I love being a crone. I am down with my career and even down with how much writing I’m doing, especially now that I am writing exactly what I want to as a self-publisher. That turns out to have been a great life decision for me.
And that’s what this column is about. Choices and signs.
I realize I am prone to make stories out of my life. I am a writer. Anthropologists and sociologists will tell you story making is what humans do. Even if you, yourself, are not a storyteller, you tend to see your life as a kind of narrative for both good and bad. Good, because it helps you make sense of what could be perceived as a series of random events. Bad because you could feel like you have no control over your fate and cannot change it. I firmly fall into the choose your destiny camp. However, I am open to what the universe sends me.
Nope. Not going woowoo on you guys today. Well, maybe just a tad.
Two years ago I began the steps I needed to free my life from administration so I could write more. It took me two years to transition back to being a full time classroom teacher AND have time in my writing studio in the morning. It took me a couple of months to create for myself a dedicated writing space. Here I am this fall with mornings in my studio.
Weird stuff happened on the way. First, my agent let me go. It was a very amicable split, and she would still write me a recommendation letter to another agent if I needed that. However, the person I was when I started changing my career had an agent and really though she was going to need more time to write and succeed in an industry. I pitched several books, and we were looking for the next thing. My first thought after the split was to find another agent. This time last fall, I pitched and had another nibble for a book.
Meanwhile, there was a thing with my publisher. A very bad thing. Small presses can be wonderful, but they can also be volatile. My publisher went sideways and the carefully vetted small press I went with turned out to be in its decline when I started with them. There were always signs. Slow communications, hard to get books, not meeting all the parts of my contract. The second book in my series was under contract to them and they refused it, another sign the press was changing.
There I was. No agent, no publisher, a completed second book in a series I really wanted to write. Another series, the one my agent found well written but not to her taste, also had most of a second book completed. These signs made me choose self publishing, at least until I had written all of the books in these two series I wanted to. It was a good choice for me.
The pressure was off, and I’m enjoying the writing I’m doing now. I chose to read it as a narrative of success, as following the signs, rather than reading it as a narrative of failure, to embrace my art over the industry. As I keep telling my friends, I have a very rewarding job I have no intentions of leaving, already.
That job is what brings me to today’s column. The narrative of my life shifted from administrator and professor to professor and writer. I never disliked administrating. I had too many things I loved doing, and at the time, administration was what I gave up for a new challenge.
My current boss at my college has been promoted. Her previous job has been made into two jobs, and I am applying for a deanship in a new department. Why?
Do you remember what I said about making a story out of your life? Instead of my story being a writer who waited until the end of her life to tell most of her stories, what if my real story is about a woman who has taught for thirty-three years, who headed up making a new English program for non-native speakers, and who is going to get a new department up and running before she retires? What if it is a story about a woman who remembered why she wrote in the first place, for joy and imagination, and she can do both administrating and writing, rather than teaching and writing?
Even at our age, stories change, especially if you are open to the change. I never thought the opportunity to be a dean would come up again in my time at the college. I have no idea if I’ll get the job. I would be content to stay in the new life I have made for myself, with its carefully planned steps. I don’t know, though. This other life also looks good, and my story isn’t finished.
Stories are never finished as long as we are alive, and growing old doesn’t mean we stop looking at new challenges and signs.