Author name: Sandra Tayler

My church relies heavily on volunteers, although “volunteer” may not actually be the completely correct term. People are asked to take on jobs as a service to others. These jobs are usually termed “callings” because people are called into the office and asked to take the assignment. The option to say no is always there, but there is some social pressure to say yes. I have always believed that these assignments are guided by inspiration and that I will be blessed for the service I give. I have lots of evidence for the second part, because I have been blessed in countless ways from the various church assignments I have undertaken. Over the years I have been a youth group leader, a compassionate service leader (casseroles for the sick), a primary teacher (teaching children at church), an enrichment committee member (organizing social/educational evenings for adult women), an activities committee member (organizing activities for the entire congregation), a relief society teacher (Sunday lessons for adult women), and a cub scout leader.

My assignment for the past 18 months has been as a primary teacher. The first half of that time was teaching 10 year olds. The second half has been teaching 5 year olds. The five year old class has been a challenge and a joy. There are several kids in the class who are highly active and creative people. They don’t tolerate boredom well and will thus resort to spitting, loud noises, and wandering around the room in order to not be bored. My job has been to corral those restless minds and bodies, try to bring them back to what the group is doing, or at least to help them not be bored in ways that don’t disrupt everyone else. It is a tiring job. There have been many Sundays when I was not feeling up to the task. I muddled through anyway because I knew that however hectic things got, it would be better for me being there. I really understand these kids. It is like I can see inside their brains and know how to help church be good for them. So I went every week, calm in the knowledge that I was giving a gift to these kids and to their mothers who can really use the break from them.

This week I was asked to take on a different assignment. I was asked to be the Activity Days Leader helping organize bi-weekly activities for girls ages 8 -11. My daughter Gleek is part of that group. (She is thrilled.) The request came as a surprise to me, because I could not imagine anyone wanting to disrupt this particular class. I expected to stay with the class through December. I half expected to be moved up with them in January. I was completely at peace with this despite missing any chance to listen to do any growing myself on Sundays. My (former) class will be taken by my backyard neighbor. This gives me peace of mind because she loves and understands these kids as well as I do or better. I have no qualms at all about handing the class over to her. And yet I’m still feel like I stepped of the bottom step only to discover that there was an additional stair I wasn’t expecting. I had so settled in my mind that it was my place to serve in Primary that the shift to doing something else feels off balance. I should be rejoicing. I’ll get to sit in an adult meeting and learn instead of holding a wriggling child who is likely to pull on my ear rings or blow raspberries in my face. I won’t have to coax children out from under chairs. I won’t come home from church with bruises on my shins because of little kicking legs that couldn’t quite hold still. And yet, I should be sad because I’ll no longer get to observe those amazing little people who seem to think at right angles to everyone else. I said yes to the new assignment. Today I taught my class for the last time. The kids made almost no reaction to the news of their new teacher. This is fine. I want them to have a smooth transition rather than a major trauma. I’ll still see them frequently at church.

This shift just feels a part of all the other things that are shifting in my life right now. I am shifting to a quieter, less stress-driven phase of life. After four months of constant high-gear I’m slowing down. It feels strange to have long stretches of day with nothing urgent to drive me forward. I still have plenty to do, but I don’t have to run fast to avert crisis. “Running fast to avert crisis” is a pretty apt description of that primary class. So I suppose the new assignment will fit right in with the general slowing down of my life. I must be careful not to fill up my schedule with things again. Or rather, I must put back the slow, soul-filling things that were ejected from my schedule during the crazy months.

Before I left for WorldCon I blogged about the WorldCon Scavenger Hunt sponsored by Anthology Builder. At that time I mentioned that I would be handing out cool badges. What I did not mention (because I was not supposed to) is that I also functioned as one of the Anthology Builder secret agents. This meant that the folks at Anthology Builder sent me five books, one to give away each day at the convention to a person who was wearing an Anthology Builder badge.

Being a secret agent was fun. Everyone who received a book was delighted to have it. The harder part was carrying around the book until I found someone to give it to. WorldCon is big and the portion of attendees wearing badges was small. Some days it felt like a needle-in-the-haystack experience. Once I even resorted to putting some buttons on the freebie table and then lurking until someone put one on, then ambushing them with a book. She was really delighted and surprised, so that went well. I saw the button badges most frequently on the writers who were giving them out, but the buttons became easier to find as the convention progressed.

I recommend the Anthology Builder secret agent experience. It was fun. You can be a secret agent too. Anthology Builder would like to have agents at every major convention and they are happily recruiting. You can find out about it by emailing 007@anthologybuilder.com. They’ll even give you a small compensation for your time. But don’t do it for the compensation. Do it because it is fun to walk up to someone and delight them with a free book.

