Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Is a Santa Clara County PR Job In My Future?
Applied for the job at the county yesterday by sending a cover letter and resume tailored to the job description.
I found out about the job when I ran into Commissioner Pete McHugh and his wife Gail, who is vice-principal at St. John's School. I saw them when I came to join "the ladies" at Baker's Square in Milpitas for breakfast after Mass about a week and a half ago. When I told Pete that I was laid off and talked about my writing plans, he got a funny look in his eye. And then he asked me for my resume. I gave him my card. I told him he could download my resume at www.lyberty.com/rs, but instead about a week later he had his executive administrator send me an email with the job posting.
Sunday, Annette, who is close friends with Pete and his first wife, and with Gail, his second wife, told me the job probably only pays $18-20 an hour. :-{ At first I thought, well that won't pay my mortgage. She told me that Pete doesn't even get paid as much as I was making as a tech writer.
But then, yesterday I re-read the job responsibilities and thought the job might be a good thing for me. In spite of the low wages, it would help me get a wider experience in non-technical writing. I could maybe scrape by using my savings to help pay my mortgage for the one year term of the job, and think of it as a paid training course--with benefits. It could be a great way to gain more experience in public relations and a wider experience of the world of county politics. I forgot to write that it is a public relations assistant job--that requires a lot of article writing and event planning. I'll have to see how things go.
I mentioned blogging at breakfast, and Pete asked me what it is. In trying to explain I mentioned the blog that got me started. I described the posting of the high school girl in RCIA who reported that a cheerleader in the class was upset when she heard that the Catholic Church teaches that sex outside of marriage is wrong. The cheerleader was wondering if she had picked the wrong Church to join. Nobody got why I thought it was so funny or why I was telling that story.
Mary volunteered, "I wouldn't want to read one of those."
At breakfast, Pete and Gail mentioned their new house, which is "behind Mervyn's." I told them I had been to their old place several times, probably to their surprise.
Annette's going to move in with them for about a month. Her house is being sold and she will be moving with her daughter's family into a new house on the way to L.A., and the new house won't be ready for a while.
Darn! The blogger preview function cut off a couple of paragraphs I wrote. Well, here goes again.
I also forwarded the job posting to Leyla, who was the receptionist at Right Management. She told me she had gotten laid off as an event planner a year ago. The job needs both of our skill, actually. Leyla called me yesterday, happy that I had sent her the job listing. We agreed to support each other. She told me that if I get and take the job, and if I needed help with the event planning, I should call her. What a great offer! She's coming here a week from Thursday. We'll walk down to Casa Vicky's for lunch, and put our heads together. Job hunting is all about networking.
If this sentence gets cut off, it won't matter too much.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Career Transitions, Writing, Guys with Ponytails and Tomatoes
Went to the company's career transition office today to look over (let's call him) Harry's database of contacts. Harry shows people his contacts database as an example when teaching the class on networking, so that people who are looking for work can see how to keep track of the people they've contacted. I had asked Harry for a copy of his database to use because I didn't want to go through the trouble of setting up my own.
Harry's database lists all the agents that handle screenplays because he writes screenplays on the side. He keeps track of which ones he sent queries to, whether they replied to his postcards (Check "Yes. I want to read Civil Widow." or "No. I don't have time.") and anything else he thinks would be good to jot down. (For the one screenplay, only eight out of 52 agents sent him back the stamped postcards, and all eight had the "No" checked. Harry had dutifully noted "No" in the column for comments.)
Among the several things we talked about, Harry told me the story of how he made contact with an influential TV producer. It started in the Hollywood area, where Harry, who is an ex Marine, led a boot camp to help people who have enough money to pay the fees build their confidence and get in shape. One student , Carl, came back in after missing a week and told Harry he had been out because he had the flu, and he asked Harry to go easy on him. Harry assumed the curled lip of a drill instructor, and said, "Oh, you've had the flu. Since you've been sick, you should rest. " Harry ordered Carl to rest on the sand, and then while Carl reluctantly laid down, Harry barked, "Okay, now flu bug, start doing pushups!"
Now Carl is recommending Harry's scripts to people who might be able to get them produced. And Harry is dropping Carl's name when he contacts agents.
According to Harry, Carl's first reaction to reading one of Harry's scripts was to say that if a producer were to look at that script he would discard it right away. Harry was taken aback, but gamely said, "Well, I guess I deserve that." Carl went on to say that Harry's formatting was terrible, and explained that if a producer saw such bad formatting he wouldn't even read the script. Then Carl paused and said that the ideas in the script were better than he had seen in years. So Harry started improving the professionalism of his formatting.
