Tag: Advice

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!

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To some parents, it’s back to school time.  To kids,* it’s the winter holidays.**

To those of us that love Halloween, it’s time for Salem Haunted Happenings!

Holiday displays before Thanksgiving, 4th of July Peeps, and Halloween in August?

We Americans tend to overdo anything we find special or unique, especially if it is inherently limited, or seasonal.  It is in our marketing/consumer nature to push it passed the saturation point, bringing it as far away from the reason we first fell in love with it as possible, either by extending the season, or making the limited unlimited.

Go ahead and put “Pumpkin Spice” in your search bar and see what comes up…

I mean… really?  Pumpkin Spice Spam sold out in 7 hours. What have we come to?  Is this irony, nostalgia, kitsch, or will certain people buy anything that remotely references something they once loved? Maybe they are doing it for the ‘gram.  Starbucks released their PSL’s on August 27th this year.   I don’t know what the weather was like where you live, but it was NOT a day I wanted to put on some flannel and sit by the fire sipping my latte.  Even my beloved Walt Disney World decorated for Halloween and started Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Parties on August 16th.  Full disclosure: we went to this party when we were there on August 27th.  It was ridiculously hot and humid.

Because of this trend, I start to worry when tourists and tour buses start jamming our streets in early September, and think that maybe we are pushing the festivities too early.  I understand that making the season longer helps to grab as much of that tourist revenue as possible, but thankfully we have enough going on in the summer that we don’t start October in August.  We have an estimated 1 million tourists each year for maritime and literary history, museums, cultural festivals, and a bustling food and drink scene, but the word on the street is that most small businesses can make 50-80% of their annual income during the month of October alone.

What’s in a season?

We typically have 4 weekends of heavy activity each October, starting with the Haunted Happenings Parade (typically the first Thursday) to kick-off the official festivities, and ending with the fireworks on Halloween night.  This year, the PEM opens it’s new wing to the public on September 28th.  In celebration, they are offering free admission to all and hosting parties throughout the weekend.  We also happen to have a Food Truck and Craft Beer Festival that weekend nearby on the common.  For this reason, the Salem Visitor Information Booth is opening a week early to assist with the expected crowds.

Booth
The booth is delivered to its home for the next few weeks.  It will be surrounded by flowers, decorations, and a rack for free maps and guides by the time you come visit.  Photo Credit: Salem Main Streets

The booth is staffed by volunteers every weekend, plus some weekdays during special events (the parade, Farmers’ markets, Halloween, etc).  If you look at the Haunted Happenings guide, you will see that there are special events every day in October, including new night markets on select Friday nights, and weekly specialty nights at most of the bars and restaurants, but there is a higher concentration of special things to do on the weekends, as the majority of tourists come in as day trips or overnights then.

But what are the crowds really like?

Have you ever been to a Disney Park during school vacation?  Our city’s historic and cultural district spans just over 1 mile in length, and half a mile wide when looking at the map, yet, we can reach half a million people in that area just on Halloween night.    On one of my Saturday shifts at the booth last year, I helped 474 people in 2 hours!  I am, what I like to call, “Aggressively Helpful” when working the booth.  I will walk up to people looking at GPS on their phones, or trying to read the giant map nearby (for some reason, it’s posted backwards, which isn’t obvious when you look at it).  If those people wave me away and say they know where they are going, 90% of the time they come back to me saying they got lost and needed help.  I will compliment costumes, give a smile and a warm “Welcome to my city!” or “Happy Halloween!” to every person walking by.  If it’s cold, I will tap a time step.  I have had people come back to thank me for my suggestions and ask me for more, and I’ve had people recognize me from helping them the previous year – it’s like they have a friend that lives in Salem! We only count people that we actually talk to, but can include whole groups, even if we only talk to one person from that party.  That’s probably how I got 474, although a 3.5 people-per-minute average is not hard to do with families or groups, especially if they have a specific question.  I also hand out maps to even more people that I don’t count.  The final Saturday before Halloween last year, we had a bad nor’easter come through.  There were many intrepid travelers out on the streets that day, undaunted by the weather (and they had already paid for their trip, so why not?), and I still ended up helping 108 people in my 2 hours.  The very next day, the storm had passed, and I was back up to 450.  All totaled, I personally helped 1967 people (officially – I don’t count the ones I help when just walking around town).  The entire booth staff of 75+ volunteers helped over 22,000 tourists that season.

