organization – Joanne Corey

JC’s Confessions #29

In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.

It’s been a hard few months.

More than a few?

Hard to keep track…

When I wrote this post at the end of October, I was re-organizing to structure my time for more poetry and less volunteering, but B’s COVID diagnosis in November, which turned into two weeks of him isolating in part of the house, leaving me responsible for keeping the household going, followed by daughter T’s shoulder surgery/aftermath in December left me with a lot to do, not a lot of holiday spirit, and very little creative brain availability. Thrown on top of this was the unexpected return of the threat of shale gas development, which we thought had ended with the New York State high-volume hydrofracking ban nine years ago, this time in the guise of an unproven scheme to use supercritical carbon dioxide to extract methane from shale and sequester carbon. This necessitated the reactivation of the coalition that won the fracking ban back then and hours of conference calls, research, and emails. Oh, and what I thought would be one or two local interviews for my alma mater turned into a series of zoom interviews across the region, taking a lot more time and energy than I had expected when I said yes to the opportunity. (There’s also some other personal and family health stuff going on, which I won’t go into here.)

I’ve been struggling with prioritizing and keeping my attention where it belongs to finish tasks. My best intentions to simplify have met with the reality tsunami and washed out to sea.

I am, though, not suffering as much as I was last January when I wrote JC’s Confessions #26. Then, I realized I was still grieving. I am in a different place in dealing with losses now.

We are spending a couple of weeks in February visiting our family in London, UK. This will get me away from most meetings. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a little bit of poetry time in the early mornings or late evenings to continue work on revision of my full-length manuscript. I’m attempting to line edit the whole thing and, perhaps, re-order it to prepare for work with a professional editor in April. It’s felt like fits and starts so far but I have worked on about 20% of the poems to this point.

I have followed through on my commitment to post daily for Just Jot It January but will be pulling back the post pace for February and trying to devote that time to poetry.

So, yes, organizing my time and following through on plans is still a work in progress.

And, come next January, there is a possibility that some version of this Confession will recur.

Or, maybe, I’ll finally stop feeling badly about having to re-vamp, re-adjust, postpone, and re-jigger my life so often.

I can hope.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/28/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-28th-2024/

reflections on BHPC residency ’23

Yes, it’s been over a month since I returned home from the Boiler House Poets Collective residency with The Studios at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts) in North Adams but I am finally getting around to a wrap-up post. I did post a couple of times during the residency, about Marika Maijala and our reading at the Bear & Bee Bookshop, although that was a far cry from most of our years in residence when I would post daily. Things were very busy, so posting took a back seat and this past month has been loaded with other commitments, such as the launch of the Third Act Upstate New York working group and the first concert of the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton’s 45th anniversary season. I also needed time to reflect on the residency and what it meant for the future of the Boiler House Poets Collective.

Until this year, the Boiler House Poets Collective reunion residencies had always had at least half of the participants being members of the original group that met in 2015 as the first group of poets in residence brought together in a collaboration between Jeffrey Levine of Tupelo Press and The Studios at MASS MoCA. For 2023, the number of participants went from eight to ten, with only myself and Kyle Laws planning to return in 2023. (Sadly, last-minute health complications prevented Kyle from joining us, so I was the lone “original” in 2023. I’m hoping to have this be a one-time occurrence.)

I had inherited the role of liaison with The Studios but also wound up acting as an organizer for this year of transition. I was determined to assemble a full complement of ten and to provide for all the elements that had been part of past residencies, including studio time, museum visits, daily workshopping, a group project, a public reading, and discussion/social time (often accompanied by food and drink). Because, in prior years, we had always had a core of originals, adding in new participants from among our poet-friends as slots became available, we hadn’t felt called to define who we were as a group. I thought, at this juncture, we needed to be more intentional about our identity and our goals. I let people know that we would be having an organizational meeting near the end of the residency to talk about what was important to us and what our plans would be going forward.

