Author name: Sandra Tayler

My sister wrote a post thinking through the affects of her writing aspirations on her young family. Her conclusion was that while it was important to prioritize her family above her writing, it was also important that she maintain a creative outlet. I couldn’t help but chime in supporting her conclusions. Then I liked my response so much that I’m pasting it here for my own reference.

The worst thing you could possibly do is to give up who you are to devote yourself to your family. You will not be happy and in the long run it will not be good for them. Mommy with an identity crisis is not good for anyone.

Our mother ALWAYS had something creative when we were growing up. Remember those fabric paint parties, painting plaster figurings, painting rocks, crochet, belonging to craft boutiques, 12 days of christmas, rooms filled with newspaper and balloons just for fun, the list goes on. Lots of times it was a project we could participate in, but there was always something.

My advice also comes from recent personal experience. I’ve spent most of the last 10 years head down in mothering. Most of my creative energies were funnelled into parenting, child management, and actively encouraging developmental growth in the kids. After all those years I managed to lose myself. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself when I wasn’t being a mommy or a wife. I felt that there probably should be something more, but I wasn’t sure where to find it.

About two years ago my personal rennaissance began. Some of it can be attributed to the lower levels of stress post-Novell. Some I attribute to my involvement in livejournal which cracked the floodgates behind which I’d hidden my inner storyteller. Some is simply because I no longer have a baby in the house and I have larger blocks of time. For whatever reason, over these past two years I’ve developed a strong personal identity. I know who I am. I know what I am good at. I know what I aspire to be in the future.

If you can shortcut the losing self/finding self process that so many mommies have to go through, you’ll be ahead of the game.

“Squee!” is the sound that Skull the troll from the webcomic PVP makes when he is delighted with something. (Edit: I am informed that Skull actually says “Glee!” and that “Squee!” is a noise that Howard brought home from a convention. This error in no way affects the correctness of the rest of this post.)

Howard and I have adopted the term. It is primarily used for the times when we have contact with someone we admire. It is the fanboy/girl sound of delight upon meeting the object of admiration. For example Howard had a squee moment when he first met Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games. Another squee moment was when we realized that Baen author John Ringo was a regular reader of Schlock Mercenary.

Today a package full of squee arrived in the mail. Okay, it didn’t actually contain squee. What it contained was books, but the books made me go squee! Baen author Ryk Spoor is also a fan of Schlock Mercenary. Not only is he a fan, but in his forthcoming book Boundary, Ryk directly references “The Tayler Corporation” as makers of “carbonan.” He sent us an autographed copy of this book. He also sent us an anthology which contains a short story by him. Two free books. Yay!

But I have to confess, the part that made me happiest was the fact that he didn’t just send them to Howard, my name was on the package, letter, and inscription as well. This makes me extra happy because his prior book Digital Knight is one of the few books that has inspired me to write the author to say how much I enjoyed it. It makes sense for people to send free books to Howard who will read and review them, but it was pure niceness that caused him to put my name there.

Squee!

I always come home from a convention with so many thoughts that I have to write several entries to cover it all. This year’s LTUE was no different even though I was only there for half a day.

The most important realization I had because of LTUE was how lucky Howard and I are to have each other. I talked to several people whose spouses don’t share their interests in Science Fiction, Fantasy, or gaming. With a few small exceptions Howard and I enjoy the same things. We make a great team. I loved working the convention with him. I want to be able to do that more often and for longer periods of time. Being on two panels with him was a delight I want to do that again too. Everyone always says marriage is hard. There are definitely hard bits. Most of the hard stuff is building a firm foundation and a good relationship structure. Once that is done marriage makes so many things easier and more fun. Maintinence work on the structure is sometimes necessary or even a restructuring as life shifts, that is to be expected. Couples who expect to have to do maintenance and plan for it, are free to pursue so many other things. I love being married to Howard and sharing life together.

The Howard and Sandra panel went really well. We didn’t do much planning for what to say beyond planning to introduce ourselves at the beginning. It’s a little hard for me to remember all that we did say, because the stories are all familiar to me and not much stands out. I know that we talked about the shift from working at Novell for $100,000 per year to cartooning. We did it at a time when cartooning had made $-600 the prior year. We had enough money in the bank to pay bills for three months and at first we were considering it a 3 month hiatus before Howard had to go back to a corporate job. But then a couple of large comission jobs came in from former Novell contacts. We lived that way for a year, never having more than 3 months of bill money, but as we’d get close to the edge something would happen to help us keep going.

That discussion led naturally to talking about Schlock Mercenary Book 1 because it is our next big thing. We have finally got all the ducks lined up and we’re ready to start shooting. Howard will be announcing stuff about that soon.

We encouraged questions from the audience and one person asked how we managed kids. We answered honestly that I do most of the active child management. Howard tends to just provide air support. But if there is a problem I can’t handle Howard is right there with me. That is one of the key reasons that I can be so supportive of Howard’s creative work, because I know that if I really needed him to, he would give it up. He has proved time and again that if I need him, he’ll drop everything he is doing and help me. I try not to ask unless it is really important. Howard’s office is here at home, but I know that “at home” is not the same as “available.” I respect his work time.

