That's My Bix!

I had a wonderful chat with my LV bestie Lindsay today. We turned over various plottings for Life After All This, and came up with a way to revolutionize the literary community and galvanize it in a way that solves the problem of both publishers and the adrift independent writers. The problem is that I absolutely could put my brain toward fixing that problem — the issue is that turning the million dials and levers to fix the problem will take all of my brain resources and I have begun to feel selfish about my remaining days left on this planet. I’m not entirely passionate about fixing the ills of the literary community, to be frank. I’m more passionate about working with individual writers and readers.

There’s an interesting analogy about how sailboats get where they’re going — they can’t really go in a direct line because the wind is rarely going in the same direction they are, so instead, you have to zigzag. Catch the wind one way, and then course correct and catch the wind slightly differently. I feel a bit like I’m doing that now, particularly in light of my pessimism about finding a university teaching job with benefits and seniority.

A four-year university in Northeastern Wisconsin announced this week that this semester is its last. They let both faculty and the students know during finals week — some students received the email as they were seated to take their final exams. Faculty found out that they don’t have a job in a few short weeks, some a little longer, but everyone will be done by August. Students found out that they suddenly need to find a new school to attend in three months, and oh yeah, most places only accept transfer students in fall, so get moving on those applications.

The university where I taught in Wisconsin has vowed to pick up some of the gap for those impacted — but for me, that means less opportunities too. When I left for Las Vegas, the English Department chair made noises about people in the creative writing team nearing retirement. There was a serious hint that he wanted to talk once I had doctorate in hand. It would have been nice, but also, it’s a solid hour’s drive from Green Bay and the roads were pretty shitty for half of that drive.

So we zig zag once more.

Today was a rare day when I didn’t really have anything specific going on — I didn’t have to teach nor attend a class, and my dissertation edits are more or less done now that the defense is over — so I focused on writing business stuff, researching agents and finishing up the formatting questions to the graduate college for my dissertation.

It hit 100 degrees in the Valley today and it definitely felt hot. I woke up and roused myself fairly early so that I could take a shower, get dressed and take the dogs for a walk before the sun had much of a chance to heat the place up. Avi needs to lose weight — she’s gained two pounds in three months, so hence the short walks. Also today I started her on her diet food, and brought Ole outside to eat his while I finished some correspondence for the Dearest Confinement Friend project and drink my healthy cherry/spinach smoothie, which was pleasant. I spotted the yard lizard again, which is now the highlight of my mornings.

The star jasmine is blooming in our little courtyard leading into the front door, so I’ve been enjoying the heady fragrance so much. It’s particularly intense right now in the heat, which will unfortunately cause the blossoms to fade fast, so I’m like a smell junkie every time I go in or out the front door. Tonight, Esteban and I spent some time in the front yard trying to spot the StarLink satellites as they were passing over the house, while talking about our future plans as well, and whether right now is worse or better than the night and week after the 2016 election. I personally think it’s worse because people are actually dying due to the fears we all had, while he thinks it’s better because this is a known enemy and he doesn’t physically feel like he needs to vomit. Probably not the conversations that the sailors of old had while steering their courses, zig zagging across the oceans, but not much far off, I suppose.

This is me beating on, boat against the current. Zig zag zig zag.