I admit that I was really nervous about how things would work out with so many people who had never met each other. For the first time, we had a member who was not herself a poet. In 2022, the BHPC residency overlapped with the residency of Nancy Edelstein, whose work centers around light. With that inspiration, I had designed our group project around the theme of light, inviting each person to contribute work that had to do with light. I had expected a group of poems but the amazing thing was that people began to notice light in new ways. One of our members was inspired to take photographs showcasing light and shadow. We were able to share our light-themed work with each other. It’s not yet clear whether or not we will produce some conglomeration of these that is shareable with the public. If we do, I’ll be sure to share it here.

Another thing that was new for BHPC this year was that we workshopped some pieces that were not poetry, including an essay, scene from a play, and excerpt of a radio play. It was interesting to expand our literary horizons. While we expect to remain grounded in poetry, it’s good to have that flexibility to serve our members’ needs.

I felt that the group had a good vibe from the time of our opening night dinner when we were first together but I was nervous for our organizational meeting when people would be assessing how things had gone and if they wanted to return in 2024. I was thrilled – and a bit teary – when all but one person immediately said they wanted to return next year; the remaining person hopes to but lives across the country, creating a lot more complications than those of us within easy driving distance. People enthusiastically volunteered for organizational roles, including inventing some duties I would never have thought of on my own, so that I will be able to concentrate on just doing the liaison role. I even have a deputy who is shadowing me and can take over if I’m sidelined for any reason. This new constellation has embraced being a collective in a wonderful way and I am immensely grateful.

On a personal level, I appreciated how supportive people were of my work. As regular readers here at Top of JC’s Mind may recall, I grew up in the North Adams area and have two manuscripts, a full-length and a chapbook, that I am submitting to presses and contests. I’m at a crossroads with the full-length collection. I have a contract offer from a hybrid publisher but I’m not sure that is the way I want to go. One day over lunch, people were listening to my concerns and offering suggestions, which were very helpful and have led to my scheduling a manuscript consultation with a professional editor next month. I’m hoping that will help me clarify the path I need to pursue.

I also appreciated that people took my work seriously. One of the poets said that my poems were important in preserving the history of the area. That was so gratifying to me, even though I seldom dare to think in those terms. I do think about those poems as being ones that only I would write, given my perspective as someone who grew up there but that has lived elsewhere most of my adult life. It’s a sort of inside/outside perspective that would be difficult to replicate in quite the same way. I don’t tend to think that my following the dictum to “write what you know” would seem important to someone else, so it was nice to hear. It makes my search for a publisher and my wish to have the book be as strong as possible feel more weighty.

So, I have joyfully marked the dates for the 2024 Boiler House Poets Collective residency on my calendar for next October. I’m looking forward to being among this remarkable group of women again, but I’m also grateful to know that, if something happens that prevents me from being there, the group will go on without me.

My heart will be there, though…

email, email, and more email

Since I first started using email over twenty years ago, I have had the same email address. It was initially set up through Roadrunner, affiliated then with Time Warner although it has since moved to Spectrum.

I’ve used this email address for everything from personal correspondence to charity donations to newsletters to subscriptions to poetry submissions to online shopping. It has been registered in hundreds of places over the years. The address has occasionally been unreliable but, given how widespread it was, I was loath to change it.

Now, however, it has lost or delayed so many things that my hand is forced. I got the October newsletter from the Biden campaign and an email about planning my vote after election day. I sent a poem to my local poet circle for workshop twice without anyone receiving it. An email from the resolution center working on refunds for our cancelled trip to London went astray and almost resulted in the case being closed prematurely.

So, I have embarked on the the painstaking process of migrating from my one-stop email destination to a constellation of gmail addresses for different purposes. There is one for poetry related things, one for shopping and business contacts for B and me, and one for all the rest of my personal and organizational contacts.

The sorting is proving to be a long and complicated process. I realize I am still in the early stages of it, but it is beginning to take shape. Daughter E taught me how to keep tabs for the three different gmail inboxes open simultaneously in my browser and I have a fourth with my original inbox, all of which I am getting into the habit of monitoring several times a day. [Note that none of these is my long-neglected blog email topofjcsmind@gmail.com. The recommendation still holds that if you want to contact me by email that you leave a comment telling me you have done so, as I will see the comment and know to check the inbox. Some year or other, I’ll get to making it usable.]

