The Curse of Being Interesting

The curse of being interesting

Honestly, I rarely tryto be interesting. I actually like to be in the background. Even though I speak in front of people, present classes every week and have danced in front of hundreds of people, I secretly like working in obscurity, which makes my writing habit an excellent fit for me. However, I have made some non-standard life choices. 

It all started out normal: I got married right out of college and had three children within five years. I was a stay-at-home mom. I converted to Catholicism and I followed all their rules for a good eight years.

But after a while, the façade started to wear out and the real me started to poke through the thin spots. I started writing again, and the writing led me to evaluate my life. I wasn’t exactly happy. I went back to graduate school at about 30, while I still had three young kids. I got a job as a bartender to pay for my tuition. 

Eventually, my marriage wore out, too. When my ex and I split up, we arranged for shared custody of our children, and I felt like had to quit and look for a “real job.” I spent whole days applying for jobs online. It is rough to find a job when you’ve been out of the normal workforce for a while, and all you can put on your resume is bartender and mother of three. Aware of my shortcomings, I wrote a cover letter that tried to bend these experiences into a useful work background. 

I remember once, when I was in high school, a history teacher returned one of my term papers with the comment, “This paper is a little too ‘creative.’” He knocked five points off my grade, but I scoffed. How could creativity ever be a bad thing?

Well, it can be bad when you want a steady job.

As the application process went on, I felt like I was getting rejected by companies where I had never even applied. Eventually, I received an enthusiastic phone call from the editor of The Postal Record, the magazine of the National Association of Letter Carriers. He was moving up in the company, and they were looking for a new writer and copy editor. He said they found my application interesting,and they wanted to meet me in person.

Delighted, I scheduled the interview and found someone to watch my kids for the day. I went out and bought a new interview suit--a very adorable brown number with a fit-and-flare skirt. It was businesslike, but still attractive. I got brand-new brown spectator pumps to go with it. I bought a Metro card. 

On interview day, I got up, took my kids to my friend’s house, drove an hour to the Metro, then rode 30 minutes into the city. I was early, but I ended up walking about a mile in the wrong direction before I realized my mistake and went back. So far, the day had cost me about $150 that I did not have. But it was fine, because this job would be a perfect fit. I had trade association experience. I had worked magazines in the past. Yes, it would be terribly far from home and the logistics of getting kids to and from school would be tough, but lots of people did it. I could find a way. 

I finally arrived at NALC, and was quickly shown into the interview room. It was to be a group meeting, with two or three staff members. I was ready to love them from the moment we met. There was an older man and woman, a man younger than me (who currently held the job for which I was applying). The older two reminded me of college professors. I felt that I could come in to work wearing hemp sandals and do yoga at my desk during lunch break, and that would be okay.

The mood broke about five seconds after I sat down, when the young man said, “To be honest, we actually think we’ve already found someone who is an absolutely perfect fit for this job and has the right job experience. We just wanted to meet you, because we thought your cover letter was so interesting.”

Interesting. Yes. My brain started ticking off the expenses of my trip to the city, the lost time with my kids, the blisters sustained from walking two miles from the Metro station…and I felt a strong surge of yuck wash through me.

Things did not get better. Although this was a job interview (with a labor union, no less), my interviewers asked how I would manage to juggle my children and a full-time job. Just in case you’re wondering, you’re not actually allowed to ask those questions in an interview.

Since there was no way I was getting this job now, I decided to go full-out interesting. In response to their questions about my childcare, I told the interviewers I’d “work it out with my partner,” which I knew would make it sound like I had a same-sex life-partner somewhere. I was actually talking about my mom, but that wasn’t nearly interesting enough.

As if the interview weren’t bad enough, I also had to take a copy editing test. I was consumed with a sense of wasted time at that point, so I made the most flaccid effort I have ever put forth on any sort of contest.

Needless to say, the other girl got the job. But I got a lesson—whether or not it was a good one remains to be seen. Don’t be too interesting your applications. Just interesting enough. Save the really kooky stuff for after they get to know you a little. And if that means fewer interviews, fine. Hopefully it means a more precise job-hunt where you are showing them exactly what they need to see for you to get the job you want. Another lesson: always insist on a phone interview first, and get serious about the questions you ask in that first screening, to see if it really is right. Because you need to make sure that once you get there for good, you’ll be able to be your real self, and your office won’t just tolerate it: they will need it. 

On Screwing Up, and Moving On

Self magazine’s segment called the “BS Meter” has been in the news lately, because of a tiny little paragraph that poked fun at a fitness trend: tutus for runners. Personally, I like the idea of running in a colorful tutu. It is fun, it draws attention to the wearer, it helps adults release their inner child, and can raise money for charity (the subject of Self’s mini-article was Monica Allen, 35, who makes tutus and donates some of the profits to Girls on the Run San Diego).

Self was apparently oblivious that the photo of Allen running the LA Marathon was taken while she was in the midst of chemotherapy treatment for a brain tumor.

Self had asked for a photo of the tutu trendsetter without informing her that they intended to mock her product.  Ms. Allen probably anticipated that the skirts would be treated with respect, and that the exposure would be good publicity.

As if publicly mocking anyone isn’t bad enough, it happened to be a young female entrepreneur, who has started a fitness trend that raises money for charity, and who is also facing a daunting and potentially fatal medical condition. It was just one paragraph, but it was impactful.

