Tag: writing

51 is not my Favorite Birthday

On By aftheadIn Meet Afthead, parenting, Rants, travel, Uncategorized, Work1 Comment
Who took this vacation picture? Was someone else here? We’ll never know.

Last year I was on the cusp of my life changing. Sure, I was turning 50, but I was about to take a year off to live my dream and write my first novel. Kamala Harris had jumped into the presidential race and was going to be our first female president. That meant I was going to come back to work inspired about working for a female commander in chief and having ample career opportunities to pick from. The self-improvement goals were numerous. I was going to get fit again and eat better. I was going to spend my daughter’s junior year being present, not be such a bitch at home, spend more time with my folks, and be a better friend. It was going to be glorious.

A year later, I’m feeling kind of (using an out of date gen-z word here) meh. I’m proud of my book, but a smidge disappointed in my early reader’s feedback. Now that I’m done writing, what do I do next? Do I take the terrifying step to polish it and try to publish, write the next book, or just quit knowing that the publishing world is cruel? The country is a hot pile of steaming shit for so many reasons, but personally I have zero future job opportunities: there is no work in electric vehicle charging, climate change, or green careers because Harris didn’t get elected. My ex-colleagues are all fired, quit, soon to be fired, or scared. My network is decimated. During our family summer vacation I refused to let my family take any pictures of me because I look like a chubby bridge troll with a permanent scowl and wiry hairs growing out of my mole. Someday we’ll look back on our nine days together and wonder if I was there. (Honestly, did the semaglutide botox fervor have to hit now? Many of my friends look better than they did in their 20s, but I’m terrified of a med spa injecting stuff into my body and face. Sigh.)

Poor me.

Yes. I know things could be worse. I know people are starving in Gaza. Shit’s about to get real in the United States as support benefits are crumbled by the Big Beautiful Bill. I saw the impact this administration is having even on the privileged as we toured colleges this summer: less emphasis on services, less emphasis on equity, less emphasis on choices, less emphasis on diversity, and the University of Delaware didn’t even mention that President Joe Biden was an alum. Meanwhile, I feel guilty because we are a rich white family so my kid will be okay even if we have to pay more tuition. Heck, she may be better off, because international students aren’t interested in attending school in a country where they might be being swept off the streets by ICE agents. (We toured Tufts right after Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by a plainclothes agent off the street in Boston. Unsurprisingly, it was the worst tour we’ve been on. They were probably distracted.)

I know I’m a whiney old lady. I have had a year off. I have enjoyed quality time with my family and friends. I have delighted being available for my kid before she goes off to college next year. Having my mom and husband read my book (and enjoy it) has been a highpoint of my life. Financially we are doing okay, even without my year of salary, because somehow the chaos since election day hasn’t impacted our investments – see rich white family note above.

Tomorrow I will suck it up and be grateful again, but today is my birthday. Today I get to be frustrated at myself for my lack of willpower and becoming a dumpy old lady. Today I get to be aggravated because in less than a year I’ve gone from being a very successful career woman, who did things like meet Secretaries of Energy and Transportation and accepted invitations to the White House, to a worthless 51 year old woman. Today I get to be frustrated because there is so much work to do with my book, and my dozen this year (so far) for short stories, writing conferences, and jobs don’t give me any hope that I can write more than drivel, so what’s the point anyway?

Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday with friends. Next week I will celebrate with my family. Today I miss the hope of turning 50.

Celebrating writing “The End”

On By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Designing Your Life, finish something, Publishing Process, Work, writing3 Comments

This is really hard for me, so I’m just going to blurt it out. I am proud of myself. Whoa, honey. No one likes a braggart. Probably everyone is going to stop reading this post now, right?

When I walked away from my career last September I had one goal: to finish my novel and make it good enough for my mom to read. Why my mom, you ask? Because she’s a devourer of all types of books and no matter what genre I wrote, she would appreciate it. Because she’s an English teacher and could tell me if my book actually met standard and historical book criteria. I love books because my mom loves books and she encouraged me to read whatever I wanted my entire life. (She actually had to stand up to the elementary school librarian on my behalf for reading a “age inappropriate” books. Poor librarian.) I wanted to write this book, because it was a story I wanted to read and I wanted to share it with my mom.

On Friday June 13th I wrote “The End.” (Which is a totally fine date to finish your novel. No bad omens associated with Friday the thirteenth at all.) Then I read and edited and spell checked and edited some more until June 23rd when I printed out all 285 pages and presented it to mom. Part one of my goal accomplished.

(Mom took this picture of me and my book. We are at her kitchen table. I normally hate how I look in pictures, but not this time. Look at how happy I am.)

