time what is happening on Michigan Avenue is entertaining and interesting to watch. And if there’s nothing happening, the people-watching is always good.

Even though I’ve been employed for a month and a half, I am still trying to find the right words to summarize how this year has been. I have always been a small town/country girl. The largest city I lived in was only had about 150,000. I’m not used to congested freeways and vibrant downtowns and skyscrapers and lots and lots of people. But for some odd reason, this feels right. I will always be a country girl at heart, but the time was overdue to move away from the small town where I’d been living for over twenty years. I was tired of not having any privacy because I was a teacher in that small town; quick trips to the grocery store often meant conversations with fellow teachers, parents, or students. While I love seeing people outside of school, sometimes I just wanted to be invisible, get what I wanted, and go home. (Other teachers will understand that feeling.).

It’s taken a lot for me to get to the point where I was comfortable challenging the status quo. If you would have asked me twenty years ago to move to Chicago, I would have gotten wide-eyed and said, “NO WAY!” My brain would have been overloaded with a long list of all the things that could have gone wrong with a move to the big city.

When I was in my mid 20s — soon after I had my first child — I started having major anxiety related to the huge responsibility of taking care of a child. All the what ifs got me big time. What if he got sick? What if he choked? What if he died of SIDS? What if I turn out to be a crappy mother? What if he has special needs that I can’t accommodate? What if? What if? What if? While I was 8-months pregnant with my first child, 9/11 happened. That is probably where my anxiety stemmed from. Suddenly the world felt steeped in chaos and I no longer knew what the future would be for my child.

It was, quite frankly, paralyzing. I stopped enjoying everyday life and most of my waking hours were consumed with fear. I eventually decided to go on anti-anxiety medication, and I will never, EVER take that route again. I truly believe such meds do nothing to cure the actual anxiety; they just mask it. What I was really afraid of was having a loss of control over, well, pretty much everything. I wanted to control whether my child was sick or well or whether or not he lived a long life. However, I was floundering in the wake of the simple reality — very little of that is within my control. I avoided airplanes because of my fear of flying; I avoided traveling to big cities because I feared possible chaos; I avoided social situations where I felt unsure of how things would unfold. I missed so many opportunities in my life because of fear. That fear was preventing me from living my life.

Living in a small town did little to assuage my anxiety, as I felt *seen* everywhere I went. As an introvert, I was not used to that sort of life, and I really struggled with it. I just wanted to go out in public and not know a soul.

I learned to live with the non-anonymity of a teacher’s life over time. I started to just expect it and anticipate it. I knew I would see them, so I stopped fearing it. I took the time to have conversations with the students working at the grocery store or K Mart (while it lasted). I learned that it was a good thing to be able to have “normal” conversations that had nothing to do with school because it helped humanize me to them and helped me get to know the other facets of their personalities.

I stopped the anti-anxiety meds about a year after I started taking them, and the withdrawal was brutal and scary. Lots of weird things going on in my brain that I can’t even begin to explain, but obviously the medicine was doing something to my brain as I weaned myself off of it. I started to take a hard, honest look at what was causing my anxiety, and only then was I able to move past it.

My anxiety was caused by a loss of control at a time when I felt I needed ALL the control. I wanted to ensure that my children were safe; I wanted to make sure that I was safe; I never wanted to find myself in any sort of emergency; I had a weird, dark obsession with stories of chaos where people had to rely on their instincts to get them through. I wondered what my instincts would lead me to do. I doubted whether I would make good choices.

I have learned that there is very little that is linear and predictable about life. If you try to control the trajectory, you will fail big-time, and you will also incur a lot of unnecessary stress. Do you remember that song that came out in the 90s called “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen”? If not, here it is. It is a surprisingly deep song that spoke to the anxiety I was feeling at the time; in fact, I used to have the lyrics printed out and hung on a bulletin board in my classroom. I wanted my students to internalize the advice because it was so freaking true.

