What Remains

Today is an important day for me. No, it’s not because it’s the seven year anniversary of the book release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (but hey thanks numerous people on Twitter for making me feel old first thing on a Monday morning).

No, today is important to me for an entirely different reason.  Two years ago today, I took a literal right turn and my life took a figurative hard left.

At 6:45 pm on July 16th, 2010, I was driving to a community function.  As I turned right onto a side street, I was struck from behind by a drunk driver.  My car skidded 180 degrees before barrel-rolling twice and coming to a rest on the passenger side.  More details about the accident can be found here, in the letter I wrote to Honda Car Company the day after the accident.

But that isn’t the story I want to tell today.  I’ve talked about my accident a lot, and I’ve talked about finding the replacement car and dealing with the lawsuits, bill collectors, doctors, and insurance companies.  It was a year-long process, but all the financial stuff finally got settled.

What remains to be settled is the story I want to tell.

What remains from my accident is a set of back muscles that will never be as strong as they once were, and the knowledge that they will always be sore after a day of hard work.  What remains are the nightmares about car accidents, the difficulty watching car accidents in movies or television shows, and the redirected fear of elevators that has seen me climb 11 fights of stairs just to avoid a crowded glass elevator.

Seriously- seeing this effect in a movie provokes a more visceral reaction in me than seeing someone get their toes chopped off with a bolt cutter.

What remains are the lingering fears: the moment of panic when a car comes up behind me too fast and I tense for the impact that never comes, the insistence that the mechanic run a safety check on my car at every oil change so that I know the air bags will be there at the ready, and the never-ending anxiety that the accident will happen again, this time with someone I care about in the car with me.

There was no one in the car with me at the time of the accident. Had there been, all of this would have been in their face.

But there are good things that remain.  I have an extremely reliable car that I know is even safer than my previous one.  I have a reason to remember to slow down every once in a while so my body can rest.  I have a slightly healthier lifestyle from all those flights of stairs.  But most importantly, I have a new path in life that I would not be on if my world had not been flipped over two years ago.

You see, if I had not been in the accident, I would never have:

• Found out the number of people in my life willing to help me needed it.
• Spent three weeks on the couch watching Star Trek:TNG reruns.
• Fallen in love with science-fiction television shows.
• Gone to Dragon*Con 2010 by myself to see the TNG panels.
• Posted an idea for a new Star Trek series on MyOuterSpace.com, based on a comment someone made at a Dragon*Con panel.
• Met James, who shares my geekiness but makes it seem cooler since he does it with a British accent.
• Helped him develop his idea for sci-fi web series.
• Attended Dragon*Con 2011, where thanks to my handicapped badge, I got to lend Wil Wheaton my pen three times, including this time when he signed Colin Ferguson’s chest.

• Started a production company for the aforementioned web series with James.
• Finally learned how to express that I want to be a creator of seriously cool things, and to do so without fear because it is what makes me happy, and sometimes that is more important than making others happy.

I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t had the accident. Maybe I would have come to the same realizations.  Maybe I’d be just as happy.  I don’t really care to wonder about it.  I love where I am now (aching back  and student loan debt and all), and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Sometimes accidents throw us off track, but sometimes they throw us onto the right one.

A Most Terrible Fruit-Based Murder

Those poor, poor baby carrots.

Last night at Art Club, a terrible thing happened.  There was a murder in the kitchen.  The poor innocent baby carrots saw it all.  They will never be the same.  Warning: the following pictures contain graphic depictions of a fruit-related homicide.  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the googly eyes make it any easy to see.

Let me back up a bit, and explain how this all started.

For being such a low-pressure social setting, Art Club can do funny things to a person.  It makes one person bring in dragonflies, makes another root through desk drawers to find old art supplies, and makes a third put a poll up on a blog asking/begging for inspiration.  (That last person is me, in case you missed it.)

The winner of yesterday’s poll was “D) Nothing.  You should just hover by the food and put googly eyes on the carrot sticks.”

You people know me so well.

As soon as I arrived at Art Club last night, I was informed that despite the Internet Having Spoken, I would be forced (forced I say!) into making An Art.  No hovering was allowed.  My well-crafted plan to eye-bomb the vegetables and have them stage an off-off-off Broadway musical number at the end of Art Club would not be allowed to proceed (not least because off-off-off Broadway show tunes aren’t allowed at Art Club.  The fascists.)

