Love or Money?

At the risk of obviousness, I love Spain.

I've loved Spain with blind faith since I first heard about its existence when I was about eleven years old. People have been telling me lately how hard it must be, away from home during the holidays. I've nodded and smiled, only to realize later that they were talking about me.

I can't understand why anyone would not love Spain.
Photo 2005 Jessica Knauss

No, I don't feel as if I'm away from home. If we must pathologize my experience, I've come up with the term nationality dysphoria, which is a form of psychological suffering on its way to being diagnosable, but I prefer to think of it as one of my defining characteristics rather than a disease. If you asked any one of my friends or family members to describe me, their first sentence would be, "She loves Spain."

Now that I'm here, what would it take to get me to leave? I underwent just such a test of my love and loyalty this past week. I'm exhausted!

A company I worked for in Massachusetts (one of my favorite places in the United States) had been trying to contact me about a freelance job. I welcomed this idea, because in order to live in Zamora, I teach English on a part-time basis. It pays enough to live frugally, but if I want to have money left over at the end of the year to pay student loans or buy a ticket back to the United States (that part's iffy), I have to maintain a healthy schedule of freelance editing.

The company had some trouble getting in touch with me because this came about when I was traveling in Ponferrada without much internet. We finally set up a time for a call via Google Voice on Monday afternoon. I should've suspected it was a big deal when they insisted on the phone call. Most of my freelance work never leaves the realm of email.

My favorite historical figures call me to Spain.
Photo 2016 Stanley Coombs 

Nothing could've prepared me for what happened. I had my notebook next to the computer to write down the specifics, and it only has one line of notes before all hell broke loose in my brain. A huge editorial project in Spanish packed into three months for one of the most famous publishers, I would have to live in Massachusetts while I worked on it.

But... I live in Spain...?

As we kept talking, the offer took on epic proportions.

* A round-trip ticket.

* A rent-free apartment equipped with ways to eat frugally.

* More pay than I've ever earned in a year as a freelance editor, and much more than I make as a part-time teacher assistant, for three months' work.

That quantity of money wouldn't seem like much to some, but it would offer me some exciting possibilities.

It turned my head. I felt I'd only ever seen job offers like this in movies before. However, inconveniences included no health insurance and no transportation allowance. I would have to give notice at school and my gorgeous apartment and be on a flight by Christmas Day at the latest. (This kind of last-minute scramble is routine in this industry.)

I requested twenty-four hours to decide, and put up the twenty-four-hour Facebook poll at the top  of this post. The poll is highly simplified, but that was what it boiled down to for me: Love = staying in Spain, Money = leaving immediately for three months. I wanted people's gut reactions, and I got them. I was impressed, but not surprised, when Love became the favorite from the start.

I also got advice from a few people whose opinions I trust. In my shoes, they would go for the money. In my circles, money is rarer than love and you must take it when and where you find it. And, after all, I've already experienced true love, the kind you always hear about and never think is real. How greedy would I be to demand yet more love now that my sweet Stanley is gone?

I went to bed thinking that in the morning, I was probably going to pack my winter clothes to head to Massachusetts. The English idiom "sleeping on it" is "consulting with the pillow" in Spanish. My Spanish pillow did a lot of convincing, because I woke up in the opposite frame of mind.

I got up and emailed to politely decline.

With the time difference, the company wouldn't read the email for several more hours, but I felt better instantly. With that strange interlude over, I had an unusual day at school that required every ounce of extroverted energy I'd stored up over the last six months.

I was emotionally exhausted to the point of physical symptoms when I received a counteroffer.

The old offer still stood, with its plane fare and its quick time frame, but the new offer added:

* A generous food allowance.

* Even more salary!

* I would be picked up from the airport.

* I would work with people I enjoyed, as well as a new international cadre of brilliant experts.

* I would be a train ride away from all the wonders and friends of Boston.

I started thinking I would be crazy not to accept. As this blog post admits, I may just be a little crazy. Add nationality dysphoria to my normal, earth-shattering grief, and we can conclude that the only reason I'm not a complete basket case is that I'm successfully treating the symptoms of my pathology by living in Spain. I've also had some wonderful help with my grief.

I researched the details of what it would take for me to accept the offer. Sure, there were a few problems, but they all had solutions. Then the Facebook poll ended, with Love the clear winner. Why wasn't I as clear about it as my friends?

I had a coffee date that afternoon with my Zamora-native friend. It turned out that such an activity involves viewing the colorful sunset and the flight of the storks at the castle as well as a nice little walk past innumerable medieval and Renaissance architecture masterpieces that exert a physical pull on me to have tea in a cozy jazz cafe.

The storks just keep coming at Zamora Castle. (Not a photo from the coffee date.) 

I explained the extraordinary job offer to my friend, and he was impressed. "You must be really good."

"Of course, I'm the best. Didn't you know?" I replied with a sense of humor I'm not sure anyone understands but me.

All the beauty of Zamora had come out to meet me that afternoon. I savored the signature bergamot essence of Earl Grey tea in a jazz cafe in the small, unique city of my lifelong dream. My life since my true love died has dipped frequently into unbearable, but here and now, I can reach out and touch happiness, if only for the briefest moments.

"Spain will be here when you come back," my friend said. "It's not going anywhere."

It was true, but I wasn't convinced. Sure, I would have enough savings to come back in the springtime and resume everything but work at school, which I assumed wouldn't take me back after such a sudden departure. But once I was in Massachusetts, the paperwork alone would be daunting. Doubts surrounded the idea in my mind.

Some of the greatest moments of my life have happened in Spain. 

My Zamoran friend and I stopped at the supermarket (full of Spanish food!! I'll have to write a separate post about this aspect of life.) before heading to our separate homes, and we sang a few lines from Manolo García songs in the middle of the street. This is not something that ever happens in the United States. If he was rooting for me to take the job, he was going about it all wrong.

I got home, made a Spanish-style light dinner, watched some of my favorite TV in the world, and then called up an old friend. She asked me different questions than all the other wise advisors I'd called upon so far and helped me unpack what felt wrong about the "it'll be here when you come back" argument.

Her question was: Would I have left Stanley for three months to be with a rich man?

When I recovered from the copious tears that sprang up at the thought, I choked out, "Never." No question. No argument. Everyone pack up and go home.

Photo 2005 Jessica Knauss 

Maybe no one else would see it this way, and maybe it's not fair to focus so much of the meaning of life on any one thing, especially a country, but this is an accurate reflection of my psychological landscape. At a deep level, I questioned whether Spain would ever take me back after such a betrayal. Perhaps the country of my birth would latch onto me and never let go. It was as if Spain was testing my loyalty and asking me to define what's most important. I couldn't disappoint the surviving love of my life, even if it will never give me words of approval because it has no lips or vocal cords.

I suppose everyone has their price, but the offer didn't quite meet mine.

Listen up, Spain! I passed the test. I'm staying as long as you'll let me. Send money now. Lots of money!

This Translates to a "New" TV

As you may know, my husband and I fled to Arizona to live with his sister. This was to keep her company, as her husband had recently passed away, and mostly because we couldn't afford a place of our own. Now, as you know, my husband has a job in the far south of the city, so we had to move because his sister's place was way too far north and we literally couldn't have afforded the gas, even before the springtime price increases. Even with the gas savings, we're just holding steady in a virtually furniture-free apartment, crossing our fingers for the day we can go back and get our stuff. Then we won't feel so gosh darn poor.