I’ve read many writing books. I think Stephen King is the one who said that writing is magic. In my head was a world, characters and actions. Part one of the magic is the transference from my head onto the paper. To the best of my abilities, I accomplished that. I’ve read my complete book twice since writing “The End” and I believe the story is there. Could it be better? Yeah. (The comma situation is certainly dicey.) Could the story be better? Maybe, but not from what my own eyes can see or my own brain can comprehend. Now I need to find out if I accomplished the second part of the magic: can someone else’s eyes and brain read the story and interpret it? I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. Feedback from my mom, my writing group, and my husband is coming. I’m trying to be brave.

I have little glimmers that give me hope. As they have finished, my writing group has sent texts saying “It’s wonderful” and “It’s a big wonderful book.” (At 107,000 words, it’s a bit of a behemoth.) Mom finished on July 7th and sent me a picture of the last page of my book. On it she wrote, “So good” underlined three times and “I got teary eyed.” I got teary eyed when she sent me the picture.

Mom’s “The End”

I’ve had a month to celebrate. A month to marvel at my accomplishment. I left 20 years of stability, a nice paycheck, and great benefits for a dream. That dream is now a physical hunk of word-filled paper big enough to cause death to a bug or pain to a foot if dropped.

No matter what the next few weeks of critique and discussion brings, I want to acknowledge that I achieved my dream and that’s pretty gosh darn amazing. (I can say that here, because everyone stopped reading after the first braggy paragraph, right?)

The End

My Country ’tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty?

On By aftheadIn politics, Rants, UncategorizedLeave a comment
An afternoon game at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado

I saw two white men kneeling on a brown man, forcing his face into the blacktop of the highway yesterday afternoon. Tonight, in the wee hours of July 4th, my country’s birthday, I cannot sleep because I cannot understand how we got here.

Five of us, two teenagers and three adults, were driving home from a baseball game on Interstate 25. Traffic slowed, and my daughter asked why there was a car facing the wrong way on the road. Sure enough, there was an empty SUV pointed north in the southbound lane. Strange, but we, and all the other cars, swerved around it and drove on. What were we going to do, stop turn the SUV around? Before the next exit, there were two munched cars on the side of the road. The people in that accident were out and about, so I assumed it was a normal highway fender bender. Maybe related to the backwards SUV? We kept driving.

Then I saw the third accident. A person with copper skin, an orange shirt, and kinky black hair was getting resuscitated by the side of the road. He was on the ground and a white man had his hands over his heart. I saw the white man doing chest compressions and I did that thing where I didn’t want to look for fear of the gore, but I looked anyway. And then I really saw. The man was not doing chest compressions. The man, a white man, was kneeling on the brown man. The white man had the arms of the brown man pulled behind his back. The white man wasn’t saving the brown man’s life, but pressing his body into the asphalt. The brown man’s face was smashed into the black asphalt on a 91 degree day. Next to the white man knelt another white man. Then we were past them. I’m humiliated to say we didn’t do anything. We just drove on and got ice cream, like we were planning. While a man was being pressed into the scalding highway we got ice cream.

We aren’t monsters. We talked about the scene. Four of us had the same life saving first impression, followed by an oh-shit moment. My daughter’s friend never doubted that she was seeing a white man kneeling on a brown man. We all agreed that the men weren’t police. They weren’t in uniforms. They were men, like my husband, forcing another man into the street. My daughter’s friend, the one with the clearest vision of the situation, commented that the white men had the brown man’s head awfully close to the oncoming traffic, like they didn’t care if he got run over. She wasn’t wrong. My friend wondered what she could do in retirement to make things better. On our way home, we drove past the scene, but traffic had cleared and the tableau was gone.

How did my country end up here? In my almost 51 years, I never dreamed I would witness such a thing. This was a story my dad would tell me from his childhood in Texas. After the fact, I wonder if I’d been alone, would I have stopped? If I’d been driving, would I have stopped? I’m CPR trained. If they were doing compressions I could have helped. If I had mistakenly stopped to help and realized what was going on, could I have made them see the man as a human being who should be treated with dignity? Should I have called someone? Later in the day, I logged onto the godforsaken Twitter app to check the Denver Police feed, but there was nothing. I checked the Facebook Colorado State Patrol feed and there was nothing. Nothing about a backwards car, an accident, or a public assault on a brown man anywhere.

I know there’s a phone number I’m supposed to call if I see ICE agents in our metro area, but I didn’t think of that until tonight. Do they want to hear about something that happened hours ago? I am ashamed of myself. I am a white lady and I need to do better. The country that exists in my head, where people stop by the side of the road to help people is gone. I’m ashamed of my reaction and my behavior. I have the same sick feeling I had when I learned that other families taught their kids how to be safe with the police, while I grew up in a bubble thinking all police would help me.

