If you've read any of the other posts in this blog, you'll know my writing history. Perhaps it would be best to give a brief teaching history, if only for philosophy.
I started teaching in 1997, for a sporting goods company called Bass Pro Shops. When I first began, the goal was just not to fall on my face--someone had selected me as a teacher, with no prior experience on my part, after having me as a student in their class. (Sadly, I wish I could say that teacher was good. She wasn't my cup of tea.) After teaching a while though, I found I got a high from one thing specifically--watching that wave of "Oh, NOW I get it" crossing the face of the student. I live for that moment. It happened a lot when I first started, too, because most of my classes were beginning employees, and, against modesty here, I'm good at teaching.
The second phase of how to be a good teacher didn't sharpen in me until the last four years, working at Grainger--if you want to be a good teacher, beyond beginners, you better enjoy listening too, so that you create a learning plan that gives back more and more of those "Oh, NOW I get it" moments. By the time I left Grainger I was damn good at listening--but the missing link was having very little or no empowerment, as an ASSISTANT manager, to make changes. I taught things and watched them fall flat, sort of like flying a kite by running all day instead of having a good wind behind you.
Leaving and working alone, you would think I wouldn't be able to teach anyone. I'm alone about 85% of the time now. (When I define alone, I mean, not with people interacting with me. In a City like San Francisco alone is all relative. I've been known to go to bars and coffee shops to CREATE interactions, but, I digress.) I'm a writer, which, for overall best productivity means that the writer sits alone, even in a cafe, and spins out a world of words. My expectation of REACH, either by association or by teaching, is low for two reasons: I'm in a solitary occupation, and in the last occupation I did get a wind to keep my kite up from the Airman, but no one else. Not expecting to having impact, I keep writing, and I keep going to my writing Meetups, even on nights where no one else is there or only one person shows up. Read me, or don't. Meet me, or don't. My devotion has to be the same whether I have wind or not.
This past week all kinds of wind brought in all kinds of "Oh, NOW I get it" on faces, even when I couldn't see them. Tuesday I wrote a piece about an event at a local bookstore as part of my work as a contract writer with the Examiner, and got all kinds of feedback from readers. I was stunned. Someone was reading me and, of all things, LIKED what they read. The article created new interactions on Facebook and on Twitter, and my audience got bigger. I REACHED someone. No, I'm not teaching at Harvard yet, but I'm teaching. Somebody learned something. Including me.
Last night I hosted what may be my final facilitating gig with Meetup for a little while. (When I first got into Meetup I had no intention of EVER being a facilitator--I was a manager at the time and just wanted to be a "student"--but people had the tendency to see dependability in me, so if they couldn't lead then they asked me to.) I have to be honest--I was dreading it. The facilitator who asked me to host has been asking about four weeks out of six, and I was wrestling with taking care of this group with a) no credit to my name for doing it, or b) no compensation for doing so. Facilitators of Meetups don't do it as a profit, but I was looking at this from a just-a-few-weeks-ago manager perspective: "What? I'm not listed as the Big Kahuna? Screw you." I sat down the last couple of days and did a lot of writing about it, and remembered why I teach, and tried to apply that: "Look for the recognition in the eyes, Jo, and give the group a place of no judgment from which to write." I had to go back to the writings of Natalie Goldberg, to the teachings of the Good Doctor, and to the question from the Healer asking me two weeks out of managerial jail, "Why do you want to write?" I want to write to reach someone. Normally, filling in for this facilitator, I'm all nervous because I want to make him proud that I can hold down the fort for him. Last night, nothing to lose, no judgment and wanting only recognition that the participants can do what they desire as writers, I OWNED that time. I was a teacher again, the good kind, and this morning two of the participants voiced how much they were able to accomplish with the group last night. REACHED them again. (To understand why I think that I've reached them is to know that I haven't seen comments the next day from this group since I joined in 2007. For ANY facilitator.) Five pairs of eyes, "Oh, NOW I get it."
God, I love teaching.
(Before you ask, I will probably facilitate again. But I have to be a student again for a little while, with a different branch of my writing Meetup, to help get it off its feet. Going where I'm most needed, I'm off to be someone else's wind. Selah.)
*****
Along with teaching and re-grounding myself, I'm seeing something else happen in my art...I'm getting leaner.
I'm sure all of my readers have seen the Food Network, so this analogy might be best unfurled with the following metaphor. There are two reasons to strain something when you are in food preparation: one is to strain to get out the big unwanted pieces, as in jelly, sauces, or stock; and the other one is to remove unwanted liquid, as in marinades, starchy vegetables, and yogurt. Lately my writing has reminded me of the second example--I write about five hours a day and publish about an eighth of that, if I'm lucky. (And most of that is self-publishing, which means a lot of stuff doesn't meet my own standard.) I noticed that the liquid was getting strained out this morning in particular when I came up with a poem. Now, I don't write poems unless I'm sitting in the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto--for some reason that's the only place I can get inspired for poetry, and where I came up with one about not knowing Spanish in a bi-lingual state. (I'd link it here but apparently it's up and gone, like a fart in the wind. So I'll type it out and get it in the blog another day.) This morning, however, after weeks of writing, reading, and reading a little poetry every morning, I wrote one:
Pears
They're red, not green,
But sit cockeyed in a green bowl
With high walls like a vase.
Their red necks turn this way
And that way,
Leaning on each other
Like fat, rednecked drunks
Wearing their union stickers
"308, Inspected by Local,"
Proudly.
Whether or not it's good is up to the reader. I like it, but I like the imagery of pears as blue-collar fruit, so sue me. What was most interesting to me was that I wrote something compact and poetic in a place that didn't involve black-and-white film and a huge organ. I squeezed out the formerly necessary setting, a lot of extra stuff that I don't need in my daily round, and now...Something's changing in how I do this writing thing, and I like where it's going.
Onward, dear reader.
P.S.-This is where the title of this post of Life for Rent comes from. (The Olympics in the 90's meant something to me, what can I say.)
No comments:
Post a Comment