I refuse to be ashamed ...

either of being out of "work" as of five o'clock today, or of needing to go find other "work" in a couple weeks.

When I reflect on all the years I have been employed, fifty five to be approximate, and what I have to show for it, I could be discouraged. I could consider myself an outright failure. However, I do not.

Admittedly, the loot doesn't even fill a medium sized storage facility. And every time there was a windfall, pension plan closing, 401k dispersed, it went to pay indebtedness not to my retirement plan.

So, I'm not a great money manager. I did manage to get four children grown and educated mostly while acceptably attired for the place and times. (Now there are some photographs that might contradict me, but there was abject complicity on the part of the children.)

Most of my income producing years were spent at jobs I enjoyed or endured, selling because it paid, writing and producing commercials because I loved doing it. If I had a demo reel of the radio and tv spots, the speeches, the letters and the programs, I would be proud for you to see them. I do not have one.

But, if you'd like to see the photographs of the places we went, the meals and birthday parties we had, and the many friends we made and still have, it was a pretty good life. You have never heard the whiny "single mom strugglin'" song issue from my lips. In retrospect I have a hard time pinpointing where I went wrong, which choices and decisions turned out " bad" and what I would have done differently.

"Single adventurer with a PhD in Anthropology writes major work on an previously undocumented family in a mountain tree house" would have been a more exciting life but I won't know it.

Now I will spend a week or two visiting with family, children and grandchildren; eating out with friends, maybe even a trip to the Alabama coast for white sand, blue water, great seafood and fun with family there. I will clean out my closet and give the things I haven't worn in a couple of moves to people who have even less. I will volunteer at a couple of places where I should have been doing so already. And then I will set out to find another "job" ... they are no longer "career choices" ... they are jobs. I will need to have a job because, much as I love that chunk of change that shows up in my bank account on the second Wednesday of every month, it is not enough to "pay the bills." My monthly Social Security check is the most money ever contributed to my regular upkeep. Yes, I know I paid some of it, but it is still the most "support" I've ever had. Someday I will have to learn to live on it but not this year. This year I must find a job.

So, if you hear of anyone looking for an adequate administrative assistant or something, have them give me a call ... but not this week!

Retired, again.

After three and a half years as the Administrative Assistant for Bluebonnet Groundwater Conservation District, I have resigned. It is a great job that I have enjoyed. I did it very well and learned a great deal.

Probably I should have tried to stay a few more months. Many friends and family have said, "surely you can take it for just four more months." And I did make the effort. But you know how there is a boiling point from which you cannot get the steam back in the teapot? Well, I reached it and I quit. Very tearing event because a fine young man for whom I would love to work and to whom I could have been a substantive help will be taking the helm after the first of the year.

Fortunately, some folks know the lack of appreciation and serious discomforts up with which I have put for these years and understand my reasons.

Pretty scary time, small town, general financial malaise, etc., etc., etc. I can make it a few months without additional income, very few. For some reason I think I can find another job. I really hope it can be here in Navasota, a town I have grown to love, but if not here, somewhere.

We are having a family get-together in Galveston over the Labor Day weekend. It will be a great time for all those grandchildren to have some fun.. I am so grateful to have a family that likes each other. When grandchildren range in age from 27 to 3, that's saying something. Those big boys have remained close for all these years and revert back to silly summers in New Braunfels when they were pre-teens. It is fun to observe.

After that I hope to visit my family in beautiful Fairhope and pay my respects to gorgeous Gulf waters and its marvelous seafood. Then Katelyn and I will celebrate a couple of big birthdays with a night on the town in New Orleans. Kate turns 21 and I will be the big "70." I am living proof of that old saw, "if I knew I was going to live this long .... I would have saved a lot more money.!" I will never brag about what I did or didn't do that was "right" but I am very very thankful to be in good health and still able to pull my weight.

All y'all pray that I find a job ... but not until I get my fun and visits over with!

My Inferiority Complex

And where it came from.

Beginning with a quote from daughter which she attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" and proceeding to evaluate my feelings of inferiority, I have concluded:

If your parents feel that complimenting and approving of their children, even a little, will make them conceited, they do not compliment them. The children never get conceited.

I think it was a 1930's kind of puritanism. I know that my mother felt very strongly especially about not praising appearance or good fortune. She was inclined to praise educational accomplishments, slightly. She never did it or didn't do it in a mean spirited sense. She really believed that it was important not to feed any false senses of entitlement. Funny, too, because for her age and time she was a forward thinking woman. She had two college degrees and taught for ten years before falling for a handsome and somewhat dastardly riding instructor.

