A Writing Room Retreat Fall 2023

I am participating virtually in a writing conference this weekend and it is so encouraging. I have let this blog slide since April. April! I hope to get back on track. When I think about writing, I am overwhelmed with all the things I can write about and stay paralyzed with the inability to choose one and get started. It's a combination of procrastination and perfectionism, (thank you Laura Scala). When I write, I feel better. 

Each speaker has offered ideas I haven't heard before and they all encourage me to write. I have realized that I have a few syndromes that interfere. First, there is the never good enough message I absorbed from my mom, who was very hard on herself. I have never looked at my life as a "hero's journey." I waste my time on my phone and TV, being entertained and distracted from the life that is going on around me. I am terrified of criticism, although I love receiving tips from friends who can suggest ways my writing could be better.

I come from a family of gifted people who expect something to be really good the first time we try it. In addition, we can think of all the other things that might be included. I don't mean to be hard on my family. I am just as guilty as anyone else. 

And then there is Anne Lamott. She has been my favorite author for as long as she has been writing and she uses humor to point out things we might want to know. I got on her mailing list by going to a previous online workshop and I am soooo grateful. I would love to quote her, but you really have to read her work and attend a workshop to get the full picture of how much grace she portrays with her life. Her son Sam has found his way into writing and I have ordered his first book. What a gifted family!

Jacob Nordby spoke on "Your Creative Hero's Journey" and I was too tired to take notes. I went to bed, missing the final event, but I will be able to see it in a few weeks via video.

Tooday, I have heard from Ryan Spear on "Crafting Resilience," Claire Giovino on "The Space Between," Lauren Sapala on "Healing Writing Anxiety," and Laura Mckowen on "Pinning the Butterfly." And that's just until suppertime today. I hope all of you will check out the app "A Writing Room" and it's free.

More tomorrow, if I can make myself sit in a chair long enough.

Economics of Being a Woman

 

April 15, 2023

I decided to post this year on the randomness that goes on in my head. Unfortunately, my head is full of wild and random thoughts and I have trouble focusing. Sounds like an apt description of ADD, although I have only been diagnosed by coworkers.

I have on my desk a book I cannot part with, The Economics of Being a Woman, by Dee Dee Ahern with Betsy Bliss. It’s not because some child of mine has scribbled between the back covers, although that brings back fond memories. It’s because this book opened my eyes to the way women’s role in our society (U.S.) limits our achievement. Most heterogeneous women grow up dreaming of finding that soul mate, marrying, and having a family. At least my generation did, although this changes with every generation, thankfully. In my childhood, women could aspire to three professions: nursing, teaching or secretarial work. I was surprised in 1969 when I married and was told I shouldn’t work at all because it indicated the husband was not a good provider. Luckily, I ignored his wishes and he enjoyed the income. 

From 1956 to 1974, women’s pay went from 63% of men’s pay to 57%. Yeah, I was surprised, too. Even with lots of protesting in the 60s and 70s, women’s share of income went down. Luckily, we weren’t so easily overcome. Women’s rights became an essential part of civil rights. By 1979, our share had gone up to 61.5% of men’s, and by 2021, it rose to 84.3%. The exception was West Virginia, where it was still 36.6%. (1)

What are the reasons women earn less? When I entered the workforce, I had a choice among low-paying professions. There were women chemists, physicians, and plumbers, but they were the exception, rather than the rule. The unions in the 50s made sure men could make enough to support a family, and teacher’s union made sure a job would be there after a child was born. Women’s birth control had undergone a significant change in the 60s with the advent of the birth control pill. Now women could control when and if they had children, but they were still held back by employers that expected them to take time to have a family. Women were also expected to take care of sick family members or elderly ones. They were expected to move if the husband was transferred, and they were entitled to very low retirement benefits because of low earnings during their lifetime. Women who were widowed were just out of luck and often had to move their family into smaller houses or apartments. It is still true that the survivor of a marriage has to choose between the two retirement packages, if there are any. 

The pandemic has showed us that it is still the women who usually have to leave their jobs to care for sick family members, and divorce has certainly shown us it is often the woman who provides for the family. I hope my granddaughters will know equity in the respect (and salaries) paid to women throughout their lives. Maybe pay equity will be up to 90% by the time they are working.

(1) https://www.businessinsider.com/gender-wage-pay-gap-charts-2017-3#major-cities-show-an-even-bigger-discrepancy-3

Gender Wage Pay Gap Charts, accessed 3/29/23.

This year's theme is "Ideas"

 I took me a few weeks to come up with a theme for this year, but I have decided on “Ideas” as my theme for 2023. I was cleaning out my closets and realized that I will probably not keep my web site up to date because there is just that one extra layer of effort needed to post on it. So here are the Relics of the Past, as I like to call them. I hope they help you all.

The first place I wanted to take you was to an article by Glenda Thorne. Yesterday I searched to find it and it was gone. I hope you see this Glenda and repost the chart you entitled “Memory Self-Test.” I downloaded it in 2008 from the Center for Development and Learning, which is no longer available. While it is written for students, i think there is a whole generation that could use this advise; the Boomers. As I approach three quarters of a century, I am constantly frustrated by short-term memory loss and word retrieval problems. I have begun to read books on improving memory, but your article was short, simple, and thorough.

Luckily for all of us, she has a new article up, called 10 Strategies to Enhance Student Learning. (1) I should say I hope it is the same Glenda Thorne, because when I searched for a way to get in touch with her, I found many Glenda Thornes with PhDs. I hope you will all check out her article.

On the same page is another article by By Jonathan Mooney called “Strategies for Improving Memory.” Seven tips are listed that use more than one sense, which is always a good idea. I do better with numbers, but my short-term memory is weaker than it used to be, so I have to keep repeating the numbers out loud if I am going to use them right away (like all those numbers we use to log in with double security).

This page may disappear like Glenda’s first article on memory, but at least you have the name of two researchers in the field.

(1) Thorne,Glenda”10 Strategies to Enhance Student Learning,” https://impactofspecialneeds.weebly.com/uploads/3/4/1/9/3419723/10_strategies_to_enhance_students_memory.pdf, accessed on Jan 24, 2024.

Mooney, Jonathan, “Strategies for Improving Memory,” ibid.