Tag Archives: advice

On Listening to Advice

5 Nov

I have a younger co-worker who got into an argument with one of the veterinarians. She is 23 and engaged to her boyfriend of two years. The veterinarian had lectured her about getting married too young, how it’s a huge mistake, and she will end up divorced one day. Needless to say, this was not his place to tell her that.

I was infuriated and stewed over the situation for a while. It didn’t take me long to remember when I met her over a year ago when her and boyfriend had just moved to the city. At the time, I thought she was making a huge mistake. I was sure that her boyfriend was going to smash her heart, and this city would eat that little Arizona girl alive. I thought that if I could have prevented her from moving to New York, I would have.

And I would have been wrong.

The thing about advice is that there are few things in life that are universal for everyone. When I moved to New York for a boyfriend, I barely survived. In retrospect, moving here with him was not the wisest decision nor was it the right one for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one for someone else.

I survived a dark couple of years in my life, and I spent most of that time desperate for a way out, a simple solution to fix my problem. I read endless amounts of inspirational blogs/books/magazines. Every time I met someone who seemed to have their life together, I would mull over in my brain what was their secret, how did they have it together. I ended up learning a lot of things that did help me, and a lot of things that didn’t. I’m still embarrassed that I used to attach my photo to my resume, simply because a girl I worked with as a barista got a job that way. How weird.

The main thing I learned is that while people tend to give you advice from the bottom of their heart, what worked in their situation won’t always work in yours. Everyone who gives advice is pulling it from what worked for them. That doctor who warned my co-worker against getting married too young has been through three divorces. So, yeah, I bet he thinks getting married young is a huge mistake. On the other hand, my grandparents weren’t much older than my co-worker when they got married, and they were very much in love for over 50 years of marriage. All of my friends who swear by online dating honestly have a blast skimming through profiles and meeting up with new people every week. It only convinced me that I was going to die alone.

Advice is great. People giving advice is even greater. It means they give a shit and want you to learn from their experiences. And maybe what they tell you will make all the difference. But we still have to carve it all out for ourselves at the end of the day.

Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten has been the simplest.

Work Hard. Be Honest. Smile and Laugh as much as possible.

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You Could Try

23 May

I knew May was going to be difficult. I signed up to cover extra shifts at work, agreed to attend a vet tech seminar, made cat sitting arrangements, scheduled my first semester final exam for the first week of June, booked a 24-hour jaunt to Boston to visit my Mom and sister. But this is something I tend to do, overbook myself.

I hate that writing falls by the wayside. It’s always on my mind. I’ve written dozens of posts in my head, come home and fallen asleep doing the New York Times crossword instead. I’ve also plotted new careers as a journalist, a travel writer, a hippy poet. But instead of working toward these things, I’ve fallen prey to some bad habits. I waste a lot of time playing games on my phone, making myself feel jealous and upset by refreshing the facebook window too often and watching youtube videos instead of setting aside distractions and getting to the business of writing.

So at the moment, this is what I have to offer, this youtube video of an adorable pug. I’ve watched it endlessly and shown it to a bunch of friends who don’t seem to get as much joy out of it as me. But the thing about it that gets me is the shift in the dog’s expression when his owner suggests that he could try. Sure, he licks everything and chases the big kitty, but he could TRY to be a better dog.

I guess watching enough silly animal videos online can somehow become an existential experience. Because I have bad habits, I’m not completely where I want to be. But each new day is an opportunity to face those things down and try to be better.

I’m ready to try and be better. And that’s all I can do.

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Why We Write edited by Meredith Maran

10 Apr

whywewriteI found out about this book from the ever amazing Brain Pickings website which is a great place to find inspiration and guidance in leading a creative life.

The book (despite consisting of 20 author interviews) is short and quick to get through. I read it in two days on subway trips to bars on a Saturday night and to softball games on a Sunday evening. But the advice and the guidance within is invaluable.

What I admired about this book is while I’ve read similar amalgamations of writerly advice, this isn’t just one type of author. You have some very commercially successful mystery thriller writers, some nonfiction writers, some indie writers, a little bit of everything. And for being a book about creativity, it’s also down-to-Earth. The authors talk about their literal journey to where they are now. The logistics of paying the bills, getting published, finding time to write, changing careers.

What struck me was despite how vastly different they all are in every sense, they all kind of said the same thing. Write for yourself, work really hard, don’t give up when someone doesn’t like your stuff, work hard, write about what inspires you, work even harder.