I dragged my poor injured self (seriously- I partially dislocated my patella on Saturday.  I have a fancy knee brace and everything now) over to a chair and sat down.  I promptly stood back up and started wandering.  I wander a lot, but especially at Art Club.  There are just so many places to get inspiration from.  I grabbed one of the 12” x 16” canvases and snagged two jars of Scrabble letters and typewriter keys.  I sat back down in my chair and stared for a second.  Then I got back up and got a pencil.  Then I sat down again.  Then I got back up and got a ruler.  Then I sat down again.  Then I spent five minutes trying to convince fluffy-white-muppet dog to come over and let me pet him.  Then I gave up and stared at my canvas again.  Surprisingly, after all that effort, the canvas was still blank.

I opened the typewriter key jar and started spreading out the letters.  A line from my blog has been spinning around in my head for a while, and now I can’t actually remember if it even made it into the blog.  In any case, I thought it was a cool quote, even if I did write it, and I wanted to illustrate it.

Yes, I know.  “C) A quotation-based piece, since it turned out so pretty last time” came in last place in the poll, but I can’t help myself.  I like words, and especially the way they can evoke beautiful images through the simple lines of the letters.

Also, I’m really good at drawing trees.  And this particular quote let me draw a nice forest scene again.

But I’m getting off-track.  We were discussing a murder, not my artistic tendencies.

So, before all this chair-sitting and not-chair-sitting stuff happened, the apple bird came into existence.  Carved carefully with a rather large (for the job) knife, the apple bird was painstakingly crafted, crisp slice by crisp slice.  The three of us in the kitchen (definitely NOT hovering over the food, as that wasn’t allowed) just watched in amazement.  Once completed, the apple bird stood in majestic repose upon the cutting board.  We all stared, transfixed by its beauty.

The apple bird: the most majestic of the fruit-based avians.

The artist scooped up her creation and went to show it off to the others.  As soon as she left, a voice was heard to say sadly, “Now that bird is going to have to die a terrible death tonight.”

No one admitted to saying it, but we all heard it.  And we all knew it to be true.

That bird would have to die that very evening.  Beauty can never last.

Fast-forward an hour or two.  I am now sitting in my chair, and have been for some time.  I am sketching a lovely forest scene on my canvas, and everyone else is doing Art Stuff too.

Actually, that part is kinda boring. Fast-forward another hour.

Now I am painting a lovely forest scene.  I am using a sponge (I know, I know, I’m so clever)  to create an authentic worn path/ field of grass/ tree canopy look.  Everyone else is still doing Art Stuff too.

Suddenly, there is a scream from the kitchen, cut short by the sound of a knife hitting a plate with a sickening thwack.  I leapt up from the table, ready to spring into action.  No one seemed to notice, or more likely, were purposefully ignoring the now-muffled weeping emanating from the kitchen.

You guys, the scene in the kitchen was awful.  The baby carrots were sobbing, the baby tomato was poking the apple bird’s severed head with a toothpick, the cookie mobster (code name: Salacious Crumb) was falling apart with laughter, the cucumber was contemplating the life choices that had brought him and his three adopted offspring to the park this evening, and the apple bird died a beautiful yet tragic death.

You know what? The googly-eyes kind of do make it easier to look at, don’t they? Interesting…

After that, it was a bit difficult to finish my An Art.  But I peeled away the bad thoughts and found the seeds of inspiration again.  I dug to the core of my artistic abilities, and pared off my insecurities.  I plucked the fruit of inspiration off the orchard-dwelling tree of…. you know what?  I’m going to stop there.  I’m getting off track again.

Back to the murder scene.

Everyone was trying to figure out who did it.  Was it truly the cookie mobster (code name: Salacious Crumb)?  Was he really so careless as to leave a literal trail of evidence?  Or was it the cucumber in an effort to keep his kids from begging to go to the park during a critical hockey match ever again?  Could it have even been the baby tomato, with his gleeful expression at the apple bird’s demise?

The world may never know.

In any case, I wonder what kind of food will be at the next Art Club?

