The momentum that I talked about in the collage made three weeks ago continues. I am continuing to check things off on my to-do list (see Week 5), which I find immensely satisfying.

It is, I remembered this week, one of the top five capabilities identified when I took the Strengthsfinders test: Achievement, by which is meant that I have the ability to organize myself and methodically tackle one task after another. (My Enneagram result is Number 2, the Helper, which also fits).

Eric has noticed this characteristic in me. During one of our nightly phone calls this week, he teased me about how, when asked about my day, I have a tendency to roll out a list of achievements, and often say something (rather smug) about how I had 'a virtuous day.'

I did a bit of study about Puritan theology when I was writing The Wild Swans (I have Puritan forebears, so it felt a bit personal). Puritans valorized hard work, the interconnectedness of the community, and yes, some things I don't value quite as highly, such as a suspicion of light-heartedness and a conviction that it was more worthy to do work that you disliked rather than liked.

Well, I don't go quite that far, but Eric's right. I do feel virtuous when I'm getting things done. This week, I did financial bookkeeping and other administrative work, searched for job openings, worked on reinstating weightlifting in my exercise routine, and brushed off my Duolingo account so as to started working on French again. (The weightlifting has been rather heavy going, no pun intended. Although I have tried to start slowly, never using anything higher than five-pound weights, I have been privately amused in noticing this week how many times I have yelped an involuntary "Oh my God," every time I have made the slightest movement and discovered yet another sore muscle.

Image description: A woman in the lower right corner (Peg) looks pleased with herself. A halo shines over her head. Background, center: a calculator, money, a laptop. Superimposed over a corner of the laptop is the word 'Virtue' surrounded by a laurel wreath. Upper part of card: shoulders and torso of a woman in exercise clothing holding a weight in an upright row position. A cartoon owl (Duolingo logo) flies in from the upper left corner. Behind the owl is the French Flag.

Virtue



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I've been home for the past two weeks on vacation. I think I mentioned that Fiona and I had planned to take a trip to England, but that got put on ice when Fiona got her new job. So I've taken the time off (use it or lose it) and I have...not been in England.

I'm trying not to sulk too much, but that's been a bit of a challenge.

I've taken a few little day trips, as depicted in last week's card. This past weekend, Eric and I went to a bed and breakfast, and I did a half-day trip to Stillwater. But of course, my inner Puritan has looked at the fact that two weeks has been cleared on my calendar and reasoned, "Excellent, you can get to WORK and get things done. SO MANY THINGS."

But there's the heat and the fact that there is such a plethora of projects. And my inner sulk because, as noted, Not in England. Ongoing sleep issues. So my attempt to move things forward has been inching along at best.

I have continued working on clearing Rob's stuff out of the house, which is, as always, emotionally difficult. I've binned a number of books (library books so not worth anything to anyone) and I pulled out Rob's ties and sorted through them for donation (and had a good, hard cry before driving to drop them off at ARC Value Village).

I've been calling contractors trying to figure out how to get my foundation repaired (one of the contractors has the distinction of standing me up twice in one day. I will not be hiring them). I've been doing financial bookkeeping in preparation for updating my will. I've been working on the Special Project--oh, what the heck. My employer doesn't read this.

I'm job hunting.

So that's what I've been doing for the past two weeks. Inching along in various attempts to make my life better. But it feels as though progress, collectively, is so slow that it's hard to see any forward momentum without squinting hard.

Lower half: neckties on a bed. Upper half: the side of a house with a gap in the foundation facade by a door. Center right: an inchworm inches its way on a stem. Just underneath the stem is the logo for the website JibberJobber. Center left: a box packed with books. Upper right: the words "Last Will and Testament." Upper left: the logo for the website Angi.

Inching



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

Up on Worthiest Words: A post about Open Arms of Minnesota. I'm doing a series on marketing in nonprofit organizations.

I lost my old job exactly a year ago today.

Some good things have happened since then. I think I'm closer to the job I'm supposed to have. Maybe. Theoretically. Surely?

A shiny new badge on my LinkedIn page:

Week 20: Twelfth
Once again, we gather around the table to celebrate the end of Christmas.



Yes, yes, this card should be named 'Twelfth Night' But I am limiting my card titles to one word. Not quite satisfactory, but I couldn't find a one word that would substitute (unlike finding "Hogmanay" as a substitution for "New Year's Eve.")
Again, this card was an experiment with different media. The table cloth and napkins are tissue paper, the forks are cut from aluminum foil. And the plates are from the foil wrapped around the Hershey's Kisses we had inside the miniature stockings.
We did indeed manage to gather around the table this year, although it was a Twelfth Night dinner this time rather than breakfast. That's just the way the schedules worked out.