It includes some authors that I already know and respect like Michael Lewis and others that I’ve never heard of. All of their stories were valuable though, and I recommend this book to anyone who desires a writerly life.

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Slowing Down

6 Mar

 

It’s true when people say New York changes you. It’s not necessarily a bad thing either. I used to be a pushover, passive, shy. Those qualities don’t thrive in this city. I’ve learned to be more straightforward, to fight for what I need/want, and to be way more outgoing.

Some of the changes are not so good, though. It’s dog-eat-dog here in a lot of ways. I miss the laid-back, friendly attitude of the West coast where people tend to co-habitate as opposed to claw over one another. It’s a lot about survival, as Jay-Z put it, “City is a pity, half of ya’ll won’t make it.” It’s tough living here, but worth it if you can do it.

I spent this last year being fairly poor. I took a substantial pay cut to become a technician as I was in “training,” only recently has this been lifted to the point where I’m  making good money once again. But I had to survive one of the world’s most expensive cities on a low salary, somehow, someway. I took lots of little jobs, in-house nail trims, cat sitting, shave-downs. I went on lots of dates mostly for the free meal (I know I’m going to hell.) When I had to mail a letter, I stole postage from the clinic. I made food laaaast. If a client bought us sandwiches. I’d cut mine into thirds and eat it for lunch three days in a row. How do I stay so slender? The old-fashioned way, by being poor. I clock into work 15 minutes early, take only a 15 minute lunch break, which adds 1/2 an hour of pay to each day. All the little things accumulate.

Things are a lot better now, and during these times, I luckily only had to dip into my savings once or twice. And I still have a bunch of lucrative side jobs that give me extra cash. One thing I do is at-home nail trims for pets for $20. Easy money and clients are more than happy to pay it to avoid the stress of taking their animals to the vet.

Today I went to do a nail trim on a cat I had never met before. I ran into work 30 minutes early to grab the clippers and go to the apartment. It was a 5th floor walk-up, and a little old lady was all smiles at the door. She welcomed me in and kept calling me Cindy even though I tried to correct her. I met her adorable cat Freddy who seemed to like me. She held him while I did the nail trim. I checked the clock and saw that I could get back to work in time to clock in 15 minutes early.

Then the lady started talking to me, offering me something to drink or eat, wanting me to play with the cat. I started getting annoyed, looking at the time, thinking about how I was losing money the longer I stayed there.

Then I had to stop. I had to pause a moment and realize I was being a true New York asshole, selfish and greedy. What is 15 minutes out of my day? How much do I really need that money? So I accepted the red Solo cup filled to the brim with orange juice and watched “Live with Kelly and Michael” for a bit. The lady was so sweet, and she quietly started telling me how she is going through a divorce and feels alone and is having hip surgery. She wiped a tear from her eye as she told me, “I’m just so happy Freddy let you trim his nails. You’re an angel.”

I laughed and told her I didn’t mind, anytime. Of all the things I could have done with those 15 minutes of my day, nothing could have been more important than that. Of all the things I do with my time, drinking orange juice and watching a morning talk show is the simplest, laziest, but to her, it was important. To me, it was important.

A lot of mornings I watch my fellow commuters shove onto the subways, elbowing each other, knocking one another over. If the train is like that, I always just stand back and wait for the next one. They come practically every 2 minutes, and the next train is always less crowded.  I think to myself, “Is that extra 2 minutes truly important to these people?” Well, call me hypocrite, because that 15 minutes this morning where I could have clocked in early was likewise inferior to becoming one little old lady’s nail-trimming angel.

Plus she slipped me an extra 5 saying, “Because Freddy thinks you’re pretty.”

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Becoming a Vet Tech vs. Becoming a Veterinarian

23 Nov
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Alas, the white coat life is not for me.

It was about a year ago that I decided I would like to pursue a career in the veterinary field. I knew I would start by being a veterinary technician, but I harbored a dream of one day becoming a veterinarian. I’ve debated this ardently with myself for the last year. Some days I would stomp my foot and just know I was going to go to vet school. Other days I would look at the career of a vet tech and think it was the more viable option. So many different people weighed in on it that I ended up feeling absolutely stuck, not sure which path was the right one for me.

The good news is about two weeks ago, I settled on a career path as a veterinary technician. I enrolled in a correspondence program to get the necessary degree to apply for my license. I am so excited, yet calm at the same time. I finally feel as though I have a direction, and I am doing exactly what I should be doing at this point in my life. I have made vet tech friends in the last year, and I have watched some of them settle for this career, and I have watched others begin pre-med programs. All I know is that this is what is right for me. For anyone going through a similar dilemma in the vet world, here are the things to think about, the information I have gathered in the last year.