On our way into the baseball game, we followed a man whose shirt read “Gunpa, like a Grandpa but with more guns and more fun.” At the baseball game the Colorado Rockies were playing the Houston Astros, and I was aggravated by all the obnoxious Texas fans. I stood quietly during the national anthem, while the woman next to me held her hand over her heart and belted out the song. At the 7th inning stretch I remarked that I was grateful we no longer sang “God Bless America” after “Take Me out to the Ballgame.” Those little differences seem like they could exist in the same country. The kind of annoying disparities that make up a population of human beings. Meanwhile, the chasm between the country I thought I lived in, where men stop to do CPR on another man, and the country I actually live in, where men publicly assault other men on the highway, don’t feel like they should exist on the same planet. I need to learn to live in the reality that actually exists, as awful as it is.

Reflections: 6 months into my writing sabbatical

On By aftheadIn politics, Rants, stories, Uncategorized, writing4 Comments

It’s been 6 months and 6 days since I stepped away from my job supporting the US Department of Energy, US Federal Highway Administration, US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and National Resources Canada where I helped build and document electric charging stations and alternative fuel stations around northern North America. When I left, the election hadn’t happened yet. Kamala Harris was 47 days into her campaign and people at work were confident in her presidency. I even had one of my bosses scoff at me when I mentioned that one of my reasons for leaving was the potential impact on our work from a Trump presidency. He insisted, “That’s never going to happen.”

It happened. One day shy of two months after I left my job supporting the Federal Government Trump won. Four and a half months after I left he took office, and since then I’ve watched from a distance as he’s demolished the work I spent decades building. It’s weird not being in the trenches with my old co-workers trying to salvage what we can.

I swear, if one more person asks me, “Aren’t you SOOOO GLAD you got out when you did?” I’m going to punch them. I’m sorry if it’s you, but I’m sick of it. I worked in public service because I believe in the importance of what the government does for it’s people. I built a team of smart, innovative, caring people who wanted to change the world and our country for the better. I left for a year, not because I wanted to be the first in the swamp drainage, but because I was tired and burned out from working and doing so much. My job consisted of managing 25 people with 30% of my time, and with the other 70% I supported a $16M portfolio, did business development, and managed five of my own projects where I was an individual contributor. I’m so fucking tired of hearing the bullshit about lazy government workers who do nothing. That was not my experience. I’m sick that my team and my projects are being demolished and I can’t help. But I also know that if I was still there, I’d probably be locked away in some padded room rocking slowly, because I was so far over capacity. I would have had no ability to continue working my ass off while the president and his cabinet destroyed our government.

Instead of having an insider’s perspective on the dismantling of the great experiment that was the United States of America’s constitutional division of power, I have been writing. I also left my job, because I had a dream I wanted to realize: to finish my novel. My first month I polished up a short fiction piece, that I love, called Bumblecat. I’m afraid it might never find a home because it’s been rejected five times since I started shopping it around, and it talks about the USDA, which may be dissolved any day. I wrote a second piece about becoming the United States Egg Czar. That one is quite funny, and was also rejected. (But the rejection said it was funny, so I know it is actually funny.) It’s going up on the blog this weekend, because it’s a timely piece and I don’t want it to expire. I hope you like it. The third piece, which will go up on my blog next week is a gut wrencher of a piece about my cat who died in November of 2024. It was also rejected and since it is outside of my normal satire and speculative fiction space and I’m not in the mood to research a bunch of new markets to reject me.

Rejection is my life’s theme right now. My daughter just got cut from the club basketball team she’s been playing on for 4 years, for her senior season. I’ve had 7 writing rejections in 2025. As a country, we are rejecting the values that I hold dear. Honestly, I feel like I exist in a universe that has no room for me.

Thank goodness I’m creating a whole new universe where I can escape. While I’m woefully behind where I’d like to be in my book, I really like it. The people are fascinating and their struggles are meaningful. When I left in September, I expected to have the manuscript done and ready to start shipping to agents by the end of this month. Ha ha. Turns out creative pursuits do not work like technical projects. I can’t lay out a Gantt chart filled with deliverables, milestones, and deadlines and make something like a novel happen. Thankfully after about 3 months of forcing myself to a schedule, I modified my approach and now have half of a book done. I’ve got a plan for the final half all written out with colorful pens on sticky notes stuck to a cardboard thing you’d use at a science fair. I know where I’m going and I’m excited about the direction. I’ve also got book 2 pretty solidified in my head, and book 3 keeps popping in to say “hello.”