What is taking a ton of time is changing the address on email lists. Some organizations have a straightforward process with a link for updating at the end of their email. Click the link. Edit your address. Save changes and you’re done. Sometimes, they email you a confirmation link for security reasons. Other times, the setup is that they email you an edit link first. Both guard against unauthorized changes.

Some sites don’t offer a way to make changes. I’ve had to subscribe with a new email address and then unsubscribe the old address.

Others allow you to update your online profile at their site, but I’ve run into lots of problems doing this. Sometimes, the site will let you change your address but then won’t update for the emails it sends you. Other times, it seems they won’t save your preferences for how often you want to hear from them. And some seem to just stop sending emails altogether.

This endeavor is also making me consider each email sender and whether or not I want to keep hearing from them. As I have posted about previously, I have been trying to tame my inbox for some time. I’m hoping the time that I’m investing in this organizational effort will eventually make it easier to deal with my email and give me more time for other things.

I wish I could figure out when I will arrive at that “eventual” point.

So far, I’ve done very little about changing my email for personal contacts. Personal messages seem to get through to my original email inbox pretty reliably, although occasionally one gets delayed for days or lands in my spam folder. Perhaps, I’ll draft a bcc email blast at some point, although I’ll probably have my poet-friends use my poetry address rather than my general one and friends of both B and me our joint address.

Something else to think about.

Who knew email could be so tiring?

a pandemic paradox

Over the past several years of spending a lot of time as a caregiver, I’ve valiantly tried to cut down the size of my email inbox, which is often overflowing with news, newsletters, and calls to action from various charitable, social justice, and environmental causes, along with personal and poetry-related emails. Even with my diligent attempts, I routinely handle over a hundred emails a day, which is still a lot, so I am unsubscribing from even more email lists and trying to avoid signing too many petitions which lead to my being on even more lists.

Paradoxically, as we have been avoiding in-person meetings over these last months, my inbox is full of invitations to connect via Zoom or Go to Webinar or some other platform. Instead of having fewer demands on my time, there seem to be more.

I can’t keep up.

In order to create some semblance of order, I’ve decided to narrow the selection of online events that I will accept. Of course, I will continue with my local poetry circle, which I call the Grapevine Group after the cafe where we used to meet pre-pandemic. I am also looking forward to the five-week summer session of the Binghamton Poetry Project, which, for the first time, is breaking into a beginner and a more experienced section. I am also signed up for six summer sessions with a local spirituality center that has had to re-convene virtually rather than offering in-person programs and retreats.

Beyond that, I plan to accept a very limited number of educational/advocacy meetings on social/environmental justice to keep informed and to take directed action. I am heartened by the increasing convergence of climate/environmental justice with racial/economic justice and want to advocate for effective change.

Beyond that, I hope to say “No” and continue to unsubscribe so that I have more time to accomplish what I need to and respond to ever-shifting circumstances.

(She writes, hoping she can actually manage to do so.)

intention

Other than One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday, I don’t usually follow the Just Jot It January prompts, but today’s prompt is “intention”, which sparked my interest. If the prior sentence makes no sense to you, you definitely need to visit Linda Hill’s blog, Life in Progress, and check it out!

It was my intention to try to re-organize my life after so many changes in 2019.

Or maybe I should say “organize,” given that I can’t actually remember the last time I felt that my life was organized.

This is definitely not the first time I have felt that I should (re)organize. In truth, I have had multiple junctures in my adult life – when my daughters started school, or moved away from home for higher education or work, or when Grandma moved nearby and we weren’t trooping back to Vermont so frequently, etc. etc. – when I thought I would re-organize and have a schedule and maybe make progress on long-term goals.

Somehow, it never quite worked out.

I know that this sounds like either an excuse or a complaint, but it is not meant to be either.

