Sorry for the silence. It’s been an
emotional roller coaster for a couple weeks and I will admit that there have
been a lot of low points. There have been some high points as well, so I’ll try
to cover a bunch of them and not let myself be too gloomy.
I have no idea why I chose the word "reinforcement" for
this entry, but I somehow just started thinking about how different
applications of it kind of meshed with what was going on.
1)
Backup (e.g. Additional Troops)
As those of you reading my blog are
probably aware, my parents and youngest sister recently moved from north New
Jersey back to Massachusetts. I couldn’t make it for the actual move, but I
took a couple extra days around the long Labor Day weekend to help settle in.
I don’t think I realized just how
unsettled the whole house still was until I got there, but that’s for later.
The house is, simply, gorgeous. The
original granite exterior was built in the mid-1800s and expanded upon over the
years to include a kitchen, enlarged sunny family room, and an attached garage.
We’ve always wanted to live in a historical house and now some of us do, along
with all the quirks: a very steep servants’ staircase, an uneven basement
floor, an oddly placed slate patio overlooking the neighborhood cul-de-sac that
used to be an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the crumbly remnants of a road in
the backyard that used to be the front yard, the alternatingly chic and
questionable style sense of the former owners. Oh, and a couple renovation
projects.
That was probably the hardest part for
me: because the top floor needs to be renovated, I wasn’t able to help with a lot
of the unpacking. I got the guest room and my bookshelves and storage set up,
tackled almost all of the dining room, made a big dent in alphabetizing the CDs
and DVDs, and helped out with a few other projects around the house. Maybe when
I’m back around Thanksgiving I’ll be able to help with some of the dozens of
boxes of books…
The best/most frustrating part was that
the movers didn’t do a great job of keeping everything labeled and organized by
room. Mostly I noticed this when things were missing from the rooms that were
mostly unpacked, but we also found a quite a few unexpected items. A box of
Christmas decorations was labeled for my room, as were a few decorative objects
from around our old entryway. The books and electronics from the family room,
dad’s study, and the back room were mostly thrown together willy-nilly. I had two
mostly empty closet boxes for my room even though there hadn’t been enough closet boxes for
the rest of the family, but breakable mugs and figurines had been put in my
dresser drawers without any padding.
Around the unpacking I did get a little
fun in: I rescued three tiny turtles from the pool; went up to the roof to take
a look at the crumbly chimney; walked to see a couple of the historic local not-witch
houses; went into Boston’s North End for a nostalgic stroll by the marina, delicious
lobster ravioli at Mother Anna’s, and cannolis to go from Mike’s. Part of me
wishes I’d gotten to live in this awesome house in this cool area near this
historic city—which may mean that Boston will have to be somewhere in my future.
2)
Positive Reinforcement: Scientific Definition
As any psychology student can probably
tell you, positive reinforcement doesn’t mean rewarding a desired behavior; it’s
simply the addition of a stimulus or incentive to a situation to reinforce
behavior. So that guy in Ghostbusters
who was getting zapped for failing to predict cards correctly was actually receiving
positive reinforcement (in his case, he’d prefer negative reinforcement: having
the threat of zapping removed for answering correctly).
In the past couple of weeks, someone
near the apartment has taken up smoking. First there’s the gentle scraping
sound of the window screen going up, then the flick of a lighter, and a few
minutes later I get to share the experience via the stink that wafts in through
the kitchen window, sometimes as far as the living room. The frequency of these
smoke breaks has been increasing from one a morning to several every day.
I don’t know who’s doing it. Up until
this point, I’ve never been aware of anyone smoking nearby, except for maybe
the occasional cigarette from someone who crossed the street from the steakhouse
to get a little quiet. It’s annoying, but what can you do?
Well, in this case, I could apply some
positive reinforcement. Every time I heard the screen go up, I rushed to the
window, grabbed two pans, and started banging them together. My desire was to
make the environment unhospitable enough that the smoker would find a different
direction to face—like out the front window, where there’s more of a breeze to
dissipate the smoke.
After some initial success, the subject
(who is, my nose tells me, currently at it again) appears to have become
accustomed to the ruckus—like bears who run into noise and light alarms around
dumpsters so much that they learn to ignore them. Maybe I need an air horn. And
“please smoke elsewhere” in Morse code.
3)
Positive Reinforcement: Conventional Definition
The use of the phrase “positive
reinforcement” to mean rewards for good behavior is so common that it does
merit inclusion. I had a great example in mid-August when I met with CC for my
half-year review. I had a great report and was given more responsibilities,
including a commissioning goal, and told what I’d need to do to be considered
for promotion. Yay!
Unfortunately, things got a little rough
soon after that. As our office move downtown approaches, quite a few people I love
working with are moving on, so there’s some sadness along with the excitement. And
I’ve had several very promising leads for book projects fall through or get put
on the shelf for a couple months—not that they won’t happen, and I can’t
begrudge a writer for wanting to take their time, but I’ve always been the kind
of person who wants to reach their goal early so that they can surpass it.