The plan was to give this writing thing a year, and then go back to work. But right now, I don’t think there will be work to go back to. My expertise in electric cars and electric car charging has limited value in our country. My 20 years of experience working across the Federal Government is meaningless once the departments I know are dissolved. And everything I write gets rejected, so even if I get this book done, it’s unlikely to ever find a home. All I can do on a daily basis is kick all those worries down the road for future Johanna. Present Johanna still has 6 months of freedom to finish her dream of writing a book, and I try to push away the fear and worry to focus on creating a new world that doesn’t suck as much as this one. Hopefully you’ll get to read about it someday.

An Extremely Belated Celebration

On By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Favorite Lines, Uncategorized, writing3 Comments

2020 was a crazy year. In the midst of a global pandemic, I had a really good thing happen. But I never shared the really good thing on Afthead, because Afthead was a public place and the really good thing wasn’t necessarily something I wanted people to know about. Okay, I didn’t want my friends to know, because I was extremely frustrated with some of their COVID protocols, or lack thereof. To cope I wrote a satire piece about them and it got published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. This publication is a big deal in the humor world. McSweeney’s acceptance rate hovers right around 1%. It’s like getting into the Stanford-Harvard of magazines. I highly recommend checking it out.

Somehow, the idea of reaching out to all my friends whose food intolerances I’d fastidiously honored in the past and telling them that I was publicly mocking them seemed wrong. Also, I wasn’t in a good place with many of them when it was published. I was busy being lonely and angry while they were out camping without me, because I wanted to do ridiculous things like wear a mask. Or their kids were doing remote school together because it was so hard on them.

Four years in the future, several of those people are my friends again (and the ones who aren’t never really were). Most of us have talked about how we were all doing the best we could during those really hard times, and have forgiven each other. Or we just let it go.

But I still haven’t mentioned to them about the most popular thing I’ve ever written. I didn’t tell them that afterwards I got interviewed by The Writer magazine, featured in an article about getting COVID-19 stories published. I didn’t share all the emails I got from strangers telling me how they were struggling too. I didn’t forward the funny comment from Facebook, “Licorice has gluten?” I didn’t want to stretch those strained relationships any farther.

So why post this now? Why not just let the happiness stay quarantined? A couple of things have changed. First, I realized that the friends I was frustrated with don’t read this blog. They don’t see my words. Unless I print this out and shove it under their windshield wipers they won’t know. Also, I did tell lots of people. Work friends got a link. Family got a link. People who I know didn’t follow my exact protocols read it and enjoyed it. Finally, I’ve told everyone I’m taking a year off to write. If I’m a writer, I want to celebrate my writing successes. I decided four years was enough space. It’s okay to let out a little celebratory yay about this piece and say I’m proud of it.

The magical thing about this piece was that it all came out in a whoosh. Normally my writing has tens of drafts littering a piece-specific folder on my computer. (Even this post has 22 revisions!) For my McSweeney’s piece there’s not a single draft on my computer. I wrote it, edited it, and published it from one file. I remember showering and furiously crafting this letter I would send to my friends. I didn’t write a word until I had all the biting phrases worked out. It was like I’d birthed the story fully formed out of my fingertips. Such magic should be acknowledged.

The last amazing thing about this piece? I was in the middle of graduate school when I wrote it. I hadn’t had a creative urge since March 13, 2020 when we all got sent home from work and school to survive the end of the world. I was taking my last two master’s level classes before my capstone. I was working full time and helping my kid do school from home. I was terrified for my parent’s lives, and my support system was fractured and frayed because of my community’s disagreement on the pandemic. It was a horrible, horrible time, and I dealt with it by producing witty, poignant, biting satire. Looking back, I am in awe of myself.

If you want to take a trip back in time and see how September of 2020 felt, now’s your chance. It was a time before COVID vaccinations. We were on the cusp of a huge winter surge. 700 people were dying a day. Somehow I coped by crafting words like this:

People can have COVID and not know it, kind of like that irresponsible room mom last Halloween that didn’t know licorice has gluten. Mistakes happen. You might be laughing and shouting germs all over and never know until someone gets sick. Imagine how embarrassed you’d feel if you accidentally killed my parents. They say hi by the way.

The little masterpiece is still online at McSweeney’s if you feel like taking a trip down that horrific memory lane. Me? I’m going to go reread the acceptance note. It’s glorious.

Thanks for the submission. This is great. We will take it! It should run in the next few weeks. Would you mind sending me a photo and bio for your author profile? 

Would I mind? Uh, heck no! Yeah, I have an author profile on McSweeney’s too. Pretty cool, even four years later.

So, Watcha been Doin’?

