84/90, get a job!

While my friends are landing jobs in Indianapolis, Chicago and New York, working in PR and related fields, I realized that I am, in essence, benching myself for at least one entire season. I'll be missing my rookie shot, focusing on other areas and losing my edge like I lost the power in arm after years without playing softball.

For the past few days, I've been frantically seeking out freelance PR and writing opportunities. I love writing. I love PR. I love too many things, and right now it's making me feel pretty mediocre across the board. Hopefully, the writing jobs (looking for PR/marketing writing as well as copy editing) will keep me up-to-date in the field.

Other than that, it's all up to my dedication. To keep myself a viable job candidate in the PR world, I'm realizing that taking myself out for a year–even though I'll be able to say that I was teaching in France–could be seen as a con against the more media-savvy intern that will just now be graduating; this effect is amplified if I am accepted to graduate school and removed from the PR game for a few more years.

The moral of the rant is this: I've realized that my field is a lot more based on research than I thought. When I'm in that workforce or looking at firms' and organizations' Web sites looking for jobs, I need to be looking at successful campaigns, reading about social media, working on my design skills... things that I love doing anyway, but things that just started seeming really essential.

I'm still set on going to graduate school. I have three life options that I really feel would make me happy, and I'm translating those into three graduate programs to apply to:

1. French Literature, with a focus on francophone nations in Africa: This would get me my literature fix, since it's the only thing I've been truly obsessed with for my entire life. It would also help me become fully bilingual and understand African cultures. This is helpful, because my PR focus has always been international nonprofits.
2. Public Policy: This does not sound like the part of my brain that I ever enjoy using–especially when I talked to a student at Indiana University, the second best Pub Pol program in the nation (below Harvard), talk about his math camp and statistics study tables. But, a very supportive professor talked to me about my goals, realistically, and said that if I ever want to make it to the UN or anything similar, this is the best way to go. It's real nonprofit work, digging in and playing dirty... okay, not dirty, but looking at the parts of the machine I never wanted to be involved with (aka being a government employee).
3. Creative Writing: Ok, I know. One of these things is not like the other. But that's not exactly true. I've been set on making writing a solid part of my life since the second grade. I wanted to study English as an undergraduate, but I didn't let myself because I didn't know what that would look like job-wise after I graduated. Now, I see that it could mean anything. It could mean working for nonprofits (Poetry Foundation, Guggenheims, school writing programs, Teach for America). It could also mean work in publishing. It could also set me up for real publications, the opportunity to put my memoir/creative nonfiction book ideas into action.

So while I'm out of this country, I'll be connected in new ways, researching to better myself and trying to find work. I thought it would be scary, but I have to say that the independence and self-reliance is exhilarating. As is the application process. Goal for summer: finalize application list and set aside money for application fees. Goal after that: let myself apply and wait until I get all of the rejections back to see what I'm meant to be doing.

It's hard for me to be spontaneous and let my life go in the direction it wants to. I always had a five year (Hell, a ten year) plan, a set order, but the best things (Joe, Ball State University, France) have happened when I wasn't even looking for them–when I was living my life and enjoying the small moments. So, why not let graduate school be decided the same way? Why not look at everything I love to do, let myself try and let life happen?

This may seem passive, but I think it is really the most active thing we can do. It's not crying that life happens to us; it's acknowledging that ever step we take is a part of Life, a part of the process and progress of being our own person. I'm letting the fates decide this one, and I'm equally happy with everything. Wow. Sigh. That feels good.

83/90, trail mix

After a migraine-induced nap early this morning, I stomped my way downstairs to eat some trail mix. I got it at Walmart, and it is full of chips. This is not an exaggeration. there is at least an entire bag of both chocolate and white chocolate chips. Then a bag of peanut butter chips, golden raisins, peanuts, 5 cashews, a handful of almonds and some craisins.

