Keeping up with the Joneses

For the most part, I don't really keep up with what's popular. For example, I still haven't watched Hunger Games or any of the Twilight movies (except for the first one). I don't plan to be first in line to watch the movie Magic Mike when it comes out (though I definitely wouldn't mind watching Channing Tatum or Alex Pettyfer dance around with their shirts off. Perhaps they could release a DVD with just the dance scenes and no dialogue? Or is that sexist of me to say that? But seriously, does anyone even CARE what that movie's about?)

I also don't really care about most electronic gadgets (except for my iPod, because I need to be able to listen to Britney and Katy on a regular basis. Stop rolling your eyes.). I don't have an iPad or a Kindle. I've heard stories of people who camp out in line for hours (or even days) before the new iPhone goes on sale. I would only camp out in line if my favorite clothing store was giving out free outfits, or if Conan O'Brien was giving out free tickets to his show (I wasn't able to get tickets to any of his Chicago shows, darn it! The HUMANITY of it all!), or if George Clooney was giving out free kisses.

Last year I finally replaced my old cell phone (which didn't even take pictures or get e-mail) for the first time in five years, and that was only because I got a free BlackBerry upgrade by signing a new contract. I still haven't completely figured out how to use all the features on it, though, which is why Smartphones make me feel stupid.)

Last week I got caught in the rain on my way to a doctor's appointment. It was pouring, so I put my cell phone in my bookbag and carried an umbrella. That was not enough to protect it from the rain, apparently, because my cell phone was damaged and wouldn't even turn on.

I happened to be within walking distance of a store owned by my phone company, so I went there to see if the phone could be fixed. They said that it was beyond repair. They also said that I would have to pay full price for a new phone (several hundred dollars), since my one-year warranty expired and I wasn't eligible for a free upgrade yet. And of course, by that point, the rain had already stopped. If my doctor's appointment had been just an hour later, I wouldn't have gotten caught in the rain, and I would have saved a lot of money as well as my cell phone.

This was my reaction:

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little melodramatic. After all, I am a member of the last generation that didn't grow up using cell phones or the Internet, so I can still remember what life was like before the Digital Age. We all managed to survive just fine.

I almost bought a new iPhone for more than two hundred dollars (the sales rep said he could give me one of the older versions for a cheaper price). I started to see why everyone goes crazy for these phones, because you really can do a lot of things with them.

But I couldn't bring myself to buy it. I am a broke grad student after all, and I can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone. I called my phone company and they were nice enough to make an exception for me and replace my Blackberry with a new one for fifty bucks. I couldn't help wishing that I'd been able to buy that fancier iPhone, though. I also couldn't help feeling envious of the people who can afford to buy the fancy iPhones. Even fifty bucks is a lot of money for me, and it's times like these where I feel frustrated for being a broke thirtysomething when people in their twenties are already earning thousands of dollars more.

I can't help wondering if those people who camp out in line for stuff like the newest version of the iPhone or the iPad are doing it because they really want all the fancy features that those gadgets offer, or if it's about status. I could say that I look down on all those people, but one of the reasons I finally upgraded my basic cell phone to a Smartphone was because I wanted to catch up with everyone else. (I suppose I could go off on some riff about consumerism or capitalism, but I have to write about that kind of stuff all the time for school. I'd rather take a break from it in my blog.)

We like to think that those things don't matter, and to a certain extent, they don't. But there's always at least one thing that we're willing to splurge on. I must admit that I write in a coffeehouse at least once a week, even though I could write at home for free.

What about you? Do you keep up with all the digital trends? What (or who) would you camp out in line for? What would you be willing to splurge on?

When I Was a Kid

When I was a kid, I used to lie on the grass next to my dog and listen to my neighbor mow his lawn or my other neighbors laugh as they ran through the sprinklers.

Now that I am an adult, I lie in my bed at night and listen to police sirens, horns honking, and neighbors screaming from their apartment windows, saying stuff like, "Turn that crap down or I will GET you!" (Sometimes I'm the one screaming that.)