One of the reasons that our partnership works out so well is that every morning we stand in the kitchen together, usually while Howard is preparing his breakfast. Howard lists his priorities for the day. I list mine. If he has assignments for me he mentions them. If I have assignments for him I mention them. Then we both have a clear idea about how the day needs to go. Sometime in the evening we do the same thing to review the day. These aren’t official meetings, they just happen as a natural part of the way we work together. We are constantly communicating about priorities for today, the week, the month, the year, and onward. This communication prevents us from working at cross purposes.

Hmm. What I’ve written here sounds really dry. Honest, the live presentation was much better. Howard and I laughed, the audience laughed. Hopefully someone walked away with something useful, but I’ll probably never know about that. If any of you online audience members have any questions or want elaborations out of my dry synopsis, feel free to ask in the comments. Discussions are much more interesting than lectures.

Today I watched a CNN segment on “unschooling”, which is an educational method where the child chooses what to learn and when to learn it. (This schooling method does not appeal to me. I’m too organizational.) The segment set my brain whirling with thoughts and opinions about various educational methods. I decided to write an analysis of all the methods I know of and what I think of them. I even started writing it. Then I realized that my motivation for writing it was to reassure myself that laziness on my part isn’t the reason my kids attend public school.

I’ve considered homeschooling. I know I’m cabapble of being really good at it. To be honest, the thought of all the work invovled exhausts me. I would be constantly creating curriculum, researching topics, and planning activities. All of that while also managing the household and the business. I don’t want to do all of that. I don’t want to spend hours figuring out how to teach division when there are professional teachers available who already know how. Professional teachers already have the experience that I would have to painstakingly acquire. Why duplicate all that effort?

Public school teaches social lessons that cannot be learned at home. Sitting quietly, taking turns, and dealing with difficult people are all life skills. Some social lessons are painful, so painful in fact that some parents choose to home school in order to avoid them. I know that in public school my kids may encouter bullying, peer pressure, negligent teaching, or drugs. I feel that the best defense against these societal ills is not to shut my children up inside my safe house. The best defense is to inform my children about theset things before they encounter them.

Public school aslo gives my children the chance to meet people frome a variety of backgrounds, heritages, and socio economic strata. They get a chance to meet people with different values than we teach at home. This is good. Sheltering my children from these things is more likely to teach intolerance and fear than to provide safety. People need to have thier values and habits challenged so that they can re-evaluate them. I do not want my children following in my footsteps merely because no other footsteps are available to them.

The biggest indicator of educational success is parental involvement. If a child’s parents are actively involved it education, that child has already won no matter what educational method is used. If all the caring, active, involved parents pull their kids out of public school then the children whose parents can’t or won’t be involved do not stand a chance. I believe in the public school system. It has problems, all systems do, but most of those problems could be resolved if only more parents volunteered. I do volunteer in my kids’ schools. That fact reassures me that laziness isn’t why they’re there, because volunteering isn’t easy.

To summarize: My kids are in public school because I feel that social lessons are as important as academic ones and because by being there both they and I have a chance to help other kids who need it.

There, I feel better. Now my brain can stop whirling and find happy thoughts.

Edit: I feel better until I re-read it and after every paragraph my brain starts supplying contrary arguements for everything I just said. Sigh.

In the game Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker there is an auction in which the player can particpate. It allows the player to bid for goodies. Some computer controlled people bid against you. However, if the player’s bid is much higher than the preceeding bid, then the other people all go into a state of shock and are unable to bid for awhile. This is handy for winning auctions.

As of today, I know exactly how those computer characters feel. I peeked at our ebay auction of Schlock Mercenary business cards and realized it was over $100. I just sat and stared for a minute while little swirlys made my head spin. Maybe I’m making up the swirly part, but my head definitely felt spun for a moment. Last Monday I felt a little silly putting up business cards for auction. I was afraid they wouldn’t get bids at all. I mean, who buys someone else’s business cards, particularly out of date business cards? Apparently there are some collectors out there. This blows me away and makes me really glad at the same time. Thanks to those collectors we have $100 worth of additional time in which Howard can be a full time cartoonist.

We own the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 1. (Great collection, I just wish it had more roadrunner.) Looney Tunes was a part of my childhood. It makes me really happy to share some of that with my kids. So, today when I walked in on Gleek, Link, & Patches watching Looney Tunes I was even more delighted that they each were munching on a large carrot. Apparently Bugs Bunny promotes healthy snacking habits. Yay Bugs!

This week is busy. Not an insanely busy one like I had last November, but still fairly packed. Fortunately NotMyBaby’s grandpa is in town for two weeks and so I haven’t had to watch him. That freed up time for me to manage preschool, the monthly potluck luncheon at the church, and prepare for LTUE.

I get to spend half a day at LTUE with Howard. That will be really nice. I wish I could manage more, but I don’t want to incur too much babysitting indebtedness. I’m particularly excited to be able to be on a panel with Howard. We’ve never done that before.

Once LTUE is over I need to plan for Howard’s birthday and Patches’ birthday. There really isn’t much planning to be done, but I haven’t even had enough brainspace to think about it and the birthdays are just two weeks from today.

February is disappearing fast. I’m glad. I’m really ready for longer daylight hours and warmer weather. The first crocus bloomed last week. It made me glad. Unfortunately today it is buried under snow. Sigh.