I eat 1 almond + 1 craisin + 1 chocolate chip at a time. It didn't take long to realize that this meant I would be digging through to the bottom of the bag and coming up empty in no time.

It didn't take long to realize how much this is like life, either. You start out with some pretty great shit. Then, a little bit later, you're on your own in a house that's falling apart with a bag of shitty trail mix with your face all puckered up from eating the tart raisins and gagging on the salt-covered white chocolate chips.

I tried to pace myself, eating a few peanut butter chips and raisins, making the best of a bad situation. But then I thought better of it. Because you know what? Screw it. If I've learned anything in life so far, it's that when life hands you lemons, you give them to your roommate and watch her eat the rind. When life hands you shitty trail mix, you give it to your fiancé and buy yourself a bag of almonds and a bag of chocolate chips, sit alone in your room and eat until you want to throw up. Then you cry about not fitting into your clothes.

So I put the bag of trail mix away, feeling all kinds of worse about the day, went to class and found out that my teacher didn't really like my paper (not sure if this is true, but there were some pretty heavy marks on it... and she kept it to check the sources because I forgot to cite one), and decided to come home for another nap. This nap actually turned into a quesadilla-eating, facebook-chatting with Joe break from the day that was not the productive things I should have been doing, but at least it wasn't a nap.

Really, I guess that means if life hands you a bag of shitty trail mix, you should just make a quesadilla instead, because that's what will really make you feel better. But still give that nasty stuff to your fiancé, because he will eat it indiscriminately by the handful and not even notice how gross the white chocolate chips are.

I'm going to go mix up some cookie dough.

Hey, don't judge me! They're not for me. They're for Joe. He'll get here tomorrow night, late late as usual.

82/90, dog bite

When the doctor said, "We could fix that," I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about. I was there for a physical to get travel clearance, which involved, well, nothing really. He wasn't poking me or using anything to stare inside of me. He was just standing at my right side.

"You could sand those out. Wouldn't take long."

I realized that he was staring at my face. At the suture marks and small divots left from the day when, at age five, a husky lunged at me and attempted to eat part of my face. He hadn't succeeded, but he did leave a perfect circle of multi-layer stitches that alarmed onlookers for some time–from a woman grabbing my face in a grocery store; to a boy asking what person bit my face; to my friends screaming when the bandage covering my right cheek fell off while jumping on the trampoline.

For what seemed like ages, each day before recess my teacher would insist that I got out the suntan lotion my mother sent to school with me and smear it on the right side of my face, to prevent scarring. I was sure it wouldn't matter, that I would always have a circle,  a constellation of fang marks, connecting my eye, jaw line and mouth.

In high school, I felt the need to explain the scars to every boy that I dated. I didn't want him to think that there was something inherently wrong with my face, or that I had (God forbide) suffered from damaging chicken pox or acne. This happened to me. It is not my fault.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the remarks of family members and doctors floated and sparked. Until I turned 18, I could have the problem, those scars, fixed for free. I never really considered it. I was afraid I would come out an entirely different person, or that people would misunderstand my reasoning.

Snapping forward, when this doctor suggested a light sanding of the right side of my face, I was appalled. I said I'd lived with them, and them with me, for 15 years. They didn't need to go away. He shrugged, and said that was true; he said that I wasn't the one that had to look at them. I felt the need to assure him that I was in a relationship. That someone had managed to cope with the scars and date me anyway.

As I've grown, so have my scars. In some way, they've shaped who I am, and I find myself missing them connecting the main features of my face. Now, they're a much smaller circle. They've gotten further from the eye and mouth until they settled in the hollow of my cheek. At times, looking in the mirror, I crinkle my mouth into a pout to watch the last of the real scar tissue pucker.

At some point, I became okay with my face–with the entirety of it. The brown eyes; the freckles my dad always said were their own constellation; my small mouth that looks angry when not smiling. I'd come into all of it. It had grown with me, served me well and wasn't about to change for anyone.

