Moments of light: that’s what Wordsworth called those instants of transcendent vision that our excellent pastor calls the “thin places” between this flesh-bound world and the view of spiritual reality. It’s surprising how little it can take to elicit an “ah-hah” moment, the “I can see clearly now/The rain is gone” insight.
A day or two of peace and quiet and several seven-hour nights of decent sleep are all it’s taken for me, this time around. As the avalanche builds while our beloved McBoingers concoct their final, most brilliant papers they’ve ever written, only a few excused late stoont paper have remained to be read. M’hijito’s decision to take vacation time coinciding with a holiday sprang me free of a full day of performance and grading also freed me from hectic puppy-sitting, allowing me and Cassie to rest, exercise, and think. (Well. I don’t know if Corgis think, although I suspect they do. But the Human certainly did a fair amount of thinking.) Thanksgiving at our friends’ house, replete with a bottomless well of free booze, provided six hours in which to stop focusing on workworkworkworkwork and to tie a fairly large one on.
Thinking and drinking. Drinking and thinking.
And here’s what I think:
Mark Twain was right when he said some writers are tone-deaf. We see that most clearly when we force writing out of souls for whom text-messaging is a challenge. For me, reading composition papers must to be akin to what our highly educated, musically sophisticated choir director would feel if he had to hear all forty of us, professionals included, screeching some classical piece off-key.
“When a person has a poor ear for music,” said Twain, “he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is Cooper [substitute “the freshman comp student”]. He was not a word-musician [not by a long shot!]. His ear was satisfied with the approximate words.”
It is painful for me to read the stuff so carelessly dumped on my desk. When I said, after several years of supporting graduate school by teaching English 101 and 102 courses, that I would go on welfare before I ever taught another freshman comp course, that is what I was talking about. This morning it was all I could do to keep what remains of my mind on those gilded words long enough to comment on them and assign them a score. Absolute agony.
Insight #1: I really, really, REALLY don’t want to do this for the rest of my functional life. If I have to, I suppose I will, because I can’t make ends meet right now. But if I can find another way, I’ll take it.
But…but would I take the full-time teaching job for which I’ve applied, were it offered?
Insight #2: Damn right. I’m in terrible straits financially, and I can’t go on like this much longer. Pay for full-time faculty in the district runs on the high side of respectable. Five or ten years at that grindstone, as painful as it sounds, would allow me to recover the losses to my retirement savings that happened when I was laid off my job. And it would be enough to let me buy the last car of my driving lifetime and get myself into a home that will accommodate me until they cart me off to Hospice.
So. Yes, she said. Yes.
howEVER….
Insight #3: Truth be told, I do not need $65,000, $70,000, $81,000 to get by just fine.
If a miracle happened and the church happened to offer me the rather interesting job it has open just now, for which I happen to have applied, would I accept it and its amazingly low salary?
Oh, yes, she said. Yes!
Money-wise, the ridiculously low salary would combine with Social Security to provide a living wage: $45,000 or $48,000 gross.
I would love to work for the church, partly because I love the church and partly because I truly do believe I can do the job.
Would there be a learning curve? Sure.
Can I do the tasks? Yeah: I’ve been doing all those for the past five or ten years.
Would I be willing to pay, out of my own pocket, for specific training to do that job ? Darn right: give me an offer and today I would sign up for an accounting course, or I would bribe my accountant to train me in GAAP and the application thereof.
Moment of light: Any day I would rather enter numbers in spreadsheets, ride herd on financials and employees, and keep an office hanging together with paper clips and Scotch tape than read another student paper.
🙂
Here’s another moment of light: the American Dream, Formerly Affluent Boomer rendition.
O
M
G
!
Just look at that place!!!!
I know that neighborhood. I’ve haunted it in the past, when prices were way, way, WAY beyond my price range. A short sale, however, brings this updated little babe right down to what I think I can net off the house I’m living in.
Lookit that kitchen! Okay, okay…no gas. But hey! I hardly cook anymore…in the depression that accompanies Old Age, I don’t feel like eating, much less like cooking. And do I or do I not have the Propane Barbecue of the Gods? If I want to do some serious cooking, I’ll take it outside.
Lookit those patios!
Lookit that yard! Is that or is that not Cassie Heaven? It’s even Human Heaven. NOOOOO swimming pool!!!! Lookit those patios! Lookit those trees! Lookit that privacy!
Well. There is a swimming pool. Someone else gets to take care of it. 🙂
Lookit those acres of greenswards, all common areas. Cassie would not even have to walk a block and a half to sniff every waft of dog pee ever deposited on this earth. At least, in her limited little doggy universe.
Lookit those freaking DOUBLE-PANED FRENCH DOORS AND WINDOWS. Oh god oh god oh god. I think I have found nirvana.
Let’s hope no one has found it before me.
I have asked the credit union if I can prequalify. I have asked a friend in my business group if he can round up some investors who will lend me enough for a bridge loan, damn the usurious interest rates. I. WANT. THAT. HOUSE.
Moments of light.
Have you spotted any lately? What are they?
Oh, Funny. The job at the church and the short sale house sound like the answer to your prayers. Here’s hoping both come to pass for you.
The church job DOES sound great–couldn’t you make known that you are interested in similar jobs if this one doesn’t come through?
@ frugalscholar: I expect they know it. There’s a communication director who does an excellent job. She would have to retire or decide to move on for that job to come open, and since she’s fairly young, the first of those options isn’t likely to happen. I think people working there are pretty happy with their jobs, since they tend to stay there for many years.
I hope it all works out for you. Are houses on your street moving quickly? It sounds as if the foreclosure house was made just for you.
With a bridge loan, I could probably hang on for three to six months. It would be a risk, of course. But nothing worth doing is without risk.
Right now only one house that I know of is on the market, and it’s been there for a while. It’s much smaller than mine, closer to the noisy, slummy corner of Dunlap and 19th, and right next door to a house that’s been allowed to run into a trash heap. My house is in the quietest part of the neighborhood and all the houses around it are well kept up. I think if the house were priced right, it would take three or four months to sell, since it wouldn’t be a short sale.