January 4, 2013

Daily diary:

Today I still slept until nearly noon - despite waking up and being fairly wide awake at 9:30 when the postman knocked at the door. I lay in bed and read a few pages of Terry Jones's Medieval Lives and dozed and when I opened my eyes again it was almost noon. Oh, well. It's officially the last day of vacation, so I'm entitled, right?

The post included three boxes/packages for me - a headset for my computer, new forks because we keep running out, and the Christmas box from my mom (calendars, massive amounts of yummy spices, and a couple of other trinkets).

I have no idea what I've done for the rest of the afternoon. Went to the post office. Caught up on blogs and webcomics somewhat. Maintained my farm on WoW. Finished reading Medieval Lives - I plan on starting A Dance with Dragons shortly, since I finished A Feast for Crows last night, but didn't want to get sucked into it yet, as we're going out tonight to say farewell to a friend (who's moving to Costa Rica for six months).

I'm trying to psych myself up for going out tonight. On the one hand, this is a girl I adore, and it's a major change in her life, and I want to be there for her. On the other hand, .... going outside. And being with people. And spending money. I'm mostly just hoping I can get to midnight before I start freaking out.

3 January 2013

Do something for 30 days and it  becomes a habit. And hey, it's not like I have anything else to do for the month of January. Therefore, I'm going to turn this blog into a daily diary. Bibliophilia will still be for book and reading-related reviews, but Pennies for My Thoughts has languished. Time I got  some thoughts.

And, yes, I know that it's three days into January already and I haven't actually started with any of my vague, habit-forming resolutions (notably: work out so that I can slim down by the end of April). Baby steps!

So, daily diary like, here's what I've been doing for the last three days:

1. Sleeping until 11-ish. Which then makes me feel like I've wasted half the day, and threatens to turn me nocturnal just before I go back to work.

2. Keeping up on WoW farming. Not grinding, but farming and cooking - I'm so close.....but it's also become one of my more time-consuming habits.

3. Board games! Ticket to Ride for the last two days, mostly in person with the Jonface but also on Steam. Just because I have lofty goals doesn't mean it's not also vacation time.

4. Reading. I got 12 books for Christmas, and still have a shelf-and-a-bit full of impending reads. So I'm about halfway through A Feast for Crows now - not one of the Christmas haul, but an essential on the list anyway.

5. Cleaning. Or at least trying to keep the house as tidy as possible so that it doesn't pile up and overwhelm me. Overwhelm is starting to knock at the door.

6. Shopping. It was a bit of an organisational binge, as I cleared off the top of my dresser and discovered that I desperately needed some tiny Very Useful Boxes for bobby pins and ponytail holders. Also an over-the-bath drying rack for sweaters that need to lay flat to dry. Also various other odds and ends and forks.

7. Trying to remember to take  my pills. Because otherwise Overwhelm tends to ....well,  overwhelm me.

Seems like a lot when it's all written down. Doesn't seem like a lot when I'm waking up from an hour-plus nap, with a list of goals and plans that haven't even been started.....

Can I call myself a gamer?

The other day on Twitter, I saw an ad requesting contributing writers to a site called GirlGamer. My first instinct was, “Ooh, I should apply for that!” My second response was a bit more measured: I am starting a new day job on Monday, and I already have a freelance writing job that I just started, and I’m just over a month away from a musical theatre group performance, and my writing deadlines calendar is a bit full of contests and ideas I want to try, and now is probably not the best time to try to take on another commitment.

But there’s also the tiny little fact that I don’t really have any familiarity (yet) with GirlGamer and, even more than that, I don’t have the confidence to put myself in the gaming world.

I’ve never considered myself a gamer, really – not until the last couple of years, and even then I take the attitude of a “new” gamer. I don’t have much of a history of gaming, or exposure to gaming (until the last few years). My best friend growing up had a Nintendo of some generation, and I played Dr. Mario and, sometimes, Super Mario Brothers when we had sleepovers at her house, but my parents didn’t want me spending too much time staring at a screen and exercising only my thumbs. Or something like that. (Plus, we didn’t have a lot of money.)

