Just before taking the unanticipated buyout

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Hard to think that it was right around this time ten years ago when my newspaper career took the big turn.

The atmosphere at the office was tense, with contract negotiations approaching a deadlock. Actually, there was little back-and-forth but rather a take-it-leave-it set of ultimatums from the front office.

As much as I loved journalism, I had long dreamed of being liberated from the daily workplace grind to pursue my bigger passions fulltime – writing serious works that would stand as a legacy, plus more time for Quaker endeavors and activities of personal renewal. I envisioned a bigger studio at home and had several book manuscripts that looked promising, if only I could get them in motion faster. When you had an interested book publisher, as I tentatively did, you had to act fast, something that’s difficult when you’re actively engaged elsewhere. My big break, all the same, hadn’t happened, even if I was being published widely in the small-press literary scene. You had to build a name, after all, as well as connections.

The job itself had long ago turned into a production-line mentality, rather than a more deliberate craft. Gone were the big projects that allowed enough space for deep research, reflection, and revision. Even at the prestigious big dailies, the clout that came with having a byline had largely evaporated. I began joking, with a degree of factual backup, that I really earned my wages in a one-hour span every Saturday night, when our biggest paper of the week in terms of circulation, heft, content, and income, was about to hit the press. Missing that deadline by even a few minutes was costly and had consequences. In that hour, and the two that followed as we made corrections and updated editions, everything funneled down through me, carrying with it blame for any big errors.

Well, I was a pro. Suck it up.

The possibility of buyouts had been floated by the union but required a certain number of members to step forward as interested candidates – tell us more – before that possibility was soundly yanked away from the table by management. I felt left like a pawn in that high-stakes game. For me, the pension and Medicare were both still a year off, and a steady income between here and there was looking more and more imperiled. I’d stuck my neck out, after all, and could now be seen as disloyal – if the paper was still running at all.

A few weeks later, brusquely, I was called into HR and essentially told I had an hour or so to commit to a decision. What, it’s back on the table? Maybe I had a little longer to confer with my spouse, I don’t recall, but in the whirlwind, the closure still came down like a hammer.

And that was it – a bonus that included extended health coverage, plus opportunities for part-time employment, if I wished. No guarantees there, but good luck. Even so, I was giddy. This is it?

A few nights later, there was a cake in the newsroom in recognition of us who had walked the plank. Some of our younger colleagues, I suspect, wished they had the option, though part of our decision came in hoping what we did kept them employed duly, some even supporting families. These calculations get tangled.

~*~

My first month of liberation came as a welcome period of decompression. I loved sitting in our front parlor and reading in winter sunlight, for one thing. A favored new routine with my wife was strolling downtown every Wednesday around dusk, when a small pub featured a fine jazz guitarist. How civilized! I could even go to bed before midnight.

The paper soon found itself short-staffed, however, and I began receiving calls wondering about my availability. Enjoying the flexibility of picking-and-choosing, I soon found myself working three or four shifts a week, the max allowed under the agreement. The feeling was entirely different, free of the weight of internal politics and big responsibilities. My floating shifts liberated me to attend concerts and films and a host of other events not previously open on my schedule. I didn’t have to weave around others’ vacation time off, either, when looking ahead to conferences or travel.

But ten years ago already? It really does feel more like five.

About my current state of mind

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Distracted. Just where did I put that thing-a-ma-jig?
  2. Stuffed to the brim.
  3. Amazed by so many actions that are normally taken for granted.
  4. Grateful for so much in my everyday life, even amid the inevitable irritations.
  5. Looking for additional sources of income to make ends meet.
  6. Worried about the future of mankind.
  7. Less demanding of others than I once was.
  8. Resigned to growing limitations.
  9. Angry about the injustices of the nutcase Right.
  10. Glad I’m not 21 and facing the future.

~*~

Now, to inhale deeply … and hold it.

 

Adrift without a routine … any advice?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever wondered how some individuals, liberated from the daily 9-to-5 or similar constraints, manage their lives? I mean, just everybody I’ve known has always envied that “free from it all” possibility, but what does that mean in reality? Even retirement?

As for someone who’s “financially set,” how do they arrange their lives?

The last thing I’d want to do is squander my time in front of a TV screen. The computer monitor, by the way, is a different matter. It’s more like a command post, not that my doctor would agree. You know, the new form of “couch potato.” If you’re reading this, you’re likely also guilty. Maybe we need to join ranks.

For years now, there was always the paying job to contend with. In addition, I’ve always had a big writing project at hand, as well as the rhythm of Quaker Meeting. There was also contradancing. Retirement added blogging, daily swimming and then Spanish drills, along with weekly choir rehearsals, at least before Covid.

