126.

Ever since I moved into my apartment, my creative workflow has been off. I've fiddled with it here and there, and small changes have made small improvements, but it hasn't felt really good to me in over a year. I've been missing the juice, the joy of it - the thing that used to make me come home from work full of colorful thoughts and get right to making things. I still have plenty of ideas, but they don't seem to gel right. It often takes me three or four times longer to get a design right than it once did.

A huge part of my enjoyment in my design work comes from pure tactile contact with my bead collection. Being able to move them around and see them together and fidget with them makes things happen in my head. I've often joked about making a giant ballpit for them and playing in it like a sandbox. A couple of weeks ago, I was frustrated beyond the limit with my inability to find a good workflow, and the ballpit of beads joke suddenly seemed like the greatest breakthrough I could imagine. 

So I cut a huge cardboard carton apart into wide strips, taped them to the edges of my kitchen table, and dumped out 11 boxes and two drawers full of vintage Lucite beads. It made a crashing enormous noise, and it felt wonderful, but it still wasn't quite what I needed. After staring at it for two days, I knew what had to happen. I needed the beads to be free range. I loved that idea, but it also made me incredibly nervous. I manage inventory in order to be able to repeat designs by knowing exactly how many of which beads I have, and having all of them together in bags or on strands where I can find them easily. The work still wasn't right, though, and it had to be done. With some smiling encouragement from the good man who holds my hand, I bit my lip and closed my eyes and changed everything about the way I work and run my business. I dumped all the beads out of all the bags, and I threw the bags out. 

The result is pure joy. It's a sandbox full of color and texture and shape and I can't stop touching it and it's unlocked dozens of ideas and put a huge giddy smile on my face. Every time I walk past it, I reach in and give the beads a stir and see something new. I pull out little handfuls of color, and make them sing. I've made more new things in the last 10 days than I have in two months. It feels fantastic. 

My candy revolution means that I'm only going to be making one of a kind designs for a while. It's difficult to find specific beads to pull multiple pieces together for inventory. But I find I'm excited about that idea - offering unique pieces of jewelry to my clients and my stockists sounds like fun.

I'll be in my playground; keep your eyes open for new work at urban legend!

64.

I need to work.

43.

I'm having one of those phases where I'm full of ideas. The more ideas I have, the more ideas those ideas generate. They're tumbling all over each other, with tangly tentacles and cross-pollinating vines and growing a giant idea-thicket. There aren't enough hours in any given day for the ideas I have going right now, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I just need a bigger notebook. And bigger bead boxes. And more embroidery thread, and another stash of white linen, and while you're at it, some black silk fabric and could someone service my sewing machine and pick up some new bobbins for me, and where the devil are my little scissors, and I should probably get those sharpened and am I out of embroidery hoops AGAIN and if I'm going to keep stitching on paper I should probably get some of those white cotton gloves so I don't leave marks while I'm working and have I remembered to order silver hooks and brass snake findings, and what was the name of that shop that had the amazing vintage chain with the brass knots?

I'm really enjoying my work right now. I'd write more, but I had an idea while I was typing that last paragraph, and I still have to list the 30 things I made this week, and there are orders to pack and ship as well. I gotta go.

37.

9:07 a.m.: An impossibly tiny boy with a downy cloud of straight black hair walks into the office with great purpose and, holding up his fingers to show me, lisps, "I found this tiny of a bug, but I wouldn't really worry about it. It only had one leg, but it was dead, but I put it out the window." I said, "Good job, buddy." He nodded, and left.

Today was my second day of actual work as a substitute secretary for the school district. I've spent the last two days in the same school, and they have both been nine non-stop hours of work and pandemonium (pandelerium is a better word for it). I'm exhausted, and I haven't eaten properly in two days, and all my parts hurt, but I HAD FUN. That may seem really strange for two days that included a 911 call and the gushingest bloody nose I've ever seen in my entire life and one student injury report and no lunch or bathroom breaks, and I can't even tell you how many phone calls, but it's true. I missed this. This is a completely different animal from the job I had at New Trier, but it bears enough similarity that I felt at home even in a completely new environment. I don't want to do this all day every day anymore, but golly I'm good at it, and it can be so fun.

