Old-School

I miss my insurance agent.

I'm not sure that I've started a post so oddly in my life, but I'm okay with it. I really do miss my insurance agent. I was with Joe Cerroni for a long time and I really liked the guy. Every time I think insurance I think of Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day, but Joe wasn't like that. He was friendly, calm in crisis, helpful, thoughtful, and professional. I liked calling my insurance agent. He made me feel good. Part of that was an additional quality Joe possessed as a person in business: he was old-school.

On birthdays he would send a postcard. He followed up with us after we had had a problem. He didn't send email but made phonecalls. He mentioned things we might want to add to our policy but never pushed the sale. I recommended him to everyone I know.

Then he retired. I wish him well in everything, but oh how I miss my insurance agent.

The folks who took over his agency are nice enough. They are up to date. I get automated emails about things. They tell me every little product I might want to purchase. They are new-school in every way.

A few weeks ago when I bought a new car, I visited the new offices, got lost in the hallways, and eventually found the agent. We sat down and she worked at selling me a whole new plan. The idea was to save me some money. She tried to get me to buy an umbrella plan. I said no. She worked out a whole new plan for our home owner's insurance and switched things around for the car. It took just over two hours of a day I had meant to save for myself.

I never spent more than half an hour in Joe's office. He moved it right along. Easy-peasy.

About two weeks later I got a call from the new office saying there was a problem. The inspector had decided that our roof looked sketchy. He did this from the ground and I wonder what the assessment would have been had there been the usual four inches of snow up there. Whatever the case, the policy was now declined and the agent said we had two choices: go back to the old policy or put on a new roof. I assumed her use of "we" did not extend to helping us pay for a new roof, so I said to go back to the old policy.

Today I received word from the bank that holds our mortgage saying that we don't have hazard insurance and the bank is going to charge us for that. Ugh. I called my agent but of course they aren't open on the weekend. I'll have to deal with this next week.

If this were Joe, I might be looking forward to the call. It's not Joe. It's definitely not Joe.

In the mail today was a letter from our retirement guy, Rob Sylvester, with a form I had requested. Along with the form was a handwritten note on paper showing that Rob supports Guiding Eyes For The Blind (nice!) explaining where I needed to sign and thanking me for working with him. Old-school in the extreme and just to my liking. If only he sold insurance.

I'm old-school, or, as Johnny Mercer wrote:

I'm old fashioned
But I don't mind it
That's how I want to be
As long as you agree To stay old fashioned with me
Oh won't you stay old fashioned with me
Oh please stay old fashioned with me

Process Stories

There are many reasons why I'm not being read by millions. First, I've got a lot to learn before I reach that kind of an audience. I need to learn how to write better (I always need to learn that), how to serve an audience, and how to get the word out. I read a great short piece by Damon Krukowski and was struck by what a fine writer he is, how he does things that I almost understand but can't yet make happen in my writing. I've been reading Dani Shapiro and there's an art and grace to her work that is clearly the result of having put in the work. I need to put in a lot more work before I reach millions.

There are other reasons why I'm not yet a household name (outside my household and that of my mom), but the one I'm thinking of today is how interested I am in process stories. I'm loath to look back and count, but my guess is that I've published at least fifty stories about how I work, tools I use, and even times of day when I'm most productive. It's not that I'm so full of myself (though I am too full of myself more often than not) as much as I love these kinds of stories from other creators and want to tell my own. Austin Kleon often talks about his processes and shares what he has learned of other people's work. Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, and Natalie Goldberg have written books about process and I've read each of them multiple times. In the words of the great philosophers Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough.

Were I to meet any of these writers I so admire, I would ask them to tell me about their days. When did you get up? Did you make coffee? Do you stay in the house or go out? Do you need to write first thing or does it wait? I'd want to see their writing spaces, ask what word processor they each use, and know what they do about their phones and other distractions. I'd want to know every detail.

There's an entire network on cable (probably more than one) devoted to watching people cook. There should be one on which we watch people write. I want to just see them at work. Ohhhhh, so they keep their back to the window. Interesting.

It's a wonder I'm not a television exec.

Today I'm happy to have heard Chris McDougall, author of Born To Run, Natural Born Heroes, and the forthcoming Running With Sherman describe his process on The Consummate Athlete podcast. McDougall can't write first thing in the morning. Instead, he screws around all day — feeding the chickens, goats, sheep, and donkeys, riding his bike, walking and running with friends, answering email, and calling in for podcasts. Then, at night, having gotten all hyperactivity out of his system, he sits and cranks out work until one in the morning.