On By aftheadIn Designing Your Life, Uncategorized, Work, writing2 Comments
My desk at Library #4

It’s been two weeks since I left my job to live the dream of being a full time writer. Inevitably, everyone’s first questions are “Are you writing?” or “How’s your book coming?” My first week I had a list of activities that would prove to myself and my friends that I was doing the writing thing. I investigated libraries as writing offices. I became my own tech support and installed a new battery in my laptop, then downloaded Scrivner (a software package for writers). I took the Scrivner tutorial, then found all my novel files, and uploaded them into the Scrivner novel template. I rearranged my desk into a writer’s desk, rather than a worker’s desk. I wrote a blog post. I made a writing plan. I worked on a short story. I created a to-do list for my novel rewrite. I started reading a writing book. Look at me becoming a full-time-writer.

But I also left my job for personal reasons. My connections to people outside of work were degrading. So I made cookies for a friend who had a death in the family. I attended parent teacher conferences. I went to therapy. I sent a short story to my mom, so she could help make it better. I went on an anniversary hike with my husband and cut his hair. I fixed our YMCA membership so I could start taking classes and work on my physical health. I managed to slowly run a 5k. I drove my kid to volunteer activities and concerts and helped rescue her broken car. Look at me fixing myself and my friends and family.

The first week was just like working, but at a different job, which is what I told everyone I was going to do. I was proud of my accomplishments, and friends were impressed with how I’d transitioned right over to this new life.

The second week tells a different story.

I also left my job because I was exhausted and my personal life and home life were suffering. All that came crashing in the second week. The cat boxes and guinea pig cages were filthy. I still had seven performance reviews to write for the job I quit. (Yeah, I know, unpaid labor, but it was for people I care about.) My health insurance expires soon, so I got my COVID and flu shots, then spent a day and a half asleep in bed. (My normal booster after-effects, but since my only COVID infection lasted 10 days, I keep getting boosted.) I had my final OB/GYN appointment complete with pap smear. Midweek, I tried a full self-care yoga-mom day: I bought tickets for our winter trip; I actually went to a yoga class; I got my nails done with my daughter (homecoming for her, simple vanity for me). I tried to include more people in my week. I had lunch and walked with friends and spent an hour picking apples with my mom in her backyard. The weekend was filled with homecoming activities – volunteering, unexpectedly staying for the football game to visit with friends, steaming my kid’s dress, taking homecoming pictures, and delivering forgotten items around town. The only writer thing I accomplished was working on my short story, visiting a third library, and thinking a lot about my book. One might say I failed week 2 as a writer.

Three weeks ago my days were dictated by my Outlook calendar. Life was scheduled from 8-4 (or 7-6 on a bad day) in half hour or hour chunks going from meeting to meeting to meeting. Often I didn’t have time for lunch, and bathroom breaks were quick jaunts where I had to wait to start my next conference call because you could hear the toilet flushing from my desk. Milestones were set and documented with clients. I had no time to think deeply or be thoughtful.

My other issue is that I’ve been working since I was 14, and working full time since I was 23. Gosh. I’ve been working full time more than half my life. The only break I’ve had in those 27 years was 13 weeks for maternity leave. Okay, I also went down to 32 hours for about a year when my kiddo had non-stop ear infections, and then went down to 32 hours during my last year of my master’s degree, but in both of those cases the extra hours I wasn’t workin’ for the man were dictated by someone other than me. It wasn’t like this. I really don’t know how to not work a regular job.

This is a whole different life in an unexpected way. I’m responsible for deciding what I’m going to do. I’ll write my own performance review. I get to report if I’m succeeding or failing. Am I allowed to take a day off? Can I knit during working hours? Can I write after hours? What are my hours? Is napping allowed? Someone forgot to give me the unemployed workers handbook. This week, I’m going to choose to be kind to myself. Anyone who has worked for me will say that I tell everyone to expect a struggle in the first 3 months of a new job. I’m going to give myself a little of my own managerial grace as I figure this out.

I’m writing this post from library number four. (Oddly, a library I started working at when I was 16.) So far, I’ve found 3 of the 4 libraries to be productive writing work spaces. They have the right amount of background noise and I like being surrounded by books. Today I was able to research points of view from books in the 808 nonfiction section. (I love the Dewey Decimal System.) I’ve got a plan for figuring out if my novel needs first person, third person omniscient, or an editorial narrator. I’m excited about doing some writing on my actual book, not because it’s on a to do list, but because I’m curious. Tonight is writer’s group and I have a writing conference this weekend. I have absolutely promised myself that I won’t let the writing conference crush my soul, as they often do. If I start to hate a session I can leave. I don’t have to go the whole time.