Oh, and I did finish my An Art.  Wanna see?

Truly, this is An Art. Or rather, truly, those resemble trees. If you squint a bit. And turn your head to the left. And look at it in the right light. See? Told you they were trees.

Counter-Pressure

Not sure if the message here is “be ridiculously happy in everything you do,” or “take joy in smacking others around,” but in any case- I want to be the ball on the far right.

I’m a big fan of Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  It’s the one that states that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.  Newton used it to describe motion and kinetic transfer, but I think he may have missed the broader applications of his law.  Sometimes I feel like it should be called Newton’s Third Law of Life, and I think anyone who has ever felt the universe pushing back on them can agree with that statement.

This month, I finally hit my ideal monthly student loan payment of $1,334.  I was so happy, you guys.  It took me six months and a lot of recalculations to do it, but I had finally hit my goal.  It was the largest single payment I’ve ever made on my loans, and I’m telling you- it felt awesome to click YES on that “are you sure this is the right amount?” prompt the loan website flashes before allowing me to submit a payment.

Two days after that payment posted to my bank account, my computer crashed hard.  I talked about this on Friday, as I tried to write a coherent blog post via my phone.  (It turns out, that’s really hard to do.)  When I finally got my computer back, the total was $85 and a grim warning that my hard drive might be in the beginning stages of systematic failure.

*sigh*

It was all right, though.  I have an external hard drive and I back everything up regularly anyway.  I have an emergency fund, and it had $85 in it to cover the repair.  I am out the  roughly $210 paycheck from Thursday and Friday, but I’ll figure out how that affects the budget next month when the check comes in.

What is not all right is that the next day, another unexpected financial cost came up.  I twisted my knee at work while helping a customer search the bottom rack of Wii games for a copy of Mario Power Tennis (and no, the irony of a knee injury while searching for a tennis game is not lost on me.  Neither are the Skyrim-related jokes, such as “I used to be a video game sales person, but then I took a Wii game to the knee.”  Ha.   Ha.   Ha.)

It’s two days later now, and my knee is still a painful mass of useless flesh.  It’s not swollen, but it hurts every time I move it, hurts even more every time I move it in any direction except for straight ahead, and my ankle and foot are in a constant pins-and-needles state.  This makes me think I’ve got a pinched nerve in my knee.

That kind of injury isn’t cheap, people.  I’ve got an appointment with a orthopedist tomorrow, which means specialist rates, and I’m not entirely sure this doc is in my insurance network.  (There’s so much wrong with the US health insurance system, but that’s another post.)  Besides the cost of the doctor, I’m not sure what it will mean for my ability to work.  Two of my jobs allow me to sit at a desk or on a couch, but the other three require a fair amount of physical activity.  I’m already down $210, which is just shy of 10% of my monthly budget.  Missing more days of work means losing a bigger cut.

But there is good news.  As a Newton’s Cradle (i.e.- the thing in the picture above) will demonstrate, the equal action-reaction concept swings both ways (pun totally intended, by the way.)  Just as the universe seems to be pushing against me right now, I can push back.  I’ve got two freelance writing tasks on my plate right now, and I have the rest of the week to try to make up some hours at the consulting job.  Since I’m plainly not going frolicking through the flowers anytime soon, I should have plenty of time to spend typing away at the keyboard in the next few days.

Provided my hard drive doesn’t fail again.

Please, hard drive, don’t fail me now.

One By One

There’s this really cool pine tree in my backyard.  18 years ago, it was a normal pine tree.  It grew in the proper direction (ie up), had the right number of trunks (ie one), and seemed unlikely to collapse and take out the back of the house.

17 years ago, it got struck by lightening.

The thing is, the tree didn’t die.  Despite a two foot long blackened fissure down the middle of its trunk, that tree refused to slowly decay into firewood.  I mean, if I were a tree and a bolt of lightening turned me into my own Siamese twin, I’d probably give up growing.  After all, lightening strikes the highest point.  More height would just invite more lightening (that bit about lightening never striking the same place twice?  Totally false).  But this tree is not me (which is good because a tree writing a blog would be really weird), and so the tree kept growing.