This is great!

What excites me is that I could never work that way. I'm a morning person. After dinner my brain turns to sludge even without bourbon. There's just nothing there. (It has been argued that there isn't much there to begin with, but I'll leave that for another time.) In the morning I'm ready to go, can't wait to start. I'm just that way.

As I push on this writing thing, I get nervous that successful writers work so differently than I do. I find myself thinking, maybe I should... There's something to be said for learning from other people's methods — I don't have everything worked out — but the point is to craft my own methods. I'm not going to spend the morning feeding animals (it's not that involved a process to feed two cats and a dog) because I need to start the day with the pen in my hand, the keyboard beneath my fingers, ideas appearing on page and screen as if by magic.

I'm working on the reasons why a million people aren't reading this post. One thing to work on is refining my process. Every time I read or hear of another writer's methods, it inspires but also relieves me of the worry that I'm doing this thing all wrong and should give it up. That's good because because I don't have any kind of future in developing television networks. None whatsoever.

I Don't Buy It

With time to spare before my appointment I was in the car, thinking where to go, what to do for nearly an hour and a half. I'm not used to so much free time, but I know what to do with it: find someplace to read and write.

The obvious choice was a coffee shop. I needed to buy a pound of beans anyway, so I turned off the highway, crossed Erie Boulevard, and drove up Westcott toward Recess Coffee. I was wishing I'd brought my bluetooth keyboard. I don't carry my laptop to and from school and so if I wanted to write it would be with two thums on my phone or by hand. Maybe I'd finish my book instead. That thought gave me pause.

I was almost through Cait Flanders' The Year Of Less in which she describes banning shopping for one year and coming to a kind of enlightenment. I could use some enlightenment (okay, a lot) so I haven't bought anything other than groceries since last week when I began reading the book. To sit at Recess, I feel obligated to buy a cup of coffee (along with the beans), but I didn't want to break the streak. Hmmm.

Instead, I went to the library where there's nothing much to buy. Maybe late fees or photocopies. It felt good being so very enlightened, but tiring too and I dozed off reading the book. I've made it almost eighteen years without being asked to leave the library and would like to keep that streak too, so I checked out a couple books and headed out.

Driving again, I thought of going to the used record shop. Surely records aren't on my do-not-buy list! But, crossed back over Erie Boulevard, I decided maybe they should be unless I go out of town to a new shop. Forty minutes early for my appointment, I parked in the lot, parked and took out my notebook to write these thoughts.

Am I up for a shopping ban? I was ready to not buy something today and that's good enough for now. I'm typing across from the turntable on which I'm spinning an album I bought in January. Writing, listening, and not buying. Doing those three things, I wonder what I might come to understand.

Nonbinding Contract In The Schools

Got a call from the teacher's union rep. She and a lawyer from NYSUT have been arguing a grievance on my behalf. Last year, upper management sent word from the big house out to our teacher shacks on the north forty saying that despite the contract, we are no longer allowed to take more than seven days off each year. I took ten last year, got taken to the woodshed (a counseling memo placed in my file), and grieved that. Everyone who hears this figures we will win. It's in the contract for heaven's sake. I know better. Management doesn't lose especially when it comes to administering beatings until morale improves.

Of course the arbitrator found in management's favor.

If anyone asks why I'm quitting this job soon, here's your answer. It's why I want to get out of teaching. I'm tired of plantation life where I am expected to show up, shut up, and put up with anything. Management pays lip service to respecting teachers, but actions trump words. Upper management won't allow us the benefits of a contract. Here I thought this was New York State but it's Wisconsin or worse.

Union leadership is upset about this. The person who told me of the decision figured I would be upset too. I suppose I am but I don't give that much of a damn any more. The job is a paycheck and health insurance, a limited-term gig, and I'm counting the days until I run away.

One person in upper management declares that the extreme teacher turnover in our schools is a result of how well management trains us. That gives me a good laugh as I try to imagine other school districts sending head hunters to lure us away from paradise. In eighteen years on this plantation I've yet to hear of any teacher lured away like that. Instead, I watch people get out in the middle of the night, running as fast as they can, hitching a ride underground, and never looking back. The only regret any of them have is for teachers left behind, but they keep running. We have to save ourselves.

So far, I have yet to be approached by another school district for the exquisite training management had delivered. Instead, I'm pursued by management, treated like a cheap possession that can be easily replaced. Soon enough they'll have the chance to replace me. Night is falling. The contract is no protection. Management is coming down with a bullwhip. It's time to run.