We did have a computer, though, and my sister and I played some games on there, but never the ones that you think of as “gamer” games. We loved Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (and eventually Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego) and SimCity 2000, which we’d learned at school. We played a lot of computer solitaire of various iterations. For a long time, when I thought about playing computer games, I thought about Solitaire and Minesweeper and, maybe, a Star Trek game that had come with a Windows pack.

In college, I didn’t play games. I was too busy studying and reading and being in choir and falling in love over AIM. If I did play games, it was, again, Solitaire and Minesweeper. Same again in my first career. I didn’t have a computer my first year, and then it was a laptop, and either way it was difficult for me to play games that weren’t pre-installed. My sister did get a Wii for Christmas, and I played some with her, but not any of the “hardcore” games that most people would think of when they think of gamers.

And I still don’t. I’ve been with my boyfriend – who is definitely a gamer, and did his dissertation on the role/history of music in video games – for two and a half years now, and he’s introduced me to so many things, from Rock Band to World of Warcraft (and, ultimately, Warcraft itself), from Final Fantasy to Half-Life. One of the first gifts he ever got me was a copy of Madden 10. (Which I now have a strong, strong desire to play, thank you football season....) But I know that I’m not yet up to speed on games. I have now at least heard of most of the major titles and companies, but I don’t play most games. I don’t have a burning desire to play most games. I think they sound really interesting, and sometimes fun, but most of them aren’t my kind of thing. (I do play WoW, though. A lot.) Some of it is the “life’s too short” thing – I know I can read a book or five in the time it’ll take me to get through most of the games, so why wouldn’t I do that instead? Some of it is the culture – the rampant, uninspected sexism, racism, and homophobia that permeates many (but not all) games and forums. But I also think that some of it may be fear.

See, my boyfriend’s been a gamer for years. Most of his friends – male and female – have been gamers for years. The blogs, comics, and magazines they read regularly are written by people who have been gamers for years. I feel like an interloper, an immigrant, who’s coming in all American and brash and loud and poking at the things that they have built their lives around, knocking things over because I’m not smart enough to know what’s good and what’s bad, what’s solid and what’s fragile.

Feeling like this is reinforced when I go into forums like reddit’s gaming thread, and realise that I don’t know 90% of the references. Or when I watch The Guild and see both Riley and Cyd’s faces fall when they realise that their definition of “gamer” is very, very different. I know that nobody does it on purpose, and I know that it’s a problem with any defined group of people. But when I see things like that, I don’t feel like I can call myself a gamer. I've played the "wrong" sorts of games, for one, and I don't have the right attitude, for another.

Sure, I play games. I really like board games (I’ve got a post coming soon about the board game resurgence in our society), I really like WoW and Civilization and Portal and L.A. Noire (once I learn to drive) and Typing of the Dead, I really like Eternal Sonata and Wii Sports/Sports Resort and Rock Band and Kinect Adventures and Madden. So I’m not not a gamer.

But when I have a free Saturday (like today), I don’t necessarily choose to game. When I have a free evening, I’ll probably spend it on WoW, but I am just as likely to spend it reading or cleaning or cooking. (Partially because of gender-based social conditioning, which is a fight we’ll have another time.) Games are not my automatic go-to.  And because of that, I don’t feel like I can really describe myself as a gamer, and why I didn’t even email about the opportunity at GirlGamer.

Back to the job boards

I am so tired of being underemployed.

I worked for fourteen months at an extraordinary busy chain coffee shop. It was hellish. The work was repetitive, nearly mindless. It was physically demanding, emotionally demanding, and mentally deadening. The shifts were erratically scheduled, with no set pattern. One day I’d be on from 6:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., the next maybe from 10-6, the next maybe back to 6:30. Or from 2:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Or from 8-4. There was no way of knowing. There was no way of planning. There was no consistency in anything except the complaining.

I was thrilled when friends of mine got in touch and said that they were planning on expanding their shop, opening up a branch in Nottingham, and would I like to work for them. I jumped at it. I promised that I’d give them at least a year, to help them get organised and settled. I gave my notice at the coffee shop. I’d start at the beginning of March.