So, I was not praised. In fact, when I walked in the door after appearing for the first time on a local television station (mid 1950's), the only comment about my appearance was that I should have stood up straighter.

We were from very strained financial circumstances but lived in a seriously upper income suburb where a girl's value was mainly determined by how many cashmere sweaters, Pendleton skirts and Spaulding saddle shoes fit in her wardrobe. I had one hand me down rust colored cashmere sweater. I went to work as a record librarian in Milwaukee's first Top 40 radio station at the age of 15 not because I was dying to be in radio but because the job was offered and I was in dire need of a new winter coat. The Teamster's Union was on strike and except for Mother's income as a substitute teacher we were doing without a lot.

I was never ashamed of how I looked, once the braids were cut and I had regular hair like the other girls! My clothes did not look rag barrel. Frankly, my radio station job afforded me a little glamor as did my television appearances. I felt accepted albeit different at my fancy high school. Well, maybe I felt a little inferior.

But my sense of inferiority was born before I was old enough to consent to it. I guess that's my main objection to the Roosevelt quote or the applications to which Dr. Phil has tied it in recent years. When people my age were being encouraged and complimented, especially for shallow accomplishments, I was already convinced that I had made none.

I was flat chested, skinny, had straight hair and was not obviously talented. Sometimes the boys with whom I played baseball, ran races or "hung out" remarked on these obvious shortcomings.

When I was a 26 year old divorcee with three children a man with whom I worked and with whom I was quite smitten told me that I had "great legs." I thought he must be kidding. Now legs are not really a cash crop, not like bosoms or curls, but for a couple of months every summer in Wisconsin, and more months in Texas, one could showcase them . I don't think I took the compliment very seriously.

All of this is leading to a weird conclusion. After nearly seventy years on the planet and in spite of all my Mother's efforts to the contrary, I am suddenly becoming vain and conceited. I don't know why. No one, not my family, my religion and certainly not Dr. Phil, has given me permission. Its getting bad. When a young person is stunned that I am "so old" and look "so good" for someone that old, I'm believing them. I actually see and own photographs in which I think I look passing good. I even change out my profile picture on Facebook with several that I find quite pleasing.

How does one overcome so many years of "inferiority" ... and we're talking the truly superficial kind ... not some heavy psychological trauma, as one approaches one's golden years.

Maybe because there's nothing to be gained, no one keeping score any longer and damn few people even noticing.

But I do look in more mirrors than I used to and I am not always disappointed.

Degrees

And no, I'm not talking about temperatures for a change.

I'm talking about those letters after your name that are earned by years of hard work and study.

I am not altogether unaware of their existence. My grandfather had a Masters of Divinity degree from Yale in 1898. My remarkable mother had a Masters in Botany from the University of Wisconsin in 1929. Both of my daughters have college degrees and some of my grandsons are mighty close.

Personally I lack higher education and I know it. If I really got a do over I think I would like to be a Doctor of Anthropology. Doubting that I could make the grade or complete the many years of study. But it does sound like what I would want to do. With one year of college, an ill thought out marriage and several small children to support, it was never an option. My career path, broadcasting and advertising, was not without well educated participants and less educated but equally bright ones as well.

All this is by way of introduction to my current whereabouts. I am near a major university and the town it supports. It is my first foray into academia nearness. For example; my wonderful Episcopal church generally numbers 70 to 80 communicants on a Sunday morning. Easily a quarter of them have multiple degrees and virtually all of them have at least one. They are lovely, bright, smart and caring people. But they are not like the real world, the world of profit and loss, the customer is sometimes right, we need an answer today, cut to the chase.

Apparently, for the intellectual in academe, thinking about it and talking about it, studying it and contemplating it, take precedence over getting it done. In my 50 years of working experience, deadlines were major. Commercials needed to be written, approved and on the air, sometimes in two hours. Media buys that start on Friday could be begun late Wednesday afternoon and ready on time. Commercials could be 10 seconds, 30 seconds or 60 seconds. Those were all the options. The yearly calendar was broken into quarters, each containing thirteen weeks and bills went out on the final Sunday of each month. These were the norm. Meditation and contemplation were luxuries left for the ... academics.

I am neither slow nor dumb ... just not highly educated. I love my new friends that are quicker and smarter and have the luxury of contemplation, both professionally and in their other pursuits. But it is taking some getting accustomed to.