How many times have I said this to my children?

Today’s conversation was about hot summers. It’s 90 degrees today and Sam (almost 23) is planning how to get the mowing done without a heat stroke. It’s really overdue, so it needs to at least partially be finished today. I tried to coax him toward doing it while it was a mere 86 out, but he followed his instincts to stay in the basement playing video games for a couple of hours first. I’m not mad. I have long held the philosophy that people learn best by experiencing consequences for their choices. He’s headed out now, and hopefully he listened to my advice to took some ice water. When I finish typing this, I will look out the window and check to make sure he’s still upright. (fingers crossed)

The reason Sam and G (13) got told about hot summers was…this was how nearly every day of the summer felt when we were kids. It was hot as Hades since before school got out at the end of May, and we stayed in the pool all day, every day until we went back to school at the end of August. Our children, by contrast, have grown up with cool Junes and hot Julys, then the entire month of August spent in temp-controlled, air-conditioned classrooms.

Air conditioning units inside the schools?! We didn’t have those when we were kids! (See? It keeps happening.) But that wasn’t what I said, actually. What I said was, “This weather today is how it felt all the time back then. This is how summer used to feel. You know all these rainy Junes you kids hate about summer? We never had those when we were kids.”

Whereas I firmly believe that AC inside the schools is better for the kids’ health (hello, asthma epidemic!), I’m also aware that the energy we’ve used to create this kind of comfortable learning space has contributed to the environmental shift that has made our ecosystem wetter, weirder, and certainly wilder. So many aspects of our lifestyle have changed since the 80s, I sometimes wonder if we will ever stop evolving faster than the average human being can keep pace. We fix one thing and it breaks another. Life has certainly always produced this challenge, but I think pace is the biggest obstacle in our lives, personally.

There were always pace-setters. Those who had the next year’s car model before everyone else. The early adopter of the briefcase-sized cell phone. The real estate developer who knew where the future of mercantile shopping would lie, and bought up all the land. Those were the pace-setters we knew as kids.

Things change so quickly now, it’s often unclear who the visionaries and pace-setters even are. What was an insane proposition yesterday is tomorrow’s “can’t live without.” We see CEOs and inventors pushing their product as the next big thing, and honestly, who can tell? You would have to dedicate so much time to researching whatever industry they are in to make an educated guess. People spend years in higher ed devoted to studying concepts that are immediately blasted apart by lived experience. It’s something, really.

I openly hope that a lot of today’s ideas about sustainability and conservation will win-out in the long run, but in the meantime, we are so assailed with the rapid pace of life that there isn’t much time to thoughtfully consider life itself long-term. I remember the luxury to time. Of boredom. I want to tell my kids what it was like, but that’s also something that has to be modeled, if we’re going to live it. Life without phones? Sure. Let’s switch ours off. (But for how long? Because I have deadlines. Seriously, I need to know. *glances at online calendar*)

See what happens? We’re all hooked on the devices that keep us up with the grueling pace of today. Whereas we used to think about tomorrow, it’s downright difficult to do now, and sometimes I wonder who benefits the most from that.

Or does anyone, really? Because while you can sell the future in shares and fractional shares, does anyone out there know how to stop the data storm that comes much more predictably than a June rain? In this world where not only can you not see the forest for the trees–but the trees are literally outgrowing the forest and evolving into something new–is there ever going to be an end? Imagine coming to the end of a copse of trees and finding a meadow, but before you can set a foot down in it–let alone build a home–it is filled with more trees. The only thing that stops this evolution of forest data is a very hard stop like an ocean. And it is only a matter of time before the data trees on land pioneer their way underwater and co-evolve with what lives there, in the deep. In the meantime, a lot of things die. Perhaps the organic parts of life we’ve always known are corralled into spaces that we seek to fit out to keep up with the human-made tech beyond.

But, Leslea, you say. I like human-made tech.

So do I. I really do. I’m just saying, it’s fast.

And that brings me to today, more than rapidly changing climate on my mind. Money on my mind, as well. There are literally innumerable ways to make money in this world, whether focusing on the now, the future, or the past. You can get in on the fixing or the tearing down. You can get in on the invention or the tradition. You can get in a bit of all of it, really. And that’s where I am. I want to preserve and hold holy, and I want to invent and discover. I reckon if you have read this far, you feel the same.

Why have I not been blogging? Because I haven’t had a thing to promote. My YouTube channel, Unicorn Puzzles, has been steadily growing its viewership, despite the fact that I spent about eight months ignoring it while I took the role of Coffee Shop Barista for a spin.

That job was a test: after years of putting the kids and my health first, do I have what it takes to get up and perform? Turns out, I sure did. I enjoyed making coffee, talking to customers, talking to the young people who were my co-workers, and doing the math to dream about a coffee shop of my own. Could I pull it off? Financially, undoubtedly. I could even manage my energy to put in my share of hours training a staff that I could then let run the place with minimal supervision. Plan for the future, unlocked.

