My husband, ever since I met him, has been an entrepreneur. That’s a fancy word for he is his own boss.

It is a scary thing to have your own business. I work for big companies that are less risky. But Chris tells me “Without the risk you don’t get the reward.” I have had to learn to steel my nerves with him as my partner. But he’s been proven right again, so many times. I have had to learn to be able to tolerate risk.

As I think back, though, the biggest risk of my life I took before I met him: the year before, as a matter of fact.

At 25 years of age, I’d never felt older. On my birthday I was staring down what I felt was a failure of a life. I hadn’t finished college–which was supposed to have been completed three years earlier— and I’d had a series of extremely low-level jobs.

In 1997 in Silicon Valley the most glaring losers could be millionaires. Not me; I was left with nothing but loserland. How far I had to go to catch up! I had to get to the starting line to get moving as soon as possible just to be on the map.

Nothing mattered until I got to the starting line. And the starting line was YEARS in the future, because it started at the END of the graduation line with a diploma.

I had gotten a little rag, though, to cover my shame. I got it because I hadn’t fulfilled some prerequisites to get into the University and missed the deadline…moving the starting line even further back. I basically wandered into an interview and got this internship at NASA.

Once that happened, people started to treat me different. It covered up some of the loser underneath. I could at least have a shred of pride while I finally got entrance into being a college student again.

I did all the paperwork and THIS time I passed. I got my acceptance letter into the University of California. SO, that fall I could finally get back on track to be a college graduate.

Because that is what everybody did. That is what everyone said everyone did. Get a degree! I wanted one. I wanted to go to university full time and live there and do all the college-y things.

But I was so far behind. And I was really enjoying what I was learning at my internship. Thing is, the people at NASA said “you can go look for a job now!”

In fact, they said they wouldn’t even call my last year of employment an internship. They would cover for me and just say I’d worked there almost like i had real experience.

Spring arrived. I had my acceptance to University, the thing I had dreamed of since I was 17. And so did this opportunity. I had this vague idea that maybe I could skip to the head of the line and have a career.  I’d worked at NASA! If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere! astonauts and rockets!

I was terrified, but I wanted it. I wanted to cross the START line and have a chance at that finish line. I wanted it so bad, and I wasn’t at all sure that I could get it..

May landed me in unemployment land.  I chicken-scratched a resume, and I was sure I didn’t know what I was doing. Every day I felt the teeth of this risky choice. College was what I was supposed to do. This was unknown and impossible territory.

By July I had a job. A temp job, but I’d done it. I made it. I was endowed with a name badge and a business casual wardrobe.

The biggest risk of my life, and in hindsight it wasn’t a risk at all. Hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it?

I’ve never once regretted my decision. Chris knows it; he brings it up when I express concern over some risk or other. But he doesn’t have to nearly so often anymore.

In high school, Mom gave me this exercise: write out your 25-year plan.  She got it from some book–the point was to write out what you want your life to be like in 25 years. Then, with those goals in mind write out what you would need to accomplish in 15 years, 10 years, 5, 3 and one year from that day.

At fifteen, what did I know about 25 years away? I wrote down things like, be married, have kids, be graduated from college, be happy, be beautiful.

Of course, I was sure that all those things would have been done and put on the shelf in ten years, tops.

It is now 25 years from when I made my first 25-year plan. I now think that my15 year old self has as much visibility into my 40 year old life as I probably have into the life of me as a 65 year old.

The point was, what my mom was trying to teach me, was that all the things we do have an impact on our tomorrows. Mom, I love you, but that lesson I already knew far better than you did. I was always thinking ahead, always scanning the horizon.

And I was SHOCKED when you went back to school and talked professors into extending your deadlines for homework. I would have fallen on my sword and taken the ‘honorable’ failing grade before asking for a special favor. Which meant of course, that I never did turn things in late. I wished I could talk my way around professors like that. Except, by the time I really had that thought, that I wished I could get away with stuff, I had lost all respect for professors and higher education. If they were so easily gotten around, what was their value?

Back to scanning the horizon. Where is the real treasure?

I know myself better than I did at a 15 year old. Starting with me, what life would I fashion for myself to live in before during and after 25 years pass?

I asked Chris about this, sheepishly. His upbringing did not include this sort of soul-searching I was sure.

He answered immediately “We will need to put a new roof on the house.”

Roll-my-eyes prosaic. Was that all he could think of? Except, he is right. And we have discussed that we want to stay in this house forever. Having a solid roof is an important aspect to our lives.

He went on “…and we will want to have that done before we put solar panels in. It would be silly to put solar up and then have to take it down to redo the whole roof.”