I quickly scanned Harry's query letters while he was talking. His ideas are poorly expressed and some of them don't even seem to make sense. For example, in the space of four sentences he had to introduce one story, the first two say something like: "This story is about a widow on her own in the civil war. She has seen young boys killed . . ." Another one's premise is that the tunnel that people (supposedly) travel at death is in danger of being exploited by an evil power that plans to use it as an energy source.
Speaking of how I react to writers reminds me of what happened when I read (let's call him) Mike O'Neil's manuscript about his adventures while travelling around Europe as a young man. He met up with a beautiful young woman in Spain who had visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I first met Mike about three years ago at daily Mass in Milpitas. He was packing up to move to teach Spanish at new Ave Maria University in Texas.
When I read Mike's manuscript I was frustrated by its lack of transitions and (even worse) lack of clarity. Mike was so sparing of details I kept wondering what he was trying to tell us. Since I had volunteered to give Mike my feedback as a former instructor of creative writing, I had written many notes, trying to tell him where he'd lost the story thread, and where he should show instead of tell his opinions.
The market for books about those visions is saturated, but I think a well-written honest first person story could find a publisher. Mike's version of the story does not meet those criteria.
The day I told Mike more forcefully what I thought of his book was when he called me about a month ago. He's retired from Ave Maria and has been back here for six months at least, and I hadn't heard from him. He called me of all things to ask me to type his manuscript for him. I told him I would show him how to use optical character recognition (OCR) software, but I needed to get to my own writing. He's got more time than I do. He was clearly disappointed.
Mike had been bringing the MS. to a writing group at the Ave Maria. When he told me that he had made only some of the changes I'd suggested, I bristled, and that, combined with him asking me to do secretarial work for him led me to be more exactly explicit about the frustrations the book had raised in me when I read it.
What really happened? Why did you give details about one time you met her and mention but not explain about the others? The way you wrote it seemed like the setting for a possible romance. You two were about the same age. You went around the village interviewing people about her. You kept writing about how beautiful she was. Then the girl went out of her way to arrange for you and her to travel to the city from the village together in a car for many hours, and you spent a couple of long afternoons together. You reported her saying many things that to a woman would indicate she was interested, but you never told why nothing came of it. Or had something come of it, and you didn't say because of some sense of delicacy?
When I told this to him, he told me his mother had been upset because he had written personal things about the visionary, (perhaps because she thought they was irreverent?). And so he had left out some information that had offended his mother, including how the girl had let him know she was not interested in him.
I told him that what he'd just said reminded me of another author I'd once known in St. Paul. I didn't say this to Mike, but the author (let's call him Homer) is another one who had gotten to know someone slightly famous and wrote a long book about it. Homer was a psychologist who had met the real Charlie Brown, the person who Charles Shultz had known when they were teachers at the Famous Artist's correspondence school. As everybody knows, Shultz used Charlie's name for one of his Peanuts characters. Homer and Charlie were friends, and when Charlie died by suicide, Homer wrote a three volume book about Charlie Brown the man, writing often about Charlie's tortured struggles with immorality without providing any details. I didn't want to know the prurient details, but the story didn't have any life because the author was withholding so much. I had done a barter with the author in which I had committed to try to market the story for him, but I could not get anyone to carry the first volume of a three volumes tome full of detail-free writing about a fairly uninteresting person.
My not so humble opinion is that none of these men know how to write. And I don't know how a person could teach any one of them about how to effectively use language to tell a story. But maybe I'm wrong, and I'll see a major science fiction movie about the tunnel between death and life being harnessed for energy one of this days. And maybe Mike's book about the visionary will find a publisher who likes his style. And someone somewhere will stock the first self-published volume of the St. Paul writer's story about Charlie Brown.
Anyway, I like Harry not because he can further my career (he can't). I like him because the day I met him was my first day at the career center. I hadn't realized how upset I was about getting my notice a few days earlier until I went to the center. Nobody could do anything right, and I was biting and rude. Harry came up and gave me several long hugs. Which led me to shed a few tears. As I told my daughter today, "What a genius." Harry understood that I was upset and gave me comfort, instead of getting angry at me for being angry.
Harry is short and solidly built with a closely trimmed Lincoln-type beard edging his chin, and the back of his hair is long and pulled back into a pony tail. He says he is a former Marine. It's hard for me to tell his age but he could be 35. I'm not attracted to him as a man, but as a person. What a good guy.