17 years later, it’s still growing in the proper direction (ie up), but now it has two separate trunks that twist and turn and generally give the impression that we hired Tim Burton as our arborist (note to self- hire Tim Burton as our arborist).  It still seems unlikely to collapse and take out the back of the house, which is good, since the tree is now tall enough to not only take out the back of the house, but a significant portion of the front of the house as well.

This tree has killed other trees (one of which nearly fell on my brother.  Somewhere there’s a video of that…), grown over two separate hammock-hangings, fought off the ever-encroaching kudzu, hosted countless generations of squirrels, chipmunks, cardinals, blue jays, and woodpeckers, and currently provides shelter for a pair of very noisy owls.  It’s no longer the tallest tree in the yard, but it’s certainly no shrimp at around 50 feet.

It’s a monument to tenacity, this tree.  Despite a major setback, it kept fighting for its right to grow and produce pine cones and slowly be consumed by kudzu like the rest of Georgia’s trees.  It healed itself, and its remaining scars are the most beautiful things in the yard.

The way I see it, if a freakin’ tree can survive a direct lightening strike and continue growing, I ought to be able to survive a few minor setbacks of my own.

So grow on, you magnificent tree.  Rest assured that the city’s chainsaws will never reach you.  I cannot make the same promises re: Tim Burton’s influence.

Not pictured- the top of the tree. I couldn’t fit the whole thing in without climbing onto the roof… which I’m not allowed to do anymore.

 

Chasing The Dream

Do you know what question I really hate?

“What do you want to do with your degree/career path/ life?”

I mean, this question was so easy when I was 5.  I wanted to marry Tigger, but I would have settled for Peter Pan.  I could have spent my days bouncing around the Hundred Acre Wood or flying over Neverland, taunting Rabbit or teasing pirates.  I could hunt heffalumps or indians, and look for a lost tail or a missing fairy.  I already had brothers, so it wouldn’t have been hard to adjust to the mostly-male cast of either world.  I had a plan, I tell you.  It was going to be perfect.

Sadly, I think I have to admit that my life probably not going to work out like that.  Apparently there is an age limit on both worlds, and I think I’m closing in on it.  Even more sadly, there is not an age limit on people asking me what I want to do with my life.

You see, I’ve made some choices in my life that would seem to indicate that I had a goal in mind when I made those choices.  I went to college, got a degree, I went to grad school, I got another degree.  For the normal person, this implies that there is a set career path in mind.

I am not a normal person.

I think the most important thing that I learned in graduate school was what I did NOT want to do.  I realized that I did not want to work as a lobbyist, a political consultant, a policy-maker, or really in anything to do with governmental politics.  I also realized that while I’m pretty darn good at biostatistics, SAS (the statistical analysis program favored by pretty much everyone, for some unknown ungodly reason) and I do not get along.  At all.  (You can ask the three school computers I accidently took out of commission for verification on this.)  Unfortunately, those were the two main things my degree focused on.

Now I have a Master’s degree that I’m probably never going to use to its full capacity.  I’m actually OK with this.  The problem is that most people don’t understand that.  There is a stigma attached to not using a degree- like the owner has failed to properly pursue their dreams.  For some, it’s out of laziness, for others it’s because of the job market.  For me, it’s because my dreams took a hard left turn somewhere between first and second year.  In any case, it’s not an easy concept to explain to people.

I’m going to try to explain this concept to people now.

I took an economics class my first semester in graduate school.  It was on Wednesday evenings, from 4-7 pm.  That’s dinner time for most people.  It was torture for the 30 or so of us trapped in that room each week.  I’m just saying- when you start trying to figure out the social cost vs the nutritional benefit of cannibalism, it’s time to get out of class.  Now, I had a wonderful professor.  She was kind, cared about her students, and tried to make the material interesting to us.  That’s a huge thing in a graduate school professor.  It wasn’t her fault that economics is the most boring subject in the entire world forever and ever and for always.

Naturally, my brain couldn’t handle this kind of self-imposed confinement for long.  Just before midterms, my mind finally snapped.  Out of the blue during lecture, a short exchange popped into my head: “And just who are the Nocturnes?”  “They’re us, obviously.”

