A few days ago I was asked to write a profile for our campus newsletter. It’s a by-monthly publication short on content but it’s put together by two retired graphic artists turned college professors. What it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. It’s a full color newsletter printed on slick, shiny paper and is full of lots of photos. It also features two profiles of residents and each profile is written by the person being featured. “So it will be your voice, sharing what others might not know about you,” I was told. What a daunting task for someone who keeps so many secrets from my neighbors! In the past, the newsletter has printed three of the above mentioned poems. Submitted by invitation and they were well received if you can judge such things by the comments others made after they were printed. But a profile? I wrote and submitted it before I could chicken out because it’s so different than any of the other profiles printed in the past. Most people, for example, have listed where they went to college, their job titles, the number of children and grandchildren or their travel experiences, places they've lived, etc. etc.
Here is what I wrote and you might recognized a few lines borrowed from the top of this blog:
“When I was asked to write a profile for Insight in 200 words or less my first thought was how can I do that without sounding like I’m writing a profile for a dating app? “Woman, widow, senior citizen seeking to live out my days with a sense of whimsy as I search for inner peace.” Yup, that sums up where I’m at in life right now, having lost my soul mate of 42 years a few years back. Life was good until it wasn’t when my husband had a massive stroke that left him right side paralyzed and with no verbal or written means of communication for the next 12 1/2 years and I transitioned into being his caregiver extraordinaire. For every Yin in life there is a Yang and my Yang came in the form of me becoming a mentor, a chat room host and an administrator on a large website in the stroke community, eventually taking a seat on the Board of Directors. I’m no longer active or associated there, but I still spend my mornings living in cyber space.
“Along with the invitation to write a profile came a list of questions and one was about hobbies and collections. It’s safe to say that I’ve tried every craft and hobby that’s crossed my path, with creative writing staying on the list the longest and Mahjong being the newest hobby added. My most unusual collection? A large jar full of every single watch I’ve ever owned including a sundial watch that only works on sunny days." ©
What do you think? Did I manage to write a profile that still left my secrets intact? The biggest secret of all is my online life in the blog community followed up by the fact that while my husband and I were soul mates for 42 years we didn’t get married until after his stroke. I know from a book club discussion that few people here in the land of long marriages would understand why we didn’t get married sooner rather than later. And the explanation is too complicated and would reveal too many personal facts that I’m not willing to put into the gossip mill around here. Even my path to getting a college degree was not in a straight line and just listing the place where I got it doesn’t begin to express how proud I was to finally get the degree 25 years after I started working on it.
Well, I managed to knock out a blog post, Now I have to work on April’s writing prompt for my writing group’s meet-up on Thursday. It’s a tough one: “Until that moment, she hadn’t realized the past can change.” Each month we plan to draw a prompt out of an envelope based on the Ten Word Stories we wrote in January. Our first writing prompt bought some great results---all vastly different. This one is frying my brain. Wish me luck!
Until next Wednesday. ©
Your writing group is a great incentive for you to set aside time for writing. My son has a drawing group for the same reason. I think you wrote an interesting profile. You have so many excellent stories in your blog that you could tell without revealing that you wrote them for a blog. Keep writing! :)
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about setting aside time to write or do anything , for that matter. That's why I like going to any kind of class. They keep you motivated. Thanks for the reminder.
DeleteThat is a great profile! If I didn't 'know' you from this blog, I would want to meet you.
DeleteWhat a nice compliment!
DeleteI understand why you don't want the members of your writing group to know about your blog, but it is a shame considering how you write such a fun/interesting blog. Still, what you shared with them is very good. I didn't know about your jar full of every single watch you've owned. That is unique and noteworthy.
ReplyDeleteFor a couple of years when novelty watches were "the thing" that everyone like Starkist Tuna to M& Ms were licensing their brand to watch companies and I collected them like mad. My husband had a taste for expensive watches and I thought it was funny at the time that I'd show up in cheap plastic ones while he paid hundreds for his. The watches in the jar hold a lot of memories.
DeleteYou did a great job on your profile and bless you for hanging in there with your writing group.
ReplyDeleteI really like the people in the group a lot!
DeleteThe author Gary Shteyngart has a love for expensive watches too. Here's an article about him in the Financial Times:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ft.com/content/e9ec8dbe-7021-4d05-b735-bcf638f54934
His taste in watches was similar than my husband's only he had a fake Rolex..that a friend brought home from China. It was very hard (emotionally) to sell his watches after he passed because of all his collections, the watches where the most personal.
DeleteI think you chose just the right highlights of your life for your profile. They're the kinds of things people will want to chat about, and if they want to know a bit more, those topics won't lead you into details you'd rather not discuss. You did a great job!
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed that you were able to condense your fascinating life down to such a limited description. Seriously, Jean. You had a helluva lot to work with.
The word limit freaked me out and I did go over a little bit But thanks for the compliment. That means a lot coming from a retired English teacher. I picked the caregiver aspect to highlight because it was a major turning point not only for Don's health and our relationship but also for me learning my way around cyberspace. It also gave birth to my first blog and me writing articles to submit online. We all have turning points in our lives but sometimes it's harder to identify them.
DeleteA few minutes ago, I was reading online and thought, "It's Wednesday, I wonder where Jean's blog post is?" When I went looking, I found you.
ReplyDeleteYour profile turned out very well. You did a great job. All that you accomplished following Don's stroke, has impressed me even more, since my husband's stroke. As is the case with most illnesses, we find ourselves in uncharted territory and it can be incredibly difficult (and downright scary!). I appreciate your willingness to help others, Jean.
I scheduled this post for next Wednesday and when it didn't pop up in my email notice I had to go back and publish is manually. Operator error. LoL We'll probably get the notice tonight at midnight.
DeleteI was helping myself as I was helping others after Don's stroke. But I do like to share what I've learned. Like this coming Sunday I'm doing a special review for our Mahjong group featuring two online zoom meetings I attended to review the new card. I want us all to get to be better players because it will be more fun that way.
If I read that profile and hadn't met you, I would go out of my way to put myself in your path. I think you made it seem very intimate without actually sharing your inner self. And things that are no one's business really aren't anyone else's business.
ReplyDeleteSaying stuff without really telling stuff is my specialty. LoL Seriously, though, I don't mind sharing personal details once I trust to keep it to themselves and when there is a enough time to round out the topic. The gossip machine in places like this, at work places and schools just feed on the headlines of a story and they can be misleading. As a writer yourself, I'm betting get what I mean.
DeleteYou are just so great at encouraging a topic out of your brain, for your blog. And then off you go. That is the hardest part for me ,... choosing the subject. You are just a very creative personality. SO, I thank you again for sharing. And for sticking with the Writing Group.
ReplyDeleteThe secret to writing is just to do it. Sit down and don't get up until something ANYTHING is written down. It may be just garbled and messy at first but it once the creative juices start in you can go back an edit that out. I've read a lot of memoirs of writers and they all pretty much use the same process for getting going when their muse is gone.
DeleteWhat a lovely profile you wrote, Jean. As others have already said, it would make me want to get to know you! I'm not someone who's interested in reading a list of accomplishments/career highlights etc., from someone. I want to know what challenges and opportunities for growth a person has faced and dealt with. And what they are doing with their life, going forward. That's what makes someone interesting to get to know better. Someone like you!
ReplyDeleteDeb
I wish I was able to talk as well as I can write. I miss what aging has done to my verbal skills. Sometimes I wish I could carry around a communication device that would speak out loud what I write. Sometimes I talk in word salads.
DeleteI love your profile piece and well disguised! Hey, Rick and I are at 28 years and no marriage stuff. It just didn't matter, then or now. I've been reading "Being Mortal" and it makes me often think of you and the wise choices you've made with your move. (It's a great book if you haven't discovered it yet!)
ReplyDeleteYours and Rick' and mine and Don's have/had many things in common. It only seems to matter to other people and the older we got the more people seem to "get it."
DeleteI'll look up the book.
I was surprised that you and Don hadn't gotten married until after his stroke, but I doubt if my husband and I would have married if he hadn't been in the Navy. I had a very hard time finding a job in Norfolk, VA, and the Navy paid him $116 a month extra after we got married (this was 1975, things were cheaper then). So we figured it would be worth it even if we ended up getting divorced later, although he did make me promise that if we got divorced, we would wait until he got out, and as it turned out, we're still married and he's been the best caregiver I could have asked for. And you're right, it only seems to matter to other people whether or not someone is married. But lots of those other people have some kind of power over you (for example, the Navy if you're an enlisted person in 1975), and a marriage certificate makes it much easier to make medical decisions for your spouse if that becomes necessary.
DeleteLots of people get married for a lot of reasons and yours is a perfect example. I'm glad it worked out for you.
DeleteAn interesting post and a damn good profile better then I could do because I don't think of myself a some who can write but that doesn't stop me blogging and writing to pen pals but that's not the same
ReplyDeleteI love reading blogs, especially yours, but choose not to blog because I value my anonymity and don't want to open myself to judgment from people whose opinions don't matter to me. I totally understand why you want to keep your blog life and some of your personal life private. I also think you're very adept at concealing what you'd rather not share! In fact I think you're so good at it, you could be a spin doctor! Your profile was great. I'd rather read something intriguing like what you wrote, rather than a quasi resume of jobs and grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteDid you know you don't have to have a comment section on a blog? Just sayin' don't let that stop you.
DeleteYour spin doctor comments made me laugh and I will wear them with pride.
In all my years of blogging, I've only had one person figure out where I live, the exact community. I was paranoid of keeping my privacy when I worked on the stroke website because I was afraid I'd run into someone who read my stuff while we going to doctors and therapies, etc. and a caregiver would want to be phone buddies which I didn't have time for. Maybe it's my ego talking but I felt my time was better spent helping more than one person at a time which I could do in a public forum.
It was a long, hard, complicated week, so I'm a little late getting here, but better late than never as another hackneyed saying goes. I enjoyed your profile, but then I enjoyed your bio when I first landed here, and the fact that there are echoes matters not one whit.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to begin a blog today, I'd use my real name rather than 'shoreacres,' but when I began blogging, the level of concern (paranoia, uncertainty) about anonymity was strong. Now, with so many years behind me, changing either my avatar or screen name probably would be counterproductive, particularly since my photos, particularly, have been linked to by so many other sites. It's a fact that people I never expected to find me have: partly because of my blog but mostly because of the increased sophistication of search engines. The good news is that the ability to moderate comments has kept a couple of 'blasts from the past' from seeing the light of day on my pages, which is all to the good. I responded to a few by email, and ignored the rest.
I can see having a blog with your real name. You write a different kind of posts than I do...covering interesting things in the plant world, etc., not much in the way of personal stuff. Yours is more like a nature and photography magazine not a personal blog.
DeleteI liked your Profile, it didn't reveal too much and yet fulfilled what they asked of you. I don't think I could come up with something condensed, I had a hard time even doing my Blogger Profile and keep remembering to alter it when needed. After a while I quit trying to count Grandkids and Great-Grands and we did get down to One Cat... so, that's all I needed to change from time to time. *smiles* I'm glad most people I know well don't read my Blog. A Bestie at Work used to and she enjoyed it and knew everything anyway... she got the Rona and Died before Vaccines, quite unexpectedly, and I do miss her Feedback about what I've done Posts on. She was the one Sounding Board of whether a Post would be well received... or not so well received... and I valued her Critiques. She was an Editor and I'm so NOT Editorial that I needed that input. *LOL*
ReplyDeleteMy profile here on campus hasn't gone public yet---the end of the month before the newsletter comes out so I don't know yet how it will go over. But, I'm not as prolific as you are and I had a hard time limiting my words, I can't imagine how you could do it. I do have 3 people in my offline life who read my blog and that's enough to keep me in check in the department of not embellishing the facts. I wouldn't want anymore because none of them will comment here, when they have something to add, they do it in a private message or email.
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