Howard calls me from conventions when he is on his way to his hotel room. At those moments he is in transition from convention day to convention evening. The conversations tend to be short because the transitions don’t last long. But we touch base a little and I get an idea of how the day went, how much we sold, and what things will need follow-up after the convention was over. The conversations are not as good as me being there to participate, but until the kids are old enough to either come along or take care of themselves I will not be able to attend every convention that Howard does. GenCon is being a really good convention. We have not sold as much as our wildest hopes imagined, but neither have we realized our worst fears. The reality is comfortably in the middle and now we have solid data for how much product to ship next time. But the sales are not what is making GenCon good. Howard has had several valuable business meetings. He has met cool new people. He has been able to hang out with long-time friends. Having good people around makes all the difference in the world. Howard is already spinning plans about going back to GenCon next year. It sounds like fun, we’ll have to look at it critically to see if it makes business sense.

On the home front, I found out who my three elementary kids have as teachers. They all got the teachers I wanted them to have. This bodes well. Link in particular is thrilled. He got the cool teacher he had been hoping for. We’re all starting to wrap our heads around school beginning next week. Everyone seems to be anticipating rather than dreading, so that is good too.

I’m not big on back to school shopping. I figure the kids can start school in the clothes they are already wearing. There is no point in spending money on cute sweaters and long pants when the first day of school is in August. But when three quarters of my kids have toes peeking out through the holes in their tennis shoes, it is time to go shopping whether or not school starts next week. It was nice being able to take advantage of the sales for things we definitely needed. While we were replacing things with holes we picked up some socks, underwear, and backpacks too. I am now $150 poorer, but the kids are happy with their shoes and stuff. It was very nice that none of the kids cried “unfair” because some kids got more things than others.

Lately I’ve been trying to restructure my relationship to food. I’ve always been of the “realize I am hungry and shove the most convenient cheap option into my mouth” school of cooking. Now, I’m trying to stop and think before eating. I am trying to be pickier. I am trying to select foods where my desire to eat them is sufficient to make me actually prepare food without the use of a microwave oven. On the whole I am eating less food, but enjoying eating more. I’ve been making use of things like feta cheese, rosemary bread, and vanilla yogurt. I’ve also discovered that the impact on my budget is not nearly has bad as I thought it would be. I use the expensive ingredients to replace the treats I used to buy. It is nice to realize that I am happier with a $3 loaf of rosemary bread than with that $2.50 half gallon of cheap ice cream. If we have to go into full-bore financial conservation mode, I’ll have to give up the pricier stuff. But for now the readjustment seems to be working.

And to bring the prior two paragraphs together, I have been pondering my responsibility as a parent to teach my kids how to manage their resources. I was a little alarmed of late when I realized that my kids regard eating out to be a regular occurrence. I grew up believing eating at McDonalds on road trips was the ultimate treat. On the one hand, I don’t want our family to fall into the expensive habit of eating out constantly. On the other hand, I don’t want my kids to think of McDonalds (or any fast food place) as the one true restaurant. I want my kids to have broad experiences with food, travel, and people. But I do not want them to take any of these things for granted. That is the gripping hand I guess. I don’t mind that we eat out when we’re too busy to cook (so long as we can afford it) but I don’t want my kids to assume that eating out is anything but a privilege. We really are very fortunate and I want my kids to be able to see that so that we are all ready and willing to help out those around us who need help that we can give.

Three kids, Four hours, one dinosaur museum. Most of the time was spent in the water erosion table (sand, water, plastic dinosaurs) or in the quarry (sand, paint brushes, fake dinosaur bones.) I suppose it is a lot of money to spend for my kids to play in the sand, but museum sand is special. Or something. We went through the whole museum twice. The first time was a mad dash to see what was next. The second time the kids slowed down, looked at things, and played spontaneous creative games. Kiki eschewed the trip in favor of hanging out with friends. Link played right along with Gleek and Patch, but I was interested to notice that he was always the first one to get bored. Gleek and Patch could play pretend for hours, but Link has shifted into an emotional place where he needs structured goals to enjoy his games. This makes sense since he is almost twelve. He is beginning the transition into being a teenager. So I watched him playing pretend and knew that, like the sand in the water erosion table, Link is constantly shifting and changing toward the future.

Talking about all the cool things at a convention like WorldCon is difficult. The list of amazing people that I spoke to is very long and if I attempted to list them all I would be sure to miss someone. The temptation is just to hoard the memories in my own head, but I know if I do that I will forget some of them. So, in no particular order here is a list of some convention Highlights:
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WorldCon HighlightsRead More »

Throughout WorldCon my mind was much occupied with the creation of importance. My primary reason for being at the event was because Howard had been nominated for an award. And yet I found myself pondering the very nature of awards. They are of themselves hollow things. Awards only carry importance because a group of people believes in their importance. The larger the group of people, the more prestigious the award becomes, and the more value it has. That value is real. It is a vote of confidence from those who hand out the award. It is a measure of accomplishment. Awards are simultaneously extremely valuable and completely empty. Throughout the convention I got to watch as the science fiction community co-operated to create community and to lend importance to the interests that they all share. The entire purpose of the convention is to state that the genre matters. And it does. I love it. I love the things I’ve gotten from it.