When I was a kid, I was afraid to look under my bed at night, because I thought that I would get pulled into the monsters' world.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm not afraid of monsters under my bed because I know that they're not real. What I am afraid of now are monsters in human form, all of whom are very real: the guys who try to grope me on the street and the ones who yell obscenities at me from their cars, the mobs of thieves who gang up on people and beat them up before stealing everything they have, and the drivers who care more about updating their Twitter feed than watching the road.

When I was a kid, I used to be so excited on Christmas Eve that I couldn't sleep, because I kept trying to listen for the sound of reindeer on the roof.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm excited for Christmas to be over, because then I don't have to watch people arm-wrestle each other for scented candles.

When I was a teenager, one reason I studied hard in school was because I didn't want to still be working minimum wage jobs after I graduated from college.

When I was in my twenties, I graduated from college with honors but continued working minimum-wage jobs where I got bossed around by twenty-two-year-old supervisors on power trips and customers who apparently believed that treating salespeople like dirt will get them into heaven.

When I was a teenager, I dreamed about Prince Charming riding in on a white horse and rescuing me.

Now that I'm in my thirties, I know that Prince Charming doesn't exist, but his wicked stepbrothers, aka Prince Rude, Prince Insincere, Prince Drinks-a-Lot, and Prince Inappropriate-Touching, are everywhere. I know because I dated them.

When I was in my twenties, I wanted to be the kind of teacher who inspired her students to read and write for fun and not just for school.

Now that I'm in my thirties, I want to be the teacher who makes her students pay more attention to her than to their cell phones during class.

When I was younger, I read books because they allowed me to escape into a different world, and they introduced me to characters who understood how I felt, because they felt the same way.

Now that I'm older, I still read books for the same reasons.

I guess some things never change.

What about you? What kinds of things did you do/think when you were younger, and how did those things change when you got older?

The Grass Is Always Greener

A few weeks ago, I ran into a classmate that I've always thought of as my Grad School Nemesis. She asked me, "Have you published any articles yet?"

She knew very well that I haven't. In academia, it's very important that you publish articles in academic journals that nobody else but other scholars read. The titles of the articles are stuff like "Daddy Issues in Frankenstein" and "If You Use Enough Academic Jargon, Everyone Will Think You're Smarter than They Are" and "A Marxist (Over) Analysis of the Economic Hierarchy in The Great Gatsby." (Okay. So those aren't the real titles. But they might as well be, if you've ever read the articles.)

I was tempted to respond, "I haven't published any articles yet, but I have learned some very effective moves in my kick-boxing class. Allow me to demonstrate," or "If your head keeps getting bigger, you're going to start scaring people into thinking that you're Godzilla."

Grad School Nemesis went on to brag about the articles that she'd published in academic journals and the prestigious conferences that she'd been to. She knows that I haven't accomplished as much as she has in our field, which I think is one reason why she always makes sure that I know all about how well she's doing.

I've never been a very good scholar. I was always more interested in teaching, partly because it's the one job I've ever had that I'm actually good at. My students drive me up the wall sometimes, but I keep showing up in the classroom every day because that's where I want to be. It makes me think of the movie Tenure. Luke Wilson plays a college professor who is pressured to publish more academic articles and books in order to get tenure, but he's a better teacher than he is a scholar. Watching that movie made me feel better, because it made me feel like I'm not the only person who struggles in academia.

I've been feeling depressed lately because of the fact that it's going to take me an extra year to complete my Ph.D., especially because my graduate funding will run out next year. So it doesn't help when people like my Grad School Nemesis keep bragging about how they're doing better than I am and then make condescending comments about how I've failed to measure up.

It's one thing to feel jealous of people you don't know. I wrote a post a while ago about how I felt jealous of Snooki, because she got a book deal (and now I hear she's got ANOTHER book deal), even though she's not really a writer. She just lets someone else do the writing for her. But it's another thing to feel jealous of people you do know, because it hits close to home. In the back of your mind you keep thinking, "If they can succeed, why can't I?" And that makes it even harder to accept it when you don't get what you want, while they keep getting what they want.

