Charity also ends at home

The following blog will probably make me sound like a bastard. A self-confessed, selfish bastard. If it does, please feel free to leave a comment telling me I’m a bastard. Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that I already know.

I seldom give to charities.

I can put forward a list of arguments as to why I rarely give, starting off with the financial argument that I’m a writer: I don’t have enough money to give to charities, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.

I’m typing this blog into a fairly recent purchase – a PC that was brand new when I bought it two years ago. The software on the machine was the most expensive I’ve ever bought (the new version of Office that adds an ‘x’ to the suffix of every file just so the rest of the world can’t access my files any more). I’m well-fed. I can afford a bottle of beer when I care for one, a bar of chocolate whenever I don’t need one, and I drive a gas-guzzling car to the university centre where I spend some of my working week.

So it’s not that I can’t really afford to make a donation. I live in a comparatively wealthy country and I’m comfortable (if not affluent) with some disposable income in the back compartment of my leather wallet.

And it’s not that I’m without empathy. The recent situation in Haiti is heartbreaking. Global crises (whether they’re famine, war or ‘natural’ disasters) are always distressing and I honestly can’t imagine the cataclysmic devastation of such an event. I’m genuinely scared to contemplate the life-changing upheaval of such catastrophe because I know it would seriously hurt.

But still I seldom give to charities.

My decision is not political. I was around in the 80s when Live Aid was trying to raise money to help put an end to famine in Africa. It was a worthy cause, although many participants and politicians tried to make it political. It’s almost worthy of the darkest satire to show fat politicians in designer suits and chauffeur driven cars talking about the politics of being hungry, as though they know what that condition is like.

But that sort of exploitation and band-wagon-jumping is not why I rarely give to charities.

I could say it’s because I don’t trust charities. I’m not talking about the occasional tabloid scandal, where a charity boss has been found to have their fingers in the collecting jar. That’s human nature and forgivable. Also, such crimes happen so rarely it’s barely worth mentioning.

I also have no qualms about the 5-15% administrative costs that are removed from the intended source of each donation and given to the fundraisers. We all have to make a living and those who work for charities deserve something for their valuable time and effort.

And I’ve got no great qualms about the government taking their tax cut from charities. Admittedly, I don’t trust governments. And I do wonder why neither charities nor governments try to rectify our universal misconception that charities don’t pay tax. The cynic in me wonders if the governments think this myth makes them look benevolent whilst the charities know that donations would suffer if contributors learnt their money was lining the pockets of the tax man.

But that’s not the reason why I so rarely make charitable donations.

As I said at the start of this blog, you’ll think me a bastard by the time you’ve reached this point – and you’re justified in that opinion. I seldom make a financial donation to charities and my excuses are pathetic in the face of all the human (and animal) suffering that charities struggle to eliminate. Admittedly, if I’m in a position to invest time or effort to help an individual improve their lot, I will happily snatch that opportunity – and I have done whenever the occasion arises.

But I don’t make a habit of giving to charities. And I know that each of the reasons I’ve listed sound like the wheedling selfish excuses of an uncaring man who is trying to hide his personal greed behind intellectualised smokescreens.

My only genuine reason for not financially supporting charities is that I don’t have the time to invest in learning about the structure and ethical policy of each institution I’m potentially supporting.

I was once devastated to learn that I had (naively) contributed money to a cancer charity that advocated and funded vivisection. Instead of paying money to help someone live, I’d invested money in helping an animal to die. I was genuinely devastated.

I’ve contributed to Christian charities (which I won’t name here) who reportedly endorse discriminatory practices against gay and lesbian employees. Where I thought I was giving money to help a good cause, it seems I was paying to perpetuate bigotry, inequality and injustice.

This uncertainty about where my money is going, and what it is ultimately funding, is the sole reason why I prefer to invest my time in helping an individual or a cause, rather than handing over cash to support someone else’s efforts.

Charities do good work. I am not disputing that fact. I could quibble that there are too many of them – an estimated 1.4M charities in the US and more than 170,000 in the UK. But I’m convinced there are a lot of good causes that require support. The majority provide relief and aid with an even, ethical and conscionable approach. The causes that have been mentioned this week by my fellow bloggers here at the Grip are undoubtedly worthy. The bloggers here at the Grip (not including myself) are a wonderful bunch of people and I sincerely believe them when they speak of the good works of various charitable institutions. They’ve written some hugely emotive pieces on human suffering and shown the ways that charities can respond to them and alleviate some of the devastating impact caused by personal and international disasters. If you’ve been moved by anything that they’ve written this week I urge you to make any donation you can afford to match their selfless generosity.

