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One month in – bureaucracy rules

September 16, 2018 By Aline Soules

Having been retired for exactly one month, I have discovered that bureaucracy rules. I spend time every day calling some “organization” about my pension or my medical supplement or some other aspect of this life-changing event, or visiting organizational offices in person. I find it ironic that, in this time when I am supposed to be approaching senility, I need my wits about me more than ever.

Every day, a new package of information or blank forms arrives in my snail mailbox. In pursuing my understanding of the information, I find that there are often elements that are missing or not clear (hence my phone calls or visits). Some of the forms I’ve faced are incomprehensible to me (hence more phone calls or visits). And every day I struggle to get things in place before I need them.

I also wonder how many of us face this on retirement. In talking to retired persons I know, they assure me that this is the “norm” when retirement begins. While these anecdotes are not scientific, they are reassuring to me, in that I’m not the only one who faces this initial challenge to retirement. On the flip side, they are worrying to me because, at the moment, I have my full mental capacities (or so I think) and I am able to question organizations’ representatives and challenge elements I don’t think are correct. How many retirees are able to ensure that they receive their full benefits in pension and in medical benefits? My fear is that some slip through the cracks, although, for the most part, the people with whom I’ve spoken genuinely want to help.

I also wonder if we need to create some sort of voluntary “pods” of people (expert on social security, expert on IRAs, expert on Medicare, expert on medical supplements, expert on estates, expert on … whoever is needed). Certainly, we can hire CPAs, lawyers, financial advisors, and so on, but what about those who can’t afford to do that. How do we help them? How do we identify those people and put them together with what help is available? A complex issue not easily solved.

Image credit: https://murraygv.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/forms-and-letters/

Writer Unboxed, Jane Friedman, and all things helpful

September 4, 2018 By Aline Soules

As a long time writer, I’ve noticed a big change over the years—more help. With the advent of the Internet and Web and the generosity of writers, I’ve been able to query help for my writing much more often in the last decade or so. Two of my favorites are Writer Unboxed (http://writerunboxed.com) and Jane Friedman (http://www.janefriedman.com and her blog, http://www.janefriedman.com/blog). In the latter case, you can also sign up for Jane’s “Electric Speed” and receive emails about her latest advice. Jane also runs a Facebook group called “The Business of Being a Writer.”

While WriterUnboxed is more unabashedly commercial (calling for donations and so on), both offer solid content and both are clearly in love with the writing and fiction and the business of writing, too. With so many of us now finding alternate publishing paths, their advice is particularly helpful.

Of course, there are many other sources for good advice as well, but, over the last year in particular, I’ve found myself turning to these two sources on a more regular basis than any other. I’m grateful for their generosity, their honesty about writing, and the advice they offer. If you’re a writer of fiction, they’re great sources to consult. Thanks to both.

English as an uncommon language, Part I

August 26, 2018 By Aline Soules

It has been said that the Americans and British are separated by a common language. One could argue that all English-speaking countries and peoples are separated by that not so common language. One area of differences centers around accent, dialect, and country idioms, and those differences are both large and small. (I’ll talk about other differences in my next post.)

I was born in Scotland and still have in my possession something called The New Testament in Scots. This book is written in a dialect called “braid” Scots or “broad” Scots. When I’ve had occasion to read to non-Scots a line or two in the accent of my youth, some assume it’s Gaelic; none understands it. To quote the line from the front cover:

“Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin press or a rínging cymbal.” (Hint: I Corinthians, 13:1).

And that’s one of the more intelligible lines that I suspect you can figure out. Try this one:

“Efterhend I will gae back an bigg up again

the dwallin o Dauvit, at hes faan;

what is nou but a ruckle I will bigg up again

an raise up the haill aince mair…

That’s from The Book of Acks (Acts), 15:16. “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up…” (I used the King James version of this verse because that’s the origin of the broad Scots bible).

Clearly not clear. I spent time correcting autocorrect to make sure that I reproduced it correctly and it’s still autocorrecting even after I think it’s set, so forgive me if it’s not completely accurate. I can’t take my eyes off autocorrect for one second (pet peeve for another post down the line).

Dialect is one of many differences. You can look at Ebonics, for example, and experience the same thing. According to the dictionary, Ebonics is American black English regarded as a language in its own right rather than as a dialect of standard English. Fair enough. You could probably say the same thing about braid Scots. But we know that these languages have emerged from some form of English, even if they are combined with other elements and have evolved into their own unique entities.

These are more extreme variations, but if you listen to two people talking the same or similar English, those two people may not understand each other because of their different accents or because they “swallow the words,” meaning that people in some dialects speak quickly and don’t verbalize the ends of their words, as if they “swallow” those sounds.

A classic story from my own family was told to me by my father. My father wasn’t born in the UK, but in Poland. His mother was English; his father a mix of French, Austrian, and Polish. During WWII, he ended up in the UK, but had a Polish “flash” on the upper arm of his army jacket at that time. On one occasion, arriving at a train station in London, he overheard a man from Somerset asking a London bobby (policeman) for directions. Their accents were so different that the bobby couldn’t understand the Somersetian, and the Somersetian couldn’t understand the bobby. My father ended up translating between these two Englishmen.

While British accents have “regularized” to some degree since the advent of television, there are still marked differences and native Brits are well able to identify where a person comes from. The same is true to some extent in the US. You might not be able to pinpoint an accent as accurately as is the case in the UK, but you know a Southerner from a New Yorker from a Californian.

So much for a common language.

Image credit: https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-apples-oranges-image3867687

Retirement Day 1

August 16, 2018 By Aline Soules

Or perhaps I should say “evening 1.” After working full-time for decades, I left work at the end of the afternoon for the last time. I have felt strange for days and I anticipate feeling equally strange tomorrow morning when I wake to others preparing to go to work and I have the entire day ahead of me with nowhere I have to go.

Retirement is an odd concept. For centuries, people worked until they were unable to do so, at which point their families (nuclear or extended) took care of them until they died, which was generally not too long after they were unable to continue working.

The Atlantic offers an interesting online article called “How Retirement Was Invented.” Apparently, in 1881, “Otto von Bismarck, the conservative minister president of Prussia, presented a radical idea to the Reichstag: government-run financial support for older members of society,” i.e., retirement. By 1889, the German government created a retirement system, which provided for citizens over the age of 70—if they lived that long. The U.S. began offering pensions about the same time and the concept of retirement with a pension has evolved from then. Today, people fear that the system will break and that pensions will not be available to our next generations. But I am one of the “lucky” ones—an early baby-boomer with a pension.

I put the word “lucky” in quotes because there are a number of factors that make retirement lucky or not. A primary consideration is health: how long I’ll live and what state I’ll be in as I age. If I’m lucky, I’ll have some years of health and energy. Another consideration is the length of my life and what I choose to do with the time I have left. The length of my life is largely out of my control (eat right, exercise is mine, but genetics?). What I choose to do is the part I control.

The key to my time now is that it’s “unstructured.” That means I can easily fritter it away. How easy it will be to put off to tomorrow what I don’t feel “motivated” to do today. I don’t know if that will happen to me, but, prior to today, my last day, I prepared a schedule for myself to try to forestall that. I may not stick to it every day and it will require tweaking as I identify more things I want to do, but I did it to forestall frittering. I don’t want to get five years into retirement, look back, and see that I’ve not made a difference in some way, accomplished something.

For retirement is not a matter of retiring to my bed or my house and putzing around. Retirement is an opportunity to focus on activities and goals I want to achieve—spend time with my grandson (when I can), travel, write, quilt, sing, play the piano, improve my French—and a hundred other things. I won’t achieve them all, but I will achieve some of them and enrich this period of my life. For I am not really retiring. I’m transitioning to a new period of accomplishment. It’s just that, in most cases, I won’t be paid and I will be the driving force that makes them happen.

Image: https://hackernoon.com/start-now-to-retire-young-retire-rich-8a179660adfb

Pet Grammatical Peeves

March 17, 2018 By Aline Soules

We all have them—pet grammatical peeves. We see them or hear them and it’s exactly like fingernails on a blackboard, an itch you can’t scratch, being on the verge of a sneeze that won’t come but won’t go away.
Consider these:

“15 items or less” (although I should give my thanks to Trader Joe’s; their sign reads “15 items or fewer”)
“do you want to lay down?” (Lay down what? Why don’t people understand that the present tense of “lay” is a wholly different verb from the past tense of “lie”?)
“utilize” (what’s wrong with “use”? I refuse to sign any report or letter with “utilize” in it—the pretension is just about as annoying as the uselessness of “utilize”)
“between you and I” (between is a preposition and the pronouns after it should be in objective case, i.e., “between you and me”)
“myself” (nothing wrong with this word, except when people use it because they don’t know whether to use “I” or “me”—see above)

I could keep going, but you get the idea. I bet you have plenty of examples, too. I try to remind myself regularly that English is a living language and, therefore, subject to evolution, but somehow I can’t get past my pet grammatical peeves. While it might sound like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, I try to respect our language and counteract these problems by doing my best to speak and write grammatically—even when I text. Join me—please.

Sumer is Icumen in — along with Summer Conference Season

March 7, 2018 By Aline Soules

Summer is such a great time for renewal, re-creation, and expanding horizons. As a writer, I can tell it’s time for summer because emails and snail mails about summer conferences flow in, enticing me with their subjects and tantalizing me with the wonderful presenters/workshop leaders. Of course, there are expenses—registration, lodging, flights, meals, incidentals—and there are times when I get greedy, take on too many, and find myself exhausted by the end of the summer.
But I love them. I write this on the first day of the AWP conference, which I am not attending for a variety of reasons, and some of you may read this while you are in Tampa, but I’m talking about the lazy summer conference—the kind that inspires you to write with space and time to write during the event, the kind that sends you home with a sense of euphoria.
You don’t get that with every conference you attend, but, if you’re lucky, you do—and it’s the best gift ever. You come home and, if you’re even luckier, that “high” stays with you for at least a week.
So here’s to summer conferences. Check the web, lists in Writers Digest, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Chronicle, wherever you can get a good list. Find the ones you think you want and check them out thoroughly before you spend your hard-earned money. Then go.