True story: I have yet to meet an angry or mean tourist at the booth.

People may be tired, frustrated, or hungry.  They may have been sitting in traffic, or waiting in line for an hour for a haunted house that was a minute in length.  They may be overwhelmed with how much is going on, but they are here to have fun, and they are choosing to chat with me, rather than relying on their smart phones.  That’s not to say there aren’t tons of a-holes wandering around, getting drunk, and heckling performers.  My friends in the service industry have nightmare stories about awful customers, or disrespectful tourists that treat our historic cemeteries like they were fake movie sets.

Tell me again why you love it?  It sounds…awful.

I can see someone reading those numbers, or hearing complaints about waiting in line, or trying to drive through the city, could think that it’s too crowded or too frenetic, but I absolutely adore my city: its history, culture, and charm – it’s my little European Walking City right here on the North Shore of Massachusetts.  When I first moved her almost 20 years ago, I griped about the traffic and ‘those tourists’ clogging my city, taking my seat in the restaurant, and crowding the sidewalks.  My friends and I commiserated, and sighed heavily waiting for November to arrive, but as I got to know the city, and became friends with many of the business owners, I realized how much the city depends on the tourist industry – not only the shops and restaurants, but I’ve met many people that moved to Salem after having visited as a tourist.

What I didn’t explain above is that those 75+ volunteers are all Salem residents, like me, that volunteer our time.  We do it because we love our city and we want to help other people to love it, too.  We are an expanding family of dedicated, passionate, slightly kooky, people with a need to help others.  This year, there are over 100 of us!  This is wonderful, of course, but (selfishly) all these new people are taking my spots!  I was only able to book 5 shifts this year, and the first one isn’t until October 13th.  I’ll have to wait weeks!  Oh well… I guess I’ll have to go rogue and walk around town with my “Ask Me, I’m a Local” button and a bag full of brochures…

I’ll create another post with this year’s booth highlights and running tally (like last year).  Look out for at least one new outfit, too!

Make your plans now!

In 2020, there will be 5 weekends in October.  Halloween 2020 will be on a Saturday… during a Full Moon…  Book your hotels now, it’s going to be crazy!

 

*and kids at heart

**I know, the word “Christmases” appears in the chorus, but other than that, the song is a secular piece about the season of peace and good will to all.

Let’s do the time hop again…

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I know, I know: It’s Time WARP, but I didn’t want to give you false hopes that this would be a Rocky Horror-themed blog post.

It looks like my last post was November 2016.  This is exactly 19 months later.  Yikes!  Let’s pretend like there was a dramatic time hop from then to now.

I’m still loving my job and the people I work with.   I admit that sometimes certain behaviors get on my nerves, but it doesn’t bother me enough to be miserable or to come home and complain to my husband.  In the past, if someone was annoying, disrespectful, or bitchy to me, my frustration would grow and become its own entity,  I remember coming home every night to tell my husband yet another story of how I had been mistreated by X or Y.  He would attentively listen, agreeing that X was a total bitch and that what she had done was borderline abusive, that Y was treating me unfairly, etc.    Now, I come home and tell him funny stories about the quirky set of characters I’m surrounded by.

As I said, it’s not always wonderful in my current situation, but the less-than-fun bits don’t get me down anymore.  I owe this turnaround, in part, to a new attitude.

In my last job, I would keep a log of the more egregious abuses from X in a file called ‘Old Dog’ (as in, the kind you can’t teach new tricks to…and the double meaning of bitch).  It was a form of therapy to get it all out and it served as a record that I thought I may need later.  That, combined with telling everyone that would listen about it, or swapping war stories with other coworkers, caused the negativity to swell and cycle and become something that couldn’t be escaped.

Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s a heightened empathy?  Maybe it’s circumstantial after the less-than-stellar year we have had so far (see below)?  Now, I find myself brushing-off the nonsense.  When one coworker bitches about another (or another, or another…), I listen, but I don’t feed it or let it ruin my experience.  When a coworker treats me like a child or says something offensive, I know that it is her own insecurities that cause her to act that way, so I don’t give it the weight that I would have in the past.  Someone will say: “How can you stand working with Z? She is so _____!”  I simply say “I’ve worked with many Z’s in my life. I know how they operate and how to deal with them.”  You truly can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so stop trying.  They upset you with unkind words or looks?   They inconvenienced you for 15 minutes?  Let it go.  It doesn’t matter.

In the grand scheme of things:  IT.  DOESN’T.  MATTER.

This is definitely personal growth, and I’m happy to be able to recognize and acknowledge that.

I’m not saying that one should not defend oneself, or to let people walk all over you.  I am saying that, in this day and age, in this culture of self martyrdom and publicizing your victimization to get attention (we all have a friend or two on social media that consistently posts an attention-seeking/pity-me/I’ve been wronged update), it is easy to fall into the trap of letting our small inconveniences turn into monsters that eat away at our lives.

On those circumstances I alluded to above:

Donald Trump is still President, and every day some new dystopian degradation is announced.  It’s wearing me down to the point where I don’t read or listen to the news anymore.  The LGBTQ rights that my own family members (Trump supporters) told me not to worry about, because “they can’t take that away from you” that are being taken away, and the way innocent children are treated like animals is just too much to deal with.

2018 started for us with one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make.  We put our dog of 13 years, our companion, our Little Love, to sleep.  He was suffering from dementia, bladder issues, a heart murmur, glaucoma, and a myriad of small problems.  He had his good days when he acted like a puppy, not a senior dog, and he had many terrible nights.  We scheduled and postponed the appointment twice, but finally we knew that it was best for all of us to end his suffering before it became unbearable.  Our hearts were torn into pieces, and though it is easier today, we still feel an ache and a hole in our lives.

Shortly after that, my mother-in-law went into the hospital for some major surgeries.  My husband’s family lives 1100 miles away, so it was stressful for us to be getting updates, but not be able to be there.  My husband flew down there to be with his Mom before and after her surgeries.  This saga is not over, as she is currently in the hospital right now undergoing more procedures.  Without a doubt, her conditions are made worse by the next bit:

While that was going on, an estranged family member emerged.  She had been unconscious in a hospital for almost a week before we were told.  She had been dropped-off by her addict friends with MRSA in her spine, a second blood infection, and fluid in her lungs.  She required and received open-heart surgery, lung draining, and aggressive multiple antibiotic treatments.  Again, my husband flew down to be there.  She continues to check herself out and then back into the hospitals with worsening ailments, but it is only a matter of time before she is finally free of her pain. They will not operate on her again.

We lost a dear family friend who lived life to the fullest. Cancer ate through him in 3 weeks.

While my husband was out of state dealing with his ailing family, I drove down to see my mother, who is living in a memory care assisted living facility.  She had to be moved to a higher level of care (locked/coded floors and elevators to stop wandering, with more nurses).  I took her out for the day: blood drawn, lunch, shopping, mall walking, driving around – while my brothers moved everything from one floor to the next.  The Alzheimer’s made it seem to her that nothing had changed.  She walked into the new room -a mirror image of the old one – as if it were the same.  It was the plan, but it was heartbreaking.

Another family member gave us devastating news about his health, then became unemployed and unable to pay for his treatment.

My husband had a few episodes of ‘global amnesia’ that scared us both.  Multiple doctors and scans say that nothing is wrong, and that it must have been stress-induced (see above).

I developed kidney pain that specialists conclude I have to live with until it goes away in months or a year. Fun!

With medical bills, flights to visit sick family, and a vacation the we desperately needed, we are pretty maxed-out on credit cards.  We are working to fix that, but this was one more stress we didn’t count on.

So…although now this looks like the ‘poor me’ posts I talked about earlier, it’s really just a sample of what has built the foundation and watermark for how we deal with small inconveniences in our day-to-day lives…

In the grand scheme of things: it doesn’t matter.

Dreams are weird…

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Sometimes my dreams are unremarkable or incoherent, but other times, like last night, they are hyper-realistic and almost plausible.