This was an elementary school, so the kids were much younger than I'm used to and they are hilarious and so sweet. One boy came into the office no less than five times in two days to report on stuff that was in the urinal in the boys' bathroom across the hall. "Um, there's a pencil in the urinal." "Ok, darlin', I'll tell the custodian." "Ok, but actually? I'm a boy."

I'm too tired to blog any further than this tonight, but I've had a pretty great two days. I'm feeling much less nervous about this job, and I'm looking forward to more stories. Maybe next week, after I've caught up on my sleep and bathroom breaks.

36.

First real day of work at the new job today. Too exhausted to write full sentences, but I had such a good day. And now, Columbo.

35.

I've been thinking a lot recently about jobs and how they feed into our ideas about ourselves. This isn't new ground for me. I've spent the last few years reassessing what I want from my life, how I want to work and what I want to bring to the work I do. There are some new elements that have come into my view lately, though, because I've been looking for steady, satisfying work for almost a year now. I'm in the middle of sorting out some of my ideas, so this is probably going to be a series of small posts.

For today, I want to slay a dragon that's been nagging at me for five or six weeks. I had a job interview some weeks ago in which I was asked, "What does friendly mean to you?" You know how it goes: you're sitting there in your interview, and you want to make a good impression and also manage to convey who you are and how you might be valuable to the company. I was doing my best to do that, so I answered the question as best I could. 

But here's the thing: that's a stupid question, and it's weirdly aggressive. It's been nagging me ever since, and it finally hit me, the thing that put the question into the right context for who I am and what I think is important. I wish that when I'd been faced with that question, I'd said, "Thank you so much for seeing me today. I appreciate your interest and the opportunity. But this job isn't going to be right for me, and I don't want to waste your time." If I'd felt particularly courageous and eloquent and firmly rooted in myself, I would have added that I think that's an unfriendly question. It's not a question one person would ever ask another person in natural human interaction. It's a corporate question, designed to elicit a demonstration of performance in corporate flavor. Empirically, I can appreciate the need for a company to do that, but it's not how I want to interact with people, and I knew from the sense of sinking panic in my stomach when it was asked that this wasn't a place I wanted to be. I just ignored that feeling because I needed a job, and I carried on with the rest of the interview.

As it happens, I didn't get that job, but that was a relief to me. It took me several weeks to work out exactly why it bothered me so much, though, and that started me thinking all over again about how sense of self is tangled with ability and performance and value as ascribed by an outside party. It's tricky stuff, and I'll probably be thinking about it for the rest of my life. For now, though, I'm going to go ahead and absorb this little episode and try to remember it the next time it applies. If a job interview - not my performance in the interview, but the actual interview itself - makes me feel like I've lost my moorings, it's not the job for me. 

day 24.

As of Monday, I'm officially not a criminal. I mean, I wasn't one before, but now there's paperwork. I am also, as of Monday, officially employed by Portland Public Schools as a substitute secretary. Most of me is thrilled to have finally landed a job - not only that, but a job in the school system! Part of me is cringing at how hectic this is going to make my life for a little while, as I'm adjusting to a schedule that has the potential to be different every day.

I'm spending this week trying to wrap up as many dangling projects and obligations as I can, as well as trying to make as much jewelry as I can. As I've recently been reminded, I like to work at a medium level of busy/chaotic. It keeps me sharp and creative. But I'm curious about the effect this change is going to have on my writing project. I haven't given much attention to my posts this week while I'm focused on other things. I'm hoping that won't continue to be the case, as I'm away from my computer more and more. Going out into the world all day every day is the best way to meet stories, though, and I'm pretty sure there will be some good ones to tell.

And on this short and scrappy note, I'm off to keep slaying the dragon Todolist.

soulmate job.

I got the best job I've ever had because I had a pack of cigarettes on the front seat of my car.