Now my sister-in-law has finally sold that house so far from town and is off this week to move back to California. (Arizona had been her husband's idea.) Good for her! My husband and I feel slightly abandoned to the rattlesnakes, coyotes, gila monsters, and burning sunlight, but her departure for a smaller place means we get even more second-hand stuff. You name it, we can use it. The one that's most drastically changed our quality of life has been that my sister-in-law gave us another TV set. She had given us one that she thought was decent, but it was anything but. The first TV she gave us was 12 or 14 inches, so I had to sit pretty close in order to see the questions on Jeopardy! Its remote control had been lost to the sands of time, and the cable guy didn't give us a cable box or remote because we got the cheapest package. I assure you, we pay for cable, but on this TV, it felt like we were stealing. The TV was really designed to be used with the now missing remote, so in order to use it, we had to take off the front panel and change the channels and volume with the little nubs. Even when I was single and at my poorest, I never had to endure such ignominy. The worst part was, well, it's visible in the picture.

In this picture you can also see the borrowed glass coffee table and a castoff lamp.

The channel number in the middle of the screen, taking up 25% of it, obscuring sight gags and making it impossible to recognize who's talking, never goes away! (This is apparently a common malady of older TV models -- I've seen Craigslist ads with this description!) You have the watch the lower numbered channels to get only half the obstruction.

The result of all this was that I never watched TV until my husband came home and needed to unwind. I think that's the reason I've gotten so much writing and Fireship Press projects done, so it actually added quality to my life ... until I had to look at that screen again.

The "new" TV my sister-in-law gave us is 32 inches or so (ginormous!), so I can see it across the room, read the Jeopardy! questions, and flip through the stultifying channels with the working remote. I feel almost like a princess. Or at least lower middle class. I'm still not watching much TV, but I do feel most grateful to my sister-in-law. I wish her all the best in California.

Writer? Yes. Famous?

Today I'd like to unpack the title of my blog. I think we can all agree that I am a writer. All I have to do in order to call myself a writer is write. Granted, my first year of being a full-time writer, I mostly just dreamed about my historical novel without a clue as to how it would ever get written. But I have written articles and fiction (many of which are linked at the Good Reading page to your left), not to mention a lot of words on this blog, so, that half of the title is a given.

Now on to "famous." I'm not actually famous. Gasp! I explained this designation in my first post as more or less a delusion from my childhood. I was famous in my own mind when I declared myself as such for the reasons in the post, but mostly because everyone I knew, knew that I wrote. To me, a famous writer is the kind of person you can ask anyone on the street about and get a decent response, along the lines of "Everyone knows who she is! Jessica Knauss is the author of Tree/House, many short stories, and the silly YA series Sailing Italy."Back when I called myself a famous writer, you could have gotten a similar answer from any of the several adults who knew me, therefore, I was famous. And the blog title has its own kind of validity, independent of how my career goes from here.

But lingering behind "famous" is its partner, "rich." If "rich" is a requirement for "famous," then I definitely am not now and may never be. I'm not getting paid much at all for my writing (copies of the magazines I appear in, sometimes a five dollar honorarium I prize like a pot of gold). My husband recently got a raise, so we can breathe just a little easier, but it's not enough to go back to Pennsylvania and get our furniture and books, so I still feel pretty poor. I couldn't afford to go to Oregon to meet my amazing fans. We had to save up for a trip to the Spanish restaurant, for goodness sake. We hunch over to eat because we decided the one table we could afford worked best as a computer desk (what a relief that was!). We choose Crunchy Oat Squares instead of Life cereal. I'm grateful for the deliciously nutritious Crunchy Oat Squares, because some people can't even afford them, but I hope I'm making the point that we are not rich.

"Rich" lingers around "famous" because people figure that if everyone knows who you are, then someone must be paying you a lot of money. This is true in enough of the cases I've seen to convince me that if I can ever get people on the street to recognize my name, I'll already have several bestsellers and movie deals.

Bestsellers and movie deals are not easy to come by, just to clarify.

I wanted to point out that I'm not famous for the sake of people who click over here from other countries, like Moldova and Ghana, using the keywords "famous writer." Sorry folks. I really appreciate your clicks! You can say you knew me when.