WHY YOU SHOULD BECOME A VETERINARIAN

  • It’s your dream. You’ve held onto this ideal from childhood when you held your first kitten, puppy, foal, piglet, whatever. This is what you’ve always wanted to do, and you can’t imagine a life without it. Who cares about doing anything else? You get to save animal lives, and you will absolutely love dedicating yourself to it.
  • You will be a doctor! Oh, the prestige of making other people prelude your last name with”Dr.” I’m not being sarcastic here. It’s definitely a plus. You will become an expert with animals, and the possibilities are endless. You can own your own practice, specialize, become a professor, write a book.
  • You get to do the best parts. By the nature of your license, you will get to do three of the funnest things in veterinary medicine. You get to perform surgery. You get to diagnose animals (It’s like a big puzzle!). And you get to prescribe medication.
  • You’ll make more money. You are the doctor after all, and the practice hinges on your license, which means you obviously get more take home pay. You can also become a practice manager and have an even greater opportunity for profit.
  • What’s a vet tech? Since becoming one, I’ve had to explain my job to countless people. It’s not a well-known profession. A veterinarian, though? Everyone knows about them.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE A VETERINARY TECHNICIAN

  • It’s one of many dreams. You love working with animals, but there are also a lot of other things you care about. For me, this was the biggest factor. My passion has always been writing. I spoke to one of the doctor’s about this, and she reassured me that in vet school, you have no time for anything else. A lot of her classmates ended up dropping out a year or two in, because they did not have the single-minded determination to put aside everything else to focus on their studies.
  • You don’t have to put your life on hold. I went to an information seminar for Ross University’s vet school. One of the girls in the audience asked if there were work-study opportunities. The admissions person told her no, that school would be her life. For me, that was a huge sacrifice, moving to an obscure area (only 26 vet schools in the country, mostly rural), doing nothing but studying, and not being able to work in the meantime. The vet tech program I started allows me to take classes on my own time, while still working a full-time job, gaining experience in the field I love. Not to mention that I will have time to travel, time to write, time to visit every baseball stadium in the country, time to play softball, you get the point.
  • You get to do most everything a vet does. Granted the things listed above are the coolest things in vet medicine, there are still a lot of things you will be capable of doing. Once you have a license, you can become board certified in a number of fields and do just about everything a veterinarian does.
  • You will save money. Sure, the starting salary of a veterinarian is about what a veterinary technician will top out at in their career. HOWEVER, vet school costs around $200,000, not including pre-med requirements. As mentioned before, it is also four years of not working. Vet tech school is costing me about $5,000, and I’m working full-time throughout while still making a decent wage. Once I get licensed, there are a variety of opportunities for more money as well. So at 32, I won’t be making as much as I could as a vet, but I will also be relatively debt free.
  • What’s a vet tech? One of the best parts about being a vet tech (this has been verified by countless veterinarians) is that you have much less exposure to the clients. They want to hear from the doctor, they want to talk to the doctor, they might eventually try and sue the doctor. All you have to do is show up and do your job. There is still some client interaction, and the veterinarian could hold you liable for mistakes, but the vet has way more at stake (their license) and will generally support you and make sure you’re comfortable.

Like most things in life, I think it comes down to how much a dream is worth it. There is more that goes into becoming a veterinarian, but if it is such a burning desire for you, it’ll pay off in the long run. I don’t want to discourage anyone. I wholeheartedly admire my friends that are pursuing vet school. But, if it’s not a big enough dream to account for all the time, money, and sanity, then a vet tech career is also a fantastic option.

 

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Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

7 Sep

I get a weekly email from a website called brainpickings.org. I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the site, but every Sunday an email with the best articles of the week arrives in my inbox. I like to sip coffee on my Sunday mornings and peruse it. The woman who curates it is always fascinated by learning, creating, the universe, science, literature, life. It’s a weekly email I’d recommend to anyone.

I’ve taken a lot of her book recommendations, and this one is by far and away my favorite that I’ve read. “Dear Sugar” was an advice column on the website “The Rumpus.” But it isn’t your average advice column. Mainly because instead of giving advice in some cheesy, overdone way, she usually tells a story from her life that relates, how it changed her, what she learned, what her advicee should take away.

So many times when reading this book, she took my breath away at the simplicity of her logic. One early advice letter basically just asked her “What the fuck?” over and over again. To which she wrote a very eloquent letter about the abuse she experienced as a child and how she spent her adulthood asking that very same question to herself on repeat. She concludes the letter.