And the rangy old Irishman with uncombed hair, Mike O'Neil, aside from his habit of saying and writing things that he seems to think are weighty in words that don't seem to mean much on the surface and then expecting you to somehow fill in the blanks, well he is a good guy too. One day before he had first gone to Texas, I went to see his condo, since I was still looking for a house to buy. He served me a light supper in the midst of his packing. The meal consisted mostly of fresh tomatoes. When he bought his first floor condo, he had dug up the lawn in the little yard and planted rows of tomatoes. In a world where fresh ripe tomatoes are hard to come by, they were a real trea
Friday, January 16, 2004
Querying Atlantic Monthly, Learning More About Tutoring, and Making More Closure
I changed the wording in the query letter, so that it doesn't mention Liberty's company. Just mine. And I sent it off to Atlantic Monthly. Atlantic doesn't only publish established writers. I've seen them publish fiction by new authors who are still in writing programs, so maybe they'll consider my piece. I'm not a new author because I have been writing for twenty-five years. Twenty years doing technical writing every work day while writing on the side has helped me become fluent. I can sit down and write without agonizing about it.
Today I tried to give my cell phone back to HR, because someone in a Exit Presentation conference call on Tuesday had told me that I would have to turn the phone in. My boss had told me she didn't want to do anything about it. The phone was free from Cingular when I signed up for the Sun program. By now it is probably worth zilch.
The way I tried to contact HR was weird, typical for me. At noon I'd met Hai May at Sun's San Jose 1 on the second floor. I started tearing up when I got to the lobby and for the first time in 13 and 1/2 years had to sign in as a non-employee.
Hai May knows I started tutoring, and she was nice enough to get some materials that her son was using when he was being tutored in a Chinese after school program. After I left Hai May, I realized that HR is just on the other side of the building, so I walked across, and I knocked on the door on the HR side. Maybe because they are trying to protect themselves against irate former employees, they didn't want me to come in. The receptionist said she would send someone down to the lobby. I waited outside the door, and the HR rep who came out was, Jason, a cute young guy who gave the exit presentation I'd attended at the Career Center a few days after I gotten my notification two months ago.
Anyway, after I explained the phone situation, and that I pay for the service directly to Cingular, he said, "Keep the phone." So I will, and gladly. I got used to using it to call my relatives when I was bored driving long distances around Eastern Massachusetts in late Sept. and Oct. It was a 45 minute drive between Martha's place in Marlboro and the Sun office in Acton, to give you an idea of the distances I was driving. And I think it's great that calling anywhere in the country is the same as caling down the block.
Liberty hasn't gotten his shots yet.
Hai May told me that Sun is also offshoring engineering work to China. They are sending management teams to China and hiring local people. If you get a regular Sun salary, which the managers do, then you can live like a King, have a driver, a cook, a maid.
Later.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
How to Survive a Layoff (And Other Life Derailments) With One's Soul Intact
The following is a write up I did after I attended a class by Father Kevin Joyce on the teachings of the desert elders on anger. As was mentioned in an article recently in the Valley Catholic, Father Joyce is starting a diocesan institute for spirituality (see the website: www.spiritsite.org). Last fall, Father Joyce gave a series of talks on the thoughts that can impede a person's growth in spiritual maturity at St. Francis Church, which is where I was fortunate enough to drop into his talk on anger.
Two days before the class, on November 12, 2003, I was one of a group of writers who were given their notices. Until I attended the class, we were emailing each other fast and furiously, and I was joining in whole-heartedly stewing over the wrongs that had been done to us.
When I sent the included email about what I'd learned to all the other laid-off writers, one wrote back how healing it was. One one reacted defensively. I don't know if it helped anyone else, but those teachings that were shared with us by Father Joyce helped me turn around my anger and helped me grow spiritually in the process.
Subject:
How to survive with one's soul intact
Date:
Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:29:56 -0800
I went to a class last night given by a priest who is starting a spirituality center in San Jose's diocese, Fr. Kevin Joyce. Tom [who is an evangelical Protestant] once had recommended Father Joyce to me because the priest teaches a course about meditation using the ancient Jesus prayer, and Tom had found that helpful. Also, other students at the Institute for Leadership in Ministry in San Jose in my second-year class recently saw Father Joyce speak at a session I'd missed, and they told me about him.
The class was about dealing with anger as taught by the ancient desert elders, whose teachings are being written about a lot recently by Catholic authors.
The bottom line is that every way I've been reacting about this layoff is wrong and harmful to myself and others. Gossiping, dwelling on the injustice of it all, speaking maliciously about the people involved, puffing myself up, obsessing about who said and did what and when, all are wrong, and I want to apologize.
Anger is destructive to ourselves and others. Allowing ourselves to be and stay angry is contrary to Christian life. It's one of the seven deadly sins (even though Fr. Joyce didn't say that.)