I’m glad that I’m keeping track of my days, because I want to know what makes a day good and productive and what days are frustrating. Just like in my other job, I’ve found that the to-do items I don’t finish make me angry at myself, but I still forget all the things I did accomplish. Going back to review makes me feel better. I haven’t “wasted two weeks” because I haven’t rewritten 87 pages of my novel. I’m being thoughtful with my time and activities. Instead of thinking that I’ve squandered 1/26th of my year off, I’m going to focus on how I’ve set myself up to make the next 25/26ths a success, however I end up defining success.

I Love a Story with a Good Ending

On By aftheadIn Work2 Comments
My office, before my last day

My last day of work was Friday. A month shy of 21 years, I went into the office for the last time. I had 17 performance reviews to write, 72 timesheets to approve, two exit interviews, an office to clean, a final lunch, and finally, turning in my badge and computer. It was going to be busy – no leaving early.

I hadn’t accounted for the fact that my last long day was a post-Covid Friday. Not traditionally a day where folks linger in the office. By 2:00, I was the only person in our wing and still had all the performance reviews to write, my office to clean, and my stuff to turn in. Luckily, one of the “pros” for leaving my job (on the pro/con list) was that things had gotten a little to people-y for this introvert. So while the afternoon and evening were a little lonely, it was nice to be able to get my packing and crying and writing and goodbyes to inanimate objects done without interruption.

At 7:00 the cleaning crew turned up. Once I was a person who knew the cleaning crew. I was in the office 4 days a week and worked a later shift then many of my colleagues. It wasn’t unusual for me to roll in at 9:00 and still be working at 6:00. Those people who empty your trash and recycling, vacuum the floors, dust, and clean the bathrooms? I knew them. Post-Covid? I didn’t really interact with the cleaning folks. On days I actually worked in the office, I’d take 2 hours of meetings from home, drive in, work 5 hours, get on the road before traffic got bad, and then finish my day off at home.

But this last week I finally met the cleaning crew on Wednesday, when I was in the office until 8:30 p.m. A guy in the red polo shirt, his and his team’s uniform, politely asked if he could empty my trash and recycling and I said “yes” and thanked him. Friday we had the same exchange. Then, shortly afterwards I took my computer up to my boss’s empty dark office, said a weepy goodbye to my dedicated laptop, and then went downstairs and took a last few pictures of my empty office. I picked up my backpack, my purse, the flowers my friend had given me, and my two funny bird pillows then headed out. Arms packed, I opened the first of three doors between me and my new life, and scared both myself and the cleaning guy. He was about to mop behind the door. We jumped and laughed and then he looked at my full arms, and held the door open for me. Next he raced ahead of me to open the final two doors. I teared up a little, and thanked him at each door. As I exited he said, “See you tomorrow.” Then he paused and I thought maybe he’d ask if I was coming back to work. Maybe he’d noticed how my colorful preschool like office had become duller during the week and he knew I was leaving. But instead he said, “No. See you Monday!” And I replied, “See you Monday” and gave him a small smile. I managed to unload my stuff and close the car door before I started sobbing. It was the perfect goodbye.

While my career had highlights with powerful people — meetings at the White House, virtual meetings with the Secretary of Energy and Transportation, awards, and accolades — that wasn’t the part of the job I loved. I loved the people. I loved helping my team of 24 find good work and help them through the challenges of simultaneously working and living a life. I loved the clients who were also human beings. I loved all the support folks who helped make work things work: HR, IT, Purchasing, Payroll, and yes, the cleaning crew. I tolerated leadership and upper management who valued hierarchy, and these upside-down priorities of mine are what made me want to leave my job.

One of my proudest moments at work happened several years ago, right as our current leadership came into power. Our lab had a sweet tradition of letting folks leave a few hours early before a holiday. It wasn’t announced in any formal way that I ever saw, but the afternoon before the 4th of July or Thanksgiving a manager or a director would walk around and say, “Why don’t you go ahead and take off.” We’d all pack up and enjoy a couple of special hours – getting our kids early, working out, going for happy hour, or picking up that last minute need before the grocery store got busy.

But leadership ended the tradition. Days before one Christmas, there was an announcement: there would be no early release on Christmas Eve. Staff were angry. People had planned flights and Christmas Eve dinner thinking they’d be able to go home at noon, or two at the latest. Of course, leadership said, staff could still take time off, but they had to use vacation time. The grumbles quieted. A tradition had ended. That’s how work goes.

I wasn’t thrilled, but had resigned myself to taking a few hours of leave for Christmas Eve. Working late one night before the holiday, I struck up a conversation with the lady who cleaned my office. My annoyance was a tragedy to her. The contract between the lab and the cleaning service stated if the lab was open normal hours, they couldn’t clean earlier, and she was going to miss Christmas Eve with her family. She confided that she probably wouldn’t be home until midnight, would miss church and her family’s celebration, and she was crushed. Cleaning staff doesn’t just get to decide to take vacation.