That was the beginning of the end.  In about a month, I had written a 65,000 word novel, mostly in three-hour weekly increments.  My notebook pages were dotted with economic formulas and bits of notes that I’d jotted down when my attention wandered back to the actual class lectures, but mostly it was full of the story of a girl who sends herself away to boarding school only to find out her classmates are not exactly totally human.

I know, original idea, right?

That’s not the point here.  The point is I did what I had always wanted to do- I wrote a novel.  It was a terribly written novel, and editing so far hasn’t made it much better, but it was mine and it was complete.  I was so ridiculously proud of that thing, and honestly, I still am.  Even though it’s terrible.

Two years later, around the same time, I wrote another novel.  This one turned out much better, mainly because of all that I had learned about how not to write a novel from the first one.  The second novel is called Northgate, and I’m even more proud of it, even though it’s technically incomplete (I prefer to think of it as leaving the ending to the reader’s imagination…).

That’s not exactly the point here either.  The real point is that it took me a very long time to realize what it was that I wanted to do with my life.  This may be because it’s not a very well-accepted career move, or because I was afraid that people would belittle my dream, or most likely- that I would totally and completely fail at it.

But I remembered something that I had forgotten in the two decades since I was 5: dreams don’t have to be practical.  That’s what makes them dreams.

I also realized that now is the perfect time to really chase down my dreams- because it’s not like I have a full-time job or anything.  I actually have very few responsibilities in my life right now.  So, *deep breath,* I’m going to start giving the true answer to people when they ask me The Question.

Go ahead, ask me.  You know you want to.

You: “K, what do you want to do with your degree/ career path/ life?”

Me: “I want to be a writer.  But more than that, I want to be a creator.  I want to make things that make people feel things- books, blogs, pictures, videos, etc. (and yes, I will say etc.  Just like that: E.T.C.)  I don’t care if people remember my name, but I want them to remember the things I made.”

You: “Wow, that’s a really good answer.”

Me: “I know, it took me several years to come up with it, and a few hours to memorize the proper inflections for it when spoken.”

You:  “It was time well spent, I’d say.”

Me: “Yep. Far more useful than that second economics class.  By the way, you’re going to save $7 if you buy that game pre-owned since you have a membership card.  It’s a better economic decision… DARN IT!  The curriculum seeped into my brain anyway!”

You: “Um, ok.  Nice talking with you.” *You scurry away at this point*

This is exactly how the conversation is going to go down.  Those of you unfortunate enough to interact with me in real-life know I’m telling the truth.  I’m sorry, but it is what it is.  And you know what? People may not remember my name, but they do remember that strange redheaded girl who works at the video game store and has that eloquently-phrased dream, and that’s what it’s all about in the end.

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Right?

The underlying message here: you may grow out of a dream, but your dreams should always outgrow you.

Inching Closer

Translation: not all those who wander are lost.

This quote has been buzzing around my brain for the last few weeks.  It’s a fairly well-known quote, and it originates from the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien, specifically from a poem known as Strider’s Riddle.  (Yes, I know the quote is in Elvish.  I provided you a translation.  I’m a nerd.  You should have realized that by now.)  I like this line because it reminds me that even though the path ahead of me is not always clear, as long as I’m moving forward, I’m still making progress.  It’s a hopeful line, and if I were to ever get a tattoo, this would probably be it.  On my ankle, to remind me to keep taking that next step, even if the path is dark.  (If my mom is reading this, there are no immediate plans for a tattoo, as my understanding is that they are still done with needles.)

The interesting part is that this is actually the second line of the poem.  The first line reads, “all that is gold does not glitter.”  That’s a powerful line when you think about it.  The converse of the line, “all that glitters is not gold,” is a popular saying that cautions us to not be fooled by false value.  It’s a good lesson, especially in today’s economy.

But Tolkien chose to say the line backwards- “all that is gold does not glitter.”   Suddenly, rather than telling us to not overestimate something’s worth because of its shininess, Tolkien is cautioning us to not underestimate the value of something plain-looking.  To me, that’s an altogether more important lesson in today’s economy.

We (by which I really mean I) can easily get caught up in the glitter of things.  We want the newest iPad, the nicest car, the clearest television, and the most fashionable clothes.  But unless there’s something more to the want, those things can’t bring happiness.  A brand-new computer may come with an impressive logo, but if it was purchased just so everyone else in the coffeehouse would envy it, it’s not going to make you happy.  It may glitter, but it’s not gold.