The new shop fell through.  There was some problem with the lease. But no problem, I’d just work for them starting in April, full-time, in their original shop until things got sorted out.

The spring was horrible. It didn’t stop raining for two weeks in April – the wettest April for a century. The double-dip recession hit. The few people who were shopping for gifts or luxury items stopped coming in. They ran the numbers again – I’d have to go down to part-time, or at least part-time wages, until things improved. No problem, I said. As long as I have enough to live on.

Things didn’t improve in the next three weeks. They ran the numbers again. They’d have to drop me to two days a week, with wages to match. It’s not enough to live on, but it’s better than nothing.

But it’s not enough to live on. I desperately need to find something else – something supplemental or ideally, something to replace. Going back to the coffee shop would destroy me, would destroy the fragile emotional balance that I’ve developed and maintained with the help of my boyfriend, family, friends, and the medication.  But I’m not earning enough to pay rent at the minute.

So I go back to the job boards. Back to trying to spin my education, teaching experience, and retail experience into something that will make the finance-focused job market want to hire me. Back to staring blankly at screens, trying to write anything that I can submit to a paying contest, or a publishing house. Back to cutting back on everything from entertainment (wasn’t paying much for that anyway) to food, just so that I can survive for a few more months.  Back to setting myself completely arbitrary goals, just so that I can feel like I’m making progress on something. Back to forcing myself away from the abyss.

I am an intelligent, educated woman who has had the misfortune to be job-seeking in an economy not suited for job-seekers. I had the arrogance to study what I enjoyed rather than what might have been more economically viable, to see education as education instead of pure job training. I have experience in a field that now demands qualifications that I don’t have, and qualifications that don’t advance my experience. And I don’t have the money to retrain.

So it’s back to the job boards.

A reaction to Stephen Bloom

Relatively recently, Stephen Bloom wrote an article for The Atlantic on how he viewed Iowa. He refers to it as “a place of bizarre contrasts”, mentioning its status as the second state to allow gay marriage, and then spends the rest of the article explaining how very rural and conservative it is.

The thing that got to me the most about this article was not how very rural and conservative Iowa is – there are certainly many conservative things about Iowa and many Iowans, although Bloom himself says at the beginning that it’s a state of contrasts, with a very liberal Democrat as one of its senators – but this sentence here: In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. 

Why? Why would a state that is ranked 30^th in population (out of 50, obviously – so just under halfway, and about half a million people off of exactly halfway in the rankings) not be considered representative of America? Why would a state that has one conservative and one liberal Senator not be considered representative of America? And, here’s my biggest question, if Iowa is not representative of America, what state is?

My experience of Iowa – as someone who grew up on the Missouri River, just over the border from Iowa, who has family in Iowa, but who also has family on the East Coast, West Coast, and overseas – is one of the contrasts that Bloom mentions, not just the rural conservatism he focuses on. Do I know people who hunt? Sure. And they then have venison or pheasant for meals the rest of the season. Do I know people who are rabidly anti-gun,vegetarian or vegan, and wouldn’t dream of killing an animal even to eat it? Of course. One of the best places I know to get organic food and vegan food is in Iowa. Do I know people who go to church on a regular basis? Sure. Do I know atheists, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, and people who claim Christianity but haven’t been inside  a church in years? Of course. Towns in Iowa are insular? So are neighborhoods in Nottingham – and, I would imagine, New York.

Iowa has cities – not New York style cities, but only 2% of the US population lives in New York City –  as well as small towns. Iowa has symphony orchestras, and rock concerts, and films. Iowa has public radio and television, and art galleries, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Iowa has a plethora of small businesses as well as big box stores. Iowa has universities and colleges, airports, and the hometown of a former President. This may surprise Stephen Bloom, even though he’s lived in Iowa for 20 years or so, but Iowa has electricity, running water, telephones, and access to the internet.