The practical things gave some structure to this discussion. Maybe we want to plan on a new roof in five years. And if we want that, maybe we should plan other expenses around these big ones.

“When do you think Veronica will be the right age to take her to Hawaii?” Because travel is an important aspect of the next 25 years.

We talked practical, which is what Chris is the best at, and then also more abstract goals and desires.

I know that taking the long view will help shape my choices for today. Also, taking the long view will also make today a part of a whole.

I can’t be the only one–the only one whom life overwhelms and frustrates and annoys to distraction. When I have a petty or heart-stabbing encounter with a co-worker, or aNOTher ridiculous battle with a mighty four year old over bedtime or mealtime, I can escape into my own life–my plans for my life.

If she wastes toothpaste, or he hides a password during a deployment, will it matter in 25 years? Or 15, 10, 5, 3 or one year? Maybe it doesn’t matter so much today either.

I am looking at the horizon. There is some great stuff coming up.

Chris took a picture of me yesterday. I didn’t want him to.

He showed it to me later. He was excited to show me because he liked it. And he liked how I looked.

When I saw it I hated it. I wanted to point out all my flaws and ugliness.

I stopped myself. I asked him what he liked about it.

I listened. Because what he said was telling me what he liked about ME.

So I listened. I took two mental steps back to stand still and listen

I want to practice letting him love me without my tidying up first

It’s not what I thought it would be

This summer…no, maybe this whole year…has been one of ups and downs.

I’ve heard of manic swings. I always thought i was the kind who would go for the up side of the energy, not really to down side.

Something happened early this year, though. I plummeted. I had a goal, I had a plan. And it bottomed. It bottomed and I was stuck

Yes, I had had surgery. Yes, I had personal relationship difficulties that were outside of my control–yes, I said it. I couldn’t do anything to budge those interpersonal issues.

My goals were stalled.

All I’ve ever had were my goals.

I couldn’t seem to make progress on ANYTHING.

except one thing. I finished my manuscript. The only thing 100% in my power, and

I FINISHED IT

I FINISHED IT

I WROTE THE THING

which is great. and an impossibility

I wrote it all down and i did it and I did it and I finished it and I wrote it and it is done and it is FINISHED

IT IS FINISHED

of course, that isn’t the end. Getting to the end of the story isn’t the story.

What happens during the happily every after? there are lots and lots of multitudinous moments in the happily ever after

And then, I got to the end. That meant I got to tighten up the story of my life.

Because all that stuff happened. And it happened just like I said. But what if I said it differently?

I had this happen before. When I was leaving my first husband, I wrote the story of what had happened to lead up to the divorce. I knew, I knew it went deep.

And I wrote it all all, almost ten pages or maybe it was twenty of what had led to this.

And I kept writing it and tightening it…for days until I forced myself to stop. I knew I was becoming obsessed with it because I wished I could have made it turn out differently.

I think I wished i didn’t have to have a divorce, or at the very least I didn’t have to have all that pain.

The pain of the divorce was terrifying, and it was a ripping away of who I thought I was

I thought I was my mother’s daughter, and my God’s chosen child.

to choose this divorce, to choose myself, meant I was not part of my family and not the chosen child of God

I decided God and my family would have to take second place to me.

I really thought it would kill me.

Then, at that time, I looked at me and saw

[space intentionally left blank]

I saw all the things I *could* be but that I wasn’t…things I hadn’t been allowed to be, and the gates were closing on me like the huge gate on a tiny soace ship going as fast as it could to escape and catch up with the rebel forces.

I could do it! I should try! All the things I hoped for and longed for

what were those things again?

education and career. Career first, because that was the short cut. Career meant smart. PROVABLY smart because of a paycheck

X dollars an hour smart

and then there was the education. My education which was so very lacking. EVERYONE had college degrees but me.

except for the people who didnt. and they didn’t because they had careers

I didn’t know people didn’t hang with people who didn’t have jobs or education. EVERYONE seemed to have one or both

i’m forty now, not 24

anyway.

This year, I hit the wall. I had no where to go to get to the career I wanted. I had TRIED everything, I had thrown myself against every door until I was bruised and bloody

and I’d finished my manuscript.

I started to be free from all those demons I’d trapped on paper. Those expectations and those TRAPS

I saw I was living those traps still. i dont want to be the loser with the same hang ups UNTIL I DIE

I reached out into the void, knowing I had to learn something. This wasn’t working.

That void of what I really wanted, I wanted to find myself.

So, when I chose myself during that divorce I didnt’ have to know what I was choosing. The anything that I might have been was better than what was.

Anything was better than what that was.

Now…it’s time to get more specific. The sands are filling the hourglass of my life.

I mean, I’M the same i ever was…but my friends are all looking pretty old.