Father Joyce said that there is a crazy idea currently circulating that we deal with anger best by expressing it, venting it. To the contrary, he pointed out, the more you give vent to your anger the more angry you become, and the less control you have.
Absence of anger enlightens the mind. Allowing anger to master you causes dejection, which is experienced as depression.
Father Joyce did say that we shouldn't just repress anger either. (It comes out in sick stomaches -- I had a stomach ache for weeks before the layoff) and in passive aggressive behavior, among other ways.
The healthy ways to deal with anger are:
+ Redirect angry thoughts by turning them into prayers for whoever it is you are angry about.
Father Joyce told a story about how he had hated someone who had harmed a family member. He practiced turning all angry thoughts about the person into prayers. It took him years, and a sense of compassion that the other person's bad behavior was putting that person's soul in jeopardy grew, and finally he realized he had gotten over his hatred when he ran into the man and was able to sincerely go up and shake his hand. And the man had changed too in the mean time. Prayer changes both the prayer and person being prayed for.
More principles for managing your anger:
+ Don't obsess about what the person you are angry about did or said.
+ If you start nursing your anger, you make it worse.
+ Don't contribute to others' bad behavior by adding fuel to the fire of their hatred.
+ Don't let yourself be controlled by your attraction to another person who is acting badly, or by your desire to have that person think well of you. Don't help an outraged person feed the fire.
+ No matter what others have done don't do evil yourself in return.
These principles are all is in Christ's teachings in Luke 6:26,27:
+ Love your enemies.
+ Do good to those who hate you.
+ Bless those that curse you.
+ Pray for those who "despitefully use you."
How to react properly to injury is also in the center of the prayer Our Savior taught us:
+ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
More principles that help:
+ Replace negative thoughts with prayer.
+ Root out all memory. Keep forgetting. Ask, "Lord help me forget."
I wanted to share this with you, and I want to apologize for all my obsessing over the wrongs done to me and all the criticisms I've been making. I am really sorry.
I very much care about you all, and I hope that we stay connected. And I mean that offer to do anything I can if I can
help you at any time. And I would do the same for Elizabeth too.
With best regards, and best wishes, in Christ,
Roseanne
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Don't Pet the Cats; You Might Get the Plague and Other Warnings
Today, preparing for his trip to India, Liberty started researching the shots he has to take. He sent me an email with a link (which I cannot open for some reason at this time), and he said that his "favorite" warning from the page he sent me is to not pet the cats because you can get the plague.
Lauren has sent him emails discouraging him. She forwarded an email from a friend who said that she and her mother and brother were treated badly by everyone they met in India.
Last night Liberty met at 9 p.m. with the people going with him and the people he'll be working with in Chennai (by phone of course). He came home at 11 at the exact moment at which I'd finished my query letter, and talked me out of trying to go with him. He is stressed enough as it is. My coming with him will add another layer of stress he doesn't want to have to handle.
He told me that people who come from his company are being warned that it is essential that they be met when they arrive at the airport. People who step onto the street alone are at high risk of being robbed.
If an editor shows interest in this story, then I will make my own arrangements. I might try to talk to his company's reps to try to get permission from them to allow me to write about them.
I went over the query letter with an employee at Right Management, Sun's contracted counseling firm for employees who are being laid off like me. Harry is a screen writer who has a lot of experience pitching his screen plays, and he said that the letter I wrote made him want to read the article.
Monday, January 12, 2004
T Day
The rest of my laid-off writing group and I have exchanged emails about this day. Some are carrying on the vengeance theme. One holdout recently joined the avengers against EJ theme.
Thoughts about the boss: Even though I think she quite probably did get rid of everyone who was against her, humanly speaking, I have to think, "Who wouldn't, if given the opportunity, get rid of a bunch of employees who were campaigning against you?" During our last talk, she told me that I was her guardian angel, and that she always loved my writing, so I don't know how that fits into the overall retribution theme.
One thing I'm finally learning after all these years is that it is hard if not impossible to know what someone's motives are.
And since none of us would want to go back to work in the same circumstances, I think it's time to move on, psychologically. We are forced by the fact that we are being terminated today to move on physically.
One of the writers has already gotten a contract job; however brief and poorly paid, it still must be an encouragement.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Tomorrow is T Day
Tomorrow is my termination day at Sun. I've been "on notification" since November 12. Tomorrow my email, Internet access (through VPN and sun.net) and regular paychecks will end, and my badge will probably be disabled. I have been feeling grief about the impending end to it all for about a week now. Euphoria has kept me going for most of these past two months. Hope that this sadness and fear only hang around briefly.
Tomorrow brings lots to do to figure out about getting unemployment benefits, to mail the paper that will entitle me to severance pay, sell stock, besides pay bills.
