Monday, June 30: At the beginning of every year, I’m always hopeful and enthusiastic about the chance to change myself, to become a better person, a more caring person, a more successful person. I make goals for myself. I want to succeed, I really do. But I wonder if I can ever really change. Can I change my true nature or am I doomed to continue to fall back into my old habits, into the person I really am deep inside?
I resolved to be FOCUSED this year. Granted, the year isn’t over yet, but as of the halfway point, I’ll recap where I am. Not very focused, I admit.
One of the things I didn’t make a resolution about was my photography. However, I had some nice things happen with my photography this year. First, I joined the Vienna Photographic Society. This is a group of hobbyists, most of whom are excellent photographers. I was inspired to push myself to excel, but ultimately, I realize I don’t have the technical expertise to be in their league. I’m not even sure I want to have that much technical expertise. Neither do I have Photoshop, nor do I do much in the way of post-processing. I understand now that many professional photographers do extensive post-processing. Maybe one day I’ll get into this, but at this point I don’t have the drive to attain such a level of accomplishment.
Each month the club has novice and advanced intra-club competitions in general photography and in themed contests using trained and experienced local photographers as judges. I’m always in the novice category.
In my first competition, I won third place in the novice category for this picture.
In another competition, I won first place in the novice category for this picture “Our Soul is a Spray Can,” taken in Cascais, Portugal. At the end of the year, when the club gave awards to everyone who entered competitions during the year, I also won Honorable Mention for this picture.
In a PSA (Photographic Society of America) National competition for Nature, Round 2, I got 10 points for this picture of Acacia Trees in Lake Langano, Ethiopia. This meant it went on to the next round of judging, but I ultimately didn’t win anything.
One of the things I enjoyed doing was a 20-minute presentation to the club on Oman. I put together a slide show about Oman and told stories about my life there. I got a lot of compliments on this presentation and I loved doing it. 🙂
I also joined Instagram and have been posting a lot of my pictures on there. At one point I started tagging my photos #natgeotravelpics. This hashtag put my photos into National Geographic Travel magazine’s Instagram feed. One week, they featured this photo and it got well over 20,000 likes and I got a lot of new followers on Instagram. It was a lot of fun for a couple of days.
Finally, I entered a photo competition at the Vienna Community Center, which was open to the public. I won third prize in Architecture for this photo of the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
It’s clear where I focused most of my energies! Below are the goals I set on January 1, 2014. As you can see, I seemed to FOCUS more on my photography than on the goals I actually set for myself. 🙂
1. Pitch a travel article to at least one publication every week, beginning after January 13.
This is one goal I haven’t taken any steps toward achieving. I started with an idea for the Washington Post Travel Section about a crazy trip I took from the chaotic spiritual city of Varanasi to the chill yoga capital of India, Rishikesh. The story, already written in my blog, was about 12,000 words. The Washington Post Travel Section seemed the perfect place for this story because they often publish personal experience stories. However, they do not take unsolicited pitches. You can send a full story and they’ll decide if they like it and are interested in buying it. But the word count on their stories must be from 1,500 to 2,500 words. Mine required a LOT of cutting. Besides, they generally don’t want to look at a story over a year old, and my story was from 2011. I thought they might consider a story if it was timeless, as mine was, so I worked on it for a while, cutting and cutting, until I got down to 5,000 words. Still way too long. Then I just abandoned it, slowly at first, as I continued to mull it over, and then all at once, as I dropped it altogether. That was the only article I even attempted to write.
Why am I so easily waylaid?
Probably because I’m not sure I really want to be a travel writer. I’m not interested in having to work on my holidays! I want to enjoy, soak up the culture and the sights. I want to enjoy the food and wine and the experience. Travel writing is a job. I’m not sure I want to make a job out of something I love doing for its own sake.
2. Finish revising my novel by the end of February. Spend March figuring out what steps to take to get it published and take those steps. Begin a new book after I get that process underway.
I didn’t quite make my February deadline. I did however finish my novel in May. Finally! A dear friend of mine read it and gave me some great feedback. I even came up with a title, The Scattering Dreams of Stars. So most of the work is done.
The next step is to send out query letters to agents. I wrote numerous drafts of a query letter and I posted a draft on a forum where fellow writers critique query letters. Mine got ripped to shreds. After many efforts to capture the essence of my story in a short two paragraphs, and to write a captivating hook, I let it sit. And sit. And sit some more. I have two friends who have offered to edit the letter, and I’ve made another attempt, but I’m still not happy with it.
I’ve decided it’s harder to write two paragraphs than to write a 350 page novel. Some people say they write the hook and the summarizing paragraph before they write their novel. Maybe I should have done that; it would have helped me to be more focused.
My goal is to finish that query letter and send it to agents in the next two months. Oh dear. Again, why am I so easily thrown off track, and sometimes by the simplest of setbacks?
As far as being a full-time writer, I now remember what I don’t enjoy about it. During the last 6 months, while I took off the semester to write, I felt isolated and antsy. It hit me that I function better with a schedule. I need to get up in the morning and go to a job. I need to interact with people. I do better getting out and about, being around people, being accountable to someone. I’m the kind of person who needs to squeeze in writing during the down times of a busy life.