On the other hand, if you have a dream to write the next great American novel, a plain but functional laptop can be just what you need (and can afford, if you’re a writer).  The other coffeehouse patrons won’t be impressed by it, but you’ll be doing what makes you happy.  It may not glitter, but it’s still gold.

This is the point I’m trying to hold on to- that the purpose of something matters far more than its appearance.  My car might be 5 years old and have a few scratches, but its purpose is to get me (and my passengers) to and from places safely.  My computer might not have the best graphics card for playing video games, but its purpose is to let me express myself (and earn money.  Self-expression comes after 5 pm).  

I do have nice things: I have a nice TV, a nice cell phone (in a nice protective case, because I tend to drop it.  A lot), more books than I can count, and every few months a nice new pair of shoes.  I appreciate all of these things because 1) I saved and purchased them all myself, and 2) they all have a deeper purpose than just being nice things.  They help keep me connected, learning, and/or properly clothed.

So starting today, I’m going to look for the deeper purposes of things before I decide on their value.  In terms of my financial goal this year, that means taking a closer look at the things I spend money on to be sure they’re worth it.  I’ve talked about it before, but my anxiety disorder makes it hard for me to enjoy social activities.  I’m working on it though, and I’ve found two regular events that do make me happy- bowling with coworkers, and art club.  I’m pretty terrible at both, but so far no one has asked me to leave because I’m dragging down the average skill level.  I also went to an outdoor play (Shakespeare’s The Tempest with a steampunk theme) on Saturday night with some friends, and it was a lot of fun.  I’m not looking to become a social butterfly, but not internally wincing every time I have to spend time among people in the real world is a good start.

I’m also going to try to remember to keep moving forward.  Financially, that means not dwelling on the months when I haven’t hit my ideal student loan payment (which so far has been every month).  Last month I fell $16 short of my ideal payment of $1334.  This month, I’m going to be $5 short.  Sometimes every dollar left feels like a million, and every inch like a mile, but I’m still moving forward.  Inch by inch, that mountain of debt is shrinking.

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What quote(s) inspire you to keep trying to live better?  Are they messages of hope, or love, or fearlessness, or something else?  Leave me a comment and let me know.

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And because I know you were all dying to see the first line written in Elvish script:

“All that is gold does not glitter.” An excellent tool to keep in mind when evaluating people. The converse is useful when evaluating sparkly vampires.

The Sneaky Employment Cycle

(In last Monday’s post, I talked about searching for keys.  If you missed it, it was a 950-w0rd metaphor for life based off a video game from the 1980s.  I’m pretty proud of it actually.  Today’s post probably won’t be as good, but then again the sequel never is.)

The issue behind last week’s post is that I’ve got five part-time jobs and not enough time to go around.  I am struggling to find the proper order to put everything in, just like I struggled to find the proper order to use the keys in Chip’s Challenge when I was eight.  That feeling of confusion sucked when I was eight, and it sucks now.  The only difference is that now I don’t get an extra life if I make a mistake.

The good news is that after a week of serious contemplation, (why are you laughing?  I can seriously contemplate things.  Really.) I have arrived at a few possible solutions (or key orders, to continue the metaphor).  I have even picked the one that I think will serve me best in the long run.

The bad news is that I’m still gathering the courage to act on that solution.  Partially because I’m afraid that it won’t do any good.

I tend to fall into this sneaky employment cycle of taking on more and more work, hitting a wall, and then furiously shedding jobs like a woodland creature in springtime.  I’ve been doing this over and over and over since I was 14 years old.

Since we all love a good internet meme, let me put this cycle into pictures for you.

So yeah- that’s my problem.

Starting today, I’m going to start trying to find my backbone.  I’m going to remember that my peace of mind is more important than grabbing every paycheck possible.  I’m going to relearn how to say no to people (I say relearn because I apparently had quite a good grasp of the word no as a toddler), I’m going to get my keys in order, and I’m going to make it all stick this time.

