Somehow the start of school has not brought with it great swaths of uninterrupted work time, nor has it ushered in hours of pleasant nappage and even more pleasant wankage.
How has this happened? What am I doing wrong? MYSTERY.
PS–This contest continues.
Lookit what I’ve been working on! And what I’m going to submit a narrative to. Not to mention the three other sites that are still under wraps. And the smaller projects which are nothing to look at but which have taken hours of behind-the-scenes tinkering.
And the overabundance of children cycling into and out of my house on an hourly basis.
And the near-constant flirtations between T and me.
I’ll sleep when school starts. In a week.
Ohthankgod.
Two years ago my email style was, shall we say, loose1. If it took me a few lines to get to the point, and a few more to make the point, and even a bit more to wrap things up and be nicey-nice, so be it. In those days I got so few messages that spending some time on each one was no big deal. Not all those extra words were about being sociable. I simply hadn’t learned then how to get to the motherfucking point in a timely fashion without a lot of distraction.
But the volume of messages flowing into and out of my mailbox these days and the magnitude of exact, fiddly details they often contain has forced me to tighten up my style. More and more I’ve been trying to make my emails so concise they fit in the subject line — a subject line that can be capped off with (eom). I love (eom)! Even more do I love (NNTR), which lets the recipient gently off the hook from having to return an inbox-cluttering and largely pointless “thank you” message.
Because I have set up so very many2 sites for so very many clients, I often forget that not everyone knows (or needs to know) all the steps I go through to make sure things work properly. I have assumed that as long as site features do what they’re supposed to do, my clients probably aren’t interested in the process I went through to make that happen. Recently I’ve found that’s not always the case:
I don’t have an RSS feed! I need you to set that up for me then teach me how to add items to it!
a client said to me last week in an email, so I very3 patiently explained that they did indeed have a feed and that it had been operational since the instant their site sprang into existence a year ago; furthermore, that for items to be added to it they needed only to write. “No further action on your part is necessary,” I said, and I sent off the message with the hope that the problem was solved and their minds were soothed.
Now, after five increasingly successful dates with the man I’m calling T, including one last weekend that left me happily battered and with cunt and tits as tender as a newly peeled switch, I am ready to turn my attention away from dating and to, well, just him. Never fear: I am under no illusions that this will be the last relationship I ever will undertake, nor that five meetings constitute true love always, nor any other such schoolgirl foolishness. It’s just that right now I have zero interest in getting to know new men when I’m having so much fun getting to know this one.
To that end I have quietly removed my profiles from every dating site but my favorite; on that one I posted a message to the effect that I was no longer looking for new partners. It crossed my mind to say something to T about this, though I’m not sure what. Look what I did, should I say, like a first-grader showing off her A+ paper? Now you do it too!
I doubt that I’ll say anything, at least not unless he brings it up first. Even then I wouldn’t push him to follow suit. This is what I did, I might eventually admit. I took down all my profiles. I have said to the world that I’m no longer looking. But you need not reciprocate. It is not expected. No further action on your part is necessary.
I was asked to give an hour-long (!!!!!) presentation (!!!!!!!) to a committee at the college I’m set to teach a class at this Fall (!!!!!!!!), on the topic of using WP.org in the context of a college website (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Man I hope I don’t sound like a fool.
Man I hope I remember to wear pants.
Wish me luck?
Spent the weekend wrapping up a few big projects while indulging in a marathon of my very favorite show from the 90s, which I loved for many reasons not the least of which was that, as Miss Maggie Mayhem says, “Agent Dale Cooper gave me unrealistic expectations about men but helped me find my clit.”
I’m only half-way through the series but done — yes done! — with my other projects. Hooray! What this means is that for the first time in many months I’ve not got a daunting load of work hanging above my head and I’m looking, yes looking, for new clients.
If you’ve been thinking about making improvements to your site this would be a great time to get in touch with me. I can do anything from a quick spruce-up of your header and graphics1 to a full-scale move of your existing content from some other platform to a fully-hosted WordPress site. Prices for the latter vary depending on how extensive are your dreams and how much content you’ve got; suffice it to say that if you’re looking to move 900+ html pages from a Yahoo small biz site you’d better be ready to pony up your firstborn.
Or better yet, a date with Agent Cooper.
Check out my work here and some testimonials here and then email me fast as I’ve been waiting twenty years for that date.
Over lunch last week I informed them of my potential new gig. “You’ll have to let us know how it goes,” was the only response.
Some hours after it was all over I received an email, the entirety of which I now reproduce: “How was the interview?”
In a reply almost equally as brief I relayed that it had gone well and that my suggested classes would appear on the schedule in the fall. The next step, I wrote, will be getting people to sign up for them.
The answer came a few hours later. “What’s the minimum number?”
I think it’s x, I said, but I’m not 100% sure.
“Only x!” came the reply. “That seems really low!”
And though I don’t know why I once again hit reply. They’re willing to run initial classes with lower numbers, I said, in the hope that they will gain momentum in subsequent semesters. And then I heard no more.
Knowing as I do the inevitability of parental disapproval I kept them informed not in expectation of flower bouquets or blessings but instead because not telling them would cause even more troubles. But Jesus, how hard is it to say “Nice work! I know you’ll do great!”
Apparently it’s far too hard.