Please don’t be swayed by the arguments of someone who is a self-confessed, selfish bastard.

Her Ferocious Heart

I think about Panama a lot these days. Someday I’d like to go see it again. If we get a little back on our taxes I know I’ll send my wife down so she can spend time with her mother and bring me back a big bag of Panamanian coffee beans. Chencha, my mother in law, is in her mid seventies now, and she has any number of health problems that could carry her off suddenly. But she has a way of chugging along. She’s a tough woman. People always make mother in law jokes, but actually we’ve always gotten along pretty well. Partly because we have a language barrier. We don’t have enough Spanish or English between us to argue about anything.

I first met Chencha at Madison Square garden around 1982 when I was getting married to her daughter along with a couple of thousand other people. That was a different time. My first impression of her was of a stout, shy person, a very working class latina woman with Chinese eyes and the deference for manners that is so much a part of Caribbean culture.

Chencha was born and raised in a little fishing village in western Panama called “Playa Chiquita”, which means something like “Little Girl Beach”. Her father was a Chinese national named Asan Yap who prospered in the grocery business and had several kids, three girls and three boys. Panama was going through hard times and as so often happens elected a right wing President, who managed to convince the people their problems were not the result of corrupt government, certainly not, but in fact were being caused by the presence of too many foreigners. With a wingnut rhetoric that would have given Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann a wettie, he whipped his countrymen into a lather about “real Panamanians” and how the country must be turned over to them and wrested from the hands of greedy foreigners, including those who had lived there for generations. Not counting the gringos of course.

Asan Yap, along with every other foreign national in the country that could be hunted down, was packed off on a fast boat to Hong Kong leaving Panama for The Real Panamanians. He never saw his children or business again. Oddly, Panama’s fortunes did not improve.

Chencha met a handsome young teacher and part time boxer named Santiago “Santy” Agnew and they were married in a common law marriage which was the norm for country folks. No marriage license or formalities other than a church wedding before God and family. They had two children, my wife and her older brother Chaguin. Santiago left them all for another woman, my wife followed him to America to drag him back home by his ears and years later our paths crossed, but that’s another story.

Chaguin’s wife died.

Then his daughters died all but one.

Then Chaguin died.

All of this happened in the space of only a few years. In 1995 as Chaguin lay dying and Chencha was in despair we packed up and moved to Panama to see what we could do to help. I became an immigrant on a tourist visa in a strange land without a job, without language or friends or money. Chaguin and his family all perished from AIDS. They were not drug users. They were not “god cursed sodomites” or whatever the TV evangelists like to call them these days in the name of Jesus. I find it impossible to control my temper when I hear people speak smugly of AIDS as a righteous disease that targets “fudge pushers” and “fags”. Chaguin was not gay. Neither were his little daughters who were born with the disease and wasted away slow and painful before they even had the chance to know of such things. Most people who die from AIDS don't even know how they got it. This is a hard world and that’s the way it is.

The last surviving member of Chaguin's family was a girl named Daniela and Chencha kept her alive with tough love and the free “socialized” medical care that the far right in our country seemed determined to deny to the rest of us. Daniela was my son's playmate for many years. Chencha kept Daniela alive by sheer bloody minded stubbornness and fierce love until Daniela was fifteen years old beating all the odds. But eventually she went home to be with her family, at least I like to think of it that way. In her last moments she said she saw her father standing by her bed calling her name. That's what they told me. Goddamn, I hope that's true.

Santiago lived with us in New York City and later in Panama as he deteriorated from Alzheimer’s. We kept him with us, and in spite of his abandoning his family and despite all the cause Chencha had to absolutely hate him, she joined in with us taking care of him from beginning to end. Eventually he died too. It was quite a place there for a while. An adolescent girl dying from AIDS. An old man in diapers dying from Alzheimer’s. And for a while at least no dough, Joe. It changed my view about a lot of things without my even knowing it.

After we moved back to the US with a good job, Santiago died. We were hoping his American social security check would go to his widow Chencha as a just offering for all the suffering he had caused her during their lives. But there was no marriage license, they were married in a church in the way that was typical of their culture. America is The Land of the Legal and the Home of The Lawyer. No paperwork, no money. Chencha was destitute. Panama doesn’t have a social security fund in the same way America does. So we took it on ourselves and every month we send several hundred dollars to help her whether we have it to spare or not. We always manage.