I also couldn’t help but notice that most of his ridicule was about the older generation of Iowans – at least 50 years old and over. They wear hats, they carry a penknife, they answer the phone with their last names, etc. Somehow I don’t think some of those are unique to Iowa.

But my main question to Stephen Bloom is this: If Iowa, a microcosm of both liberal and conservative, containing elements of both urban and rural, isn’t representative of the US, what is? Should we focus on the eleven biggest states, which Wikipedia says have 56% of the population, and ignore the other 39 with 44%? Do we need to revisit the arguments that led to the House of Representatives having proportional representation while the Senate had equal representation? Do I need to remind him that the US is supposed to be for all people, regardless of creed, colour, or political stripe?

Also, if you really hate it that much, there’s nothing stopping you from leaving. I-80 (I’ve only ever heard it called simply the Interstate by people who don’t have access to another interstate – like, say, I-29 or I-35, also in Iowa – or to distinguish it from one of the many US or state highways that also criss-cross the state, when giving driving directions) is right there. Oh, wait, you say that academia is facing many of the same employability problems that you mention about farming and manufacturing? Funny how that didn’t make it into your article.....I suppose it was just too easy to fall back onto the rural stereotypes that people have been using for the last hundred and fifty years or more.

P.S. If you've read Bloom's article, please please read this one too - it's another, better-than-mine, response.

Thinking about the future

I’ve been reading through the Wordpress.com Post-a-day prompts, and I have noticed that there is some repetition. This isn’t totally surprising, as it would be very difficult to come up with 365 completely unique post ideas. It is often said that there are no truly original ideas - just adaptations and original ways of portraying them - and that is what I’ve noticed among these prompts. It also helps that the vaguely repetitive ideas are spaced out quite a lot, so, if you were doing these prompts in a timely manner, you might not notice. Certainly there’s possibility for wide variation in the treatment of the prompts: later prompts about protesting, for example, pull in reactions to the Occupy movement where earlier ones might be less specific and more philosophical.

One of the trends I noticed among the prompts is thinking about the future.  Write a letter to yourself to be read in a year. Or ten years. Where do you want to be in ten years. Come up with a bucket list. Or a list of life goals. Is 2011 anything like you’d thought it would be in 2001, and what do you think 2021 will be like.

I sometimes think about doing these prompts, but I run into problems. I write a bucket list, but then realise that there’s nothing preventing me from accomplishing some of these things apart from spending my time writing a bucket list (or surfing the internet or watching TV) instead of getting started on things like learning Japanese/French/Arabic or revising my novel. I have a list of books I want to read, and there’s nothing actively preventing me from reading them except my own relative apathy and procrastination.

The other problem I have is just thinking about the future. I learned very quickly that the future rarely turns out like you expect it to. I certainly didn’t expect to end up in Slovakia. I didn’t expect that the only full-time work I’d be able to find with a Master’s degree would be as a barista. I didn’t expect to find Jon. It’s good to have goals, of course, but I have found that setting those goals too far in the future almost guarantees that something will come up to change them.

I can’t think about the future. At this point, I can’t see past February, when my current visa runs out. (Goal for today: at least one job application and compiling the paperwork for the next visa.) I can’t even fathom what my 31st birthday will be like. I certainly can’t think as far ahead as 2021. Will we be married? Have kids? Still be in Nottingham? Still working? I have no idea. It’s completely dark to me. And this isn’t a depression-based thing, either - I don’t think that I’ll be dead or anything. I just don’t have an image for what it will be.

I have goals, of course. I want to stay in the UK, get a non-minimum-wage job, stay with Jon. But those are all either short-term or continual goals, not ticks on a long-term list.

Ramblings about the EU and the Euro

I feel like writing, but I don’t quite have the inspiration or attention span to focus on fiction and/or poetry, so instead I’m just going to ramble. I keep being fascinated by Wordpress’s Post-a-Day topics,  even though I don’t have the discipline to actually do them. So I’m going to ramble based on some of these topics.

First up: The Euro.

