I've decided not to feel bad about myself for not being Neil Gaiman. Neil's the Super Genius who wrote Coraline, the Sandman series of Graphic Novels and, one of my favorite books ever: Neverwhere. He's prolific and amazing. Me... less so. But I am plodding along, trying to get the hang of this writing thing.
At present I'm stalled out. I haven't written since Monday because I can't figure out What Happens Next. I am familiar with the overall arch of my story, but I am at a point where I need a bridge from Here to There, and I'm in a quandary. I'm going to need to take a few long, hot showers. Maybe then it will come to me.
Writing is hard. I admire the authors, like Neil Gaiman, for whom it seems to just spin forth... and I also admire those others for whom it is a more laborious process, or seems to be, but they just keep at it. Myself, I'll consider it a wild success if I can just manage to finish this one book... this one story I've been carrying in my head for years. If I can just get it on paper, I'll have won.
I am hoping to get back into it soon because I'm wildly bored otherwise. I have to admit that lately my job bores me beyond words. Oh, I love the museum: I love all the crazy specimens and the crazy curators and the exhibits and the visitors and the wonderful volunteers. But I'm heartily sick of writing the same press releases year in and year out, cranking out the same old tripe. Even the newsletter, which used to be a labor of love, has become a chore. The blog is more interesting, but you can't maintain a PR program on blog entries.
Part of my malaise is seasonal. This is a classically slow time of year. Programming trickles to a standstill by the first week of December. I won't have a new exhibition to write about until the spring, curatorial field work is at nil. Part of my problem is the routine. And part of it is this new fundraising function I've been handed.
I've been tasked with raising the next year's crop of corporate sponsors. Whoops. We're now calling them Corporate Partners. Essentially I need to go in and ask a bunch of businesses and corporations for money. Well... at first that was what I was doing. Now it's been revamped so that I'm essentially selling them advertising via the museum. So instead of asking for money, I'm a salesperson. Either way, I'm uniquely ill-suited for it.
I tried to approach this new role with enthusiasm. I tried to tell myself I just needed to hit that learning curve full force and go for it. But I'm petering out. I can pitch the museum all day to anyone who will listen... and plenty of people who won't. But I don't like asking them for money. This is, I think, the main problem with me and work now. This is the Big Thing I should be working on at this time of year, and I just haven't been able to work up any enthusiasm for it. Every day I futz with it a little bit, worry over it, move papers around. Make a couple of phone calls. But I'm not diving into like I know I should. And it's wearing on my conscience.
Today! I tell myself. Today I'll go after this project like Roxy with an unattended steak dinner. And so this morning once more I'm girding my loins, so to speak, to prepare for another day of figuring out which end of this thing to bite.
There. That was my do-gooder talk for the morning.
Yesterday at noon my student assistant and I went over to the OU Art school for the annual "Chili Bowl" fundraiser. For $15 you get to pick your own hand-turned clay bowl and fill it with all the homemade chili you can manage. There were probably 25 crockpots full of chili! Long tables filled the school's Lightwell gallery, and students, faculty, OU staff from every department, staff from the Norman CVB and the Arts Council, just about everyone in town was there, cheek-by-jowl, comparing their bowls and snarfing chili. It has to be a terrific fundraiser. Nearly zero costs: just for the sodas and supplies to make the bowls. The students do the turning and glazing. The staff and faculty come up with the chili. Genius. And fun, too, to see so many different folks piling in together for comfort food and an earthen dish. I sat between an art history faculty member and a first-year art student who was coming back to school to learn photography after spending several years in the oil business with his electrical engineering degree. Go figure.
Bob popped in only briefly, large social scenes being not his Bag, baby. I think it still sort of scandalizes my assistant that her first-year drawing teacher is dating her boss. His contribution to the chili cook-off is several cans of Hormel, dumped into my crock-pot. Its title is "More Fartsy, Less Artsy."
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