In the first dream, I was with my cousin and her family.  They are big into horses and riding competitions, so it was natural that I was there with them in their backyard (not really), which had a slight hill inclining up into the distance, with a chain-link labyrinth that wound on the flat and just at the bottom of the rise.  They called this the ‘coaster’ and I pictured the poor horses running up and down hills and through loops and jumps. But no, it was only called that because of the hill and because of its design.  The rows of fencing were just wide enough for one horse and rider to comfortably get through, with the turns being a little more open. This caused the horse to control its desire to buck or gallop, and made the rider take more control and be more careful and gentle with guiding the horse’s gait and direction. There were stretches of straight rows where picking-up speed was encouraged, then the rider had to rein the horse in when coming up to a sharp turn, and similar challenges were found where the ground was uneven, such as walking on the incline. It was very tricky, but it was obvious that my cousin’s daughter and her pony had done this hundreds of times and were enjoying it.

One bit of unrealistic dreaming: at one point, wings blurred out on the sides of her pony, and then were gone in the blink of an eye. Almost like something I wasn’t supposed to see; or rather, something no one else saw, but I could. “Pegasus!” I thought. And then it was gone and never came up again. Subconscious reminding me I was dreaming?!  Who knows.

We went inside and my cousin’s husband was there, happy to see me.  He said, “Will you be staying for …” but didn’t finish the sentence. “Ooh yes, he’ll love it!” they all cried. His son took me in the other room excited to show me this game everyone was playing (either I can’t remember the name, or it was never mentioned).

In the TV room, there were arrangements of small wooden squares everywhere. Not really piles or stacks, but displays of them, like periodic tables or mosaics all around the room in groups.  They looked to be made of chip wood or really thin light-colored veneer, all blank on the one side showing. He turned on the TV as explanation, and there was a tournament going on. They were showing a super-cut of a lot of young men’s reactions (girls didn’t play this game?) of delight or despair as they won or lost a game.  It was like something they would show in between games to keep the audience interested. It looked to be in a huge convention center – how had I never heard of this?  One guy had all of the squares stuck to his shirt, arms and neck. He had lost, and in slow motion, we saw him pull a double-square from his neck. It had a blue splotch and some symbols in black that I couldn’t make out. He saw it and seemed to act as if that would have been the winning piece if only he had drawn it earlier.  There were more short scenes like that, and then it switched to a station where you could buy the game set-up and the rules.  Everyone was watching me and very excited for me to play, but I didn’t think I had the money for it, so I declined and went into the other room to lay down on a couch with a blanket.  This is where I transitioned to the next dream.

*This is just some background on the next dream.  You may have seen in one of my other posts that I used to work in the Music industry as an agent. One of the most fulfilling experiences came at a conference in Europe. My colleague and I had a booth, so tons of Artists would come up and drop off their CDs to be signed by us. There was a group of young singers without managers, labels or agents, that all paid their own way to come to the conference (not cheap). They were young, eager, personable and (I found out when I got home) immensely talented. Over the weekend, they would stop in when we were free to chat and ask advice.  While being in Europe, and meeting with people I only got to see once a year, seeing great performances, and mixing with my colleagues from around the globe were all wonderful, it was this new experience of being mentors (in a small way) to these young Artists that gave me a renewed drive when I got back to the office.  We helped them network and introduced them around during the cocktail hours, and I’ve been following their careers since.*

As I was on the couch, the non-distinct room turned into a reception room in a hotel. Behind me were high-top tables with groups around them talking, but I wasn’t paying attention.  One of the young singers I knew walked in, gave me a hello kiss and swept over to the tables.  It took me a minute to recognize him as I watched him go. Only then did I notice that I knew a lot of the people behind me. They were managers, musicians and producers. I had introduced him to some of them long ago, and now he was confident and expanding on that network. I made a mental note to go say hello to everyone.

As I turned around, I was still on a couch, but the TV and blanket were gone, and instead, there was a long row of tables running lengthwise away from me all the way to the lobby of the hotel. The tables were full of people talking and I recognized more industry people and some of my personal friends. From this table came another singer that I had talked to about her career (though I didn’t think she would go very far). I was happy for her because she was with two people that I understood to be her manager and an assistant.  She had started her career, but still wanted advice.  She came to me with a difficult and tricky question.