There would be no sanding, no ripping myself apart to put myself back together in a way that left no questions for people, made no one uneasy. Because none of it really happened to me. It all just happened. The "me" is what came out of it.

81/90, growing

Two weeks after introducing my indoor garden to the world, I have four successes and one flop. I still attribute my success to the teaspoons of filtered water these little guys get to sip on while they sit in the East-facing window of my kitchen.

The flop, as I expected, were the bell peppers. The started to sprout, but a spindly, fluffy (sounds contradictory but isn't) mold started overtaking their pot. Each morning, I wipe off each of the jars. I can't imagine how many mold particles are in our air if this is necessary. Each evening, the bell peppers had more green and what spots than any of the others.

I started watering the peppers less, but the seeds just started floating to the top each time I did water it. I'm sans topsoil, so I don't have a lot of options for fixing the problem except pushing the flakes back down. Last night, I gave up and threw them out. I have more seeds and will try again this summer, and I'm hoping more fresh air and direct sunlight in an outdoor home will help them.

Everyone else, as you can see, is holding steady. The basil is by far my biggest success. Ten sprouts, each with their two jointed leaves, end up tilt at a near-45 degree angle by the time I get home. They're greedily taking in the sun and stretching out their leaves. I'm getting a bit worried that their roots will be too crowded, or that there will be too much competition for sunlight in that teeny pot, before I get them back to Ohio and switch them into something bigger.

Next to the basil, the chive is really going. They were the last to sprout and the first to reach an inch tall. Each sprout is still holding onto its seed casing, sucking down whatever nutrients are in those things. They remind me of the models my mom called "lollipops"–their head so much bigger than their body that it starts to wear them down, make them slouch. This is the pot I'm most afraid to water. It seems like one extra drop could tip them all over or rot the roots.

The marigolds and zinnias are stubbier than I was expecting at this point. Three zinnias and two marigolds–I'm not complaining. They still have two weeks to grow and solidify roots before the trek home. Then, I'll be ready to transplant whenever they are. I'll probably start a few more seeds, even though they'll be getting later into the season.

The idea of getting anything to flower on my first year is incredible. I feel like the zinnias have a better shot. They were the first to sprout and the second to open their leaves... and they just look a bit better off than the marigolds, who I have more pity for even than the bell peppers. Oh, marigolds and your little black stem.

For today, I'm putting off all personal-life projects (and my parents let out a sigh of relief). I'll be finishing up work for two classes today... and no, it's not writing that paper I've been complaining about. I'll be doing a photo shoot with Rachel, a creative component for my French class that I'll present on Thursday: a series of photos surrounding a character's rejection of gender roles in French Indochina. Why isn't every class this cool?

Then, I'll be creating a case study for my Ethics class. We'll be creating a scenario and making a decision, then defending our reasoning. But mostly eating pizza, I would say.

80/90, that damn journal

I have taken a break from my journal. For the entire semester. I don't know how it started. I know that I started feeling sick about it by the end of January. I started for a few days, looked at what I was tracking about my life, and felt sick.

I am not unhappy. I am a bit worse for wear, a bit more confused about my life, but I am not unhappy. And for some reason, all I write about are the depressing bits. All I write down are the times when I'm broken and alone, reflecting on the pieces of the semester that damaged me instead of the parts that built me up.

So I decided to make an official break. I stopped writing in the journal. I kept going on the blog, but lets be honest: I'm not creating. I'm blogging my life, and I'm loving it, but I'm anxious to get back to the creative projects I hesitate to write here, the real pieces that make me feel whole.

It's almost that time, graduation and real life. For over a month now, I've been chomping at that bit, stomping and anxious to tear out of the semester's confinement and write again. I've been scribbling notes and narratives and sources to research and connections. I've been digging into the history of my genre, this "new" fourth kind of writing, the growing fourth genre. I've been asking myself if I'm writing prose, what that means, what I'm writing if it's not that.

