Six for Saturday: Reading, Watching, Thinking

Paul and I took a little vacation this week to his family’s cabin in the woods.  It was the perfect break except for the fact that it was way too short.  We read our books, worked on a puzzle, cooked, and lounged about with no to-do list.  I still did some work (haven’t quite figured out my work-life balance as a freelancer), but it was so nice to work with no appointments to keep and no place to go.  I figure that in this first year of full-time freelancing, every mistake is a chance to learn.  What I learned this week: I need a longer break during spring break—two full days away from the hustle of real life.  As it turns out, most of my students who wanted to meet with me this week canceled their appointments anyway, which makes the idea of being “available” during spring break seem silly.  Next time: a longer break and more lounging!

At The Cabin, I worked on my taxes, and you guys, taxes are seriously bumming me out.  A little backstory: I’ve been doing my own taxes for ten years, so I know my way around a 1040.  But 2014 is my first year of self-employment (SE), and holy god, doing SE taxes SUCKS.  I owe the government close to $2,000, and that’s despite the fact that 2014 was not particularly lucrative for me.  If I thought before this that self-employment was tough, I must amend my statement: I’d say it seems damn near impossible to make it work, to actually make enough money to live as a self-employed person.  Fortunately for me, I didn’t know how bad the tax burden would be, so I carried on cheerfully, meeting students and building my business.  I’m actually really grateful for my ignorance now because not knowing made my life less stressful at a time when I didn’t need any more stress.  I feel like I can handle the reality of SE taxes now, and moving forward, I can make decisions with that knowledge in hand.

But that’s the end of my sighing about taxes.  Onto the Saturday six!  

{ONE}  My book of choice at The Cabin was The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.  If you haven’t heard of Sam Harris or his work, you are in for a treat: few people are as thoughtful and rigorous in their writing about religion, spirituality, and ethics as Sam Harris.  I’m a huge, huge fan of his work, most of which I’ve only experienced through youtube.  So far, I’m really enjoying The Moral Landscape, and I’m thinking about adding Waking Up, his book about non-religious spirituality, to our next Amazon order.

{TWO}  I’ve been really bummed about call-out culture.  Call-out culture, for those of you who live under a rock like me, is the practice of publicly shaming people who say or do oppressive things (think homophobic, trans-phobic, misogynistic, that sort of thing).  I didn’t even know this practice had a name until today.  But Paul shared this piece with me, and I think it really articulates the problems I see in call-out culture, namely that it’s alienating and dehumanizing.  It seems to bring out the worst in people.  The piece was an interesting read.

{THREE}  I’m thinking about buying some new makeup to go along with the subtle makeover that I’m doing on myself.  At Target, I saw the Pacifica line of products, which are vegan!  Anybody have any experience with Pacifica makeup?  I saw this good review on-line and am thinking about plunking down $14 for a lipstick (but see above re:taxes, hence I haven’t bought any new makeup yet…)

{FOUR}  This piece on pop culture exhaustion made me smile and nod.  I feel the same way: with a few exceptions, I just don’t care much for pop culture.  I have no mental bandwidth for it!

{FIVE}  My Twitter friend Fran recently posted a day in her life as a second-year med student who is studying for boards.  While I am so, so glad I did not go into medicine, I find the lifestyle fascinating.  Fran seems so calm and balanced!  She makes it look easy.

{SIX}  We’ve been making a vegetarian version of this gnocchi recipe with greens and sausage, and it’s outrageously good.  Just sub in your favorite veggie sausage and you are good to go.  It might become your favorite busy-night dinner.  Maybe I’ll post our version of it…

Whew, that’s it from me for now!  What have you been up to lately, my dears?

Life Lately

It’s a gray, rainy day here in Austin, Texas, but I’m wearing new red pants with bare ankles, so all is well!  I have a few hours of downtime today between work gigs, so here I am with a life update.

Overall, life is good.  Work is busybusybusy—I have a full roster of students, and I like working with them.  Most of my students this semester are high schoolers, so I’m anticipating that when they go on spring break in March, I’ll have a slower week.  When that happens, I’m looking forward to working on some content for my professional website.  It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything over there.  (But I do love my most recent post on what Cheryl Strayed and Wild taught me about tutoring.  Honk honk—of course I toot my own horn!)

In light of my work, Paul has really stepped up his game at home.  Not only does he do a lot of the dishes after our meals, he’s been turning our home into an art/engineering exhibit.  A list of his projects this year: a hydroponic garden with a computerized lighting/watering system, a set of cubbies for our living room, and a remote-controlled power box for the strings of lights in our living room.  He’s amazing.  And in February, we celebrated two years together!  What an adventure it’s been for us—the best.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “big things,” like motherhood, authorship, and what my purpose in life is.  Truthfully, I feel like Paul and I have been doing a big thing together this year, which is helping our roommate Courtney get back on her feet, financially and otherwise.  In some ways, I feel very parental toward her, even though she’s a grown-up.  Paul and I are older and more stable in life.  Together, Paul and I have been able to use our financial stability to help Courtney.  After being underemployed for seven-plus months, Courtney landed a job with a cool company called Legal Zoom in north Austin.  She started working in January.  Now, for anyone who hasn’t been unemployed or underemployed for an extended period of time, I can tell you that it’s a long, slow climb out of the unpaid bills that accumulate during unemployment.  You go from having lots of time and no money to no time and no money as you start paying down those bills.  So while Courtney works on her bills, Paul and I are keeping our house afloat, paying the rent each month and helping out as unexpected expenses pop up.  Given our collective circumstances, I feel a lot poorer right now, but I also know that it’s absolutely the right thing to do.

Now that my career as a tutor seems to be stabilizing, I’ve had more mental bandwidth to start thinking about other big things in life, like having a baby and writing a book.  I’ve been wanting to start working on a book for like two years now, but I’ve lacked whatever it takes to truly commit to a book project.  I’ve had some false starts, but I’m wondering how I’ll know when I have an idea that’s good enough to nurture into full existence.  Maybe I won’t know until the end, when I look back and say, “Yes!  Now that is a book I am proud to have written.”

As for babies…I have never been more ambivalent about that possibility.  And when I say I’m ambivalent, it’s not that I don’t care.  It’s that I really want and don’t want a kid at the same time.  I think of a line from Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert and I just know that I would have moments of parenthood like this:

The one thing nobody ever warned me about when I started having babies was this: Brace yourself for the happiest years of your life.  I never saw that coming.  The joy of it has been an avalanche.

And then there’s this tidbit, also from Committed:

Just go for it.  It’s not that hard.  You just have to push against all the forces that tell you what you can’t do anymore now that you’re a mom.

It probably says something about me that I’m more drawn to the “go for it!” quotes than the “it’s so hard” quotes.  Because the truth is that I already know it’s hard.  But is it what I want?  Do I want motherhood to be one of my “big things” in life?

I don’t know.  But I do know that I want to give birth to a book, so maybe I’ll focus my creative efforts on that one for a while.  At least with a book I can put the project aside for a while and nobody will start screaming!

Happy day, friends.