When I moved to Nantucket in the fall of 1998, I knew no one and had a part-time job working in the office of the Episcopal church. I worked with a wonderful woman named Joan who shared a house with a former teacher. They ran a heavy-duty book group that met once every couple of weeks, spending several weeks on a single book. This was long before I started making jewelry, and I was shy and had a hard time meeting people. I spent that first winter going to work, hiding in my room reading, and cursing the buffeting wind that howled off the harbor round the clock. A book group seemed like a really good idea - particularly in a cozy house in town, on a sheltered street, a mile inland. When I joined, they were just starting Robert Pinsky's translation of Inferno. I hadn't read Inferno since my first year of college, and really loved the new edition. Several weeks into the group, they invited the owner of the local bookstore to come to the group and read to us. Mimi was fluent in Italian, and she read several passages from the original in that beautiful language, sounding rich and liquid and as if flames were licking around the words.

After the group, I offered her a ride back to the store on Main Street. She plucked a pack of cigarettes off my passenger seat, sat down, and fished one of her own out of her massive linen pockets. She said, "Well, you read and you smoke. Would you like to come and work for me?"

Oh yes, I would. Very much. Mitchell's Book Corner was a legend in Nantucket. For its size, it's the best-curated bookstore I've ever seen, touching on every subject with an eye to both classics and new books. Mimi had a sterling reputation for selling exactly the right book to the right reader, whether she'd known them all her life or they'd just walked into the store five minutes earlier. A local business heavyweight nicknamed her the Maven of Main Street. She'd read everything, averaging more than a book a day for most of her life. She had excellent business sense, a steel trap memory, a fierce temper and her own way of doing things. Mitchell's didn't use a computerized inventory system (in fact, they didn't own a computer when I started there, and did all their buying by phone from publishers and with the aid of monthly microfiche updates from distributors). Mimi knew the stock of the store inside out from memory, and she expected her booksellers to do the same. 

I'd worked in several bookstores before, but this was a whole new level of fun and challenge. Knowing the full inventory of a bookstore by memory means you absorb the life of books into your body. Stocking and straightening shelves, climbing through the dusty basement shelves doing inventory, I pulled the knowledge of books into myself through my fingertips. There is nothing more satisfying than taking a list of books from a customer and, without looking anything up, pulling Don't Stop the Carnival, Nightbirds on Nantucket, Snow Crash, Motherless Brooklyn, How to Cook Everything, Vile Bodies, A Coney Island of the Mind, The Tipping Point and A People's History of the United States off the shelves. (That's an actual list someone gave me once.) I adored it, and I was good at it. For three and a half years, I lived in that bookstore like it was a second skin. One of the most contented moments of my life was leaning in the door on a late evening before locking up, watching the rain, smelling that paper-in-humidity smell and being aware that I was in my exact right place.

Nantucket, as it turned out, was not my exact right place and I went back to Chicago in the autumn of 2002. Mimi had retired half a year earlier, and although I still loved Mitchell's, it didn't feel the same without her. I've had good jobs and bad jobs and jobs that were just a job, but there was never another one like that. I was talking to my brother last weekend about my current job hunt, and said that I'd like to go back to bookselling. He said, "Really? You still want to do that?"

Oh yes, I would. Very much.

wear your story.

One of the most rewarding things about designing jewelry is hearing from a customer who identifies something I've made as their signature piece. Reaching for the same pair of earrings day after day because it makes her feel like herself. Wearing a particular necklace because she knows it will make her smile when she looks in the mirror. Putting on a custom bracelet as a reminder of her strengths before starting a difficult day.

Bracelets have always been my favorite pieces to design and make. To me, they're more narrative than any other form of adornment. ID bracelets, medic alerts, friendship bracelets, mourning armbands, cuffs - something about wearing that encircling form on our arms speaks to identity and sense of self in a very powerful way. They can be a mark of possession or self-possession, a talisman to the wearer - intimate, kinetic, sometimes hidden. You can't look at a whole bracelet at once when it's being worn - it's in constant motion, with different focal points as it moves. The story is in motion.