“Ask better questions, sweet pea. The fuck is your life. Answer it.”

I devoured this book. I’ve lately taken to writing in my books: starring favorite passages, underlining fun turns of phrases, adding my thoughts in the margin. In college, they called this “active reading.” Thanks Bachelor’s Degree! But I didn’t write in this book at all. Why? Because I couldn’t put it down. I didn’t want to take the time to find a pen. I wanted to get to the next page. This book is pure beauty.

The book concludes with one of my favorite letters. A 22-year-old fan asks Sugar what she would go back in time and tell the 20-something Sugar about life. My favorite quote:

“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether or not you should shave your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”

It’s eerie when you read something, and it’s like the writer’s all of a sudden looking out at you from between the lines and seeing a part of you and not just seeing a part of you, but telling you what that part is, what it could be, what you should let it become.

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Tricks

5 Sep

I have spoken here before about the sage advice of Dr. G. He’s just my favorite. Today I assisted him in a spay while he regaled me with stories of him traveling around the world to do a rare procedure known as a PU for various wealthy people’s pets. During the spay/story time, a receptionist interrupted to let him know that a client was on the phone about her dog’s persistent diarrhea.

“Jesus,” Dr. G muttered. “Tell her to wipe the dog’s ass, and leave me the fuck alone.”

Classic.

Recently, I found a book that the office manager started of Dr. G-isms. It’s a gold mine. You’ve got the traditional phrases that we hear all the time, like, “I should have been a mortician.” And you’ve got your situational quotes. In reference to expensive makeup: “It’s all just horse piss. Why don’t you buy a gallon of horse piss and put that on your face?”

But there’s one that I found in there that I simply can’t stop thinking about. I think it’s pure genius.

“You can’t just be a whore. You’ve got to be a whore with tricks.”

To me, this is such a good philosophy to life. Dr. G is one of the best veterinarians and the best surgeons in the country. But that’s not the only trick up his sleeve. He loves to cook and cook very gourmet meals. He’s an obsessive Yankees fan. He loves fish. Yep, fish. He has bowls of them in his office that he takes care of every day. He goes to special fish stores and gives them special fish food. Every year, he takes a week to volunteer at a camp in Colorado for terminally sick kids. He has whole other aspects to him besides being a sharp-tongued surgeon.

I guess this is something that has bothered me. My life has been at the vet office the last month or so. I spend all my time there. I’m looking into vet schools, looking into other volunteer options for animals. It’s become all consuming, and that’s not healthy.

I don’t want to just be a veterinarian. I want to be a writer too. I want to write novels (crappy or amazing, I don’t care), I want to see all the baseball stadiums in the country. I want to be a coffee snob all through Western Europe, then a beer snob through all of Eastern Europe. I want to play soccer AND softball. I want so much more out of life that I think I’ve even realized.

Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in something that seems bigger than yourself: a relationship, a job, even a hobby or a passion. But none of it is bigger than yourself is what I’m starting to realize. I’m not just a whore. I’ve got tricks.

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Memorizing a Poem

26 May

My path to poetry was atypical. I suppose everyone’s is. I was never a big fan, other than Shakespeare which for some bizarre reason I never really considered to be poetry. When I made the decision to apply to the Creative Writing track at my university, I dreaded the fact that I would have to take poetry classes. To me, poetry was pretentious, obtuse and a dying art form. I felt like all the required verse classes I had to take were a giant waste of my time. Prose had always been my natural mode of writing, and I wanted to spend as much time as possible perfecting it.

Then, there was Steve Dold.

Steve Dold. I don’t know where to start. He was my junior year poetry writing professor. He was a dreamboat. Every girl in our class was madly in love with him. He would strut into class with his leather jacket and tousled hair. When he read poetry aloud, he’d get this dreamy look in his eyes and take on a high-pitched intonation which was comical yet entrancing. He taught us iambic pentameter by relating it to a steady heartbeat. A 20-year-old girl’s heart didn’t stand a chance.

Our assignments were pretty standard creative writing stuff. We would read a bevy of a certain type of poem then write our own. One week we worked on narrative, another week we worked on sonnets. The only other requirement he had for us was to memorize a poem, just one, any one we liked.

“I believe this will be the most important thing you take away from this class,” I remember him saying. “You will have this poem in your mind if you choose to keep it with you in your life. At some dark hour, when you most need it, it will be there, a calming refrain, a gift you give yourself.”