Week 21: Severus
He was the bravest man I ever knew.



This was the week that Alan Rickman died, and I made this card in honor of him and in honor of one of my favorite of his performances. Once I started thinking about Severus, I started making connections between his situation and mine (and not all of them are flattering, to say the least). This gets into personal stuff, so Elinor Dashwood will leave it there for now.
It was the last day of the previous week, January 9, that was Severus Snape's birthday. Rowling deliberately chose that day because it was the feast for the Roman God Janus, the two-headed god who guarded doorways, looking both into the past and into the future. An extremely appropriate choice for the ambiguous Severus Snape's birthday, and an appropriate thing for me to ponder, as I think about my career--where it has been as well as where it is going.

Week 22: iPod
I lost my iPod in the snow and felt helpless without it.



At least by process of elimination, that's where I figured it wound up. I never got it back. I held out a week, gritting my teeth, and then I bought a replacement. Screw the fact that I am unemployed. I need one to organize my life.

Annoyingly, I found out when I upgraded to the next model, that I can't synch it on my iMac. The software on my desktop Apple is too old. Planned obsolescence is pretty damned annoying.

Week 23: Three
There are three things I do to help myself.



This was a tough week. Again, Elinor Dashwood will not provide many details. The three stones represent three stepping stones, the sort to keep you above the water you would drown in otherwise (I tried and tried to find an image of three stepping stones, but for a variety of reasons, what I found just didn't work. So I used an image of stacked stones). The stones represent three things I do throughout the week for self-care. The stones are carried by a manatee, and if you haven't found the site Calming Manatee, really, what are you waiting for?

I know what the next card is (Card 24) and I worked on it today, but I had tremendous trouble with figuring out the right fixative to use. I had an image with words superimposed over it. I printed the words on waxed paper, but every fixative I used just smeared or blurred the words. I have an idea for how to fix the problem, but it involves a trip to the store. So I started working on the next card (Card 25), and finished it, too. I worked on the cards OUT OF ORDER! I felt SO GUILTY! And I will not scan and show this past week's card until I finish the card for the week before.

This means we are almost halfway through the year! (It also means it's been half a year since I've had a job--groan). minnehaha K. impishly suggested that we could swap decks and I would do the rest of hers and she would do the rest of mine. I firmly vetoed this idea. But then she made the clever suggestion that we would each do the jokers of the other person's deck, one at Week 26 and one at the end. Which I think is a really cool idea.

Week 7: Fall
The beautiful and familiar are falling away, leaving bare spaces for winter's approach.



I think this may be one of my favorite cards I've ever made.

The original title for this was 'Leaf Fall' which I originally visualized as one word and then realized that wouldn't work. And because I'm limiting myself to just one word as titles for these cards, I played around until I realized that 'Fall' could refer both to the season and the falling of the leaves. Excellent.

One of the impetuses for this was a discussion I had with Delia about an art project she was working on for her Introduction to Drawing class. She was to draw a common object (she used a hole punch) and then draw it different ways over the course of fourteen days, using a different medium each time. The trick is to keep finding new ways to convey the object when you start to run out of ideas. I suggested that the line could be conveyed by negative space. Two of the ideas I gave her were 1) to use pinpricks through the paper to outline her subject, and then 2) to use cut outs: negative space in other words, like you see in some of the marvelously ornate pumpkins that people have been carving the past several years for Halloween: you suggest the line of an object by illuminating what's around it.

The autumn here has been gorgeous, and the fall colors just about reached their height last week. Even as I was enjoying the colors, I've been feeling increasingly uneasy about what's coming next. I was struck by the very strong correlation between what I'm going through, with this job search, and the leaf fall all around me. When I was laid off, I had my severance period, I could enjoy my suddenly free time, take walks, visit with my family, etc. A lot of people who are laid off initially treat this time as a mini vacation. But I'm aware that world I lived in of my job (routines, friendships, tasks) has fallen away. It felt a little unreal at first, but it really feels real now. My severance period will eventually be coming to an end, and then my income will drop precipitously when I go on unemployment. And if I can't find a job then...

So I see the beautiful leaf fall and at the same time, the bare spaces left behind that are growing. Winter is coming. Hard times are coming. Have I stored up enough acorns to see my family through?

I loved, loved, loved making this card, and to do so, I used a method I've never tried before. I cut out small delicate leaves from my collected images, but instead of gluing them on the card, I used them as templates; I laid them over the card and drew tiny brush strokes of paint away from the leaf edges, first in white and then with a wash of autumnal colors over the white (the color on black alone wouldn't have shown up). Then I peeled the leaves away, leaving the finely edged outline of a leaf behind. Finally, I added a few, spare touches of gold.

I had a tough time capturing a good scan of the card with the scanner app I have on my iPod touch. Reflections of light on the black kept washing out the paint. Finally got a good one on my screened in porch (indirect light) and toned down the brightness to make the scrim of white reflection disappear while keeping the leaf color true, but that made the card look almost as if it is deep purple rather than black. Then I had to monkey with other parameters to make the card look black again.

Made this card yesterday, as part of a lovely day I spent with minnehaha K. Thanks for the use of your paints! And I really enjoyed your company.

Rob got a job offer from Best Buy, and he's going to go with them rather than Target. They will probably give him less hours (and will deliberately KEEP him below the hours he needs to get benefits). But the pay is better. And it's a place he could see actually continuing to work if, please God, they see fit to keep him on after the holidays are over.

He has to wait for the results of the drug test, but if all goes well he'll start in a week to a week and a half.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I hereby refer you to the link about when Improv Everywhere pranked Best Buy. Huzzah!

I'm thinking of sending in my story myself. It's right in line with the other stories there.

We are the 99 percent.

Have you been following the Occupy Wall Street coverage?

The job disappeared in a puff of smoke twelve hours before he was supposed to start. GODDAMMIT.

There might be something in a week. Or ten days.

Or never. I've heard that shit before.

I have been thinking about this.

My family has some problems that have just seemed absolutely intractable. Some of these problems I talk about in public. Some of them Elinor Dashwood is talking about in smaller locked groups on this blog on Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Some I talk about only in person, to just a handful of people.

We are trained to want the happy ending. Let's face it, happy people and winners are culturally preferred. Everyone appreciates a winner.

People in pain? People who can't get it together? People who continue to hurt, even when the people around them, the people who love them, keep trying to help them find their way out of the morass that surrounds them? Not so appealing.

I don't know quite what to do when I can't report the happy ending, both to myself, to my family and friends, and to readers of this journal.

I'm ashamed in a way. I am rather scrupulous at self-examination, and this is what I have been mulling over lately.

One of my soul collage cards is a Committee card (i.e., an aspect of myself) called The Bearer of Burdens:

The Bearer of Burdens - Committee Suit I am the One who is dependable, who bears the unbearable weight. I keep moving forward steadily through the desert that no one else can cross. I carry all that I need with me using my own inner strength. I can carry the burdens of others as well as my own.

I have been thinking lately that when I started walking across this desert, I had no idea that the journey would be so long. You keep going and going and going, reasoning, okay, this can't go on forever; sooner or later you have to get to an oasis, and you'll be able to lay this burden down. But I haven't been able to do so. And after awhile, you start to feel like a fool and a sucker for continuing to trudge forward, but what is your alternative when all around you all you see is a sandblast of desolation? Who else would pick up the burden? And if you stopped now and try to go back, who's to say whether or not you wouldn't end up just walking farther than if you just keep going in the direction you're going? There is no one to tell me. No one.

I lost one of the most important relationships in my life, I think, because the other individual, for reasons that elude me even now, said, "I'm not going to stick around any longer with you on this journey because I'm just tired of waiting for you to get to the oasis." Look, I'm tired of it, too. But I can't find any other way out of this desert than to keep walking.

I would never have believed, three years ago, that Rob would STILL not have a permanent job. I never would have believed some of the other things are still going on that I am struggling with. I can't believe I'm still walking through this desert, and the fear keeps stealing up that it looks as though I'm on the brink of dying of thirst. But what the fuck else am I supposed to do? There are no maps. No vehicles swooping down to pick me up.

I am sorry. I have no idea how long it will take or whether I will ever find the cool waters and restful shade I long for, or whether I'm even destined to get out of the desert at all. I might die of thirst out here all alone, but I have no idea which ending will happen. If only I knew. If I knew that it wasn't going to work out, I suppose at least I could put the burden down and just rest as I waited for the ending.

But I don't. If there's any chance I'll ever see the end of this desert, there isn't anyway I'm going to get out of it except under my own power.

So no, I cannot report the period of unemployment has ended, the marital and mental health problems have been solved, the house has been cleaned and the financial picture is more stable. I'm sorry, and it's getting downright embarrassing, but I just can't. The future may involve foreclosure, bankruptcy, homelessness, hospitalization, divorce. It may involve none of these things.

I don't know how this will end. But I can't see any alternative but to keep going.

(Edited to add: The ironic thing is, I am also actually on both sides of this divide, within my own immediate family.)