Here are some of the stories I've been working on recently for Leaves of Glass. This week I'm making handcuffs - but that's a story for later.

please stay tuned.

I've been taking my product photos the same way for years, and I had the thing down to a science. I get fidgety with my styling, but I've been able to get the same clarity and color for a long time. And now here I am in a new place with new light from new directions and the backgrounds I normally use are packed away who knows where, but I'm doing new work and it needs to be photographed. IT IS NOT GOING WELL, people. I took three sets of photographs of the new pieces I made this week, and none of them are singing to me. It's going to take a lot of experimentation and practice to get them back up to standard, I think. In the meantime, I have work to list so I'm using the third set of photos. My sense of pride in presentation has taken a hit, though; so consider this an excuse post to salve my ego. Argh.

In less frustrating news, I'm enjoying working with vintage glass again and have several new pieces that will appear over the coming weeks. I'm adding to my occasional Holy/Shadow series, and am doing new interpretations of some older designs. I'm hoping to start work soon on a collection inspired by {bloody, dark and grim} fairy tales.

what's next?

It's been a long time, and I'm trying to remember how this blog thing works. Um...I put words, yes? Right. Let's see how I do with that.

It's been three weeks since I got here, and I'm starting to feel like I'm home. The first ten days or so were a blur of holiday celebrations, family, friends, meeting people, exhausted sleep and disorientation. After that was a period of sort of shell-shocked looking at all the new things in my life. But around the middle of last week I started to feel like I had a routine going and some idea of what I need to do to start building my new life and take care of myself and let the wheels grip again.

I've lived alone for a long time, and to my delight and gratitude I'm finding that I love sharing this transitional phase of my life with these two people who mean the world to me. They're incredibly generous to share their home and life with me, without any idea of how long they'll be stuck with me; and we do have so much fun together. I've started to look for an apartment, but it looks like that process might take some time; I'm not anxious about it, though. Typically, I'm a really impatient person (cue pause for my loved ones to smile as they read this), but the past year has given me a tolerance for uncertainty that I've never had before. I've been living in some level of flux for several months now, and I almost feel like I'm getting good at it. It's not something I want to do forever, but it's good for me to exercise those flexibility and portability muscles.

There are three excellent pieces of wisdom that are serving me well right now. The first was a farewell from a friend in Chicago: "It's going to be great, but it might take a minute." The second was from one of my oldest and dearest friends, when I wrote to her just after Christmas that I was alternating between panic and joy on a minute-by-minute basis: "I know those feelings of panicky joy. Lean into them. Being off kilter can be quite amazing." And the last was not directly a piece of advice, but something profoundly useful that came up in conversation: "I love being the stupidest person in the room. The newest employee, the worst musician. There's no pressure and everything to learn." I am, right now, the stupidest person in the room in almost every sense. New place, new life, no job and no home, a totally new awareness of my roles and possibilities. The feeling that I have everything to learn, and no one except myself to impress, is very freeing. (That being said, I still have fairly high standards for impressing myself and I have to keep working at it. But my point, I hope, is clear.)

Two days ago, Shana and I went and got my jewelry supplies out of my shipping container. She loves me. She spent hours clearing a space for me to work in her studio. Last night I made several new designs with vintage glass. I think my entire being breathed a sigh of relief. It's been over a month since I made anything new, and many months since I made anything with glass. I've been itching to get back to it, and it felt so great to hold my work in my hands again. I look forward to being back to full time designing soon; look for new pieces to appear at both Leaves of Glass and urban legend in the next week.

In other news, surprising to no one, Portland is beautiful. The natural landscape is very similar to what I grew up with in Vermont, but on a larger scale. Taller trees, and real  mountains. Seriously, very large mountains. We drove to Seattle last week to see the King Tut exhibit, and I got my first in-person look at Mount St. Helens. I wasn't expecting to see it, and it's a breathtakingly iconic sight. I lost my head for a little while, thinking about the history of that mountain and its unmistakable shape. I was practically on tiptoe in the front seat of the car and Shana said, "You can't take your eyes off it, can you?" No, I can't. That's going to stay with me for a while. I feel like I should be taking more pictures, but I'm too gobstruck half the time to think of pictures. I'm just soaking it all up.