 

SOMEWHERE IN THE PAST two or three decades I had an annual year-end practice of blocking in my goals for the coming year, as well as a five-year plan. That’s faded away since my leaving the newsroom, but when my wife first came across those, she was both amused and annoyed. Seems I left out a lot of important things, even in a single day, meaning the plans weren’t especially practical or entirely focused.

I’ve recently come across a file of those aspiration but find I’m unable to get very far in rereading them. My plans were grandiose, ambitious, regimented, even militant, and besides, I no longer have the energy to keep up that kind of pace.

On the larger scheme, I broke out each season with Personal items like birthdays, vacations, auto inspections and license renewals, routine medical affairs, maybe even a reading binge or a recognition that I needed to get some exercise, at least by hiking or some such. There was a Domestic category to remind me of getting the furnace cleaned, paying insurance, tax deadlines, setting aside time for snow shoveling or getting garden stuff moved, even ordering firewood. Creative was the one that set goals for writing, revision, and submission. Spiritual was mostly Quaker activities. And, for a while, there was even Astro, to keep me apprised of what the heavens indicated I should be aware of.

Retirement was when I was finally going to be able to go Literary in a big way.

On the smaller scale, I tried envisioning daily and weekly routines in which I would block out so many hours for each of my larger categories and goals.

The problem was that there were never enough hours to work it all in.

 

RELOCATING TO EASTPORT was initially a writer’s retreat where I could focus on the Dover Quaker history book, but now that the project’s wrapped up, apart from getting it published and promoted, I’m feeling adrift.

No matter what time I wake up, anywhere from 3 to 6, usually, I can’t get away from this keyboard and screen until after 10. So much for the early morning meditation and study I originally envisioned! Well, these are the hours I’m finding clearest for writing and corresponding.

But from there? That’s the problem. Nothing feels structured, much less directed.

The introduction of an hour of walking in the school gym may change that, though it means moving some of my computer “butt time,” as writer Charles Bukowski put the practice. OK, back in college, I was a night owl and found midnight to two or three to be prime time. (Not so any more! Eastport is in the “land of the dawn” or Sunrise County.)

A big cooking day? Say, Wednesday? As for cleaning? A set amount of time daily or instead a big round on a specified day?

Well, that’s what I’m looking at now. The one big difference is whatever emerges will be more flexible than the earlier incarnations.

Any advice or specifics, especially things that work for you?

 

Let’s acknowledge another annual turning point

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Looking at the low temperature here and then the ten-day forecast, I observe a turning point in the season. This may be the last day of the year that our low reading is near zero, much less in the negative range. We’re heading upward into the teens and above as the minimum.

It may be cold, but no longer bitterly so.

Not that we’re anywhere near getting warm.

What’s the equivalent where you are?

An orange is an orange is an orange orange

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The mystics and traditions I’ve encountered are anything but airy-fairy. In fact, they can be pretty down-to-earth and practical, based on personal experience and testing rather than empty speculation or dogma.

As George Fox said at the beginning of the Quaker movement, “This I knew experimentally.” That is, by first-hand experience including trial and error. Or as was said a few years later, “Some of the best barns in Rhode Island were designed during Quaker Meeting,” during quiet meditation.

Never underestimate the importance of the disciplined circle of fellow practitioners, either. Anyone who says “I’m spiritual, not religious,” but lacks that communal base is headed for trouble.

I learned that 50 years ago in a yoga ashram – see my novel Yoga Bootcamp for unorthodox examples of how it works – and have seen it in other traditions since, especially my Quaker circles.

One of my favorite stories comes via fellow blogger Tru-Queer, who relayed the incident this way:

A Tibetan lama and a famous Korean Zen master in the Rinzai school were to have a debate.

The Tibetan lama sat meditating, counting his mala. The Zen master produced an orange from his robes and asked the lama, “What is this?” It was a famous koan. Waiting for a response, the lama continued meditating. The Zen master asked again, “What is this?”

The Tibetan lama spoke with his translator for a moment, who said, “Do they not have oranges where he is from?”

~*~

I suppose I should explain that a koan is a kind of mental puzzle intended to push a student beyond rational thought. Zen is essentially black-and-white ascetic, while Tibetan Buddhism is full of colorful esoteric teaching and drama. Yet here the roles are reversed, in a great joke.

But it doesn’t end there. When’s the last time you really looked at an orange? How many varieties can you identify, much less their differences in uses or subtle flavors? Does your recognition that it’s “an orange” put a stop to regarding it fully? That is, when’s the last time you had an “OH WOW!” moment with something so seemingly commonplace.

