I just wrote confidently that this is the "1st Edition" of something I may never try again. But that's something that's awesome about me. My over-confidence when it comes to my ideas.
When I was in my late 20s, I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and my favorite part of that was to write three pages first thing in the morning, long-hand, whatever flowed from your mind and pen (this is called "Morning Pages."), not necessarily stream of consciousness, because your inner critic comes in of course, but a good practice for writers. A few years later when I took my first graduate class at Arcadia University, I met Mr. William Faulkner.
And by met him, I mean I discovered that people actually wrote entire books using stream of consciousness as a mechanism, and I felt like my favorite writing tool was now validated. I read Absalom, Absalom approximately 800 times. Faulkner became an excuse to talk endlessly to my favorite professor. She loves Faulkner too. I even pressured her to teach a Faulkner class by bugging her endlessly and getting signatures of interest from other graduate students. The next semester, she taught an entire course devoted to him, and she still does over ten years later. I also campaigned for a Mark Twain course, and she still teaches that too. But that's for another blog post.
And so courtesy of my devotion to Faulkner, here are 13 miscellaneous things currently swimming around my head, about various subjects, some connected and some not. If they can't be blog posts individually, at least they can be together.
- The picture included with this post is from my original edition of Absalom, Absalom, which I re-read the same year that I got a kitten, Quentin. Quentin is named after one of Absalom's major characters, Quentin Compson. In this picture, you can see the corner is taped, because that is where Quentin ate the book cover.
- I named my cat Pip after a character created by another favorite author of mine, Herman Melville. Pip is the character that becomes changed after being abandoned in the ocean.
- My cat Mr. Henderson is named after Sally Rogers' cat on The Dick Van Dyke Show. I loved Sally Rogers because she is what I wanted to grow up and be. A comedy writer. I still want to be a comedy writer when I grow up. When I got my little blind girl cat, I named her Miss Sally Rogers.
- As of this writing I have a test reading for a psychic line, later this evening. I have worked for a few lines in my time. Some are really good. Some pay well but aren't good (meaning they don't care if clients are helped, they just want their clients to spend money. I stay away from those). Some are really good but don't pay well. The anxiety that goes with finding a job as a business writer is not present for interviewing for a job giving readings.
- In the 2000's, I once gave 23 live readings in a row at a psychic party my friend wanted to have. The next day I went to work and the power went out. It went back on as soon as I left.
- Between my private clients and all the psychic line clients, I have give probably 125,000 readings if not more. That is over 14 years. The reason I know that is that the line I was on for seven years tracked my readings, and I was at 75,000 when I left there at the beginning of 2015.
- I liked that line but left because after my mother died, everything was different. It also frustrated me that I was not making the same amount every week. Isn't that adorable of Past Erica?
- My obsession with Faulkner is why I have two Master's degrees. When I was midway through my MA in English, my advisor had to break the news to me I could no longer take elective literature classes because I was maxed out. But, he said, if you want to do a degree in the Humanities program, then you can take at least ten more literature classes. I signed up right away.
- It took me nine years to complete the second MA because I took a break from school and couldn't think about it anymore after my Mom died. I received it in 2018. I was amongst the last three students to receive the degree before they ended the program.
- Believe it or not, if I could, I would go to school again. I do not regret pursuing my literature degrees, because I love analyzing literature so much, but I now see that I could help even more people if I were to study psychology. I don't feel like I'd ever want to be an actual counselor, but maybe I would. Maybe I could just write books that help people. Is someone hiring for that?
- I am a good intuitive, but I am not intuitive or psychic for myself. Let me tell you something, that's a real pain in the ass.
- I used to be a fan of Doreen Virtue, who called herself "the Angel Lady." Then she renounced Angels and her belief in all things New Age and told all her former fans they were demons and going to hell. So that may have triggered some trauma.
- I regret not having more of a portfolio. There have been many times in my life where I have completely re-written manuals or white papers or blog posts or guidebooks, and because at the time business writing was not something I was focused on, I didn't bother to save them.
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