Anne Lamott wrote a very good chapter about jealousy in her book Bird by Bird. She said that it was normal to feel jealous, and it was also okay to not feel happy for the people that you're jealous of. We are only human after all, and everyone has their limits. Reading it made me realize how insensitive people like my Grad School Nemesis are, especially because they know how I've been having a hard time just trying to keep up with everyone else. I might not be able to tape the lips shut of my Grad School Nemesis, but I can limit my interactions with her so that I don't have to listen to her anymore. And that's something, at least.

Are there people in your life who constantly brag about their accomplishments? How do you deal with it when you feel jealous?

Revisions

I haven't been blogging lately because a) I went to visit my parents, who live in another state, for Memorial Day weekend; b) I've been watching Youtube videos of boy bands like One Direction and The Wanted, even though I'm more than a decade older than the members and they make the same lame hand gestures and soulful looks that the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync made years ago, and yet I can't help myself from hitting "Replay" while trying not to dance along to their music; c) I've been making a list of all the ways to get back at the jerks who cut in front of me in line, including pulling their hair and throwing water balloons at their pants so that other people will point and laugh at them and think they need to wear diapers.

I've also been revising two stories that I wrote. Here's how bad I am about procrastinating: after I finished the first draft of my first novel, I put off revising it so that I could start writing the first draft of my second novel. Now that I've finished writing that draft, I've gone back and started revising both stories.

I just finished rereading Stephen King's On Writing, and he said that an editor who rejected one of his stories gave him some very good advice: "You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%."

That advice definitely rings true as I revise my drafts. One thing I've noticed about both manuscripts is that I have a bad habit of repeating myself. For example, I noticed that the love interest of the main character in one of my stories kept running his hands through his hair, as if he was an actor in a shampoo commercial or a lead in one of those CW teen soaps. I also noticed that the main character and her love interest kept smiling at each other, as if they were actors in a toothpaste commercial or a Hallmark movie.

I also realized that the main characters of both stories are about as obsessive and neurotic as I am, because they kept worrying all the time about everything. To make matters worse, they kept describing what they felt, which broke one of the big rules of fiction writing: show, don't tell. I felt embarrassed about the fact that there was more description than action in some of the scenes.

There was also the fact that setting did not play a big role in either story. Both stories are supposed to be set in Chicago, but you wouldn't know it because there is too much dialogue and not enough details about what was going on around the characters. They might as well have been talking in an empty room.

So I printed out the drafts and have been going through them with a pen, crossing out lines and even entire paragraphs that I don't like. I've also been adding additional lines and entire scenes in the margins and on extra pages. That's why revision can be a good thing. It helps you learn from your mistakes, and it means that you can take out scenes or even characters that don't work in the story. It also means that your story could move in an entirely different direction, and that can be a good thing too.

What about you? What kinds of mistakes do you make in your first draft? What do you think of revision? How many times do you revise your drafts?

What Makes Me Feel Like a Writer

1. I always carry my journal with me, so that I can jot down interesting things that I see or hear in my neighborhood, on the train, at school, at the gym, etc.

2. I'd rather write than go to a ball game or a party. On the other hand, I'd also rather get three cavities filled while being forced to watch a Mob Wives marathon than go to a ball game or a party.

3. Writing is a way for me to express all the feelings and thoughts that I don't have the courage to say out loud to other people.

4. I was willing to accept it when I realized that I would never be a singer; I realized it when I didn't get into a singing group that I tried out for in college (the members were not shy about letting me know that my voice was not as good as theirs). My voice cracks at the high notes and I start to sound like one of the Chipmunks. I stopped singing after that audition (for the most part). I was willing to accept it when I realized that I would never be an athlete, seeing as how I can't walk onto a field or a court without getting hit by the ball. That's why I stopped trying out for sports teams when I was younger. But I'll never accept a life without writing, because I'll keep writing even if I never get published.

5. Like I've mentioned before, I feel happiest in bookstores, because I get to be in a room full of other people's stories and ideas. And being in a bookstore makes me imagine what it would be like to see my own book on one of the shelves.

6. I'd rather spend money on books and writing paper than makeup, which may explain why I am thirty-one years old and I still don't know how to wear lipstick. That's why I don't wear makeup. The few times I've tried wearing it, it always ends up looking like a five-year-old who's just eaten three bowls of sugary cereal has put on the makeup for me.

