Today I start my new job as a Recommender-In-Chief for Connie Brooks at Battenkill Books in Cambridge, N.Y. I’ll be working Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. all year (unless Connie fires me) working the floor, available to help people find good books to read. (Note: I will be disciplined about doing my work, not talking about my life or people’s dogs.) It’s an irony of the independent bookstore that bookstore owners are so busy keeping their stories going that they don’t have as much time to read or recommend books to customers.
A nice hole for writers to fill if they can. I recommend books to people all the time, and pride myself on it. I will be keeping track of new books, monitoring Connie’s inventory, sharing what I have read, using my instincts and experience as a writer of 23 books. I love the idea of writer supporting bookstores in this way, and the job has gotten a lot of good attention. Red will be coming with me, joining Connie’s dog Clara, a refugee from Katrina. Both Walmart greeters in training.
This job joins the list of Things I Never Would Do for one reason or another.
This is the time, I think, of Things I Would Never Do. I accepted an ad on my website from Fromm Family Foods. I left Bedlam Farm and put the farm up for sale. I accepted ads from Google AdSense. I signed up with a classy speakers bureau to do speeches and workshops. I am teaching a writing workshop at Hubbard Hill in Cambridge, N.Y. I went to see a shamanic soul retriever. I took two drumming classes. I took wallpaper off of three walls. I painted part of the outside of Maria’s Studio Barn. I stained old wood floors. I meditate at least once a day, sometimes twice. I take meditation walks. I photograph dogs at the edge of life. I returned to sheepherding with Red. I see a naturopath every couple of months for my health care. I put an old pony down. I made some good new friends. I wrote a collection of short stories. I published my first e-book original. I am considering putting a “donations” button on the website to help defray the costs of the blog and save up for a new camera, which I will need sometime in the coming year. I’ve gone through all of my savings to move. I am tutoring people privately (and for free) in writing, something I can do pay back for the gifts I have been given and the opportunities I’ve had.
All of these are things I said I would never do. I didn’t need to do them. I was too important. I was too busy. I was too smart. I see that doing things I would never do is essential to being authentic, to changing and growing. I was closed to the gifts of the world, to my own gifts, to the beauty of new experience, to the joys of connecting with human beings. To facing fear squarely and moving beyond it. Maria is surely responsible for much of this. She has opened me up. Life has done the rest, challenging me to reconsider myself, re-define myself, live more from the heart and the soul.
I am glad I got to do all of these things I said I would never do before I leave this world.
Doing Things I Would Never Do has been challenging, frightening and rewarding. In all the years I’ve been going to bookstores, I never once thought of volunteering to help them sell books or to help people find books, a joy and a pleasure all around. This personal interaction is precisely what has been lost in the modern era of bookselling, with online reading sites and e-book readers. Bookstores and writers are partners in creativity, and so are writers and readers. That is the real power of interactivity. There is no substitute for a human being recommended a book he or she has read to another. It is the pathway to reading.
Connie Brooks, as always, is open to new experience. She also is doing a lot of things she wouldn’t do. Good for the soul. See you at Battenkill Books, hopefully (and I’ll be happy to recommend books on the phone if that works 518 677-2515 or via e-mail ([email protected]). If you would buy the books through Connie or your local independent bookstore, that would be nice.
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