When I was a young man I thought I would dedicate my life to making the world a better place. My intentions were good. My companions were fine people. And we had faith, boy, did we have faith. It just didn’t work out. My messiah failed. I wish I could do it over. I can’t. It was all a waste in some ways as far as making the world a better place. We just managed not to fuck it up any worse. What little I’ve learned about compassion I’ve learned from Chencha and her ferocious heart, not from messiahs.

Compassion is the great religious ethic of Christianity and Buddhism both. The ideal of Christianity is that Jesus was a divine man who shared our sorrows and felt what we feel and paid his dues the same as us. So he has credibility, in a world where divine justice has so little credibility. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering and all attachment leads to suffering. In Buddhism the highest virtue is compassion, the willingness to take on and share the suffering of others. You don’t learn compassion from being successful. You learn compassion from failure. Sometimes not even then. You learn about generosity when you don’t know where your family’s next meal is coming from and someone helps you out. Good people helped us out. You learn about the preciousness of life when your only son and your grandchildren are all dying in your arms, slipping away one by one.

When I look at my life compared to what I set out to do as a young man, it doesn’t seem to amount to much. Nothing I did with such earnestness has stood the test of time, its all been undone. But there is Chencha, Chencha and her ferocious heart. The stuff she did didn’t stand the test of time either, they all up and died in spite of her tears and her prayers. She deserves better. So we take care of her. God isn’t going to bless me for this. God doesn’t give a flying fuck one way or the other. But when I send off that money each month, no matter what is happening with our own finances, I feel like I’m still connected to the idealistic young man who thought he was going to do great things.

You start out as a child loving just about everything you see, and as you get older the things you love number fewer and fewer until finally there's not much left. You can’t save the world, that's what you find out. But you can take care of a small piece of it. That small piece becomes your link to whatever is still decent inside yourself.

It’s my offering to God if God’s watching. If God isn’t watching, which is what I suspect, well, you take care of whatever's genuinely sacred and some of that is family. You just do it. Just the way Chencha did. That’s old school.

C. Sanchez-Garcia

(I'll also donate $1 to Mercy Corps for every person who posts a comment to this. Scouts honor. Maybe God is watching. Who knows.)

Make a difference in your own way ...

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors: we borrow it from our children." ~ Ancient Nation American Proverb

Like my fellow Grippers, I tend to look at charity and giving from two view points - local and worldwide.

I am horrified by the devastation in many different countries, all brought about in many different ways - nature, war, poverty, political unrest, and so on.

For me, I have always had to balance what I would like to do to help - bring about world peace and a utopia - with what I can do.

A few years ago, I picked out my "charities" and started donating, and I have held to them ever since. Every year, I figure out what I can give, saving what I can along the course of the year, and I decide which of the charities gets how much.

I give to the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Foundation, and Conservation International, to name a few.

"We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can't speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees." ~ Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation

I admit it, I am a bit of a tree hugger. As a biology major, I have been exposed to a lot of information about the planet, ecology, and the need for conservation of species. Which is part of why I have chosen to send my donations towards such efforts. The other reason is very simple - I want my grandchildren, and my grandchildren's grandchildren, and so on, to be able to admire the beauty of a tiger pacing, to smell the sweet scent of a orchid, to snorkel and have a manatee come upon them to play.

Species matter! And the preservation and conservation of species is important, which is why I was thrilled to be selected to take part in the Coming Together: Al Fresco anthology to benefit Conservation International.

Each species plays an integral role to the health of the ecosystem in which it lives, and the planet as a whole. One professor explained it very simply. The planet is a game of Jenga. We can remove blocks here and there, and it will still stand. A bit shaky, but it stands. Yet there will come a block that will destabalize it to such a degree that the tower collapses.

We tend to focus a lot on the things that matter to us as humans; Aids research, breast cancer, heart disease, relief efforts. And I do not disagree that there is a need for such. In fact, I also support such efforts when I can. But the planet, and the species on it, matter too. Which is why I give what I can to aid conservation efforts; money, time, and support.

As for my local charitable work, I volunter at a nature center which helps to rehab injured wildlife. It is messy, smelly and in some cases disgusting work since I am cleaning out cages, helping change bandages and cutting up mice and rats for the injured raptors to eat (since that is what I tend to do when I am there - work in the raptors room). But when I leave, I always have such a sense of doing something that matters.

