Failure Is an Option--Part Four

Crunch Time

Four years later, working at the insurance company the last three, my grandfather died suddenly of heart failure. My mother, aunts, and uncles out of state—it was a large family of six kids—I handled the funeral arrangements. A month later, my grandmother had a heart attack and became bedridden. Did my personal life affect my ability to concentrate and be effective on the job? I didn’t dwell on it.

 

The office supervisor called me in for a heart-to-heart talk after my grandmother returned home from the hospital and said that while understandable work suffered as I dealt with personal issues, he hoped things were resolved and I could now buckle down and finish my project.

 

Resolved? My heart disputed. My grandmother had stopped communicating. A stoic upbringing insisted I accept that people died and suffered illnesses. The living shouldered their responsibilities and got on with things. I didn’t fail. I quit for a higher purpose, taking responsibility for my grandmother, my time surely better spent caring for family.

The dreams started immediately—repetitive, haunting scenarios of that last project at the office—the deadline approached and I wouldn’t be ready, endless squiggling lines of doodles heading nowhere, and yes, even occasionally that old standby of being naked and vulnerable at my desk.

Living on savings, I assured myself chances of getting another job would increase at the beginning of the next year after Grandma had time to recuperate, in reality, terrified of putting  myself back out there and in denial about my grandmother’s prognosis. She died quietly two months after her attack, three months after Grandpa. At the time, I would have sworn it had been at least six.

What I’m Reading

I finished the Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference. Way too much information to take in at one reading, though the writing style deliberately aims at helping the reader to retain it. I’m going back to another draft of my novel The Devoted of Imshalel this week with all these probable corrections I need to make buzzing in my head. Good thing I enjoy revising. Some of what I’ve learned is obvious when comparing earlier posts to more recent ones.

More next time.    

Failure Is an Option--Part Three

The Feel of Home

I grew up in New Jersey but felt an all-encompassing sense of home when, at the age of six, I first visited my grandparents in Western Massachusetts. Their house rested only five feet from the edge of a steep bank. A brook, carved away over time from the land above, rushed below past water-smoothed stones. A bitterly cold wind swirling with snow raged outside, and my grandmother served homemade cocoa as we sat cozily before a wood burning stove, its door left open. The first such fire I’d ever seen, the coals blazed or glowed, shifting from orange to red to brilliant yellow.  

To keep his house safely on its foundation, my grandfather transformed the brook’s bank into a five-tiered retaining wall of varicolored and striated rocks that ranged in size from softballs to boulders three feet across. He quarried them mostly by himself with nothing more than grit, determination, an old heavy truck, and a homemade winch. The truck had fat, deep blue fenders and plank benches my grandfather built against the sides of the bed. Rides down the main street of town to the dump or a quarry, thrilled us grandchildren. Laws were different then. 

The calendar-worthy town where my grandparents lived was the place I wanted to call home. I fell in love with the forested mountains and picturesque boulder-strewn streams and rivers. After college, I moved to Western Massachusetts without a job offer or the means for an apartment. My grandparents graciously opened their door. Ours evolved into a beneficial relationship. They were in their eighties, and I gladly took on the tasks becoming burdensome to them. I never felt a stranger to the town and met some kindred spirits I still treasure some thirty years later.

More the next time.     

Failure Is an Option--Part Two

First Grown-up Job

My first solo project required the writing of a lengthy new set of commands. Unwieldy at first, I whittled it down to something workable in a couple of weeks. I spent the next month doodling, pretending to be working as I butted my head against the impenetrable wall of the existing code stubbornly refusing to reveal its secrets. I had no clue where to place my program in the stream of data.

  

My first really grown-up chance at a career and I was bungling it. Shame ate at my confidence.  There were a vast number of things for which I had no talent, but I’d never before been defeated by something I put all my time and effort into accomplishing. Had I?