My annoyance bloomed into anger. Me, who despises talking with leadership, started sending emails explaining to my boss, my boss’s boss, and the head of the lab what they had done with their little maneuver. Sure all our staff was aggravated, fine, but their move was a full-on Grinchy-Scrooge for the cleaning folks. I not only told leadership what they’d done, but I ratted them out to all my colleagues.

My explosive protest found a champion among the directors, and the cleaning staff was allowed to start early on Christmas Eve. It didn’t cause a problem, because most of the lab folks were leaving early anyway. Friends on my floor had thought about the situation, and pulled together donations for our cleaning lady. There was also a card, where we all thanked her for everything she did for us. From that point on, there was a different relationship between the lab staff and her. I found out about her side job hand-sewing pet toys. (Now I know where those specialty “hand made” toys at pet stores come from.) She got to hear about my family and my mom who also enjoyed sewing. The lab leadership had made a mistake, but we had turned it into a chance to make and help a friend.

On my last moment of my last day of my twenty year career, there was no lab leadership to thank me. No final hobnobbing with other managers at a happy hour. When he opened the last door and the sweet red-shirted guy said, “See you Monday,” it didn’t just feel like a kindness. It felt like the perfect end to my work story.

Happy Birthday to Me

On By aftheadIn Designing Your Life, Meet Afthead, Uncategorized, writing3 Comments

For my 50th birthday I am giving myself a gift. The biggest gift (monetarily) I will ever give or receive. (Well unless I get all philosophical and consider the gift of life to my kid, but that’s outside the scope of this post.) I am quitting my job to take a year off to write my book. Goodbye annual salary, hello priceless time.

I started this book in 2013, eleven years ago. Since then I’ve raised my kid to driving age, started and finished a master’s degree, got promoted, grew my team to twenty-three people, visited the White House and increased our team’s portfolio to $10M dollars. But do you know what I haven’t done? I haven’t written my book. I published an essay, a satire piece, and a short story, and was racing into 2020 on a high of acceptances. But then my writing started suffering. It suffered because, for me, a global pandemic and a creative mindset did not go hand in hand. It also suffered because of my master’s capstone completion in November of 2020 and my subsequent brain-fry hangover. It suffered because I took an “opportunity” to do a second role at the same place I already had a job. But about a year ago, I was down to one job, my degree was a memory in a frame, I survived COVID, and the creativity dam broke and I really, really, really wanted to start writing again.

Only an idiot would quit their lucrative high-paying career as a 50-year-old woman. I don’t have a single friend who can’t tell a horror story about a middle-aged woman getting forced out for being too old. I myself was recently informed, by a younger male colleague, that I wasn’t “hungry enough” to do my job effectively. If I quit now, I might never work again. This is conventional wisdom and even my six page list of contacts isn’t enough to make me consider that I’m not murdering my future job prospects with this move.

In 2016 I had a plan. I would get my Master’s degree, as required for female upward mobility at my company, then I would work for a year as required for tuition reimbursement by my company, and then I would apply for a year long sabbatical to finish my book. I would get a break, accomplish my dreams, and go back to work. It was a perfect plan destroyed by COVID-19 and bureaucracy. By the time I wanted to write again the leave policy had changed and the sabbatical requirement had changed to require relevancy to the mission of my workplace. My novel is not relevant.

Why not wait until retirement? What’s another 15 years of work? Can’t your dreams wait? Couldn’t you just find time to write? Your kid’s going to college soon, you’ll have plenty of time to write then. Just give it a couple more years. The fiscally conservative engineering voices in my head have plenty of reasons for me not do this. My heart has a different perspective.

As a fan of Stephen King’s On Writing, I am a believer in the ideal reader. Each writer has a person they are writing for, and my book is being written for my mom. In the past few years, I have made a remarkable discovery. My parents are not getting younger, and a couple of health scares with my dad has been a terrifying reminder that they are not immortal. So if I want my ideal reader to read my book, I best write it while she’s still alive, don’t you think?

I also have an obligation to my daughter. She’s getting ready to go off into the world as a new adult, and has said things to me and my husband like, “I don’t want to hate my job like you two do.” Now she’s a pessimist, but I do complain a lot about my job, and while I want her to learn responsibility and stick-to-itiveness, I feel like I’ve gone above and beyond in modeling that behavior. I also want her to see that you only have one life and dreams are not worthless. She was the one, when I told her my plan, said, “Well mom, when you sell your book, you’ll make up that lost salary, right?” She voiced the dream I am afraid to even ponder, because that engineer brain in my head knows all the statistics about the impossibility of publication. While she is living with me, I want her to see the joy, the pain, the price, and (hopefully) the payback of dreams.

