Lying! Judgment! Melodrama!!!

One of the very coolest things that's happened in my life is a completely happy accident.  I got a job last fall at a university doing fundraising.  I took the position because it gave me a chance to focus some of my marketing abilities, specifically on writing.  Working in higher education has tremendous appeal because of the hours.  After working a zillion hours a week at top speed at nuclear pain levels, to be able to work 9-5 is a real treat - almost a vacation.  I leave with enough energy to work out and teach fitness and write on my own.  The other thing that attracts me to this job is the social justice mission and my role is to raise money for scholarships to help people get education they would not otherwise be able to afford, so there's a real soul-satisfying benefit to the work I do.  After slutting it out for consumer products and selling my soul to the devil for financial services for years and years and years, it is a true pleasure to solicit people for money that actually helps people in need.  The circumstances leading to me even getting this job are in the realm of a miracle.  So I feel super grateful every day - even on tough days, I just feel like I'm there completing some kind of cosmic assignment.

So when I met with HR on my first day and they started articulating my benefits package, they kept throwing around a term unfamiliar to me: "tuition waiver."  There was a lot of detail and paperwork around that and I started to understand it a little bit but wasn't sure.  I asked my boss about it and found out that I get to attend school for free.

School for free.  School for free.  School for free ... it just kept rolling around in my head.

I enjoyed college so terribly much the first time around but often for the reasons that regarded anything besides academics.  I loved to booze.  And smoke cigarettes.  And take drugs occasionally.  And kiss boys.  And there were a million opportunities to do all of these things.  There were also a million opportunities to study, and I didn't really take advantage of that until I had to learn the hard way in the GPA department.  Once I got my act together, though, I really hit my stride and started learning I was capable of doing more and being more than I ever dreamed possible.  I found my chosen career path and did very well in that coursework.  I worked at the student newspaper and got great practical work experience and made friends for life.  I look back on that time of my life so fondly, it was so wonderful and I wish I could bottle up some of those moments to relive whenever I need to have a little fun.

I hit the ground running in my career the instant I graduated and I never looked back.  It was really popular in the early 90s to get an MBA but that never appealed to me.  I felt like I was analytical enough and really was more interested in managing the creative process.  Advertising gave me a foot in both worlds - I could be strategic and play with the big business boys but I could also produce cool creative projects in a Thirtysomething atmosphere.  I rose through the ranks quickly because I was willing to and had the energy to work 24 hours a day, I was smart and I was likable.  Plus I could really hold my liquor which was an extremely handy skill at liquid lunches and lengthy client entertainment dinners.  School wasn't really in the mix.

I've always had creative writing projects on the side, popping out short stories about all manners of subjects.  My very favorites ever were the "George" series - relatives of Curious George: Spurious George and Furious George.  Those were on a laptop that died long ago so the evidence no longer exists.  But on long plane rides and endless nights by myself in hotel rooms all over the world I had lots of time to think and loads of energy to burn.  I never did anything with these stories at all.  Later on as I started to want more from my life than to be a corporate ice princess, I dreamed maybe I could be a writer but still put no action into it.  Then I put up a blog, and took it down.  Then I put up another blog documenting my transition over last summer from Business Betty to my current state as fundraising fitness instructing writing happy person.  I had to take that blog down because of a hacker which was sad because I'd amassed enough of a following I was starting to investigate ways to monetize it and promote to a wider audience.  So here I am back in the blogosphere, meekly putting my work back out there.

A side note regarding writing about what REALLY happens in my brain.  It's scary.  I don't make an effort to portray myself as perfect so you're getting a really authentic peek between my ears.  There are so many people who have said over the years they can relate to my writing that I feel like I'm doing the right thing and pursuing an important gift I have to offer.  But it's really intimidating at times to throw it out into the universe.  I'm afraid people will judge me unstable.  I'm afraid my writing isn't good enough.  I'm afraid that just as I've found my voice and mustered the courage to whisper it out there, that people are going to criticize me and laugh at me.  It's a catch 22, isn't it?

So then along comes this total gift from whoever makes the world spin on its access.  School for free.  After checking out the programs offered by my employer and lo and behold, there's a Masters of Science in ... INSERT DRUMROLL ... Written Communications.  Well.  Shut the front door.

So my first class was narrative forms where we studied fiction for the first half and non fiction during the second.  I learned so much about my ability to read up to a thousand pages a week!  But very importantly, I learned that my lively imagination really has a place in black and white.  The papers I turned in were so fun to write and my professor called me the Truman Capote of the class due to my ability to blend fact and fiction.  I'm trying to figure out how to post all my grad school work on this blog so you can read them if you want.

I just started my second class last night: Reading and Writing Short Stories.  Hello, I'm in heaven.  For starters, we spent the first half of class talking about detail and suddenly my ability to notice and discuss minutiae about everything, at length, was completely validated.  There is a place for hypervigilent attention to detail and it's in black and white.  I have a particular gift that has just been bursting for a platform.  The second half of class we read several short stories as the professor was illustrating a point about how to craft a story-starting fragment.  He referenced picking up on a detail and telling a story around it but what compelled me the most was that none of the stories we read to illustrate his point were personal tales.  I guess I assumed that we'd be learning about how to write blog entries, essentially - ways to bring out our own inner lives and make it relatable.  He said it's true that we can bake our agenda into the story, but that the more imagination we use to create characters that will conflict within the story, the more interesting the short story.  It's about the innuendo, the backstory, judging what each person is thinking and how based on their point of view they'd treat the other person.  The more wacky the characters, the better.  The lion tamer with a lionel train collection.  The pot smoking high school shop teacher.

By the time class was dismissed my mind was dancing with possibility.  But more importantly, my heart just sang with excitement that I now have a voice for the traits that are not always appreciated in real life: overdramatizing everything, exaggeration, hyperbole, partial truths, acting on assumptions.  I feel liberated that I'll have a healthy outlet for all of these behaviors that if I did them in real life I'd be continuously bogged down making amends.  What fun!!!  I can't wait to get started!