Farewell to Clare Bear and Hello to Living a Better Story

This week is Clare’s last week in Conference Room C.  She is taking a temporary contract gig with the GA government so she can try it out and see if it’s something she might like to do permanently.  If she doesn’t like it she will come back to Conference Room C (hopefully).  The fact that she is leaving us sucks monumentally.  She is hilarious, fun and has become a good friend.  Once you sit in a small windowless space with someone day after day for 7 months – you either come to love them or hate them.  We definitely came to love ole Clare Bear.  I will miss hearing about all of her dating adventures.  She said I will have to pick up the reins after she leaves and keep the rest of the Ladies entertained with my dating woes – but I’m not so sure I have the energy for all that.  In all the hubbub of interviewing for the government gig she woke up with a HUGE zit on her chin.  I’m talking borderline boil quality zit here.  She said it reminded her of an episode of the Family Guy where the son had this huge zit that started talking to him (picture below).  We swore in Clare’s zit as an honorary Lady of the Conference Room.  She named it Chewbacca – her reason being that every time she tried to pop it she envisioned it making the Chewbacca growling sound.  Hey, it’s her zit; she can name it what she wants.  I think I would have gone with Esmeralda.  It looked more like an Esmeralda to me.  But I kept my suggestions to myself.  I think naming a zit is a very personal matter.  No matter what she did it just kept getting bigger and bigger.  She even put off getting her government photo ID made because Chewbacca was being so uncooperative.   There are only a handful of folk at the office that actually speak with us – so you can imagine how taken aback Clare was when she was washing up in the bathroom and some lady looked at her and say “hi, how are you?”  She came back into the Conference Room looking shocked and bewildered.  Finally she said “I'm pretty sure some lady in the bathroom just said Hi to my zit.” We all started being super nice to Chewbacca after that.  We never imagined her zit was going to be so popular!!  We figured if Chewbacca was going to help us get recognized in this crowed, we'd better learn all we could - and fast!!  I mean most zits have a full life cycle of maybe two to three days before starting to dwindle so we had a lot to learn in a short period of time!!

Family Guy son - see his zit has a mouth . . . so it can talk to him!



According to Clare - this is (was) her zit.

I finally finished Donald Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.”  It isn’t a big book (less than 300 pages actually), but it is a non-fiction book and non-fiction books are always harder for me to read.  I instantly revert back into “Undergrad Brain” and simply refuse to do my reading – in my mind non-fiction is for learning and not for enjoyment (I know, I know – not always the case, but once I am in “Undergrad Brain,” there’s no swaying me).  Why was I so intent on reading the book?  A friend of mine, who also quit her big law job to work as a cheese monger (yeah, I said cheese monger) briefly before becoming a teacher with Teach America, told me that the book literally changed her life.  Strong words, I know.  But, I figured, even if I didn’t have the life changing experience she had, the book HAD to have some valuable information.  She actually told me about the book over a year ago – before I quit my job and before I went to Ireland.  She only told me the premise of the book – which was basically how the author learned to live a better story – as if your life was a movie or a book (a good movie or book, rather – not a shitty movie or book obviously).  I thought, “yeah, I’d like to live a better story too,” but I didn't actually buy the book and read it until now. 

The book starts off by explaining that you would never go see a movie about a guy who worked his whole life so he could buy a Volvo.  No, no you wouldn’t, because that would be boring as crap – and you’d want your money back – or you'd at least want to punch the person in the face who suggested the movie in the first place.  If you wouldn’t even want to see a movie about that story – why the hell would you want to live that story.  Makes sense to me.  I figure to live a better story you have to take some chances, chase some dreams, speak up when you might not have before and risk everything – at least once.  According to Miller, a good story involves a character who overcomes conflict to get what they want.  There is risk.  It has to make the reader wonder “how will it all turn out,” “will it work out in the end” so that they want to keep reading!  It doesn’t have to be your whole life that climaxes into some major finale – no, you can have little stories along the way – each one involving its own risk and conflict.  He also explains that there has to be some “inciting incident” that propels you into a story (i.e. get fired from a job, quitting a job, being forced to sign up for a marathon, selling a home, buying a ring, yadda yadda yadda – you get the picture) – something that takes you out of the comfort of your normal ho hum existence. Otherwise, a story will never happen and you will just work and go home and buy a Volvo.  Or whatever.

Over the past year I have been working to live a better story - whether I knew I was doing it or not.  Who knows how it will all turn out!! Now that I have read the book, living a better story is always on my mind.  I definitely recommend the book!!  It will definitely get you thinking!!