After all, how many people can say they have been glared at by an injured redtailed hawk that is sitting in the backseat of their car in a pet carrier (was transporting him to the center for treatment), or dive bombed by owl and hawks and the occasional falcon while taking them food. I've also stood inches away from an owl and shoved bites of chopped up rat into its mouth, and helped to keep an eagle from biting another of the volunteers while we checked his wounds over. (Just to name a few highlights LOL)

My husband and our daughter also help out. And I was so proud to hear my daughter say she felt good about volunteering her time on Saturdays to help out. She wishes she could go more often, but she is seriously limited on how many hours she can give, due to her age.

I think that is what it all boils down to in the end. Whatever cause or charity we decide is worthy of our time and money, regardless is it helps local vets with medical supplies and food, or feeds millions in a foreign country, or if it contributes to the research being done on a disease, or protects the planet - we are giving what we can.

We are making a difference, in our own way.

We are teaching the next generation they can make a difference.

“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.” ~ Baba Dioum

...But At Times Widen Your View

Charity may begin at home...but for me, sometimes I need to widen my view.

Like Lisabet, I had been prepared to come into this topic discussing my own fashion of contributing back to the society in which I live. And I discovered an interesting thing about myself; almost all of the causes to which I've leant support have been ones with mostly a local or regional impact.

I've contributed my time to tutoring children who need help with reading, volunteered to SOLV (Stop Oregon Litter & Vandalism) clean-up days, and planted trees on Earth Day in local parks and wetlands. I've donated food to the Oregon Food Bank, donated blood to the Red Cross, and supported local women's shelters with donations of interview suits and clothing. I've given computers to be recycled, revamped and sold. I provide coats in the winter, toys at the holidays, and stuffed animals to the police and fire departments.

All good causes, and I don't regret a single one. But sometimes I "forget" there is a whole world full of people who endure a daily struggle for basic needs. And a tragedy like the the ongoing recovery in Haiti just knocks me off my safe and secure stance. Very humbling to remember how blessed I am and that I can extend my help to outside my own little sphere.

Is there an event or story that really caused you to do some self-examination? Like Lisabet, I am going to add $1 to my Mercy Corps donation for every answer or observation I receive in reply to this post. Thanks for the idea Lisabet, and thank you in advance to commenters.

Beginning at Home

By Lisabet Sarai

Michelle added her topic of “Charity” to our Get A Grip calendar a couple of weeks ago. I had intended to write about my experiences writing and editing smut for good causes, through the Coming Together series and the I Do anthology, which benefits the fight for marriage equality. Then came the Haitian earthquake. Suddenly altruistic erotica seemed almost trivial, although Coming Together has organized collections for several disasters including the southern California wildfires and hurricane relief.

Like many people, I've been stunned by the images of devastation and death coming from Haiti. Nature's cruelty has never been so apparent. In the best of times, many Haitians barely survive. Poverty, disease, violence and fear are Haiti's legacies from decades of dictatorship and a century of environmental pillage. Now to suffer this, on top of everything else--it is almost too much for me to grasp.

It is a gorgeous day here where I live, bright, sunny, breezy and pleasantly cool. I'm sitting in my comfortable apartment, typing on my laptop and enjoying a cold drink. In an hour or so I'm off to a university party. Haiti seems like a bad dream--but like a nightmare, I find that it haunts me. Whenever I begin to relax, I remember the multitudes--wounded, homeless, robbed of their families and their livelihood--on the other side of globe. A cloud crosses the sun.

I live in Asia. I was here during the 2004 tsunami, and I remember feeling the same way. I recall that terrible New Years Eve when everyone wore black. I feel helpless. What, after all, can I do? I've made a donation to Doctors without Borders (Medecins sans Frontiers, or MSF), but what is money in the face of such trouble, especially the meager amount I can afford? A part of me wants to hop a plane and fly to the Caribbean, to help with the rebuilding. To hold the hand of some woman who has lost a child. To cook and serve food to the many who must be hungry.

Practically speaking, I can't do this. But money seems like such a pale substitute for the personal gift of comfort--human to human.

I was thinking about this and came to a heartening conclusion. If I can't help a Haitian personally, I should reach out a hand to someone closer to home. I believe that we are all connected, that we share a spark that makes every person worthy of love and respect. And though I'm not traditionally religious, I remember Jesus' comments that to assist the least of his creatures was equivalent to serving him personally. (If I were religious, I could find the Scripture quote, but I hope you know what I'm talking about.) In some mysterious but I think real way, showing compassion in one part of the world will ultimately have positive effects somewhere else.

