Seams Like a Story is celebrating its one-year anniversary! My very first post, Creating a Space to Sew and Write, debuted January 4, 2021. http://seamslikeastory.com/creating-a-space-to-sew-and-write/ . Since then, I’ve published 46 posts and have had 4,793 views.
For a blogging newbie, I’m happy with the numbers. More importantly, Seams Like a Story has given me a chance to see the world through the eyes of a storyteller/writer. I love finding little snippets to share with you through my words and photographs each week.
I’m happy to announce that I have just published Out of the Crayon Box: Thoughts on Teaching, Retirement, and Life. It was an interesting process, and I’ll admit, it amazed me to see three years of writing and editing, and rewriting.. and editing… and rewriting… finally come together in tangible form.http://amazon.com/author/debravandeventer
Why Did I Write This Book?
When I first retired from 37 years of teaching, I had a difficult time adjusting to “life on the outside.” I looked for resources, books, or articles written by someone who had experienced the same feelings. My search came up short. Surely, I wasn’t the only retired teacher who was going through this. I journaled. I wrote about feelings and happenings during my three-year transition from teaching to… well, non-teaching. Before I knew it, I discovered I had written a book!
It Takes a Village
I’ve always had a passion for writing, but my teaching profession left very little time or energy to pursue it. Once retired, I wrote in earnest. I found a local writers forum and worked with a critique group. It was a learning curve, to put it mildly, but bit by bit, with a lot of help from my friends, my manuscript took shape.
Could a self-professed Star-Bellied Sneetch make it on the outside?
What is the Book About?
Out of the Crayon Box is a memoir of the first three years of my retired life. It’s an often humorous, sometimes poignant journey to discover a life after teaching. Through these pages I explore:
How to know when it’s time to retire
What to do with unstructured time in retirement
Can I really go to Starbucks in the middle of the day?
Ways to honor my past as a teacher
Self-discovery through travel
Adjusting to life with a retired spouse
Finding renewed purpose and passion for life
1976 Stinesville Elementary. The journey begins.
2018 Manzanita Elementary, blowing bubbles on retirement day.
Check it out, and if you enjoy the book, be sure to leave a review on Amazon and help me spread the word! For updates on my retired-life journey subscribe to my blog http://seamslikeastory.com
This summer I made a trip back to my hometown in the Midwest. It’s also the home of a major university. The historic limestone courthouse centers the town and at first glance, it still has a small town vibe. But walking around the square, it’s evident that the sprawling university is changing the cityscape. Mom and pop shops of the past have morphed into wine bars and coffee shops. A tattoo parlor now inhabits the ladies’ shop, where local moms once took their daughters to be fitted for their first bra. Woolworth’s Five and Dime is now a Mexican restaurant.
Yet some things remain. Catching an article in the local newspaper, I discovered The Caveat Emptor Bookstore recently celebrated its 50th year. Though struggling through the pandemic, it is still in business. I made a visit.
An Afternoon’s Entertainment
The space is small and cozy. Rows of bookshelves line the walls, floor to ceiling, the sliding ladders invite the daring to peruse the topmost shelves. A lone employee sits behind an ancient wooden desk as soft music plays. He glances up from his textbook and bids me to take my time. A sign on the desk quotes John Maynard Keynes:
“A bookshop is not like a railway booking office, which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshop, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon’s entertainment.”
Little Free Library
In a different sort of “merchandising,” my talented, wood-worker brother-in-law has built a “free lending library” in his front yard. Committed to recycling and an avid reader, he hates to see anything go to waste. Neighbors who stroll by his library are free to take a book and/or leave a book.https://littlefreelibrary.org
Today’s Bookstore
How different this is from our current-day book shopping experience. It’s hard to find a brick-and-mortar bookshop these days. Most folks, myself included, shop on-line and have books delivered to their door. Or, faster yet, download convenient e-books to electronic devices.
As a new author, I’m delving into this arena myself. It’s an interesting process to see your stack of words converted to a book. I’m in the final stages of publishing now and am anxiously awaiting my advanced author’s proof copy to arrive. Miraculously, with a click of a button, words can travel much faster and farther than the local bookshop or my brother-in-law’s neighborhood spot. It’s a sign of our fast-paced times.
Yet there was something magical about strolling through that old bookstore. Who knows? Maybe 50 years from now someone will find my book on one of the shelves….hopefully sooner than that on Amazon….
Threads of Thought
Three years in the making and I’m almost “Booked!”
One of the first things I did when I retired from teaching three years ago (after sleeping for about a month) was to convert a spare room in my home from a teacher’s office to a writing/sewing studio. https://seamslikeastory.com/creating-a-space-to-sew-and-write/ After thirty-seven years of teaching, I needed a different way to occupy my time and engage my mind. I rekindled passions I had put on the back burner and began to sew and write again.
I find the work to be satisfying and inherently different from teaching. After spending a morning working on a poem, story, or sewing project, I have something tangible to show for my efforts. In my teaching profession, though the goals were noble and the rewards great, it often took weeks, months, or even years to see progress.
If I make a mistake sewing a garment or am not happy with the way a story is going, I can rip out seams and rewrite paragraphs. Struggling students were much harder to figure out. Many times solutions weren’t obvious, and it took many tries to succeed. There were times I wasn’t able to unravel their tangled threads or smooth out their life stories.
The Mindfulness corner in my room was a place where students could go to collect their thoughts, reflect, calm themselves.
Reap what you sew
So why did I stick with teaching for all those years? Because sometimes, sometimes, a spark ignites, a plan works, a struggling student smiles and succeeds, I made a difference; I reaped what I’d sewn.
These moments, brief as they may be, are the rocket fuel that drives those of us who were, and are fortunate enough to be educators. That passion drives me still. I’m finding new ways to channel it.
Threads of Thought
Transitioning to retirement has been a three-year journey for me.
I’ll admit, I was a young, naïve Blogger(two months ago) eager to impress my audience. One reader suggested it was “too neat to be true.” I have a confession to make. It doesn’t always look like the photo. You see, my creative life has a split personality.
Different pathways to creativity
I contribute my dichotomy of styles to my parents, Jack and Alice.
Jack liked to have things tidy and organized. If he needed a pencil, sheet of paper, or pair of scissors he knew right where to find them in his organized desk. On the other hand, when Alice got an inspiration, it often took over our household in a flurry of activity leaving an unruly mess in its wake. Dad learned to take refuge in his office when this happened, only peeking out when order had been restored. Sometimes I’m Jack. I love it when I can go to my sewing pegboard and find my scissors just where they should be, or look at my pattern filing system and take pride that I’d put things back where they belonged. But sometimes, a burst of Alice takes over and I find myself following loose threads. I recently had a “loose threads” morning. It went something like this:
