Internet Grapes

thankful

From a Facebook status a couple of weeks ago:

A partial list of jobs I have held: babysitter, typist, front desk clerk at dorm, data entry clerk (at accounting firm, at bank, at blood bank administrative location), bookkeeper at bank, member of acting troupe, customer service rep (at power tool company), associate at law firm, claims attorney at title insurance company, photographer, copywriter, stay at home mom, communications assistant (at church). My "career trajectory" is scattershot. Heh. And soon, preschool teacher will join the list!

Yesterday I started a new job, unlike any other job I've ever done before. Well, I guess that's not completely true - it's got a lot of similarities with parenting - but it's unlike any other job I've ever done for a salary. Between 8 am and 3:30 pm, I worked as a preschool teacher at Annabel's preschool, which is run by a woman who's become a friend of ours since we moved to Fort Wayne. Right now I will be working there MWF. Next fall I might start working full-time. 

I had expected the start of a new job to feel much more momentous than this has felt. I have applied for some office jobs and then occasionally cried (yes, cried!) because I was very well qualified for the position and might actually get it and have to start over again with that corporate schedule: 9-5, 5 days a week, 10 or 11 paid company holidays a year, 5 sick days a year, 2 weeks of vacation. Once I was outside of that - and after I'd started over 3 times with 2 weeks of vacation and then earned more, only to be returned to the bottom rung of vacation again at a new job - it felt like some sort of prison, especially since I always imagined that whatever I was doing would be in an office with no windows, doing something I wasn't really that interested in that could be done the same way by anyone, that didn't make use of any (many?) of my specific talents or degrees or expertise. That's what I'd imagine, and I couldn't easily imagine many other alternatives. I have more clerical/legal/office experience than any other work experience. It made sense that if I became employed by someone again - rather than making a success of my own photography business, for instance - that I'd be doing that. 

Preschool teaching has come as a surprise. There was no job posting, no application (no cover letter, no resume), no confirmation of application received, no interview request, no interview, no job offer negotiation. I told Geoff a few weeks ago that I had been thinking that it would be worth telling L., the preschool director, that the next time she had a job opening, I'd be interested in applying for it; a few days later, when he picked up Annabel, he and L. talked about me coming in on Friday, and L. told Geoff that she was impressed by how good I was with the kids, which prompted Geoff to say that I'd been thinking I'd be interested in working there; the next morning, when I dropped Annabel off, she said, "So, Geoff tells me you'd like to work here. I would have asked you before, but I thought you were too busy! I can give you part-time starting in January, and full time in the fall if you want it." January got changed to December, and the money is a little less than I had anticipated, but otherwise it is kind of a dream job. For now, I'll be working 3 days a week. I'll take Annabel to school with me, spend the day with her and the other kids, and arrive home before Katie gets home from school. I'll have winter vacation along with the girls (and along with Geoff's teaching schedule), and I'll have summers off, too. In addition, I'll have Tuesdays & Thursdays to do any work for the part-time church job I'm doing, and/or to work on my photography business. (Also: to do housework, because ay yi yi.) 

I spent a lot of time in November thinking about what I was thankful for and posting about it on Facebook, and oh, dear reader, it is a lot. Really, it is almost everything, or almost everything that matters. I started out the month wanting to be humorous and silly and light, being thankful for peppermint mochas and chocolate chip cookies and twinkly lights at Christmas and paint from Benjamin Moore and Homeland and Dexter and Parenthood (and I am, in fact, thankful for all of those things), but as days went by on the way to Thanksgiving, I found myself posting about the big stuff, with little stuff thrown in, because basically, it came down to what I'd posted at the end of October: 

Here's the thing: over the past few years, I have been sad a lot, and felt hopeless fairly often, and wished for a different life than the one I have. So if I say things that make you roll your eyes from the saccharine Pollyanna sap of them, just ignore me. I am feeling so much better, and I am moved to share it. And with that said, allow me to say: I sure do love these three amazing human beings I live with. (I have thought that a lot this weekend.)

One woman commented, "So many people wear masks, so it is difficult for us to realize who they are and what they are feeling. Thanks for removing your mask and letting your friends in." And oh, that made me cry, because it was just right. Since I lost my job, and since we moved to Fort Wayne, I have worn a mask a lot. I am pretty sure that if you'd asked just about anyone at the church how I was doing, whether I was happy, they would have said yes, that I was fine, was pleasant, was chatty, was calm. It really is a shame to wear a mask most of the time, but how do you know when to take it off? If underneath the mask you are just destroyed, what is the point of showing everyone how poorly you're really doing? Most of the people who would see it would either not want to help, would not know how to help, would be offended, or would be profoundly uncomfortable, none of which would do me any good. 

These days, I hardly ever wear any kind of mask at all, and this sunlight, right here on my skin? That's good stuff. 

hope you guess my name

Oh, hello there! Do I know you? Some of you I do. Maybe some of you are new. I don't know who is who. (Maybe some of you like to chew blue glue in canoes! I don't; do you?) I have been blogging since 2000 (or, as we called it back then, "online journalling"), and over the years I've come and gone enough times that I've done quite a few introductions. 

The very first introduction is here, transferred over to this site from the old journal that I called "Internet Persona":  I'm not in the mood to introduce myself, even though that's probably how one should start a journal. Is that how I should start this journal? You (yes, you - who else is reading this besides you?) might like reading this more if you knew something about me. Of course, what are the chances that you (no, not you, the rest of you) are reading this if you don't know anything about me already?  I should do it anyway, shouldn't I? The short version, at least. For posterity...

After that there are some boring facts, some of which are still true, some of which are not. I am not 30 anymore; I am 42. I am not an attorney at a law firm, or an attorney at all (not really). I am still left handed and blue-eyed (sort of; they're more grayish greenish these days, it seems like). I have not been single in a little over a decade, having gotten married in November 2002 to the then-boyfriend that I was about to move in with back in August of 2000, and since 2004, I do have kid(s) (first Katie, then Annabel). I'm no longer in Chicago, although I am still in the U.S. midwest; I've been in Fort Wayne, Indiana since July 2010. 

I still drink a lot of diet Coke, I still listen to a lot of music, my name's still Jessamyn and most people still call me Jessie. I no longer dance around the living room for exercise, but a little over a month ago I started doing a Couch to 5K program (I had to take a couple of weeks off after I hurt my knees falling down the stairs. I hope to get back to it this week, after I'm recovered from this flu or whatever it is). 

It has been over 12 years, and so much has changed. I know that I have changed, too, but I also know that I am the same. I am the same me, deep down inside, as I have been since I was 2nd grade or earlier. Or at least it feels that way.  

Here's another introduction, this one from December 2010:  "Oh, hello there!  Let me introduce myself.  Actually, I have a hard time with introductions these days, because one of the first questions people ask is something about what you DO, and I don't have a good answer right now. I'm a stay at home mom, sort of.  I'm unemployed (and still collecting unemployment, for another week and a half). I'm a(n) aspiring photographer. I'm the wife of the director of music here at the church.  I sing in the choir. Grudgingly, but with a smile, I admit that I'm licensed as an attorney in Illinois, although not here in Indiana.

It turns out that I'm relatively uncomfortable with general uncertainty. (Gee, who knew?) I am happy, these days, most of the time, most of each day, with most of the parts of my life."

And then I talked about how I loved our home - the one we rented for the first two years we lived in Fort Wayne, until the landlord opted not to renew our lease this past summer and we had to move - and how I loved the feeling of possibility, how the days were passing quickly, how I'd been exploring my new surroundings, how overall, I was doing well. 

Sometime after that, everything went to hell.

I exaggerate. Not everything went to hell. Geoff's job has been fine, he and I remain glad to be together and grateful for each other, the girls are doing well, we've been generally very physically healthy. Nothing really went to hell, actually, except what was inside of me. I just...broke. I look back at what I was writing at the end of 2010, and I remember that not too long after I'd hit "publish," I was crying and feeling sad, not because anything I wrote was untrue, but because my state of mind was so fragile. I think maybe what eventually happened is that I got so tired of feeling crushed so often that my hopes rose less and less high, until my even keel was not a good thing, but rather some sort of one-foot-in-front-of-the-other death march that left me feeling numb on a good day, and semi-numb (but also worthless!) on a bad one. 