There are so many new things to absorb and think about, and I've not been doing a very good job keeping up with anything online. My blog, my shops and my social networking are all a bit of a shambles, but I'll start surfacing more often now, I think. Things are returning to a whole new kind of normal. I'm leaning into my off-kilter. I'm happy. Wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted.

privileged.

At the beginning of the summer, I wrote a blog post that was, in part, about the terrible stories I hear in doing my job. I was at the zenith of my burnout, as I am every year in June. This past Friday, I went in to the office for a few hours to get some preliminary work done, and I started thinking about the really great things I've seen in the ten years I've done this job. Most of them aren't things I ever talk about to anyone outside of my office, for confidentiality reasons. Even if you're not using names, you get used to keeping things to yourself. The strength and self-knowledge of a 16-year-old kid can be an amazing thing to witness, and I want to remember these stories. I was thinking about The Breakfast Club on Monday, and realized that since I've been in my job, I've met and gotten to know students who remind me of all five of those people. I'm going to use their names to tell these stories.

Bender was referred to social work for a mandatory three sessions, following a suspension for damage to school property. He spent all three sessions facing the therapist's door, with his arms crossed. The thing is, though, he kept coming back after the three sessions were up. He kept facing the door. Until one day he sat down, with his arms crossed. Then one day he talked, with his arms crossed. Then one day, he uncrossed his arms while he talked. Eventually, he talked enough that so that he could be removed from his abusive mother's custody, and he moved in with a local host family. Two years later, he graduated. He went to community college and studied psychology. He's a therapist, and does motorcycle repair as a side business.

Andrew's father cheered him at every football match, then beat the shit out of him on the weekends, being very careful not to hit him anywhere obvious. The first time he hit Andrew's little brother, Andrew came into my office and reported his father to Child Protective Services. Dad was arrested and the little brother never got hit a second time.

Claire found out her best friend was cutting herself, and dragged her into the department and demanded to see a therapist, while her friend cried and swore she'd never speak to her again. Claire's circle of friends ostracized her, and her own mother screamed at her in my office that you never, ever tell. It took 18 months for her friend to talk to her again, but the friend was hospitalized (twice) and got help and stopped cutting.

Brian was nearly run over by another student in a car, a boy who had been bullying him for months. He reported the incident, and found out that the other student was the son of a prominent and influential community member. He decided to press charges anyway, against his parents' wishes.

Allison got her drunk mother out of bed every morning for the three years I knew her. She bathed her, dressed her, and fed her breakfast. If these measures failed, she called her mother's office with an excuse. Then she got her little sister out the door to grade school. She then arrived late to school herself. She managed to keep up a B+ average and won an art scholarship when she graduated.

There are dozens of other stories I could tell. A senior boy who was told he had a degenerative eye disease and would be blind before he finished college. While completing his senior year, he also completed a life skills course and then enrolled in a training class so he could help other kids who would go through the same thing. A girl who has been diagnosed with a neurological disorder who decided to remain in school as long as she could while her own mind turns on her. She keeps a journal so she will remember who she was. An autistic boy who is fascinated with dates and incorporates the numbers into staggeringly complex and beautiful self-portraits. More students than I can count who have reported their friends' suicidal ideation, drug use, self injury or abusive homes, and have literally saved a life. I've seen children perform acts of enormous selflessness, bravery and love that were beyond the range of the adults who are supposed to protect and care for them. Yes, true: my job takes a toll. It's hard to watch suffering, particularly in children. I've felt many times that this job has crowded out my capacity to be a careful and supportive listener to the people I love, whose stories I would choose to hear. There are times when I've missed cues for help from people close to me who needed me, and I wish that wasn't true. But my job is also an incredible privilege. It's a privilege to be trusted with someone's story, and to be trusted with their comfort and safety, however briefly. I don't regret that, and I don't want to forget it.