Then I got Covid for the first time. I took my medicine, rested, and scurried back to work as soon as I could, because I was learning. I had a future in a coffee shop somewhere in the Bloomington/Brown County area of Indiana, and I wanted to soak up all I could from the successful small business I was working for in the meantime.

And then I got Covid the second time. I was sick for most of February, and I realized after consulting with my doctor and doing lots of research with the CDC that I was not an ideal candidate for work outside the home anymore. Even if the Covid doesn’t kill me, being off work for weeks at a time isn’t a sustainable way to run a career. Any career. And it shouldn’t have to be said, but frankly, it was downright depressing.

So. Four months ago, I decided I shouldn’t go back to the barista gig. It pained me. I miss the place, and I miss the kids who work there. I miss the fragrant aroma of espresso. I miss making a little money. After spending a little time moping / aka recovering from Covid x 2, I decided to focus on jobs I could take that wouldn’t kill me, and I started a UX Design class. I plan to have that finished by this fall. (I have been far too busy this summer enjoying time with G and writing to finish the class, but it really shouldn’t take months. It’s pretty easy and fun to do.)

I’m job hunting now. I have some AI credentials and marketing, and UX and writing and and and…

For about six weeks, I put aside the audiobook I was recording, put aside the YouTube channel, put aside everything I could push out of the way, really, and hunkered down trying to find a job I could do at home to replace the interaction, income, and satisfaction of working at the coffee shop. Granted, there’s a more “grown up” sort of ethos to working online in the corporate world vs literally working with kids at a coffee shop, but my experience and expertise are better suited to “adultier adult” work than anything else, anyway. I’m an adultier adult with a fairylike flair. I am the witch of the woods, wizened and surprising. I often forget where I left my glasses and have fifteen open tabs on my browser. I work magic.

Gosh, did I have a hard time with job searching. SO MUCH HAS CHANGED. I know this makes me sound old, but in my life, old isn’t a bad thing. Old is wisdom, experience, and trust. Old is healthy. Old is taking time to think about tomorrow and making sustainable decisions.

And, let’s get real: I’m not old. I’m probably going to live another 50 years. So take that, ageists of the world. I’m rambling, because this is a blog, and that’s how I’ve been blogging for 20+ years, but hear me out: We didn’t have LinkedIn when daddy and I were kids.

We had paper applications, generalized resumes, landline phone calls, in-person interviews, and snail mail thank you notes. I’m not saying it was better, I am just saying how it was.

We have adapated through so many things since then. We have dealt with the curse of workday ATS, we have learned how to customize resumes, we have hundreds of connections on LinkedIn, we text, we do interviews via Zoom, and we know how to look for remote first / direct hire / agile businesses.

We learned how to do that on our own. We adapted to survive. We outgrew the forest and bloomed underwater.

We did all of that, because what is common now, what is everyday common-place de rigeur so rapidly replaced decades of stasis that we had no choice but to pole-vault ourselves into the future.

Daddy and I have always been on the cutting edge of research and exploration, kids. We love to learn new things. We are strategic, creative, and fun. We survive. We thrive.

I’m looking for a job right now, and it’s both terrifying and exciting, because whoever I go to work with is going to teach me so much, and also going to learn so much from me. I have always been a teacher at work. I get the lay of the land, and then I make things better. I’m a team player who gives my heart to my friends, and I’m also a natural leader. Whatever job I take is going to allow me to specialize my knowledge in a totally new part of the forest. I want that, even if it doesn’t smell like fresh espresso.

Stay-at-home moms: your daddy and I didn’t have those when we were kids. We learned how to cook, how to pick up, how to make grocery lists and take down business phone messages. Career choices: your daddy and I didn’t have those, either, to the extent we do today. Resources: fuhgeddaboudit. The kinds of resources today’s job seekers take for granted would have made my genius parents’ heads spin.

I know that I’m going to be fine, I just don’t know yet what that picture looks like. So, rather than drive myself absolutely crazy applying to a dozen or more jobs per day, I’m finding a balance. I’m working on the audiobook again. I’m ghost-writing a novel for someone for $. I haven’t made time to find space in my life for Stationhead, but I do play with the idea of starting Witchy Wednesdays up again, since the old gang from Amp has asked about that a couple of times. I’m learning new novel-writing software and have migrated my codex of characters from the Miss Fitz at Midlife series into it. I’m making videos again. I’m learning UX Design. AND I’m applying for jobs. I’m going to do so selectively–even more selectively, I should say–as I go forward, because I really need for the job to be a good fit. I give far too much of myself to work for a bad fit.

God, I am excited for the future. For my kids, for my spouse, for myself. This daily life is so challenging, but so full of potential, how can I not be?

Coming soon: Miss Fitz and the Hot Patchouli Murder on audiobook. It’s finally gonna happen. That and everything else. Wear your swimsuit, because it might be underwater.