Room with a View

The sun is out and I'm feeling (sorta) optimistic. This morning it was too sunny to work on the laptop in my new office (my son’s childhood room--posters removed, staple-holes filled in, and walls and moldings painted a lovely shade of gray-green). Really, we will have to get shades for an office that faces East or give up working there mornings. Our new office looks out on the garden, the white Adirondack chair nestled among the lavender, the Douglas iris and ferns, the bright patch of orange poppies, the little path. True, the deck is rotten and dangerous. True, the best-case scenario short of winning the lottery is a job that will take me away from this bucolic scene. But hey, right now I’m optimistic.

I figure my manuscript will eventually get published. I may even still be alive when that happens. I toy with the idea of writing a novel or screenplay, just so I could sit here and write every day and not have it be “self-indulgent” like poetry. Well, even if I knew how to do that (I don’t), it doesn’t erase the fact that we will soon be living off our line of credit.

The job leads come and go. In half an hour, I will have a phone interview, the second step in an employment ritual that may or may not get to a third step. I’m trying not to put too much weight on it. I figure if it’s the right thing for me right now, we will both recognize that. But I don’t want to screw up by saying the wrong thing --as I did at that contract position I was supposedly starting in March—screw up by being too trusting, too naïve. (It’s not something I want to go into in detail—really, I’d rather forget it – but to make a long story short, friends, don’t ever tell an employer you have carpal tunnel syndrome. You may think that will make them take your needs seriously, but they will likely, as they did me, show you the door.)

So, be it. The office is mostly done. I’ve got my garden to look at for now. I’ve got a small teaching gig coming up in June (Please point your poet friends my way! Or see this listing for more information.) Maybe all the puzzle pieces of my life will fit together one of these days. Maybe not. But at least the sun is out right now.