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I've had to spend the last couple of days catching up on things left undone before the holidays, and doing some things I can bill for. Some of that involves relatively boring "secretarial" tasks for the NPO I for which I free lance.

I don't really mind this free lance job. The best part of it is that I am left alone to do it when and how I want. I've always been good at organizing things, and I'm also great at being self motivated most of the time. (If you really expect to make any money at being an artist you damned well better be self motivated.) I've got this job down to the point now where I have created databases, and I have all these nice form letters and templates and so on, so I don't always have to start from the beginning and type new documents all the time.

But, when I do this kind of work, I am always grateful that I have been able to avoid working in offices for most of my life.

When I was in high school, I took typing, (and shorthand) but I purposely avoided getting really good at it because back in the "old days," to be a good typist meant that there was the possibility that you might always be employable as a secretary. I really did not know what I wanted to do, but I was pretty sure secretary was not on the list. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a secretary, if that's what you like doing.)

Now, of course, we are in the computer age, and while my typing has improved a lot, I really regret that I can't type as fast as I think. For one thing it sure would make updating here a lot faster, and it would also make the free lance work go faster so I could get back to other things I prefer doing.

My mother was a fabulous typist on one of those ancient, clunky Underwoods. She even won a medal in a state typing contest in Louisiana when she was in high school. What it got her was office work during the depression and early war years, which probably wasn't so bad for the times. In a way it eventually also got her a husband which in context of the times, was pretty much a goal then, I guess, whether or not we approve of that today. Later in life, it also got her the privilege of typing her children's' term papers. Well, she mostly typed her sons' term papers since her daughter had to take typing but her sons did not.

She also won a cooking medal. Another skill she put to good use.

But, she also won an English contest of some sort, and a college scholarship, which she did not use. And when she was feeling particularly bad, put upon or taken advantage of she would always remind everyone about how much she had sacrificed to be a wife and mother.

Sad.

~:~:~:~:~

Now, that was an odd little segue, eh?

Well, I am trying to understand her and understand my life in relationship to her better, so I guess I'll just leave it there.

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