What Was Lost

Okay, so. Y'all are going to judge me for this post, and that's understandable, but try to stick with me, okay? Because there are some life lessons here, I think.

Sometime in the next year (I decline to say when, exactly), I'm going to reach a milestone birthday: 30. I am in no way prepared for this eventuality, in spite of having had three decades to brace myself for it.

There are many reasons why I'm overwhelmingly trepidatious about turning 30. Most of them have to do with not being where I thought I would be by that age: career, relationship, and so on. But there is one more, decidedly superficial explanation. I will not be getting my spectacular "Happy 30th Birthday!" gift to myself.

Once upon a time, I decided that I would start saving money with the intention of purchasing a (secondhand) Hermés Kelly at 30. It's the pinnacle of luxury--classier than its more popular sister the Birkin and lovingly hand-crafted from the finest materials in the world by master artisans. This was meant to be my way of congratulating myself for making it so far when I had strong suspicions that I wouldn't. Was the price sure to be steep? Yes. Let's not even talk about how outrageous it would be for me to spend all of my money on such an item or how even just five years ago when I hatched this plan, it would have cost MUCH less to accomplish the task.

But I had made other things happen: I wanted to take a trip outside of North America before I hit a quarter-century, and I managed it through an unexpected stroke of good luck as well as some generosity on the part of others; I wanted to have my second chapbook published before I was 30, and I persevered until I signed not one but two publication contracts. So in a way, I failed myself by not getting enough money together for that Kelly.

This hurts me a little. Not just because I'm materialistic and acquisitive--which I definitely am--but also because it's another reminder of the things I've lost along the way. Before you judge me too harshly, I would like to make it clear that I appreciate everything I DO have: a roof over my head (thanks, Mom and Dad), a job (thanks, Nancy and Becky), a modicum of good health (THANKS, OBAMA!), and more. So this is a sort of lament for what could have been in general, rather than a petulant complaint about an item I don't have in my closet.

Obviously I can--and will--live without yet another handbag, and a costly one, at that. But this knowledge doesn't negate the creeping notion that I may, in fact, be some kind of a failure. After more than a year out of my beloved office, I haven't been able to regain a foothold in my previous career track, which hurts enough in and of itself. More than that, though, I'm the girl who had to move back in with her parents (again, thank you, Mom and Dad) and can't even pay her own cell phone bill or feed herself (seriously, thank you). 

So, you see, it isn't really about the bag.

On the plus side, Little Dog is always at my side, my friends stuck around, my current job mostly doesn't suck, and I haven't run out of books to read. Plus, I get to see Niece and Nephew more often. When I start to get gloomy about the state of my life, I have to list these things off so I don't lose sight of this: not everything was lost.

-Cate-

Stumble Your Way Into a New Language Today!

Back in July, I made a brief reference to my so-called self-improvement regimen. As I noted at the time, this consists largely of my attempt to re-learn French, which I never spoke well in the first place.

In the years since I first studied française (circa 1999-2001), I have also taken one and a half years of Spanish courses and made an attempt at some German, which turned out to be useless in spite of the fact that I'm fluent in a Germanic language. The reason I keep coming back to French is not as simple as saying that it was the first language I studied other than my own, although that is true to some extent. It's also wrapped up in the fact that English, as a language, was heavily influenced by French thanks to the Norman Invasion of 1066.

Maybe it's even a little bit because I grew up in what was once a French territory (heyyyy, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac). But that last explanation doesn't hold much water. The military enclave that grew into the Motor City, Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, should rightly be pronounced DAY-twa, yet we Michiganders managed to mangle it into Duh-troyt. (This might be a good time to tell you that I hate when people call it DEE-troyt. I am looking in your direction, Chris Sherman.)

My point is this: I have no easily-identifiable motivation for why I'm more inclined toward the study of French. But I'm trying to work with what IS there.

My fluency does not seem to be improving, as evidenced by the fact that I am more or less stuck in the present tense. My methodology is imprecise at best: I use a combination of materials including a used but excellent copy of the level-one French textbook that was employed by my school district when I was going through the system, a text by Barron's called French Now! that totally doesn't suck, and the now-ubiquitous langauge-learning application Duolingo.

Duolingo is great because it allows you to take your lessons along to the doctor's office, your lunch break, what have you. On the other hand, it also tends to produce sentences like this: 

Still, this is better than nothing. While no one forces me to speak French (as I once forced my ESL students to speak English), I have been fairly diligent about studying every day. And I think the fact that I've kept up says something about me, and not just that I spend too much time alone in the house. Rather, it says (to me, at least) that I haven't given up on myself completely, as I have often wanted to do in the past year or so. Plus, it allows me to focus my intellectual energy somewhere in the absence of colleagues and friends who know about and understand my academic pursuits.

Will I ever go to France and put this imperfect knowledge to use? I couldn't say. But at least I'll know my self-improvement plan worked to an extent, and this is one of the first times in my life I can say that.

-Cate-