I rolled my eyes and decided that I would just pick a random villanelle. Villanelle is a highly structured poem based on French poetry. There are a couple of repeating refrains, a strict meter, and a predictable rhyme scheme. I figured this would be an easy form to learn. I checked out a book from the library full of them, I read a couple and found one that struck me. As I read it aloud, something about it was so pleasant, so perfect, and although I didn’t completely grasp the meaning, it affected my heart in a positive way.

I set myself to memorizing it one night when I was home alone in my apartment. I remember making Macaroni and Cheese, taking a shower, cleaning up my room, all while repeating the poem over and over again to myself.

With each repetition, something happened. I became more and more attached to each line. What was originally an interesting but opaque poem became a poem that meant something, each line revealing itself to me more and more.

I memorized that poem and still know it by heart. I went on to focus on writing and reading poetry. When I bring up poetry to people, they often groan and say they just don’t get it, that it’s too academic. Nothing irks me more. Poetry takes time. It is rare to read through a poem and understand it and be done with it. Poetry is meant to dwell with, to spend time with the words, the variety of meanings, to pull something from it for yourself. When I originally set to memorizing a poem, the poem had little meaning to me, except that I enjoyed the first line. Now it is a source of comfort when I’m feeling down. Yes, at dark times in my life, that poem comes to mind and it means something to me. It might not mean anything to anyone else, and it might not mean to me what was originally intended by the poet, but that’s not the point of poetry. It’s an art, and we are to take from it whatever we need.

The Waking

I will forever be thankful to Steve Dold for that.

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Quality Advice from Dr. G

27 Apr
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SPROUT! I want a Brussels Griffon. I want one real bad.

The above dog has nothing to do with this post, other than the fact that I took it at work, and this story also takes place at work. Honestly, I’m just trying to lure you in to read my blog, because I’m sly like that.

So the worst part about working in Veterinary Medicine is the people, the clients that inevitably come with their dogs. Ironic, right? People get into this field, because they want to spend their day with animals. Yet so much of the time is spent dealing with people. And people, in general, aren’t that pleasant.

Some people are wonderful though. Like Dr. G. He’s my favorite doctor at our clinic. He’s older, so a lot of us call him “Pops” which has always been a goal of mine…to have an old man friend whom I call Pops. He’s a lifelong Yankees fans, so we’re always discussing our teams. He continuously attempts to bring me to the dark side, make me a Yankees fan. With other Yankees fans, I find this sort of thing annoying; with Dr. G, it makes me smile.

He’s also the only doctor that doesn’t lose his temper, that doesn’t freak out at clients, never blames any one else if things go wrong. His interactions with clients are legendary. For example:

“Dr. G, is my dog going to die?”
“Well, yeah, one day. We all are. I just don’t know when your dog will die.”
“What am I supposed to do?!!?!”
“Stop worrying about your dog so damn much.”

He’s the only one who can get away with saying this sort of thing.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a client who was persistently calling the front desk, driving us all insane. She was sobbing about how her main vet had left the practice, how someone in her building told her the food she fed the dog was garbage, how she was a single mother and couldn’t afford vet bills. Basically, she called to complain about things that don’t concern me, and I can’t fix. She just wanted someone to whine to.

Finally, she stopped in to the clinic and demanded to speak to a doctor. She was crying and yelling, but she didn’t want an appointment. We only had Dr. R and Dr. G available. Dr. R was doing an emergency emesis, so I approached Dr. G. He rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, these fucking idiots.” Then he straightened his embroidered scrubs and asked, “So, how do I look?” I gave him the nod of approval, and he headed out there.

20 minutes. This woman ate up 20 minutes of an important man’s time. She ranted. She cried. She whined. He sat there. He nodded. He told her his food recommendations. It did not look like fun.

Eventually she left, and I followed him back into the treatment area.

“That was amazing, Pops. I don’t know how you handled that woman for that long.”
“Let me tell you something I learned a long time ago,” he began. All of treatment turned to listen to the wise, old doctor. “It takes two people to argue. One person can complain and cry and scream all they want, but if you sit there calm, you aren’t in an argument, you aren’t upset. The second you raise your voice and give in to anger, they’ve won. They pulled you into a fight. So I listened to that woman’s crazy rant. And even though I sat there for 20 minutes and could only think, ‘Go fuck yourself, you crazy bitch,’ I didn’t say it, and she didn’t get to win.” All of treatment erupted in laughter and applause.

I lose my temper with clients every once in a while, but I’m really trying the Dr. G method of dealing with it. It really does work. I’m not as good at it as Dr. G is, but I suppose I have 40 odd years to perfect my craft.

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