To sort myself out, I've undertaken this huge blog-switch project. I've been trying to figure out, since becoming engaged, how my name change would work with my Web presence. I was going to keep myself a Veit in the blogosphere and social media arena. I've since changed my mind.

Now, I'm building all of my sites with the name "Betz," even though I'm a bit concerned that this will somehow jinx me (what with it not being my legal name yet). I'm researching how to use two blogs effectively--one for me and Joe, one for my continuing education and passion for writing. I'm designing and redesigning and still not writing in my journal...

But I can't wait for this summer! I know that this is all over the place, but the goal is to have both blogs running... a new wordpress and la francofile, so that people can select the narratives the want to follow... and then I'll have my journal–my poor, neglected best friend–to start my creative nonfiction journal.

I feel so good about my writing life right now, and it's flooding over to the rest of my life. I feel like I can learn French. I feel like I can get a job or find freelance work to keep myself busy (and fed). I feel like Joe and I will be an outstanding, happy, focused-but-flexible family. I can't wait to share it with you.

79/90, links & changes

So, the bigger post for today is over at the other blog.

I'm getting excited for the summer, and I've been thinking about how I want to handle this blog. This blog has gradually been spinning out of control, capturing the tumultuous emotions of this last semester. I'm trying to get that under control.

Over the summer, my "real" writing, the real creative nonfiction, will be taking place in my journal again, which has been abandoned this semester to save myself and my poor journal from the writing out all of my negativity.

That means I have to figure out how this blog is going to function, and this is what I've been developing: A real blog, with a distinct look that I'm going to design myself, from new headers for posts to a logo to fun links. I want to learn a lot more about my passions, and I want to share my passions with others, so I'm looking at a lineup something like this:

Mondays: what's happening in creative nonfiction
Wednesdays: what's happening with PR firms and their big shift away from "traditional" PR (press releases and the like)
Friday: me, fumbling around learning how to play with cameras

+ a special bonus feature somewhere in there somewhere that's my own writing-writing as I start working toward some publications.

I'd love to hear what you think, since this is obviously all for you.

78/90, yes, i'm still packing

In a week from today, I need to be packed and ready to move out. In a week, at this hour, Joe and I will be pulling into our Pre-Cana session. We'll get home that night, ready for marriage, and wake up the next morning to get me ready for the move back to Ohio.

I'm looking around my room, wondering how my life will fit into the few boxes that I have. The donation pile keeps going. I wish I could say the same with the "Find Someone to Buy This" pile. I've been using my restless energy to gradually start moving things out, then rearranging them into new boxes, then finding more things I don't need and yet again rearranging things into lighter boxes.

Baby has been enjoying the process. There's more space in my room, and the circles she runs around my room–weaving between my legs, desk legs, electrical cords and chairs have gotten bigger, faster, louder. She doesn't make it through one lap without stomping her back foot, that Thumper-like action that reminds everyone: This is our territory. This is our own.

I want to take my room with me. Just cut this room off of the house and carry it home, strapped to the top of my car. I want to keep this place, for her mostly. The thought of confining her to a section of carpet, an island in the slick flooring of my parents' kitchen breaks my heart a little, and I again wonder what she'll feel when I'm forced to leave her behind.

Today, she jumped onto the bed with me, curled up next to me hair while I laid on my back reading a book. I turned to look at her. She pressed her nose against mine and left it there, letting her little puffs of air tickle my nose before laying down and trying to chew on my hair.

Now I'm at my computer and she's off in a corner, licking my suede boots. My eyes pan over to her and on their trip back to the monitor, I catch sight of the cords plugging my life in. Each of them–fan, lamp, extra strip of outlets, cell phone charger–each is wrapped in electrical tape, striped like Kingsnakes. Maybe she will fare better when she's on the safe carpet at my parents' house. Maybe, after a while, she won't even miss her first home.