It is a recognition of the vicissitudes of life and how priorities need to be reshuffled to meet a new challenge. I chose to prioritize caregiving over other possible activities – and caregiving is seldom a follow-the-schedule sort of thing. Unfortunately, my extended family has suffered an unusually large number and variety of diagnoses, some of which took years to pin down and some that are difficult to treat. I’ve spent time supporting friends who have had cancer and died at a much younger age than we had hoped. I’ve spent major amounts of time volunteering to address emerging community needs.

These choices were all intentional, but they meant postponing or jettisoning personal goals. There were times earlier in my life when I thought I would have my musical compositions published and might return to paid work as a church musician. Circumstances, including orthopedic problems and a crisis that tore my church community apart, intervened and those dreams disintegrated.

Serendipitously, my music losses made room in my life for more writing, albeit in a somewhat haphazard way. My blog and my poetry have shoehorned themselves around major caregiving challenges in the twenty-teens. My dreams of submitting poems for publication on a regular basis and of having a book in print by sixty turned out to be unattainable. I suppose the book part is still a possibility, but it is unlikely because now, at 59, neither of my poetry manuscripts is currently in shape to submit.

Which circles me back to my intention to organize my life…

It is true that my caregiving activities are lessened now, but they are still there and somewhat unpredictable. Something that I have said often over the last few years is also still true; sometimes, the problem is not so much lack of time as lack of brainpower. I definitely can carve out more time for writing now, but I don’t necessarily have the brainpower to do it effectively.

I’m tired.

I guess that, sometimes, when you have run on adrenaline and/or cortisol for a long time and then you stop, your mind and body don’t just jump back to normal function. (I’m not sure that this is medically true, but it is my current way of understanding how I am feeling.)

A week ago, while writing for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, an idea floated to the surface that has kept coming back to me. Perhaps what would be most useful right now is not a schedule, but a sabbatical.

I had intended, early this year, to do revisions on a few individual poems and to assemble my chapbook manuscript for critique by my local poet-friends, so that I could submit to contests and publishers in the spring.

Now, I am feeling that I should not put that pressure on myself.

Maybe I will rest for a while and then feel rejuvenated and creative and I will be able to work on it.

Maybe I won’t.

I just feel too tired to force the issue.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! You can follow the prompts or not as you wish. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/05/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-5th-2020/

Household reorganization

One of the promised catch-up posts…

Over these last months of spending additional time dealing with Nana and Paco’s needs, I have been spending less and less time taking care of things at home.

Happily, spouse B and daughters E and T have stepped up to deal with the bulk of the shopping, planning, cooking, and cleaning so I don’t have to worry about it.

A bonus has been that E and T have been trying new recipes and expanding their kitchen expertise, which will be good preparation for the time when they each will have to manage their own house or apartment again.

It was also nice that when E’s spouse L was able to be here for three weeks in August, E, L, and one-year-old ABC were able to get a taste of what it will be like when they are able to have a household of their own.

Just before L returned to London, he and E prepared tea for us, featuring finger sandwiches, homemade scones, Coronation chicken, and a Victoria sponge for dessert. Of course, there was also tea!

Maybe late next year, they will be together in London and B and I can visit them together and have tea there.
tea

*****
Join us for Just Jot It January. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/04/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-4th/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

Re-jiggering – part two

On the morning of March 21, I wrote this post about how I was making some changes to my blogging strategy.

That afternoon, my mother-in-law, known here as Grandma, had a heart attack; she passed away the next day.

Since then, I have posted sporadically and done almost no blog reading and commenting. It has even taken me days to answer comments on the few posts I have done.

It was just the way it had to to be.

I am going to try to do a series of (relatively) short catch-up posts over the next few weeks. I will also try to get here to answer comments in a more timely way.

Extensive reading and commenting on other blogs is going to have to wait a while longer. There is just too much in-person stuff that demands my attention.

It does feel strange not knowing what is going on with you all. Have fun reading, writing, commenting, and keeping up with each other in the blog community in my absence.

I’ll be back when I can.

Peace,
Joanne

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