I have come through that. I no longer think that a robot would be able to parent my daughters as well or better than I do. I no longer think that the world would be a better place without me here. I no longer wonder how I will make it through the next day or the next week or the next month or the next year. I no longer believe that I'm unworthy of love. (It feels crazy to type all of that, even; it seems ludicrous to act like I felt that way. Who feels that way? That's so melodramatic! And yes, I guess it was. But yes, I definitely did.) 

I'm Jessamyn, and most people still call me Jessie. I work part-time as Communications Assistant for the church where my husband Geoff is the director of music & organist. I sing in both of the church choirs he directs, and sometimes I even sing a solo. I am trying to launch a photography business, and am enrolled in a certificate program at the local university for (would be) professional photographers. Starting this Thursday, I will also be working part-time as a preschool teacher at my 4 year old daughter Annabel's preschool. Geoff's three jobs are as the church music director, as music instructor at the university, and as accompanist & assistant director of the choirs at the university. Katie is in 3rd grade at an arts magnet school, where she's taking violin and piano and choir and dance. She also loves art and is a great reader who's recently discovered she's also good at math. We live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in an old house that we bought this summer; there's a lot I'd like to change about it, but there's also a lot I love about it, including the yard, the three toilets, the skylight in our bedroom, our very own washer & dryer in the basement, a great wooden deck off the back door. Since we moved in, I have painted every downstairs room. 

I am left handed, and I drink a lot of diet Coke, although not as much as I used to. Now I also drink coffee, and I always have water on hand. I have one brother, and he has two children, my niece and nephew. My dad & stepmom, my mom, my brother & his kids all live about an hour and a half away from us, which I love, even though I still don't feel like I see them enough. Our days are busy, which is almost always a good thing. I am on a near constant quest to eat better and get more exercise and lose some weight (three separate goals, really, although I recognize they're all related), and right now is no exception. I'm 42 years old, and I have given up thinking that my career path is going to have any sort of linearity to it. But I have not given up hope that I will enjoy what I do for a living. 

It's nice to be here. I hope you'll be back. 

Better than ok.

I'm better today. Still stuffed up and with a very raspy, limited vocal range, but so much better, especially when you know that yesterday I ended up in bed, feverish & achy, texting Geoff (who was downstairs) about how if I died, my only real regret would be not seeing the girls grow up. So yes, I am much better today! I think I have the flu, rather than a cold. Not that it matters much. 

Church was not nearly as enjoyable for me as usual, since I couldn't sing. I tried, at first, to at least sing along with the congregational hymns, and although I could squeak out a very quiet version of many of the notes (or an octave below them), every note caused me discomfort or actual pain, so I quit trying. Instead, I stood there and followed along with the music, listening to the alto part in my head and imagining that I could bring it to life. I do think that I'm a good listener, but I also really enjoy my own part in conversations, and it always feels very strange to me when I lose my voice, and something that's usually so easy for me becomes such an ordeal. 

So the morning was not the best, but the rest of the day has had some great highlights. After church we went to the buffet at our favorite local Indian restaurant, which both of the girls clamored for happily. As we drove there, they begged to sit next to each other on one side of the booth that we always get, loudly and emphatically declaring their great love for each other and for sitting next to each other. We told them we'd let them try it, but that they needed to be respectful, relatively quiet, and not crazy. We set our sights a little high, and they weren't really able to control themselves the way we'd hoped - but although they did go under the table more than once, and they did talk too loudly most of the time, and they didn't listen to us as well as we'd have liked - they didn't really fight with each other. We came home and watched Brave for the second time (I rented it at Redbox yesterday) while Geoff took a nap, and then I said it was time to turn off the tv. 

That's when things got REALLY good. Katie read to us from Wind in the Willows while Annabel and I colored in coloring books. Katie played teacher and instructed us. After awhile, I felt like I needed my own nap, so I went upstairs and sent Geoff down. When I came down, a little over an hour later, the girls were in the kitchen, playing Hullabaloo together. After awhile, we put them in the bath, where they played and talked and laughed for at least 45 minutes, at which point they got out to eat dinner, and once they'd finished eating, they started playing Hullabaloo again. It's been the kind of day that makes me feel not only happy to be a parent (and the parent of these two kids in particular), but also one that makes me feel like this family is doing ok. Better than ok. 

I'm so glad this flu has not killed me, and that I still have a chance to see these girls grow up.