3. Apply for at least 3 jobs a week in international development until I get one (Painful).
Yes, it was as painful as I thought it would be. I applied for 40 jobs in the U.S. and after getting no response from any of them, I started putting feelers out abroad. Even though I matched job descriptions exactly, I didn’t even get an acknowledgement on most of my applications.
As it’s very time-consuming to apply for jobs these days, I got disheartened very quickly. It used to be you could send a resume and a cover letter, but these days, applicants must often fill out online applications, completing every detail of your job history on each company’s website. It’s so ridiculous. What’s LinkedIn for, anyway? I think there should be one central place where you post your resume and you can download from that central place to a company’s website. You go through this cumbersome process and then you never hear ANYTHING back! It’s so frustrating.
Finally, I got sick of never getting any acknowledgement and spending so much time spinning my wheels for nothing. I don’t know the reason I don’t get short-listed. Some people have told me I’m overqualified. Others have told me I’m not qualified enough. Or I don’t match every single qualification. I have transferable skills, but employers seem to want you to have worked in that particular job, and they seem to want you to have no ambition to move from that job. Also, there are so many young people with Master’s degrees in International Relations coming from the big schools in the area: George Washington University, Georgetown University, American University, Johns Hopkins. Why would they hire an older person when they can hire a young person fresh out of college?
While I was in Oman, a woman contacted me through my Nizwa blog because she was considering working for the University of Nizwa. She ended up taking a job in China. I wrote to ask about possible jobs at her university and she told me they had just instituted a mandatory retirement age of 60. As I started looking at jobs in China, I saw many jobs with an age limit of 60. I figured since I only have one more year to work in China, I would focus my job search there. I’ve always wanted to teach in China for a couple of reasons: 1) Asian students in general are hard-working and 2) there are a lot of amazing things to see in China. I focused my job search there and in one week I had four interviews and I got three offers. I accepted an offer to teach at SCIC (Sino-Canadian International Colleges), Guangxi University in Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It’s not far from Vietnam and about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from Guilin, where the movie The Painted Veil was filmed.
In all, I applied for 70 jobs, beginning my job search when I returned from California at the end of January and ending on June 13, when I got the offer from GXU. That was 21 weeks at over 3 jobs a week. I believe my days of trying to find a job in the U.S. are over. It just doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
Since I can’t get a job in my country, I’m thankful that someone will hire me from foreign lands. Looks like I’m going to China! Nǐ hǎo!!
4. Post no more than two posts a week to my blog. (This will be one of the hardest to keep!)
I actually did this. I’ve posted 52 posts in 26 weeks, about two a week. I have neglected my fellow bloggers though, and for this I feel bad. 😦
5. Continue my explorations of the East Coast over the next year, after my trip to California in early January. Venture to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, Delaware, Tennessee (Ann Patchett territory!). Take a road trip. And if I can get a job, or make some money freelancing, go to Costa Rica or one of the Caribbean islands. Pitch local travel articles to publications further afield.
I haven’t been to any of these places. However, I am planning a trip to New Hampshire this week. 🙂
6. Read a lot: short stories, novels, the craft of writing, travel writing.
I love to read, so this has been easy. I’ve read 22 books, mostly books on writing and novels.
7. Walk at least 5 times a week and eat healthier and smaller quantities of food.
I’ve been really good about the walking, but not so good about the eating smaller quantities of food. I managed to lose 6 pounds, but then I gained back 4, so I’m only two pounds down from where I started. Here’s a chart of my weight, which seems a kind of metaphor for my life. I always end up right back where I started from!
In a way, I feel relieved to be going abroad again. Taking a job here in the U.S. probably wouldn’t have allowed me to travel. Besides, starting a new job in a corporation or a non-profit at this point would mean starting with only 2-3 weeks of vacation per year. Teaching abroad allows me to have both the cultural immersion I crave and to have extensive time off to travel in the region where I’m based. Overall, it’s a great solution to all my problems. As I only have about 9 more years to work before I retire, and I still have my health, I may as well take advantage of teaching abroad. Besides, my kids are nowhere close to settling down, getting married or having kids; by the time they are, I should be back in the U.S., ready to settle down and enjoy the extended family. And best of all, they’re supportive of me having my adventures while I’m still young enough to have them!
The other thing I miss about being abroad are the expats and foreigners one meets when thrown into a foreign country. Everyone is an adventurer of some sort. Being in the U.S., I’m tired of having people’s eyes glaze over when I share my experiences living abroad. I love the fellow nomads that tend to gravitate to each other in foreign lands. In addition, you meet wonderful natives of the country where you are a guest. Two of my closest friends in Korea, Julie and Kim, were Koreans. And I miss dearly friends I’ve made abroad, friends the likes of which I don’t have here in America. I miss Mario, Sandy, Tahira, Kathy, Anna, Mona Lisa, Seth & Anna, Myrna… and the list goes on. We share a common experience no one else will ever understand.