4)
Assurance
Along with all the changes happening at
work, though, we still have a great team of editors and assistants. My own
editor has been supportive when things were rough, and other editors, EAs, and PAs have
also offered opinions and advice—potential positives in turnovers, last-minute career tips, moving office decorations, shows to see, books to read, restaurants to eat at, recipes to try. I’ve also spent some time with people who I’ve not had
much chance to interact with up until now. Hard to believe it's possible not to have talked much with someone in an imprint this size, but our wedge-shaped office doesn't lend itself to interaction. Which is part of why we're moving.
5)
Reiteration
Support doesn’t just come from work,
either. Friends have been willing to listen and offer advice—even hilariously bad
advice, when I need a laugh. Cadillac is there every morning for a quick chat to just make me feel
human again, to have a conversation that isn’t about work, doesn’t
require knowledge of current TV shows, and allows conversations to swing from serious to silly and back again in a few seconds. And, as usual, my family has very kindly put up with me. My mom is a saint.
6)
Strengthening
I’m trying to stay focused on this aspect of the definition, the
fact that I really feel like I have a grip on the EA thing and am more than
ready to move up. Even if my projects have been slow off the ground, they are
coming—that’s something. But I’m also handling some complicated and delicate situations
on my own (as a result of the turnover, not negligence on anyone else’s part!) and
doing really well. I can answer most questions about our title management system
and I know who can when I can’t. I’m writing bulletins about
technology updates and monthly successes. I haven’t actually let us run out of
coffee despite a surprising lack of anxiety in the office when the supply gets
low. (Yes, I’m doing the coffee order. Oh, the irony! (I think…))
To step away from all the vagueness, I
also did some literal, construction-level strengthening. A friend, MM, told me
and Neline about a cool even that happened last Saturday evening in Madison
Square Park: MAD. SQ. TASK, a massive art party for people young and old and a
lot of in-between.
Volunteers had brought in supplies from
all over: cardboard boxes and tubes of all lengths, sizes, and weights; ribbons
pattered and plain, strings and tapes of several colors; hat boxes in at least
four different sizes; seven or eight mannequins that didn’t start or end the
evening with all their limbs in place; lengths of scrap cloth in a dozen
textures and patterns; plain, construction, and wrapping paper; markers,
crayons, paints; and odds and ends that included a couple reels of film,
ladders, endless rolls of plastic wrap, and foam tiles.
Visitors had to write a creative task and put it
in a box, then take one of their own and complete that task. One friend had to
build a Broadway set, convince people to act in it, and gather an audience. Someone
had to make and share a pizza. One group built a “power tower”. One little girl
wrapped herself in tinfoil and went around asking for hugs. One person got five
people to join a dance party. One little boy had to start a human wave, and some
older guys quickly got on board helping him out by lending their very loud
whistles. Several college kids were running around tying people together. Lots
of little kids built nonsense contraptions that may or may not have been actual
tasks, but hey, they were having fun.
My task was to make a five-foot-tall
hat. I had no idea how to start. I ended up getting a hat box with a ribbon in
it for the base, then realized that it could be five feet tall without going
five feet off my head—so it was five feet tall but started partway down my back.
I attached a five-foot cardboard tube to a hat box with copious amounts of tape
(going by the “more is more” school of thought), so that the tube was about
three feet above my head and two down my shoulders. I did some tying and taping
to wrap some shiny textured gold paper around the tube, then did some creative
taping and wrapping to attach some overlapping layers of dark green cloth to
the top and a sandy gold textured cloth to the top of the hatbox (no glue, no
staples, no scissors, and I was lucky enough to find one tiny safety pin among
the cloth. Voila! I had an island hat.
But my palm tree was lonely. I decided
it needed a mermaid. Again I got creative: I rolled a bundle of brown cloth for
the body and secured it with a ribbon, rolled and bent paper tubes that I
tucked into the ribbon to make arms, and carefully folded two corners of a
scrap of blue cloth into a tail. Zhe looked a little lonely, so I tore a few
fish out of green construction paper, drew on fins, gills, and smiley faces,
and attached them by taping them to lengths of film that were, in turn, taped
to the hat box.
When I finally put the hat on, the
hat box covered my entire face. But then, a five-foot-tall hat wasn’t going to
be the height of practicality anyway.
My next assignment was to give it to
someone. This was fairly easy, though the poor woman I gave it to had no idea
what to do with it. Alas, I was the only one to ever wear my creation: it
leaned against a railing near some very wildly dressed mannequins the rest of
the evening.
7)
Reminder
When I’m in a slump, I have an awful tendency to become unsocial
even when I really want to be around people. So to combat that, I’ve been
trying to do things that I know I like, even when I do give in to the desire for some
alone time.
I started with a walk in St. Michael’s Cemetery, which did not seem like a morbid
thing to do until I told someone I did it. I like cemeteries. They’re quiet,
peaceful. There’s so much history in gravestones, and sometimes quite a bit of
personality. There were no terribly old stones that I came across—only the very
late 1800s, not exactly impressive to someone who grew up in New England.