7. There's no guarantee that my dreams will come true (even if I try to make them come true), or that I'll get my happy ending. But the good thing about writing fiction is that I can make my characters' dreams come true and give them happy endings, although I try to do it without making the stories sound like an episode of The Brady Bunch or Full House (the cheesy music they always played on the latter show when the characters "made up" always drove me nuts).

8. When I got my first rejection letter from a literary magazine that I submitted a story to, I actually felt pretty good. I felt proud of myself for finally putting my work out there, even if it didn't get published. I thought of all the other successful writers whose work I'd admired; I knew that they had all received their own share of rejection letters. I realized that it was better to try to make it as a writer than to just talk about becoming one. (Sounds obvious, I know, but how many people do you know who talk a lot about how they want to write a book but never write anything?)

What about you? What makes you feel like a writer?

Side note: Here's a funny video of teachers dancing behind unsuspecting students. This is just more proof of how much teachers rock!

Googling

Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll Google old friends, classmates, and acquaintances to see what they're up to these days. I suppose it'd be easier to find more information on them if I just joined Facebook, but that would never be a simple decision for me (because I have this irritating ability to make everything complicated).

For one thing, if any of my current/former students tried to friend me, I'm not sure if I would be willing to accept their requests. Either they might find something on my Facebook page that would get me in trouble, or they might see how boring my life really is and say, "Wow. Now that's just sad. All she needs now are a bunch of cats and some wool sweaters," or "She always seemed like a nerd, but this just confirms it."

I didn't go to my high school reunion, because a) I wasn't really excited about seeing the people who made fun of me on a regular basis, a few of whom thought it was hilarious when they made me cry; b) I don't really want any of them to see me until I make a bunch of money, drop another dress size, or marry someone really handsome (which I will totally rub in the faces of all the people who ridiculed me for not having a boyfriend in high school, so THERE!); c) I thought I might revert back to the person I was when I was a teenager, and I like the person that I am now better, even though I still like listening to pop music that makes everyone else cringe. (Except for Justin Bieber, because even I have to draw the line somewhere.)

So I rely on Google to find out what everyone else has been doing. Here are a few things that I found out:

I found out that one of my classmates from high school did an independent film where he goes around half-naked in several of the scenes (though it wasn't a porno).

Several of my classmates are still living in the same town that we all grew up in.

One guy was arrested, though I'm not sure if it's the same guy I was friends with. The article I read described someone with the exact same name and same age, and he lived in the same area that the guy supposedly moved to.

I went to summer camp when I was fourteen, and there was a boy there my age that I had a crush on. We wrote letters to each other after camp, because we lived in different towns. I found his obituary through Google. He died young, in his twenties. I still have the letters that he wrote to me, and now I'll always keep them.

Several of the girls that I went to high school with now have children of their own, some of whom are going to the same schools that we went to.

There was a guy that I had a crush on in college who saw me make a fool of myself at least eight different times (because I also have this irritating ability to say stupid things, fall down, and wear weird outfits that look okay when I try them on in the store but end up making me look like I just graduated from clown college when I go out in public). He's married now, to a woman who looks like she could be a model and probably never trips over herself.

I also Googled myself, just out of curiosity. I found an article that I wrote for the college newspaper when I was an undergrad. I found my name in the listings of faculty members for two of the schools where I worked as a part-time instructor. I also found online reviews of myself on those despicable Rate Your Professor websites, which were obviously created by students who know nothing about teaching (if they spent even just one week as teachers, they'd take those sites down because then they'd know just how difficult teaching is and wouldn't create sites that let students bash their teachers). I did find a couple bad reviews about me, but I found a couple good ones too. I only visited the site once, though. Why give them more traffic anyway? 

Googling myself and all those people made me realize how much has changed over the years, and how much my own life has changed. Despite all the information that Google can provide, I'm not sure if I would recognize most of those people if we passed each other on the street. I wonder if they would recognize me.

What about you? Have you ever Googled yourself or people that you used to know? What kinds of things would you not want people to know if they Googled you? What kinds of things would you want people to know if they Googled you?