Loose Leaf Notes

I was feeling overwhelmed and in a funk, looking for receipts to send to our tax accountant that would show my writing expenses. I didn’t want to pay unnecessary taxes on the modest amount I earned writing this year, which in some cases (when I match time spent against pay scale) I was underpaid for. The thought that my expenses could all but cancel out my earnings made me all the more determined to document a fair accounting.
There was a new voice recorder, a near fortune in printing ink, a jump drive, a new computer chair and more; all of which could be “written off.” But I’m an unorganized nutty professor type and looking through my records was like pulling a thread, inviting the unraveling of a year’s worth of paper clutter.
With piles of papers on my upstairs desk and other ones on the stairs on there way up, the sorting soon included more than receipts and bank and credit card statements. Drawers were left open and paper stacks, newspaper clippings, cards, and photographs were spread out on my kitchen table and floor.
Every now and then I would go on to something else, then return to my task and realize that I had lost my place completely. “I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m making things worse,” I complained to Joe, who was getting ready to leave town to teach a weekend meditation retreat.
He invited me for a walk to the mailbox. I thought the exercise and sunshine would do me good. Buttoning up my coat in the driveway, there, glaring at me was the gash in Joe’s truck, gauged over a month ago when I hurriedly tried to make an unsuccessful right hand turn into the downtown Village parking lot on my way to a power point presentation that resulted in a story that made the front page of The Floyd Press.
“Oh Jeez. How much is it going to cost?”
“About $100,” Joe answered.
The dog joined us and we walked while I complained about the bitter cold and the auto body repair bill. “Sometimes I think it would be cheaper to just stay home and do nothing,” I griped. “I’m not making much progress. It’s like one step forward and two back.”
Our driveway is long, so I had time to also consider the value of actions and how they can ripple out and change others in ways we may never know. I thought about the story I ended up writing, started the day I dented the truck, about a young woman in our community who traveled with a group to an impoverished part of Thailand to give villagers being displaced by development a voice. I had just received a heartfelt note from her, thanking me for the attention I gave to her cause. My story was important to her. Maybe it was to the villagers. “I really do know that money isn’t the only way we are paid,” I said.
We had stopped at the mailbox. I opened it up and sifted through bills and catalogs, my eye quickly settling on an envelope addressed to me with a return address I didn’t recognize. While Joe was looking at a package with his name on it, a book he had gotten cheap through Amazon, I ripped the envelope open.
It was a $100 check!
The check was for another story I had written, one for a national publication. At first I thought I had been overpaid but then I did the math at their 12 cents a word pay scale and realized it was right. “You get paid by the word? You’ll have to resign your Queen of the short poem status,” Joe said.
“It’s not for poetry. No one wants to buy that,” I answered, adjusting slowly to the perfect symmetry of the universe and the lesson I was being given.
Joe was happy that he practiced what he preaches, that he slowed down and enjoyed a mindful walk with me before rushing off to the retreat to instruct others to slow down. “All you have to do is turn around, look from a different perspective,” he said. I laughed because we had literally turned around and were walking back to the house.
But everything was different now. The wind was at our backs. I felt the warmth of the sun shining. The bad mood I was in had lifted.