You do not know what will happen in life. Some horribly bad people live to be 90 and never pay for their mistakes. Some really good, kind people die at a young age and never get to live a full life. The injustice of that stings, but it’s not an isolated example either. One of the stanzas of the song is this:

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the ‘Funky Chicken’
On your 75th wedding anniversary
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much
Or berate yourself either
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s

All we can do on this earth is do the best we can with each day we are given. As I type this, war is raging in the Holy Land. Again. People are suffering and wishing they were elsewhere. Meanwhile, here I sit in relative peacefulness in the suburbs of Chicago. I do not understand why I have been able to live a decent life while people across the globe are suffering, and dying, and fighting for basic freedoms.

I also know that I can’t do a damn thing about it.

I also know that taking chances and facing uncertainty head-on have done wonders for me in the past few years. People may not understand your choices, and you will undoubtedly suffer some criticism for what choices you do make, but the important thing is that you feel OK with what you’ve chosen to do.

It’s your life. No one else’s.

I think living in Chicago has given me the anonymity I have desired for so many years. I can go shopping, walk down the street, have a glass of wine in a restaurant without knowing a single soul, and that is liberating. On Michigan Avenue, when I walk down the street and take pictures of buildings, I am just another person in a sea of tourists. I listen to the sea of dialects around me and know that this is all just as new to me as it is to them.

For me, anyway, I have made peace with the idea that life happens and there is very little rhyme or reason as to why some of us make it to 90 and some die as infants. I don’t know why evil people are allowed to run free while good-hearted people die from cancer. All I know is that each one of us is given a gift every day we wake up to a new day.

It is up to us what we choose to do with it.

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LIVE from the cesspool that is LinkedIn

Ok, not really live, but my thoughts are live right now if that makes a difference.

Prior to this year, I had not job hunted in 17 years. My job hunts have always been fairly easy. The last two interviews I had resulted in jobs.

I posted last time about the murky waters of LinkedIn and how it is so foreign to me. That sentiment remains.

LinkedIn seems to have two extremes: the platform for the successful and the megaphone for the desperate.

NETWORK! That is what all the advice is for people like me: desperate teachers who want to switch careers. I don’t know HOW many times I have gotten a message from someone who seems helpful but ultimately just wants you to pay him/her to redo your resume.

LinkedIn is, at best, shark-infested waters that introvert types like me do not do well in.

I have always tested as a strong INFJ type. If you read about this personality type, we thrive on genuine connections with other people. We are notoriously bad at bullshitting and clamoring over others for personal gain. I would say that is a good thing. However, if you look at allllll the advice on LinkedIn, most people say that’s a bad thing.

You have to get your name out there! That’s what the masses howl. Yes, but to me there is something inherently wrong in pretending that I have a deep connection with someone when I really don’t have one. Some people can fake this. I cannot.

YOU WILL NOT GET A JOB WITHOUT NETWORKING! That is also the status quo. However, if I have no connections, how do I form them without feeling totally phony?

LinkedIn was made for certain personality types. It was NOT made for people like me who thrive on honest, real connections with people.

So the job search continues. I’m about 75 applications in with a handful of rejection letters and zero interviews. To say that this job market is tough is a supreme understatement. It’s more like a battlefield. Thousands of teachers are fleeing the classroom and they are all competing for a very small sector of jobs.

In addition, I have become increasingly annoyed with the trends in job postings that I see:

  1. Not listing the salary. Ok, in a dream world, we can say salary doesn’t matter, but it does. People jumping careers are used to making a certain amount.
  2. Not disclosing that a remote position is only for certain states. I don’t know HOW many job applications I have filled out where I don’t find out at the end that the listing is only for certain states and I get immediately rejected. How about putting that important detail in the job description?!
  3. A LOOOOOONG list of job details makes it apparent that companies are looking for a robot or some sort of unicorn in the job market.
  4. Refusal to train. EVERYONE, it seems, wants 3-5 years of experience. I still see a job posting pop up that says “Entry level with some experience.” If you have experience, it’s not entry level. This particular job posting wanted a long list of qualifications for this “entry-level” position.
  5. Being ghosted. For the 75-ish jobs that I have applied to, I have gotten follow-ups (rejections) for about 25% of them. For the rest of them, I just notice when the job says it’s closed and I delete the listing from my Teal queue. How hard is it with today’s technology to send out a mass rejection email? Y’know, the “while your qualifications are certainly impressive, we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates” email. I mean, c’mon . . . if my skills were impressive, I would be getting an interview. Stop trying to be nice.
  6. I didn’t realize until now that there were fake job postings. I don’t understand the purpose of this other than stealing people’s info, but it is infuriating to have to work around these fake job postings. There is one that I have had to filter out for months. It promises 100k and the job posting is ridiculous. Basically, they want an educator who can guarantee proficiency in 100% of students. Nope, not going to sign up for that BS. This company has been running listings for MONTHS and they clog up my job feed.
  7. No recruiter to connect with. LinkedIn makes it pretty impossible to connect with recruiters unless you pay a ridiculous amount for their Premium service. Many listings have no one to talk to at all or follow up with. There has to be SOMEONE reading these resumes and cover letters. Who are they? Why not let people talk to them?
  8. The stupid questions at the end of the job application: gender, veteran status, disability disclosure, race, etc. Aren’t companies NOT supposed to discriminate about any of those things? If so, why do we have to disclose it? If you hire someone based on their qualifications rather than their race, veteran status, or gender, then that is a more fair hiring practice, is it not? Even though the questions are optional, in this intense, competitive job market, do you think people will risk not getting hired because they didn’t disclose that info?
  9. Personality/Temperament tests. The ones I have seen have forced me to choose from a selected group of adjectives. How authentic is this if I only have 8 predetermined answers I can use?
  10. The endless stream of people who just want to connect with you to sell their services — resume rewriting, job coaching, cryptocurrency investing, etc. It is all exhausting.

I have a phone interview with a recruiter tomorrow. I am preparing as much as I can, but that imposter syndrome is very real and I’m trying like mad to fight it off with a stick.

I can do this.

Not . . . I can do this?

I hope my next post has much better news.

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Metamorphosis

It has been a hot minute since I have posted anything. It’s not for a lack of having anything to say; it’s just a supreme lack of TIME.

My last post should have been an omen. I was starting to have an awakening in my career. I actually made another LONG post in December but decided not to post it. One never knows in this career when written words will be used against them.

On February 1, I resigned from my job. I am finishing out the year, but I am so completely worn out. So many things have happened this year that led up to the decision. Although I am moving and can’t keep the job anyway, I was just done. Too much to detail and no energy to do it. Maybe another time.

Around November, I decided to enroll in the Applied Instructional Design Academy. One part of teaching that I have loved involves making materials and creating learning that is relevant, fun, interesting, and useful. The program is 9 months, but I am trying to get it done in 4.

That tells you how motivated I am to get into this very highly competitive field.

I know I would be good at this job, but man, is it hard to find entry-level jobs. Everyone wants experience. No one wants to take a chance on a former teacher. For some reason, the word “teacher” has a negative connotation in the corporate world. I already have a nice little pile of rejection letters keeping me company.

However, I will keep on keepin’ on. I am motivated to do something else – a job where my experience is respected and I am treated like an adult rather than a child. I want to have a job where it’s not normal to inhale lunch as fast as possible so I can get back to my desk to correct papers or check off one of the 184 tasks that need to be completed that day. I need to feel more in control of my own chaos – if that makes sense. Right now I am definitely one of the inmates in the asylum, and I desperately need to be out.

Know of any companies that need an instructional designer or a curriculum developer? I’m your gal. 🙂

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A ticking time bomb

Silly me. I thought that the longer I was in education, the easier things would be. This is year 23 for me and I have never felt so slammed by expectations and pressure to make sure that everyone passes – no matter what.

I won’t get into the specifics of it all, as you never know when your own writing will land you in hot water, and although I am frustrated by this field right now, I don’t want to leave it just yet. However, there’s a nagging little voice in the back of my head that has been growing louder day by day with a catchy little chant: What else can I do? How can I do what I love to do without this immense pressure to be a grading machine, a super motivator, a surrogate parent, and a relationship builder — all while trying to run my own life?