I’m also going to go mourn the $783 check I just wrote to the IRS.  Do me a favor and keep your exclamations of joy over your tax refunds to yourself.  Part of that money in your hand came from my pocket.  Actually, do me another favor and go buy a book with your refund, any book at all.  Books are wonderful things.  Happy Tax Day, America!

There’s Always A Key

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that there is always a key.

When I was a kid and I went to visit my grandmother’s house, I would spend hours playing Chip’s Challenge on her state-of-the-art Compaq desktop PC.

16-bit video games: teaching kids about unrealistic physics since 1989.

I never got past level 30.

But you know what?  I learned a thing or two about finding the key.  Finding the key was everything in that game- the keys opened the doors, which let you collect the chips, which let you open the portal, which let you progress to the next level of Melinda the Mental Marvel’s Clubhouse.  What’s more, you had to find the keys in the right order.  Opening the green door before the red door could mean you’d never see the other side of the blue door.

As I got older (and computers came with better pre-loaded games), I moved on from Chip’s Challenge.  I started collecting my own set of real-life keys- the house key in 4th grade, the golf cart key when I turned 14, the all-important car key when I turned 16, and the dorm room key and mailbox key when I hit college.  Each key signified a rite of passage- a sign that I was being recognized with some new responsibility.  Just like in Chip’s Challenge, I had to earn them in the right order.

It turns out that I’m still collecting those keys.  Over the years, I’ve had two golf cart keys, three car keys, four dorm room keys, two mailbox keys, a bike lock key, a school swimming pool key, numerous filing cabinet keys, keys to the houses of families that I’ve nannied for, keys to neighbors’ houses, keys to my own house, keys to houses that I can no longer identify, keys to two separate churches, and for some mysterious reason a key to a steamer trunk that does not open any such trunk in my house.  (I chose to believe that this key in fact opens the trunk from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but that’s a different story.)

Each key given to me has been a sign of trust- trust that I will not total a car, deface a dorm room, use my school mailbox to send/receive illegal items, fill the school pool with Jell-O, “borrow” the church’s crayons for my personal use, rearrange the contents of a filing cabinet in accordance with the Klingon or Elvish alphabets, or most importantly that I will not allow any harm to come to the children (and houses) that have been left in my care.  I am proud to say that I’ve only failed in one of those things. (I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which one, but a hint- it wasn’t the children… or the houses.)

Yesterday I received a set of new keys (six, to be exact), and with them a lot of new responsibility.  I was given keys to the store at which I work part-time.  I now have the responsibility of shift manager, and can open and close the store by myself.  Added to the three physical keys and numerous virtual keys that I have for my other jobs, and you could say that my inventory has reached maximum capacity.

You know it's bad when your computer not only starts talking to you in metaphors, but in perfectly-timed metaphors.

Here’s the thing.

I’m not sure I want all those keys.

Having these new keys means that I’m eligible to work more hours at the retail job.  Since a full-time coworker just left, there are now 40 extra hours per week on the schedule.  For anyone else, this would be a good thing.  More hours up for grabs plus shift management capability means more shifts.  More shifts mean more money.

For me, more shifts just mean more time constraints as I try to juggle five jobs.

Four of those jobs are things that I can see myself doing for a long time.

Three of those jobs have the ability to become full-time jobs.

Two of those jobs make me truly happy at the end of the day.

One of those jobs has just received a renewed commitment from me to work my maximum allotted hours each week in hopes that it might become a full-time job (or at least get another major contract extension) at some point in the future.

There are still just 24 hours in the day.

You see the problem here, right?

The worst part is the uncertainty of it all.  What will happen if I leave one job and the other jobs can’t pick up the slack?  What happens six months down the road if the stars don’t align and no contract is offered and I’m left with no job at all?  Even if I don’t intentionally leave a job behind, I’m still left with questions.  What if I make a mistake and get fired?  What if the store closes due to poor sales?  What happens when the children I care for go to elementary school in the Fall?  What if budget concerns cut my monthly stipend?  What if  the new project/ fifth job that I’m so excited about falls through and I am left with nothing to show for all my efforts?

I think that all this work-related anxiety  is a common problem for my generation- we no longer live in a time where people will stay with the same company for 50 years.  Businesses fold, jobs change, dreams shift, and entire careers take sudden left turns.  We aren’t offered the same job security that we watched our parents live with, and it terrifies the living hell out of us.