Remember how a few weeks ago I said I was doing something really, really frightening that could require the wearing of pants? And that even writing about it was sending me into paroxysms of heart-pounding anxiety and skull-rattling misanthropy?
The intervening time passed with me alternating between unbridled hope that I’d soon hear something and abject relief that I’d not yet heard something; just at the point I was about to1 screw up my courage for the terrifying call to ask if my paperwork had arrived I got an email. We like your course proposal, it said, and we’d like you to come in to talk with us about it.
They liked! Come in! To talk! OMG!!!!!1!!PONIES!
And so today — quite possibly even while you are reading these exact words — I will bathe, shave my legs (Do they check that sort of thing in job interviews these days?), smear my face with some sort of stressflush-concealing paint and put on pants. I have made a list, you see, so that I cannot forget any of these very crucial items. And then I will take my foul-mouthed tattooed self to the local community college and try for at least an hour to act like a respectable adult.
[Oh gods just thinking about it fills me with dread. What if they hate me? They will hate me, I'm certain of it. What if they think I smell funny? What if they think my voice is grating? What if they discover that I'm not all that bright? They're going to find out that I'm a big fraud I just know it.]
Have interview practices changed much since 1998, internet? Do they still ask which animal best represents your spirit? Or who moved the cheese? Will I be expected to recite a list of my strengths2 and weaknesses?
Or have the requirements changed? Will I be required to perform 180 words per minute in semaphore? Compose my answers in rhymed couplet? Demonstrate my competence via interpretive dance?
OHGODOHGODOHGOD who thought this was a good idea?
A million years ago I spent my days helping children between the ages of twelve and eighteen learn to write; a million minus five years ago I helped them perform physical and chemical experiments without blowing up their damn fool selves. Can you believe it? Foul-mouthed, tattooed, ass-sex-loving me entrusted with the delicate minds of tomorrow’s youth?
Yeah, I have a hard time believing it too.
When my first child was born I found that I could not detach her from my breast long enough even to shower in a timely fashion much less don un-puked-on clothes and drive to work. Adjustments were made (to wit, we stopped eating out three nights a week and going to movies in favor of attempting to soothe this squawking-angry new person) and hey presto my job changed from minding other folks’ kids to minding my own. The plan always was that once that ravenous infant was old enough to go to school (without, we fervently hoped, a tit in her mouth) I would go back to school and pick up my career as a red-pen-and-safety-goggle-wielding pedant so as to start really pulling my weight in bringing money into the house. But then another child arrived and then another and how could I work during their infancies when I’d not worked during the first’s?
For the most part — most days, most months — this arrangement has succeeded. It’s certainly not been easy to watch my friends advance their careers and many times I burned with envy over their ability to eat lunch with people who didn’t necessarily feel the need to smear it in their hair; not to mention that they could also, should they choose, curl themselves under their desks to indulge in the naps I so desperately craved. And while married it was always a struggle to assert my firm belief that even though I’d not technically earned half the money, I should receive an equal voice in how it was spent.
Even when the marriage ended I hoped to carry on with the plan of being home until the little ones began kindergarten. The work I’ve done through this site, through Jane’s Guide and through my other little business venture has made that possible, and not for the first (or last) time I must once again say thank you. Thank you for putting food on our table and a roof over our head. Sincerely. Thank you.
But in the fall youngest will be in school full-time, and while I certainly look forward to more structure in his life (and possibly slightly less mud stomped all over my floors) I must also accept that when that glorious day arrives I will have no child-centered responsibilities for seven full hours a day. Seven hours! A day! Not a month, or a week, but every. Single. Day.
Not even I can nap1 that much, and while I have absolutely no intention of abandoning this venture in favor of respectable employment I think there just might be enough time to squeeze in a little something more; for example, a class teaching real live pants-wearing human beings…well, something. Surely amongst all my various areas of expertise there is something2 which could be taught at one of the very many local colleges either as a class for credit3 or continuing education. I mean, right? Surely I can tone down the foul-mouthedness. Surely I can at least temporarily cover the tattoos. Surely I can express myself competently during an interview. Surely I can remember to put on pants.
Believe me, this is fucking terrifying. I am terrified that they’ll say no and I’m terrified that they’ll say yes, for if they say yes I must contemplate doing a portion of my work outside the house and consistently wearing pants.
Tell me not to be terrified, internet. Tell me I can do it. Tell me I’ll remember the pants! Tell me.
“Whatcha been up to lately,” you wondered.
I’m so glad you asked! Let me tell you! In the past few weeks I’ve:
Whew. I always think that I cannot possibly get any busier and then…well. Let’s not tempt fate, ok?
What have you been up to lately? Share in the comments below.
In the past week I’ve finished this:
and spent a billion hours working on this:
Bear in mind that the latter project (which isn’t quite done yet) consists of a collection of nine hundred (yes, nine hundred) reader-submitted stories from women who have terminated pregnancies; these nine hundred stories previously lived on a Yahoo Small Business site as individual html pages.
In case anyone ever asks, you should know that there is no good way to move even a single html page to WordPress. There’s even less of a good way to move nine hundred html pages to WordPress. There is a bad way to move nine hundred html pages to WordPress, and that is the way I accomplished it: Cutting and pasting page by page, letter by letter, hundred by hundred. So now you know. In case anyone ever asks.
But I’m not complaining because these are stories that must be told. They must be heard. They must be read.
So…go read them, won’t you?