She had recently been diagnosed as HIV+. She hadn’t told anyone yet, because she had finally gotten her career going and she didn’t know if disclosing her status would ruin that, especially this early.  She wanted to know if I thought her agency would drop her, since she was so new to them, and she didn’t want to throw any risk into such a new relationship.  I told her that I had some ideas, but needed a moment.  She went to the lobby to the restroom while I thought it out. (This was weird for me in a dream. I actually sat on the couch and had a mental conversation with myself for what seemed like several minutes.) she came back and I gave her two bits of advice:

1. As long as you give a good show, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, your job as a singer is to perform your art for your own self-growth and for the enjoyment of others. If you are doing that, whatever is happening off the stage or out of the studio doesn’t matter (in your career), and therefore shouldn’t matter to your agent. Your manager is here supporting you, your agent should too, as well as your label.

2. Don’t let it define who you are as and Artist, unless that is what you want.  Stevie Wonder, Diane Schuur, Ray Charles – what is the first thing you think of?  A blind, piano playing singer; that is unavoidable.  People notice that and (I’m sorry to say) exploit that.  Obviously those three had the talent to excel, but they did use their disabilities to get noticed (or their people did) at first. Is that what you want?  At a certain point, when does something move from being unique to becoming a novelty act?  I understand the point of being an advocate, especially as a heterosexual female – that is still needed, but that is something you need to decide. My advice would be to be that advocate proudly in your life, but don’t change your performance. People will see that as an attempt to use your diagnosis for advancement, and you might be put in a niche that you can’t escape from.  Being in jazz is enough of a niche!  Think of the labels that follow people: gay comic, trans-gendered actress, plus-sized model, etc.  Do you want to be known as ____, or ____, HIV+ singer.  Have it be part of your story, but not your entire definition.

Two examples from Artists I’ve worked with:

I worked with a very well-known singer. She was well know by her fans for being a soulful singer, and she was well known by the industry for being extremely difficult. We put together a tour for her that met all of her demands (I can’t list them here, or it would be known who I was talking about, sorry!) but while she was on tour, she got nastier and nastier to us, to her musicians, and to our buyers. All the time, the fans loved her, and the reviews were great, but the horror stories coming in from the buyers were unforgivable.  She was ruining relationships we had built, and for what purpose?  When she refused to go on because she decided that she needed to be paid more money in cash right then (while her audience was sitting waiting for an already-late show), that was the last straw, and we dropped her. My point with this example is that as long as you are making your best art on stage or in the studio, and the audience is happy, it doesn’t matter what goes on in your life. People will put up with a lot if you have the talent to back-it-up.  She is a bad example – don’t be like her, but you know what I’m saying.  Also, we are talking about the Jazz world, not the world of “Beyonce had this for breakfast and you won’t believe what it was!”

I also worked with an Artist who had developed AIDS early in his career, and long before I worked with him.  He chose to be an advocate, and even wrote some beautiful pieces about his struggles and health issues. It was part of his story, and it became part of his act, but not all of it.  He knows that his diagnosis does not define him, though it does limit him, physically, unfortunately. He was a great musician before and continues to be a great musician now, that’s what really defines him. Another thing you will need to contend with is the prejudice of the buyer. We have come a very long way, socially, but misunderstandings still exist.  You will have buyers that will put extra clauses in contracts regarding cancellations due to illness. They will think twice about the money they are willing to spend if there is a worry that they will lose it if you catch a cold and can’t perform, especially at this point in your career.  Be careful.

She thanked me for my advice and went off. I walked over to say hello to the tables in the back, but that’s when I woke.

I am not too happy with some of the advice I gave her, to be honest.  I didn’t explain it in the right way, and looking at it here, it comes across as harsh and that I’m telling her to hide. That wasn’t it at all. I wanted to tell her to know what she was up against.

I often go to bed with the hope that my dreams will help me to find the path I’m supposed to be on to find my next career. The second dream reminded me what I liked from my last job, while highlighting my desire to mentor and help others.  It was also in a hotel. I had a second interview earlier this week at one hotel and have a first interview at a different one next week.  Who knows where these things come from?

As for the first dream? I don’t know.  Maybe I need to make that game.  And see my cousin’s family more.