So today I resolve to give what I can of my time and my capabilities to my neighbors who might be less fortunate than I am. I'm not as helpless as I thought. Every kindness, every gesture of love or support, anywhere, adds to the sum of goodness circulating in our world. We're bound into a chain of love that transcends distance.

Maybe that sounds hokey or ridiculously innocent. But that's what I believe.

Meanwhile, here's what you can do. Leave me a comment. Tell me your thoughts about how we can help Haiti recover or your feelings about my post. For every substantive comment other than those by other Grippers, I'll donate another dollar to MSF.

Thank you.

Commitment To Making It As An Author...

Commitment to making it as an author (when you have a fulltime day job) - AKA – Sleep is for the meek

By Claire Thompson


Ok, so it’s Thursday, and Devon asked me to please have this to her as early in the week as possible. Like all rocky roads, mine is no exception, paved as it is with good intentions! But good intentions don’t write books or sell them either. Good intentions don’t get things done.

So, I have a bunch of kids at home (the number is always rotating, I can hardly keep track, they are all over sixteen, none of them fully independent, all of them money-sucking slobs), a disabled spouse who doesn’t work, two shedding dogs, a cat and one bathroom. I work a fulltime job for a school district, and then there’s my real career – writing!

Oh, oh, oh, I am a lucky girl because I love to write. I don’t just enjoy it or do it well (though I hope I do!), I freaking love it. No. Love isn’t a strong enough word. I eat, breathe, sleep, dream and wake it. I couldn’t not do it. Writing is what I do, a part of who I am, a very key, core part. I couldn’t imagine life without my laptop, my dirty mind and my stories.

I follow a lot of chat groups and blogs where folks are lamenting the fact they have no time to write, or they have been polishing up that one manuscript for the last five years and know that soon, soon, they are going to work up the courage to submit it. You know what I say to this?

Just do it.

Gosh, that sounds easy, but I have always maintained, and still believe, once you make a decision, the rest is just details. And once you decide, damn it, I am going to be a writer—a published writer!—that is the key. The rest is details. Admittedly there are lots of details.

The main number one thing, up and above any kind of blogging, advertising, chatting, posting, dreaming, is to write. Every day that you can, every spare minute that you have, sit your ass down and get those fingers flying. Buy a digital Dictaphone so you can tell yourself your ideas while driving or in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. Skip those stupid TV shows and all the time-wasting crap you do after work (Dishes? Laundry? Making dinner? Delegate, baby!). If you’re too tired after work to write, get up early (I aim for 4:30) and write then, when you are fresh and the world is still.

Yes the marketing is important, but not nearly as important as you might think. The real key is getting with a publisher who has a good distribution network, and getting your name out there by getting your books out there! The old adage – “write your story and the market will find you” IS true, at least to a point. If you have a good, compelling story to share, and it’s distributed where folks who want that kind of story are hanging out, it will sell!

Yes, it’s good to blog and chat and post and all that stuff, but only to a point. If that’s what you’re spending your time doing, instead of writing, you are missing the boat! Do that stuff after the book comes out, and even then, limit it.

What about advertising on review sites, stuff like that? I have personally found that advertising does not make much difference. I have tracked a book before and after an ad went up, for example, and noticed no difference in sales. Good reviews do cause a small increase in sales for a while, though I haven’t noticed that bad reviews negatively impact sales (not that I ever get them, ha, well, hardly ever! Groan).

The main thing is that you have a good book to sell, and a place to sell it. Sounds simple and guess what, it is! With ebooks and the Internet, the world has been split wide open and made hugely accessible. There is still lots of room for a good writer to break in, and pretty easily.

So, all you aspiring authors, stop reading this blog right now and go write! (and don’t worry, I wrote this during my day job, so I’m not taking time from my writing! (and don’t tell!))

Respectfully submitted,

Claire Thompson

*****
 
Claire is a multi-pubbed erotica and erotic romance author with over 50 titles in ebook and print. She recently went "indie" with her imprint, Romance Unbound.

You can connect with Claire at:

Website www.clairethompson.net
Romance Unbound
Yahoo Chat Group
Claire's Blog
Twitter CThompsonAuthor
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Knowing when to walk away

Does anyone here remember the motivational posters that were so popular back in the late 1990s? Maybe they're still popular. Maybe they were popular even before then. I don't know. I just recall that in the late 1990s, when I was hip-deep in my first and only corporate job, the office I worked in was wall-papered with the damn things. All those posters with images of stunningly beautiful nature scenes and the pithy saying underneath, meant to inspire us drones to give our all to the gods of the J-O-B. I hated the damn things. I already gave my all for the J-O-B, and because of it I spent far more time locked away in a tiny cubicle lit by nauseating florescent lights than I did in the great outdoors pictured in those posters.