As I said, I love languages. I studied French and Spanish in high school, the only non-English courses offered. Junior year, I was ordered to choose one or the other as this year both were scheduled for the same time period. Being the only person affected, what right did I have to question or complain about the school’s decision? I never brought it up.

Shy in my teens and young adulthood, I proudly summoned the nerve to audition for my college’s chorus. The tryout included singing a song from a piece of sheet music without accompaniment. I could read music, but this was more akin to singing by ear, something beyond my comfort zone and, to be honest, my skill set.

 

I knew the song and the director plunked out the starting note on an old piano. I was a bit literal minded, still am for that matter. I assumed singing from memory wasn’t the same thing as singing by ear and not what he wanted. I didn’t ask, only said that I had no experience with this type of singing. The director politely dismissed me. Hardly comparable to my trouble at work, I thought.

More next time.

  

Failure Is an Option

Status Update

I’ve searched local markets for scifi-fantasy magazines to whom I could send my short story. I found none. I’ll have to go online and order back copies from the names in my publisher’s guide. I have another slice-of-life short story that needs a home. I’m looking for possibilities. Didn’t hear from the Ladies Home Journal about an entry for its essay contest, so I can assume I’m free to use it elsewhere such as this blog. Everyone can relate to learning from failure or being doomed to repeat it

Failure Is an Option 

I allowed myself to fail—eventually.  It took about five years. Second in my high-school class and earning a bachelor’s degree while on full scholarships, I had been taught that intelligent people from New England Puritan stock, especially those handed such opportunities, had no business failing.

I tried. I dug in, sometimes by mere fingertips, fighting each whisper of doubt and the ever-growing pile of accusing, incomplete tasks on the desk of my first career-building job. The gift of a small “Best Secretary” plaque mocked me. Perhaps you should never have reached beyond that, my mind whispered. Second thoughts of course made not a whit of difference.

I advanced from administrative assistant at an insurance company to data programmer and excelled at a local college course for the computer language the company used. I love words—the look on the page, the sound off the tongue, and its clever usage—even when written in code. In-house training introduced me to the existing programs that blended four branches of incoming data. Seasoned programmers, I later learned, quailed at such informational overload.

With the degree of complexity, lines tended to tangle. It was the programmer’s job to untangle problems and introduce new commands. I wrote with concise elegance, when I could figure out where the problem originated and how the new code needed to be integrated. The existing programs baffled my every attempt to decipher them. Told on-the-job experience would solve the problem, it didn’t.

More next time. Please feel free to leave comments on your own experiences.   

Short Story--Third Part

Short Story—Part III

I’ll Fix You

Molly’s determined to keep me house bound, afraid I’ll disappear maybe. I’m not happy and stay on my side of the bed more. Guess the move’s a go—boxes piling up—less and less stuff lying around. Her friends come over for a so-long party and I see my opportunity. I slip out between arrivals and stay away for two days. It’d probably have been longer, but I got a really big lump under my ear, courtesy of a disagreement over which guy the lady wanted. I wouldn’t say I lost exactly. She just weren’t no lady.

Molly’s really pissed, though if you ask me, she’s overreacting. Keeps mumbling this is the last straw, and she’ll fix me and stop my nonsense once and for all. Whatever. Dragged me to the clinic she uses. I hate doctors and gross medical smells. The white coat shoots me with something then adds insult to injury and prods at the lump. I yowl good and loud. Molly finally takes a little pity and runs her fingers through my hair to soothe. I must fall asleep.

When I wake, the whole world’s tilted. Bright light streams into a really roomy bedroom. Large leafy plants line the floor at the windows. Mostly, the air’s filled with flowers and fresh mowed grass. Molly is suddenly all solicitous kindness. Even the food’s improved, moist and meaty, not too bad coming from a can. I have no ambition at the moment to go out and explore. I’m sore, especially when I pee. In bed, I snuggle close to Molly. She has crap for claws but I still like it when she scratches under my chin and between my ears. I purr like a tuned-up motor.

The End

Next time

I’ll offer an essay about what failure can teach and any status update on my writing.