So am I going in circles?
If I reach a turning point and in a little while another one, and then another, do I run the risk, if I always turn right, or always turn left, of going in circles! It comes to mind because I feel like I am at another turning point.
After one more week of working full time with the Encyclopedia of Arkansas (I invite you to visit it at www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net if you haven't already), I will move to a new job. I will also move from working forty hours a week to working twenty hours a week.
It is a turning point in a couple of ways. For one, I will be join the manuscripts division of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies (the Encyclopedia is also a division of the Butler Center), processing documents that have been given to the Center. The collection includes the papers of politicians, writers, community leaders, and organizations. I know I will enjoy the opportunity to research and write about people and places and events important in Arkansas history.
At some point, I will process the papers of Ruth Yingling Rector, a collection I recruited for the Center while I was working on my thesis. I am excited about that because the whole collection is about German immigrants, and specifically about people I have written about. Getting access to this collection is critical to my work with the letters of Wilhelm Huebsch, who was one of those immigrants.
The second way that this marks a turning point is perhaps more challenging, and that is in going to part time work. First, there is the money to think about. Part time work, of course, brings in part time pay! One really great thing about the Central Arkansas Library (parent organization of the Butler Center) is that part time people get very generous benefits. I will be able to continue my health insurance! Yeah!
This change is not, however, to be seen as semi-retirement! It is rather an opening door to doing contract work in the field of historical research and writing. The Butler Center, or more correctly, the Library, has contracts they would like to discuss with me because they think I would do well on completing them. They can't offer contract work to full time employees, but they can to part time (hence the opening door!). Hopefully as I get in touch with other people about the skills and experience I have to offer, other contracts will also come my way (hence the challenge!).
And then there is Herr Huebsch and his letters - I plan to apply for a research grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council to help me move on with that. There is a proposal to write and a budget to put together (they don't pay for research in Germany :-( )!
So I think that even though I will be going to a job for half the time I am now, I will soon wonder how I can get everything done. Perhaps that is when I will literally be going in circles! It is both exciting and kind of scary! It will require concentration and focus NOT to go in circles!
I don't do windows -
And on an evening like this when the sun is low in the sky and shining brightly against my library window, it really shows! Part of what catches the sun's glare is dirt on the glass and the screen, and part of it is the screen itself. But part of it, the brightest part right now, is scotch tape!
The thing is, there was a hole in the screen. One evening when the weather was cool enough that I could open the house up instead of running the AC, I noticed how many June bugs had gotten in through that hole and met their demise trapped between the glass and the screen. I got out the vacuum and got rid of them, and then taped up the hole. Immediately I was aware of what I believe is a strong spiritual lesson.
I sit here at the computer with that window and the roadway that it frames as my view. As I work, I look up from time to time and watch a car go by, or maybe a deer or some dogs. I watch the hummingbirds on the crepe myrtle bush, and neighbors in their comings and goings. It helps me think. But once I put tape on the screen, the view down the road receded, and all I could see was the tape! It was almost hypnotic!
Right now the tape is catching the sunlight and glaring at me, which makes it worse. But even when that isn't the case, I have to concentrate to raise my view beyond it. And then I think of all the times that I am so focused on some flaw or irritation, some perceived problem, some task that I don't want to do, that I can't see past it to the bigger picture, to catch a vision of what lies down the road.
Now I know some would remind me, and rightly so, that if I fixed the screen properly or even replaced it, instead of patching it with tape, I might not have that problem. Like I said, though, I don't do windows. But I do look for lessons to be learned even from a dirty window and a patched screen.
The irritants that are up close and threaten to distract me right now are things like filling out forms, filing insurance claims, paying bills, doing my own laundry (thank you, dear David, for all the years you did those things for me!), stuff like that. I can easily get overwhelmed and discouraged and see nothing but the long list of things to be done.
The bigger picture means enjoying the moments, staying in touch with family and friends, and taking positive steps toward reaching my goals. Today it meant going to a meeting of the Coleman Creek Greenway Committee, and then tonight working on transcribing the German letters I hope to get published. The payoff, the view down the road? Perhaps a research grant, perhaps a chance to have significant input on a project that will benefit both UALR and the community surrounding the campus.
It's not a choice between one or the other, it's keeping a balance between the two. Tonight I get to spend time looking through the immigrant letters to find the part that deals with the Indian Removal. And tomorrow night I have to return to the forms and bills again. If I let them stack up too long, they distract me, like the scotch tape on the screen, and block my view of what the future can hold.
Für meinen Lebensgefährte
Wir waren fast 36 Jahre zusammen. Ich vermisse ihn sehr!
I love the German word Lebensgefährte/in! It is such a good description of the life of two people who choose each other and stay by that descision through good times and rough times, who build a life together and then share the fruits of their relationship with other people. We were partners in life, traveling the road together. We had come a long way in our years together and expected to travel many more roads! But he passed away on June 8, only six weeks after we learned that he had cancer.
The challenge for me now is to keep on without him, to build on what we had together, to honor him with the choices I make and the work that I do. I am challenged to treasure the memories of our life together without holding on to those memories so tightly that it keeps me stuck in this time or even this place. I am challenged also to treasure the way he drew out the best in me and continue to live as the kind of person I was with him beside me.
One way I will be able to do that, I know, is by continuing to treasure the people that we shared our life with, to keep in touch with people and involved instead of retreating to my own world. And another way is to keep on using the knowledge, the skills, the energy, that developed while I pursued my college education. He supported me in that with the expectation that the experience would be used in shaping my life after the degree was hanging on the wall.
And my degrees are hanging on the wall, right above a shelf full of just a small part of his kangaroo collection! :-) He put them there for me in February. From where I sit as I work, I can see them, and I can also see the road outside the window.