But somehow in the course of helping create value for the awards and for the genre, I inevitably ended up measuring myself according to these standards. The result was sufficient to make me feel very insecure. My one professional short story sale looks very small when compared to the writers with multiple novels. It is hard to feel anything but insignificant when you’re attending a high-powered genre publishing party and your only claim to fame is being the wife of a self-published cartoonist. The people who knew me were kind and gracious. The people who were introduced to me were kind and gracious. Our friends sought me out and made my heart glad. But to the majority I was irrelevant. The delightful conversations were like islands in the swamp of irrelevance. When I describe it this way, it sounds like I had a horrible time. That isn’t true. I had a marvelous time. But I also know that I am not the only one who feels small or irrelevant at conventions. Everyone always blogs about the marvelous moments, but I also believe that everyone who is not A-list and followed by an entourage, also has moments where they feel insignificant. I frequently felt insignificant during the convention. I resolved it by either starting a conversation with someone or by taking a break away from people to gain some perspective. And I truly did have a marvelous time. The good far outweighs the negative.

Looking back I can see how much stress is inherent for the professionals at WorldCon. This is IT, the important convention. People win or lose big awards at this event. Contacts are made, deals are begun. As a result, few pros or intend-to-be-pros are relaxed and ready to make friends. I felt the pressure of this myself. I knew I should not waste any minutes. I should be walking through the dealer’s room talking to folks at press tables. I should take advantage of the Hugo parties that Howard’s nomination gave us invitations for. I should be working the room, talking to everyone. Because you never know which contact will lead to another contact which will lead to a business opportunity. I felt all of that, and I was attending just as the spouse of a nominee. If I had been trying to forward my own work, I can only imagine how stressed I would have been. The pre-Hugo party was full of pre-award jitters. The post-Hugo party was full of complex emotions of elation and disappointment from both winners and losers. When I look at it that way, it is not surprising at all that I failed to connect with people with whom I would have liked to sit down and talk for hours. It really isn’t about lack of interest, or my insignificance, it is about stress responses.

At the convention I found myself spinning plans for writing stories, for creating work that would gain me recognition from the science fiction community. I plotted ways I could put myself forward, the best methods I could use to get noticed for a Campbell Award nomination. Then, in the airport on the way home, the parts of my soul that I had stowed away, unfolded. I realized that there are large parts of myself for which the WorldCon measures of value are completely irrelevant. My success or failure as a person can not be contained by a science fiction award or the lack of it. I can not be alone in this realization either. Because when everyone blogs about attending conventions, they also blog about how glad they are to come home. It is as if conventions exist tangentially to real life. It is easy to get caught up in the spirit of the convention and lose track of the rest of who you are.

And so like many bloggers before me, I say “I am really glad I went to WorldCon, but I’m really glad to be home.”

We are still travel lagged and tripping over suitcases, but all is right with the world because the kids are back home. I’ll admit that I was not thrilled about 6 hours of driving on the day after 14 continuous hours of airplanes and airports. But three hours of driving turned out to be the perfect amount of uninterrupted time for me to unpack all the random convention thoughts and sort them into orderly piles to be dealt with later. The three hours of return trip turned out to be just enough time for Kiki and I to talk over our separate trip experiences. Also there were hugs from children glad to be going home and that makes any amount of driving worthwhile.

I still need to write up all those thoughts which I’ve sorted into piles. Some are blog entries. Some may be essays. Some are emails. Some are tasks. I’ll tackle all of that starting tomorrow. Today is for home and family. And for preparing Howard to leave again. I’ll be really glad when he is back home and we can all settle in a regular schedule again.

And here we are dressed up for the Hugo awards. The picture does not show how swishy and fun the skirt is to wear. The motion of the skirt was what made it beautiful. I got several compliments, which made me happy. In fact I find I am loathe to take off the pretty clothes. As soon as I do, it will be bedtime and then the convention will be over. We wake early early and board a plane for home.

I was not nervous about the Hugo ceremony until Howard and I arrived at the rehearsal. Somehow being in the room with the lights and the tech crew scurrying around really brought home the possibility that was in front of us. Then we saw the Hugo unveiled and it was beautiful. We walked into the theater and both Howard and I were full of jitters. I couldn’t even sort out what I was feeling. I’d thought that I was reconciled to losing because Joss Whedon was in the category, but I found that all the what-if possibilities clouded my brain. I alternated between picturing Howard winning and soothing my nerves by assuring myself that surely Joss would win. When they announced that Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio had won the award, all of the jittery possibilities vanished and I was left with relief and Joy. It was such a relief that Howard did not win. It would have felt wrong for Howard to get this award before Phil and Kaja. They have been doing this for so much longer than we have. Their story is fantastic and their art is beautiful.

Phil and Kaja are not here. In fact, they were so sure that Joss would win, that they did not even send acceptance speeches. The award acceptors created speeches for them. I remember last year when Phil did not will the Best Professional Artist award. Both Phil and Kaja radiated disappointment, and yet they were wonderful and gracious to everyone around them. We sat with them and laughed while Howard and Phil tossed jokes. I rejoice for them because I know how happy they are going to be when they hear the news.

Howard feels the same way that I do. We are both honestly happy and relieved that Girl Genius won. Hurray for Girl Genius.