Well, more accurately, the EU. The topic as given by Wordpress is “What is the future of the Euro? With all the trouble in Greece, Spain and Italy, do you think the currency will survive? Do you understand why there are multiple currencies in the world? Do you wonder why there isn’t just one kind of currency? Do you think your nation’s money is better looking, or worse, than other nations?”

I’m just going to adapt that to my general feelings on the EU, touching on the monetary issues even though I don’t quite have the expertise to completely understand it all.

First of all, sometimes I have heard the EU referred to as “The United States of Europe”, mostly in a derogatory way. This frustrates me no end, and not because I am from the US. No, it’s because that’s inaccurate. The EU is not like the US is now. It’s so much more like the US was under the Articles of Confederation.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were much more like independent countries. They had much more control over both their internal and external policies, and could opt in or opt out of the “national” demands. The national government had a bit of control over defense, but not the range of responsibilities that the current federal government has. In the same way, Brussels has certain responsibilites, but the member states can opt in or opt out of some things. And the Euro is probably the best example of this. If the EU were like the current US, the Euro would be used across the region, Brussels would have the responsibility for minting and regulation, and when one member state went bankrupt, it wouldn’t completely demolish the overall economy. California was bankrupt a few years ago, but the US didn’t completely implode. (*note: this is one of those areas where I don’t have details or expertise to back up my statements - just the vague impressions that I’ve gotten from headlines*)

But, just from living in the UK, I do know that the EU doesn’t have the same control or influence over its member states that the US has over its. At the moment, it’s an alliance, not even close to a nation - more like NATO than the US. I don’t know if it will survive in its current form - the Articles of Confederation didn’t - and certainly the Euro problems at the moment are shaking things up.

I think the Euro will survive, at least within the Schengen group (and, yes, I know that there are a few countries in Schengen that aren’t on the Euro yet). I think the convenience of not having to convert money, for both individuals and corporations, will outweigh any drawbacks or pride issues involved with switching currencies. It only makes sense for a region with no (or almost no) border checks to have the same currency. If you’re taking the bureaucratic hassles out of international travel through a region, take them all out.

The problem with the Euro, as with all currency, is that it’s an intermediary in a barter system, and based almost entirely on trust. We trust that our little pieces of metal and bits of fabric-paper will be accepted in place of actual goods or services. And when we travel, we are assured that our historically relevant bits of fabric-paper can be translated into somewhere else’s historically relevant bits of fabric-paper. And the reason that a global single currency won’t work in the foreseeable future is because of that trust aspect. There are plenty of places in the world right now where there is no trust - not just places like Greece, which is publicly melting down, but places like Egypt where the government is in transition, or North Korea, which doesn’t trust anybody. Until there is global economic trust, there will be no global currency.

The last bit of the WordPress prompt is about currency appearance, something I am also a bit fascinated with at the moment. First, US currency is ridiculously boring. It’s a bit better now that they’ve added colours to some of the bills, but overall it’s one of the most monotonous currencies I’ve seen. I kind of can’t believe that in a country with so much emphasis on disabled rights and access and all - there are Braille instructions on drive-through ATMs - the paper currency is still all one size.

Second, I work in retail, so I handle money almost every day. Every once in a while someone hands over a Scottish note - and once even a note from Northern Ireland - and I can’t resist looking at it, over and over again. I wonder so many things about currency - who the figures are, mostly, and why they were chosen for specific denominations. Whenever I travel, I study the money. Euros can be fun sometimes because, although its a single pan-European currency, the coins are marked with specific countries’ designs, so it can become a collecting mania. Same with quarters in the US, and the newest designs of coins in the UK with the partial shields.

Third, money can be an important cultural touchstone. When I was teaching, I always did at least one class about the currency of the US and the UK (and Canada, when I could find pictures). There are linguistic nuances to money - buck, quid, etc. - cultural differences with prices and taxes, and also just appearance differences.  By going through currencies with my students (and the associated cultural things), I hope I made them a bit more prepared for experiences in those countries, so that they don’t just hold out their hands saying “Your money baffles me,” spend twenty minutes ranting about why a little kiosk won’t take their traveller’s checks, or expect to pay with a $20.00 for something marked at $19.99 in the US.