The buzz word in education these days is self-care. My district focused on that last year. We actually had some good PD from it when we had Zoom meetings with a wonderful presenter based in Colorado. But the question remains – if this profession is so heavy and stressful and chaotic that we need to teach teachers how to take care of themselves outside of the work day, what exactly is wrong with this picture?

The irony remains that the pressures increase and the self-care talk is now replaced with the new buzzword: relationships.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble maintaining relationships with the handful of long-time friends that I have, much less 170 teenagers, some of whom have absolutely no interest in building a relationship with me. We are regaled with sob stories about students who give all the credit for their success to the teachers who went the extra mile. And that’s great, really. I know I credit my own high school teachers for instilling a love of education in me, and that is why I ended up in education.

But now the mantra is that if we are not going the extra mile for every single one of our students, we are not doing our job right.

There’s a napkin dispenser in our break room that has this saying: “Every student. Every day. Whatever it takes.”

Whatever it takes? Every day? For every student? All 170 of them?

That’s more than pressure; that’s downright impossible.

I belong to a few teachers groups on the book of faces. It’s a blessing and a curse; I get some great ideas, but it is painful how vicious teachers are to one another. Once in a while, a teacher will post anonymously about his/her frustrations about the job, and within minutes, the holier-than-thou types start lashing out. Inevitably, someone starts preaching relationships. Surely that kid would not be misbehaving if you tried to build relationships. Surely you are lacking in some way. Surely it’s YOU.

It’s amazing and incredibly sad to watch the thread play out in a very predictable way. Rather than supporting one another and acknowledging that we work in a field that is not only difficult but even more so since the pandemic (for various reasons). Rather than admitting that student behavior is not just off the charts at our own schools, it is happening all over the country, we tear apart the teacher who admits that she’s at her breaking point. It reminds me of the teacher cliché of talking to another teacher about a student’s behavior in your class – then having to listen to the other teacher say that the same kid is an angel in their class and they are so surprised that the student acts out in yours. You walk away from that conversation feeling like a failure.

In my 23 years of teaching, I’ve been flipped off (with both fingers – an added treat), told to f*ck off (numerous times), told “tough sh*t” when I pointed out that I expected respect from a student, had my tires punctured with construction screws several times in one school year (no accident, I can assure you; that was an expensive school year!) and been accused of treating students unfairly in various ways. And that’s just the stuff I can think of right now. This year, I have more students than I have ever had in my entire career and now grading has gotten to the point that if a student fails, WE have to prove what we did to try to mitigate that.

Grades are due tonight. I suppose I had better get my defense ready.

I’m tired, y’all. And it’s not just me. It’s teachers everywhere who are dealing with students who have seldom been told “no’; who have zero parental support because there ARE no parents; who come to school hungry, unwashed, unloved, and angry at the world; whose only ambition is to work at the local factory so f*ck you and your English bullsh*t; ones who have been up all night playing video games and therefore can’t stay awake in class; students who get called out by mom and dad every time the kid says “We’re not doing anything today,” (which is almost always untrue); students who are really and truly addicted to their cell phones and cannot even have their phone off their body for an extended amount of time — no joke!; students who are carrying around a lifetime worth of trauma that even the best-trained teacher would have difficulty assisting with . . . the list goes on and on and on.

And now we are taking kids who are barely functioning well enough to exist day to day and asking their teachers to not only hold them to high standards but ensure that they don’t fail any of their classes.

After all, if they fail, it surely has to be our fault because teachers didn’t try hard enough. YOU didn’t contact home enough. YOU didn’t form relationships. YOU didn’t give enough grace. YOU didn’t enact good self-care and thus were not in your best form for work. YOU didn’t differentiate your lessons enough to meet all levels of learning. YOU. It’s gotta be YOU.

Add to all of this that there are students in education programs who are choosing other fields because they hear about the nightmares they will be facing once they get their own classrooms, and this country has a problem that will soon rear its ugly head.

I apologize for making this post about me and not something more fun like antiques or tablecloths or Elvis or literally anything else. This is what was on my mind on this Sunday, and I hope my next post is lighter in subject and way more fun.

Enjoy your weekend!

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