Gertrude Stein was aiming at something similar with her “A rose is a rose is a rose,” which blows open when you learn she was also speaking of a friend named Rose and not just the metaphors associated with a specific flower that somehow too often gets lost in the entire equation.

So just how do we live full of wonder – a state a Friend hailed as the Holy Now?

I’d say having dear ones who share it with you does help. Even if they’re Zen Buddhists.

You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows, nosirree

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Not when you have one of these.

The heart of the station is this unit, joined by a rain gauge nearby. They send data via Bluetooth to a digital monitor indoors.

Thanks to this Christmas gift of a personal weather station, I’ve been watching the local weather direction and speed closely, along with the fluctuating temperatures, barometric pressure, and humidity indoors and out. Rainfall will be fun to observe, but snowfall – alas – is a problem.

 

Hola Orlando

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

talk of spiced sausage all you want or the angelic art of seduction all come clean in the springing but circle the wagons or your ways if you will sometime when riders approach, demanding their due we’ve no cavalry to the rescue what runs on the line honestly, not since the divorce have we sensed any mid-afternoon vehemence comparable to that blazing dirty bird union . let me tell you of the plagues of Moses . invest the rest wisely

My encounters in a yoga ashram altered my perception of life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I stepped out of my journalism career three times in my life before retiring for good. The first was when I decided to move to the ashram where I could immerse myself in yoga philosophy and practice. Responding to Swami’s invitation to settle into her rural setup was something I did slowly and deliberately, with a large degree of trepidation. As I relate in my Yoga Bootcamp novel, the daily life was intense and evolving. Leaving the ashram was a different matter, with others largely resolving the outcome – out you go. For weeks afterward, I felt myself falling helplessly through space. Eventually, I reestablished my feet on the ground and then headed off for a new life in a town I call Prairie Depot.

The paperback cover …

What happened for me during my residency was life-changing. I regard it as my master’s degree and my introduction to psychotherapy of an amateur sort. Among other things, it led me to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, which turned out to be the faith of my Hodgson ancestors from the 1660s down through my great-grandfather.

In the novel, I chose to confine the structure to a single day, in part because I had so many lingering questions I could not answer. Yes, within that day individuals could look back on their previous history, but the focus was on the NOW. And a lot could happen there in a 24-hour span. Besides, as I later learned through some candid discussions with a former Episcopal nun, monastic life has some commonalities of its own. As she said, some of the most intense interactions came in trying to choose the flavor of ice cream when the rare opportunity arose. I’ll argue you’re the most human under such rarified circumstances.

On top of everything, when I was drafting the book, I was out of contact with the place and its people. Critically, I had refused an order to return to the ashram after I’d married and moved to Washington state and a follow-up stipulation of heavy financial support was out of the question. A half-dozen years later, back on the East Coast, I had an opportunity to stop by but was not admitted into the house. I did learn that Swami had died and I sat by her grave. So much for making amends.

… and the back cover.

Since then, I’ve reconnected through social media with some of the key players and had a few assumptions, not in the story, deflated. In addition, Devan Malore’s “The Churning” reflects life there a few years after I’d moved on.

The story itself could have gone another way, if I hadn’t wanted to present the ideals that drew us together and kept us going. Especially the humor and playfulness.

More compelling for many readers would have been a more sordid tale of just one more “new religion” outfit run into scandal of a sexual or financial sort, preferably both. There were enough elements for that, as I’ve since learned.

The story first came out as a pioneering ebook in PDF format only and was later updated to Smashwords and its affiliated partners. A more recent, quite thorough recasting (again, blame the influence of Cassia in “What’s Left”) changed Swami from female to male and introduced Jaya as one of the eight resident yogis, thus linking her to the heftier Nearly Canaan novel. Besides, the transformation made Swami more acceptable to the expectations of many readers and allowed the Big Pumpkin and Elvis dimensions. The role was already unconventional enough, and this was more fun.

Am I still doing yoga? If you mean hatha, the physical exercises, let me say rarely and embarrassingly, at that. As exercise, I’ll substitute my daily laps in the swimming pool, and as meditation, my weekly Quaker meeting for worship. And no, I’m no longer vegetarian, other than when I voluntarily follow the Greek Orthodox “fasting” of Advent and Great Lent (again, blame Cassia), though I also eat much less flesh than most Americans. Actually, in these seasons, the Eastern Orthodox Christians are stricter than we yogis were.

I do wish there were a similar haven for youth today, one freed from the burden of student college debt. I’ll let “Yoga Bootcamp” stand where it does.