I know that there’s a key hidden here somewhere.  There’s a solution to all of this, and I think I may already know what it is.  The hardest part is that this is real life.  There’s no password that will let me skip this level.  If I chose the wrong door, I can’t hit control+R and restart.  If I use the wrong key, it won’t come back to me.  And there is certainly no video walk-though on YouTube.  (Believe me, I’ve checked.)

So while I continue to write pro and con lists, sketch time management pie graphs, stare blankly at an electronic calendar, and just generally pray for either some clear guidance or a meteor to throw off the planet’s rotation just enough to grant us an extra four hours a day, I can at least draw comfort from the fact that video games can still teach me valuable life lessons.

Oh, and the fact that Chip’s Challenge 2 has to be released to the public someday… right?

Life As A Ball Pit, or Beginning of March

I woke up this morning half-dreaming about building a giant ball pit. (Bear with me, this story is going somewhere.)  We all remember those square pens of netting and foam-encased steel, lined with a trampoline and containing hundreds of pieces of the most perfect childhood ammunition since the paper airplane- the hollow plastic ball.

The hollow plastic ball was a wonder of safety engineering.  Its brightly-colored exterior was soft enough to not dent a child’s skull, while its empty innards made sure that no matter how much force you put behind it, that throw was not going to make it to the end of the pit, let along clean through your younger brother’s head.  There was never a less throwing-friendly ball invented.

Sorry Mr. Ryan- even you couldn't get one of these things across the plate.

However, even all the brains of the adult generation couldn’t compare with the ingenuity of blood-thirsty children.  It didn’t take long to figure out that those soft plastic hollow balls provided more molding opportunities than a new cup of play-dough.  A grip of the fingers, and that ball morphed from a perfect sphere with the flight capability of an obese emu into a canoe-shaped weapon of mass eye-putting-out destruction. (Bonus points if you found the stress line and got the plastic to split open at one end.)  You still couldn’t take your younger brother permanently out of commission, but you could sure teach him a thing or two about breaking your favorite toy pony. (Sorry- getting a bit personal here.)

All in all, the ball pit was an excellent place to learn a thing or two about the real world (See? I told you there was a point).  Think about it for a minute.  You show up at the entrance, all excited to play and make friends, and then someone hurls an oblong piece of plastic at your face.  You have two choices: duck and cover, or stand up and fight.  You could try to crawl through the balls along the bottom of the pit and grab your enemy’s leg, jerking them down to your level among the contents of a hundred children’s pockets and the occasional lost sneaker.  Or you could grab your own ammunition (it’s a BALL pit after all.  Running out of ammo is an impossibility) and defend your right to play with the big kids.

Paying student loans off, or really paying any kind of debt off, is like being stuck inside a giant ball pit for the duration.  You show up, all flush with excitement at the wads of cash in your pocket/ new degree in your hand, and the loan company hurls a promissory note at your face.  You have two choices: sneak around and try to pull them down to your level, or stand up and fight.  Either way, just remember that no one’s mom is going to call them to come eat their chicken nuggets.  You dove into the ball pit- now make sure you have an exit strategy.

 

The money stuff.

Beginning of March

$10,980.16 (end of February balance)

– $658 (initial March payment)

+ $??? (March interest)

– $??? (Secondary March payment)

—————–

A balance under $10,200, with any luck.

 

 

For the morbidly curious: Where I Should Be

$11,530.13 (amount owed at beginning of January)

+ $307.41 (accrued interest)

-$961 (January payment)

———

$10,876.54 (end of January balance)

+$110.03 (rough interest for February)

– $961 (February payment)

——-

$10,025.57 (End of February balance)

 

I am $954.59 off where I should be going into March. Essentially, one full payment behind.  The good news is that I might have some extra money coming my way this month from babysitting jobs, if everything goes according to plan.  I know that each month I talk about making a second payment, but so far it hasn’t happened.  I’m going to try really hard to change that this month and boost that payment into the $800 range.  Mainly because I have to beat Amanda, who has accepted my Amazing Loan Race challenge.  But also because I’m an adult and I can’t throw hollow plastic balls at those who stand in my way anymore.

 

At least, not literally.