Not long after the motivational posters came out, some comedic genius came up with the "de-motivational" posters. Now these were funny, painfully so in most cases, because they held far more truth than the originals they were making fun of. The one that still sticks with me showed some poor schmuck on his knees at a running track, his face a cataclysm of agony and frustration. Beneath the picture it said, "Winners never quit and quitters never win. But if you never quit and you never win, you're an idiot."

I think that was about that time I started seriously re-considering my corporate career.

I've walked away from a lot of things in my life time. When I was eight, my mother signed me up for dance lessons. I started with ballet, and by the time I was 13, I was taking gymnastics, jazz, and point too. Point was excruciating. I couldn't bare to slip my feet into those hard-toed shoes and try to balance on tip-toe. After a year of struggling with bleeding toes and ingrown nails and infections, I told my mom I was done, more than done, with dance and I never took another class again. Considering at the time I was taking four classes a week, and that most of my social life came from the dance studio, that was a hell of a thing to walk away from. I don't recall ever looking back though, and my feet were grateful for it.

From dance I went to band. My favorite cousin played the French horn in her school band, and I just had to play too. I had a good ear for music, so I signed up for my school's marching band and spent the next few years struggling to play as well as everyone else. You see, I had the ear for music, but not the mouth. French horn demands a hell of a lot on the muscles of the lips and face. Some days, an hour of class would leave me with a throbbing mouth and cracked lips. Not a pleasant way to go through the rest of the school day. Plus I always got so damned nervous during auditions and exams that I bombed every single time. I was the worst French horn player in the school, and I knew it. By the end of my junior year, I figured I'd suffered enough, so I didn't bother to sign up for marching band the next year. When my instructor found out, he laid into me like nobody's business. "You're a quitter!" he screamed at me. "A lousy quitter who can't commit and can't finish what she started! And you'll never amount to anything, ever!" You better believe I never looked back when I walked away from that conversation.

It was another 12 years before I was ready to quit something else. That was the corporate job I hated so much. Sure, the money was good; I got lots of raises and bonuses and nearly doubled my salary during the four years I worked there. But while I was getting well paid for 40 hours a week, I was actually working 80 hours a week. And I hated the job. I was good at it, but it was boring, sterile, and at times very degrading. The Hubster understood, fortunately, and we eventually made arrangements that allowed me to quit that particular millstone and once again walk away.

Looking at all this, it might seem like I've made a habit of quitting. But I also have a habit of committing. I completed both my bachelors and my masters degrees, which was no small task. I completed four years of Army ROTC and got my commission in the Reserves, in spite of the fact that I hated ROTC and definitely did not want to join the military. Of course my ROTC scholarship came with an 8-year commitment to the Reserves, which I also completed and then went beyond by a few years.

I have committed to this and committed to that. I have started some things and walked away from them, and started other things and crossed the finish line even if it meant I had to limp several miles to get there. Why finish some things and not others? Pain has a lot to do with it. I have a limit for how much I'm willing to suffer for a cause. Dance, band, and the J-O-B had become intolerable in my eyes, thus they went. ROTC and the Reserves were pretty intolerable too, but in those cases, I had no choice but to finish what I started. My dad refused to help pay for college unless I joined ROTC and went into the military after school.

I have to admit, my days in ROTC and the Reserves did not kill me, but my memories of those times do put me in mind of yet another de-motivational poster. "That which does not kill you can really fuck you up." I keep that in mind any time I confront a situation where staying means more pain than it's worth. I do not hesitate to look at a situation and ask, "Is this really what I want to be doing right now? Is this really worth the agony and frustration?" When the answers to these questions are 'no,' I know it's time to walk.

I can tolerate a great deal of pain and suffering. Hell, I have a husband and kids and I've decided to make a career of writing. You know I can handle pain. But only for the right reasons. Sure, winners never quit and quitters never win, but sometimes we all get into games that just aren't worth the effort to finish. When that happens, it's time to smarten up and just walk away.

*****

I'll be at Marscon in Williamsburg, Virginia, all this weekend, presenting discussion panels on science fiction erotica, so I won't be able to respond to comments until after I get back. I hope everybody has a great weekend!