Tomorrow this little egg of a dream will be hatched. I will tell my boss. The next day I will tell my team. I will begin the process of transition. I have a list of tasks and the people I think can take them over. Tomorrow people other than my trusted family and friends will know. People will be hurt. People will be angry. People won’t understand. People will mock and eye roll and smirk. People will be glad. People will see opportunity. People might be inspired. Tomorrow this won’t just be about me, but will be about everyone else. I’m writing this today so that I can remember why I’m doing this before everyone else has an opinion. Why it’s important to me. Why I want and deserve this gift.

Twas the night before publication…

On By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, Uncategorized, writing7 Comments

Twas the night before publication, and all through the house not a creature was stirring except me because gosh darn it, holy moly, gee whiz my first short story is getting published tomorrow!  Monday, June 3rd is publication day.  After a rough few years of submitting and being rejected, then completely quitting for a bit, I’ve had a run of acceptances.  (Is two a run?  I feel like it is.)  My first creative essay was published online April 20th and now my first fiction story will come out tomorrow.  Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow….

Grork Dentist will be published by Luna Station Quarterly, a magazine in their tenth year of publication.  I’ve loved Luna Station Quarterly since I first came across Holly Lyn Walrath’s story The Joy of Baking.  It’s a magazine with a cool mission: publishing speculative fiction by women-identified writers.  I love that they do a print and online publication (I’ve got four print copies arriving Tuesday from Amazon, thank you very much.)  It’s easy to share online publications with friends and family, but likewise really special to have a print copy of your very own story to hold, and smell, and sleep with, and carry in your purse everywhere, and give to your mom, and accidentally leave at your dentist office and… and…. I might need to order more copies.

The other cool thing?  I got to write my very own real live author bio.  I mean, does it get any more official than that?  My full bio is online and a shortened version will appear with my story.  Nothing makes you feel more like a real honest to goodness writer than a bio.  That is, not until tomorrow when I see my story.  I bet that will feel even better.

It’s funny, because I spend a lot of time with the Twitter writing community.  (Too much time, but hey, it got me my first publication.)  I’ve read how getting your story published doesn’t change anything.  My expectations will just get adjusted and I’ll want bigger and better things.  I must disagree.  For me, getting my first story published means the world.  As great as this story’s rejections were from high quality magazines — “We loved this story’s delightfully ridiculous concept” and “there’s some good writing here” — nothing equaled the joy of “We would like to publish your story, “Grork Dentist”, in the next issue of Luna Station Quarterly. Thank you for submitting!”  Getting a story you are proud of accepted into a journal you love is a very special feeling.  I’m now no longer afraid of calling myself a writer, and the publication has made me believe that my stories are worth writing and worth being read.  That feeds my writing soul.

Tomorrow I’m going to be refreshing my browser like an idiot waiting for the cover image to change and my story to show up.  Until then, I’ll be like a kid waiting for Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny to all show up overnight and bring me the best present imaginable.  Happy publication eve to all, and to all a good night.

Polymath Puberty Ponder

On By aftheadIn Tickles my afthead, Uncategorized, writing1 Comment

seb-creativo-197860-unsplash

There are times when all my roles in life — mother, graduate student, writer, and professional — threaten to draw and quarter me.  I’m pulled in different directions and the pain of not doing my best at anything rips me apart.  Then there are other times that epiphanies happen, and could only happen, because I see the world from so many angles.

It started with the note home from school.  The anticipated but dreaded permission form for my daughter’s puberty class.  The coming-of-age embarrassment of all children when they start to stink, have to think about a bra, or experience “nocturnal emissions”.  Nocturnal emissions?  When did wet dreams get such a fancy name?  I reread the note to make sure it meant a boy waking up in sticky sheets.  Yep.  The note clearly said “nocturnal emissions.”  Apparently it’s not just new math these kids are learning, but new puberty too.

That same week, I had to submit my graduate school capstone project proposal.  I’m leveraging a work project on alternative fuel corridors to examine how the climate impacts of the World Cup and Olympics could be mitigated by utilizing alternative fuel.  It’s a great proposal that hits the sweet spot of a school project for me: something that extends a work project and gets me credit from both school and clients.  As I was researching my proposal I found some fascinating journal articles that discussed the importance of delivery timing during mega-events.  The goal is to ensure that souvenir and food deliveries don’t impact spectators getting to events, and one of the strategies is to make deliveries at night.

Without warning, my writer brain engaged.  I had the perfect proposal topic.  If I shifted my focus to the Women’s World Cup happening in France this summer and refocused on the temporal aspects of the study I could title my capstone: Calculating Nocturnal Emissions resulting from the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

Now who wouldn’t want to read that?

Photo by Seb Creativo on Unsplash