My husband said "Creative Mindfulness" made him uncomfortable,
He was afraid someone would ask him to breathe in public.
He said that men like him always prickle when they encounter the words of my former byline: Creative Mindfulness. They fear that someone might ask them to breathe in public. Agreeing how tragic that would be, breathing in public, I changed my byline to Stories by Janus.
Notwithstanding my dad, that Roman god called Janus was my first male role model. Janus is the one who looks in two directions, who lords it over entrances and exits, who tells you an opinion only to say, “…but on the other hand”, who sees both sides now and who wonders what could have been accomplished had clouds not gotten in her way.
I was in middle school, and there was a unit on mythology. I thought I was very cosmopolitan, being able to use the word god with a small “g” and not feel blasphemous, so I liked this character, Janus. Never mind that some say you should pronounce it with a long “a,” but that would rhyme with the word I that I don’t want to put on the end of a limerick line.
There once was a narrator named Janice,
who looked both left and right, like Janus.
(You know, that Roman God with two heads? No worries, you pronounce them the same.)
she tried to stay calm, & write with aplomb,
and not say anything too heinous.
(But if she does, it’s not her fault. We will blame that Janus person.)
I write autofiction, drawing heavily on my personal adventures. However, given that I’ve always had a vivid imagination and, increasingly, an imperfect memory, you’ll never know if what I’m saying is the truth. Besides, I don’t want to spill all the beans.
In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of doors, gates, and transitions. Janus represented the middle ground between concrete and abstract dualities such as life/death, beginning/end, youth/adulthood, rural/urban, war/peace, and barbarism/civilization.
There once was a writer named Janice, who looked both left and right, like Janus. Looking forward and back? Oh, boy! What a hack? Surely, she is disingenuous.
While growing up in central Illinois, the daughter of a 3rd-generation farmer, in 1965, my parents let me tour with the School Band of America in Europe. My life was never the same after 30 days, 20 concerts, and six European countries. Of course, neither was theirs because shortly thereafter, I left the farm forever to study and teach music in four states and two foreign countries before settling in southern California, landing what I thought was my dream job, only to say, “Oops, never mind!” a few years later.
Avoiding the rush, I had my mid-life crisis when I was 35, trashed my hard-earned doctoral degree, and changed careers. When EF Hutton talked, I listened, entered their training program, and on April Fool’s Day in 1984, I became a registered investment advisor.
I had left a career that was 5% women's and entered a career that was 10% women's, but I was oblivious to the impediments ahead. Federal banking laws had recently been changed to allow this new-fangled invention called the money market; AT&T, better known as Ma Bell, had just birthed five “baby bells”; interest rates were at 12%, on their way down from 15%; and I was writing buy/sell orders by hand and running them to our office wire operator who transmitted them to New York.
About a year into my new career, this premier investment house that was doing so many things well, got too full of themselves, thought the rules didn’t apply to them, and got caught for check-kiting. I left shortly thereafter. As a new broker, cold-calling for a firm under federal indictment, was a drawback. Besides, I Larry and I had just gotten married and he had uttered his famous line which amuses him to this day: “I’m bored with teaching calculus, and if a musician can do this, I’m sure a mathematician can.” Hutton’s response was that a husband and wife team would never work, oh my goodness, how wrong they were, so I jumped ship and went to Prudential-Bache who was eager to hire and train Larry.
We were happy to be there until, once again, a decent firm got too greedy, and, well, it’s a long story, but if you are interested, you can read all about it in the book Serpent on the Rock: “Backstabbing. Lying. Embezzling. Cover-ups. Just another day on Wall Street.”
For the next 25 years, we worked in Claremont on Route 66 in the same building, while surviving the continuing upheaval in the financial services industry, steadfastly caring for our clients, many of whom we had for decades, but our business cards changed from Shearson to Salomon Smith Barney to Citibank to Morgan Stanley.
In 2019, I retired and became a writer, my third career, which is definitely the most fulfilling, and I am so grateful you are reading. Thank you.
I’m always learning from you, Janice!