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Not since 2003, I just found out. I have arranged my teaching life so as not to need a vita or resume for 11 years. That arrangement has worked so well that I had no idea it had been this long. Updating the vita with everything I’ve done in that time — or at least everything that can be of use on a cv — makes me feel alternately as if I’ve spent the last decade being awesomely productive or appallingly idle.
I’m throwing my name in the hat for a couple of part-time teaching gigs, creative writing, at local grant-funded non-profits. It would definitely be fun, and might fit in some sensible way with my creative and family priorities. I’m guessing it would pay less, hour by hour, than I charge for private tutoring, but working up the enthusiasm to hustle for SAT prep students is kind of hard. There’s a prissy little voice in my head that protests, The SAT is just not consistent with our brand! We launch books, we write books, we should be mentoring people who also want to write and launch books. Thank you, prissy voice, but we haven’t been reaching those finish lines for so very long yet, and meanwhile I would like to be able to get Conrad a music teacher, since he’s clearly got some kind of talent and drive. The SAT pays bills. All hail the SAT.
I remember doing most of the things on my old vita, though strangely not all of them. I was an advisor for an undergraduate organization’s reading series? Who knew?! If I can’t answer a question about it in an interview without sounding like an elected official at an investigative hearing, that line should probably be deleted. Other things, I remember with such clarity it’s as if I just set them down ten minutes ago, even if I haven’t thought about them in a decade. Series Organizer and Master of Ceremonies, Cleo’s Cafe Poetry Series, 1/2003-present. Man, I got such amazing featured readers to come to that hole-in-the-wall cafe. Some of them traveled for hours, crossing multiple state lines, for nothing but dinner out on my personal dime and a chance to sell a handful of copies to my open mic regulars. Nominees for the National [Bleeping] Book Award, I tell you.
No wonder people were surprised when I walked out on that life. It looks, at least on paper, like I was pretty good at living it.
I’m throwing my name in the hat for a couple of part-time teaching gigs, creative writing, at local grant-funded non-profits. It would definitely be fun, and might fit in some sensible way with my creative and family priorities. I’m guessing it would pay less, hour by hour, than I charge for private tutoring, but working up the enthusiasm to hustle for SAT prep students is kind of hard. There’s a prissy little voice in my head that protests, The SAT is just not consistent with our brand! We launch books, we write books, we should be mentoring people who also want to write and launch books. Thank you, prissy voice, but we haven’t been reaching those finish lines for so very long yet, and meanwhile I would like to be able to get Conrad a music teacher, since he’s clearly got some kind of talent and drive. The SAT pays bills. All hail the SAT.
I remember doing most of the things on my old vita, though strangely not all of them. I was an advisor for an undergraduate organization’s reading series? Who knew?! If I can’t answer a question about it in an interview without sounding like an elected official at an investigative hearing, that line should probably be deleted. Other things, I remember with such clarity it’s as if I just set them down ten minutes ago, even if I haven’t thought about them in a decade. Series Organizer and Master of Ceremonies, Cleo’s Cafe Poetry Series, 1/2003-present. Man, I got such amazing featured readers to come to that hole-in-the-wall cafe. Some of them traveled for hours, crossing multiple state lines, for nothing but dinner out on my personal dime and a chance to sell a handful of copies to my open mic regulars. Nominees for the National [Bleeping] Book Award, I tell you.
No wonder people were surprised when I walked out on that life. It looks, at least on paper, like I was pretty good at living it.