I would like to spend some time getting to know myself better. What do I want? What do I like?

really really

those are some very weak signals.

and they are the most critical signals of all

I can hear it in my voice. It isn’t pretty. And it is so present.

I am resentful. I am bitter. I am wronged and it twangs against my heart to know it and to feel it

It is a STORY, and it is magnificent, how very wronged I am.

I am mad about it. But not healthy mad…sniveling, pitful resentful and powerless mad

dark corner hooded eye angry

you know who will tell you all the ways things didn’t go right?

The loser

i do not want to be the loser.

I am NOT the loser because

I AM NOT DONE

I want to re-write the story. I have to re-write it. Even if It’s a cliff hanger

Where will we see our heroine next?
How on earth will she get out of this scrape?

Boy, I like the sound of that a lot better than theone where I snivel.

I AM NOT DONE YET

My magnum opus, currently titled The Russian American School of Tomorrow (rasot) is under the scrutiny of beta readers

My beta readers have pointed out some discrepencies and confusing parts. In one section, I describe the shopping for bread in Russia:

I saw a dark building right by; that must be the bread store. I ducked in, the warm yeasty smell so inviting after the freezing outside. Darker inside than out, it was quite small. Raw plywood sheets had been nailed against two-by-fours around the top half of the room, to create slanted bread bins. Some of the shelves even had the tall dense loaves on them. The bread was naked to the touch and cost 75 kopeks.

My reader asked what I meant by “naked to the touch.” Was I being overly poetic?

I meant that they weren’t in plastic bags, or any kind of bag. Plastic bags existed in Mirnyy in 1992, but not the throwaway disposable kind we have become accustomed to. For all  I know, Russia is as coated in plastic now as America was then.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I am thinking of the movie “The Graduate” One word. Plastics.

I was watching the outstanding Genius of Design again. It was the episode that talks about the chair…the one-piece plastic chair. Back when it was avant garde art. Now it is 6 dollars each at the big box store. Because of plastic. We think in plastic. The guy at the end of the documentary said “Plastic is 100% human intelligence”

Oh boy. Now we have to think about that. What is plastic? What is human intelligence?

The plastic that first was used to invent the one-piece chair isn’t the same plastic we use now. We have better plastic. We have better intelligence.

Maybe.

Plastic has taken on a new meaning. It is an adjective and an adverb. We should be plastic. We should be especiallly plastic about our ideas of plastic.

Wanting things to be moldable and pleasant to the touch and durable and manufacturable…We have a new technology. It’s all over the news right now. 3D printers use plastics to take a thought–a computer drawing–and make them real.

they use more than plastic. We have made other materials more plastic. Metal has been changed and treated into a powder which will react and then solidify with a 3D printer.

So will wood, when made into the right form.

The idea of plastic has been so compelling, so seductive, that we are inventing plastics that aren’t plastic.

And now I am thinking of something Margaret Fuller said:

Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain.

This hymn to me is talking about work. I love to work. And I hate work a lot of the time. So, this hymn is comforting.

Lord of Light Your Name Outshining

Lord of light, your name outshining all the stars and suns of space,
use our talents in your kingdom as the servants of your grace.
Use us to fulfill your purpose in the gift of Christ your Son.
Lord of light, as in highest heaven, so on earth Thy will be done.

2.
By the toil of faithful workers in some far outlying field,
by the courage, where the radiance of the cross is still revealed,
by the victories of meekness, through reproach and suff’ring won.
Lord of light, as in highest heaven, so on earth Thy will be done.

3.
Grant that knowledge, still increasing, at your feet may lowly kneel.
With your grace our triumphs hallow, with your charity our zeal.
Lift the nations from the shadows to the gladness of the sun –
Lord of light, as in highest heaven, so on earth Thy will be done.

4.
By the prayers of faithful watchers, never silent day or night,
by the cross of Jesus, bringing peace to all, and healing light,
by the love that passes knowledge, making all your children one,
Lord of light, as in highest heaven, so on earth Thy will be done.

My empowerment class, my new friend Ferdinando, and dooleys book

The gems personality system, the sales training

I have been inhaling new learning

I am hitting a wall.. I know I have encountered these ideas and I have not integrated them

I have not stopped to do things… Other things I like.

There is A lesson not integrated there too. Things I like are important

It is time to do the homework. Time to get organized in thought and action

My power is not only powerful within context. I am a compound, I can do me anytime anywhere.

I don’t need specific cooperation from one entity–person, job, business. Not because i don’t need cooperation to get what I want, but because there are many many possible cooperators and collaborators.

I have to focus on my goals, and my abstract wants to get there.

Specific frustrations are a waste of energy