I recently heard the expression, “true beauty is the ability to see beauty in another.” I also believe this idea meshes well with Christian philosophy, that we should strive to support and love one another. (“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John, 13:34, among many others)

It’s not always easy to do, and it’s something that I continually struggle with. But there were days in my youth, when I did not scruple to try. I remember a time, freshman year of high school, when I let my demon tongue get loose.

I had a friend named “Barb”, who lived down the street from me, and she was friends with a girl named “Suzy”. Suzy and I never got along, and I’m not sure why.  At some point, Suzy got the idea that I was chasing her boyfriend, which is ridiculous, because he was in our grade and therefore way too young to be interesting to me.

When I heard that she thought I was trying to steal her guy, I guess I was insulted by the idea that I would: a) try to break up an existing relationship, b) be attracted to a high school freshman, and c) want anything that Suzy had.

I wrote a three-page note to Barb, in which I let loose every mean-girl thought I’d ever had about Suzy, and her beau. I made fun of her hair: How does she get it that way? It’s like wings sticking out on the side! I laughed at her slim figure, her choice of clothing (I must admit, I had a very limited wardrobe at that time), her performance in school, her manner of speaking.

I intended the note only for Barb’s eyes. I wrote it in a moment of anger. But my wicked humor was spot-on that day. Barb read it in one of her classes, and laughed (at her best friend of several years) until the other kids asked what was so funny, and the note began to circulate.

People I didn’t even know came up to me and told me how hilarious it was. “You are so right about her hair! It is like wings!”

I felt triumphant. I was funny! And it was so easy. All I had to do was make fun of someone else.

I can’t remember the exact moment when I started to realize that the attack on Suzy was completely unfair. Although she had been gossiping about me and her boyfriend, the two of us were on completely different playing fields in the battle of mean. I had a vast resource of written words and mean-spirited humor: she just had a few catty spoken remarks that didn’t go past the few people she spoke to.

It may have taken me years before I realized that, even though I gained a few popularity points from my snarky letter, I had used my writing skill to put someone else down. Unfortunately, it was not the last time the mean girl escaped from my pen. It’s so easy to climb a few steps higher by stepping on someone else that we don’t always realize we’re doing it, or what the cost is to the people around us, to our relationships, and to the general atmosphere of a community.

I am sure that when a writer at Self scribbled out a few sentences about running in tutus, she thought she was being funny. When the editor read it and approved it, she probably thought the same thing. And many people that find the tutus tacky probably laughed at the piece. Then the tide turned.

Although I disagree with the article, I wouldn’t mount an anti-Self hate campaign because a series of people in the editorial chain screwed up. We all screw up. All the time. Life is a process of learning to recognize that you are screwing up, and when you do, not only to apologize, but to learn how to move forward and do a better job in the future.

The publisher of Self has already apologized and published a short interview with Allen. The magazine has decided to stop running the BS Meter feature. I sincerely hope that in the future the magazine, and those of us who were upset by the blurb, will make an effort to do a better job of using our powers for good—for building people up, for encouraging good ideas and positive characteristics, and just letting little things alone when we don’t particularly like them.

Massage Therapy 2: Massage and Writing

I am not a big talker. I prefer listening to people and thinking. I usually express myself best through dance and writing. I always have a hard time putting words together verbally, especially with people I don’t know very well. I get shy and awkward. I’m not an assertive conversationalist, so if other people are talking, I don’t fight to make myself heard.

A massage therapy session takes this verbal communication challenge to a whole new level. In addition to being quiet by nature, I am now face-down on a table, deprived of the use of facial expressions, and without the use of my hands to as a visual aid.

One of the main points of massage therapy is to help you chill out, so one of the first effects I usually experience is the unplugging of my higher brain functions. I have noticed that after about three or four minutes, answering basic questions like, “how did you hurt your shoulder?” require an enormous amount of effort. It’s a little like trying to have a conversation when you are mostly asleep: words come out, but they don’t always join together well and they rarely make sense.

While I am enjoying my hour of massage time, ideas swirl around in disconnected ways inside my head. I don’t say a whole lot, but I think a great deal. While I am there, these thoughts are unformed little baby concepts twirling like a sleepy tornado inside my head.

I can’t say I leave the session with a single idea in my brain. In fact, when I go to pay, I often have a hard time with the simple mental math of tip calculation, and I frequently have to ask the receptionist to do if for me. But in the days that follow, interesting things happen. When I have quiet time, like when I am out on a run, or waiting for my kids in the carpool line, those fragments of swirling ideas start to float back into my head one at a time. At this point, my brain is working again, and I can start to pull these ideas apart like cotton, and begin to weave them into a single thread, or two, or three.

During this phase, I find it really helpful to talk to myself. I like to do this when I’m driving my car, because no one else has to listen to me. As opposed to the massage therapy session, where I fail to assemble words in a coherent order, I am Winston Churchill when driving alone in my car. Baby ideas become stories as I drive around Virginia setting and retrieving radon machines.

At that point, all I need is time: just an hour or two a day of quiet time to get the thoughts down on paper before they evaporate.

The past three months in which I have been consistently doing massage therapy have been some of the most productive of my life, and I am full of gratitude for all the benefits this experience has provided. It’s like the unplugging of a drain. The challenge now is finding enough time in the day to capture ideas before they evaporate into the air.