(Claire didn't end up with Bender. She dated Brian. They met sitting in front of my desk, waiting for the cops and their parents to show up.)

the last last day.

Today was the last day of school at Anytown High. This was my tenth last day of school, and the last one I will ever have at this job. Usually, by this point in the year I'm aching so hard for this day that every minute of it feels significant. This year, my mind is so taken up with other things that I didn't even remember it was the last week of school until I was on my way in on Monday morning. Today felt almost like any other day (apart from the deafening volume of teenagers who can't wait to get out).


It was a busy day, and as sometimes happens with significant moments, it went by mostly without thought. I did have a twinge while I was cleaning out old student files for shredding and remembering relationships with students who have been important to me. That happens every year, but it felt especially poignant this year because I won't see any of them again. Usually graduates will come back and say hello when they visit on holidays, but I'll be gone by that time next year. My final goodbyes to graduating students I've loved this year were offhand and quick - have a wonderful summer, good luck at college, let us know how you're doing.


My usual routine is to work 3-5 extra days after school gets out, tying up loose ends and doing whatever projects I haven't had time for during the year. I always do this immediately to get it over with so I can forget about social work and tears and anxiety and stress and spend the following nine weeks immersed in my business and personal life. This year, my boss is experiencing some separation anxiety because he knows I'm leaving at the end of September. He asked me to come in one day a week for the next few weeks instead of doing it all at once, and I agreed without even thinking about it. The stress of the job has lifted, knowing that it's almost over. I won't mind going in over the summer, and they won't be full days. Plus, that means I'll work next Monday on a project of my own and then I'll be free already on Tuesday.


That doesn't really sound momentous, but it's a huge difference from past years for me. It means I'm already gone in spirit, and the toll that this work takes has started to lift. This job has been good for me, and I'm very good at doing it. I took it because it was offered and I needed work, but it's been a good fit and I've learned a lot. It's taken a massive toll on me as well. I work inside a concrete box, with no windows and no fresh air unless I go out for a walk (which I try to do at least once a day if I can). That's contrary to everything in me. I need light. I need air. I need to know what the weather is doing. I've heard more terrible stories than I can possibly enumerate, both first hand from students and second-hand from therapists who needed to unload them. I am stop number one for therapists who need to unload what they hear. In the past ten years, I've lived through student suicides, accidental deaths, one appalling murder, overdoses, family violence, stories of incest and abuse, the deaths and professional downfalls of colleagues, and the suicide of a friend and member of my department. I'm fucking tired.


It felt strange to arrive at the end of the work day without some kind of fanfare, but it was a good day. A normal day, which seems like a fitting way, after all, to mark the occasion. I backed up my files. I pulled all the materials that need to be shredded. I answered email and voicemail and made a list of what needs to happen on Monday, and what needs to happen in August when I come back to the office. I hugged my coworkers and wished them a good summer. I walked out the door and went home to what I think of as my real life, the one that's moving on to something new.

the true adventures of pellet in high school

So I think I mentioned I have this beanie baby hamster thingy. I acquired him several years ago, and he's been sitting on my desk as a sort of unofficial mascot as long as I've worked here. The kids seem to like him; sometimes they ask if they can have him (no.). Staff members like to arrange him in poses, give him props, bring other stuffies to sit next to him, and on occasion, perform nefarious deeds such as Kidnappings or Concealments.

Having absolutely no ideas for a February blog project, I've decided to make February the month of Pellet. I'll be sharing some of his adventures and pictures. The picture above is Pellet's current pose, looking at me over my monitor. One of the interns balanced him on the very narrow top edge of the screen and when he got jostled he performed some kind of beanbag-butt-backwards magic flip and lodged here:

And there he'll stay until his next outing. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Pellet in High School!

while contemplating my quote board

(which is covered with about a thousand tiny slips of paper), I came across this gem: "When love and duty are one, then grace is within you." - W. Somerset Maugham (maybe from The Painted Veil? I'm not sure.).

And for those of you turning the page and picking up piles of things to look underneath them, yes: this is the entire post. Way to phone it in, Morton.