There were definite waves of fashion among the headstones. Newer remembrance
walls for ashes and urns broke up the field, as did a couple rows of
honest-to-goodness mausoleums. Near the front of the park the tombstones were
massive in width and length, at least four feet high, with bigger plots and a
handful of names of each stone. More modestly sized stones for individuals (and
a few couples) filled the middle, though there was a lot of variety in
decoration. Well, sort of. There were carvings of pillars and flowers and
scrolls, but there were also a heck of a lot of crosses. I only realized when I
saw one star and crescent that I hadn’t seen any stars of David.
There were also a lot of languages, which was a first for me. I’ve seen some
tombstones in German, but that’s about it. St. Michael’s had Greek, Italian, Russian,
Polish, and quite a few alphabets and languages I didn’t recognize, with a few
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean letters scattered among them.
Right next to that crowded, newer
section were some scattered older headstones among very large trees: one of the
oldest parts of the cemetery, I believe. A far corner was dense with a variety
of Asian texts and stones as tall as I was with what looked like quite a few
names—family plots, I assume. I made my way back toward the entrance over a
hill, through some very Edwardian-looking grave stones that were more like
statues and decorations than simple markers.
What struck me most was how impersonal so many of the stones were.
Granted, I wasn’t expecting it to be full of unique memorials like Barre,
Vermont’s Hope Cemetery, but I expected a bit more individuality from New
Yorkers. Names, dates, maybe a photo—that was it. Only a few had really
personal touches: one made sure that everyone will remember he was a Yankees
fan, one was a piano player, one a doctor, one
a “ladies man” (that was carved on the back
of the tombstone, which I thought hilarious), and in one perplexing
instance the stone didn’t say anything but “MOTHER”. Those last two really
struck me, since they seemed to have several possible stories behind them.
I also made note of good names as I went
by. Graveyards are great places to browse for character names. I won’t include
the one absolutely brilliant full name I found, since it was a relatively new
memorial, but I’ve included some of my favorite individual names.
First names: Marija
Roque Tekla Madiana
Orsalla Edilia Spyros
Quiescence Suoma Toman
Last names: Rovensky
Skerbel Timberman Vartholomes Dragos
Arrington Templeton Grassner Spinner
Wickersheiner Lallathine
On the subject of characters, I haven’t
been writing but I have been inspired and taking notes like a fiend. I usually
only dream vividly when I don’t sleep well (and yeah, there’s been a good bit
of that lately), and one morning I woke
up with a place and a situation and the beginning of a story clear as day in my
mind. I started throwing characters at it, first from Sherlock and Elementary, but they rapidly spun out of character until they were
only vaguely recognizable (though I may still play with them that way)…then, oh
boy, I got Frankenstein involved.
Mostly it was a desire for me to throw in some characters I’ve been building,
one of whom was Frankenstein’s creature. (He likes to cook. It’s a long story.)
Then I remembered “Pride and Prometheus,” a gloriously grim and gothic short story
I read a while ago, and decided to get some Bennett sisters involved. I’ve cut
myself off for now until I get some more plot hammered out.
As a result, I’m back to doing what I
love: research. I’m gobbling up what little information and scraps of literary criticism there is about Ernest
Frankenstein (the second son and the only Frankenstein to survive the novel),
figuring out just how much I’m willing to fudge the properties of phosphorus in
a steampunky world, looking up the thickness of permafrost, brushing up on the
history of the transcontinental railroad, and very determinedly ignoring the
last two digits of the years I’m looking at. We’ll see what happens.
I also had a chance to indulge in
something I rarely do: fire! I had a few packets of checks with my parents’ New
Jersey address on them and I’d finally gotten around to replacing them. I wasn’t
sure how to dispose of them, so I figured I might as well do it completely. I
brought the checks to Massachusetts, found the old “wolf pot” (an iron pot that’s
always stood by a fireplace…except when we’ve repurposed it as a Halloween
candy bowl) and carted it down to the pool side. Not exactly a bonfire, but fun
nonetheless. It made me want to light a real fire and try cooking in that big
old pot.
Food is has still been great.
I’ve been out with coworkers and friends for Japanese in the East Village,
vaguely South American nachos and tres leches cake, a Korean burrito (man, I
love New York!), and a good old burger.
I'm also still volunteering. Since I missed Labor Day Weekend, I actually gave Xavier a try on a first Sunday. Man, was I reminded why I don't go on those weeks any more! No issues with M. Creepo, thank goodness, but the coordinators sure were doing their best to keep the hungry miserable. I took a certain savage pleasure in fetching takeout containers, extra cups of juice, and coffee--other coordinators have only ever encouraged us to do that kind of thing, since the whole point is to be welcoming and friendly! The usual post-volunteering lunch crew wasn't there, so I indulged in Panera's over the end of The Marlowe Papers.
So yeah, I’m doing what I can to get out
of this funk of mine, though it’s taking more work than I’d like. Hopefully my
next update will be a bit more cheery.
