58. “First, Best Destiny”: a Conversation with Janet Robertson
“I don’t just think I am a creative...I think everyone is a creative, and that our creations are in many ways sacred.”
If you are not a Star Trek fan, you may not recognize the often-quoted line, “Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny. Anything else… is a waste of material.” Spock says this to Captain Kirk in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The quote resonates with anyone searching for their true calling. It highlights the importance of discovering the work you are meant to do—where your passions and skills are perfectly aligned.
The luckiest of us, find our “first, best destiny” when we are young and have it as a guiding force for our whole lives. But for many of us, the choices we make when we are young are more often guided by conventional paths of advancement and/or societal pressure. Mid-life becomes an opportunity for these individuals to revisit this idea of one’s “first, best destiny” in their life.
Our guest today, Janet Robertson, references this quote in our conversation, and in many ways, it captures her midlife journey. A brilliant and accomplished electrical engineer, Janet eventually stepped away from her career to care for her family and home. Later, when she was ready to return to work outside the home, she found herself drawn toward a very different path centered around writing, teaching, and creativity. Janet’s journey to her “first, best destiny” was neither straightforward nor easy and involved many years of exploration, uncertainty and hard work.
Although her scientific background remains central to who she is, Janet speaks with real joy and passion about writing, storytelling, teaching, water-color painting and the creative process itself. One of the most beautiful themes from this conversation is Janet’s belief that we are all creatives and that the things we create – whether art, stories, relationships, or even everyday objects – carry meaning and value. Janet’s story is an inspiring and helpful reminder that life is full of second chances to become who we are truly meant to be. Some of the topics discussed today include:
Growing up in Texas and the lessons she learned from her family;
Her lifelong love of learning;
The unexpected joy of finding a writer’s community;
Why she believes creativity is sacred and belongs to all of us;
The abundance of beauty and art in ordinary places;
The emotional and financial realities of stepping away from a traditional career;
Retirement, reinvention and the evolution of long-term relationships.
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Christina Donovan: Welcome to Messy Middle Essence.
This is a podcast where we talk honestly about the changes. Just challenges, connections, and gifts that come with midlife.
Nothing too polished, just real conversations that remind us we're not alone.
So let's dive in.
Christina Donovan: Hello, Messy Middlescence listeners. This is Christina or Tina Conti Donovan, and I'm here with my sister, Tara Conti Bansal and our special guest today, my friend Janet Robertson.
Janet and I have known each other,
I want to say, almost 20 years at this point.
We met actually at our local park here in our neighborhood when our children were really young.
And Janet is one of the most interesting people I know.
And I'd also like to add, probably one of the smartest people I know.
She is trained technically as an electrical engineer. She has a doctorate in electrical engineering.
And to me, she's truly an intellectual in the best sense of the word.
She has a curiosity about so many things,
and she approaches everything with a very systematic desire to understand it.
Understand things way more thoroughly, I think, than the average person.
And we're excited to talk to Janet today because through many of her midlife years, she's been on a search for her true identity,
and it's kind of motivated her to do a complete reinvention of her life.
And we're excited to have Janet share her journey with us here. So welcome, Janet. We're very happy to have you.
Tara Bansal: Welcome.
Janet Robertson: I'm glad to be here,
Tara Bansal: I'm going to say. So I was a chemical engineer,
and electrical engineering is always like a whole nother level of that's the smartest people and the hardest engineering,
in my opinion.
So just had to put that in there. That very impressive.
Christina Donovan: But we always start our conversation with very typical first question. Tara likes to describe it as. Tell us your stories. We just kind of want to know
Christina Donovan: a little bit more.
Christina Donovan: Our listeners want to know a little bit more about your background, where you're from, your family, kind of the basic facts about your life.
Janet Robertson: Well, I was born in Indiana, and two weeks later I got out and went to Texas.
And I've lived all over the state.
And the wonderful thing is that when I was growing up in Texas,
Texas was a place of optimism.
Everyone was optimistic about the future.
And it was a very individualist kind of atmosphere.
Everyone was capable. Everyone needed to find their own destiny.
Janet Robertson: And in the midst of this, my
Janet Robertson: parents raised us three girls.
And the word wasn't really around much at that time, but I guess the word is to be feminist.
And this is sort of strange because it wasn't the type of feminism that you hear about today.
You hear about feminism a lot in the realm of contesting against males.
And that wasn't at all how I was raised.
You see,
in both my parents family, both my mother's parents, my dad's parents,
there was abuse and there was alcoholism.
And so a couple of things we were raised, there was no alcohol in the house. I mean,
absolutely none.
But the other thing my dad did, and my dad did it with vigor,
is he wanted to raise us girls to take care of ourselves.
Janet Robertson: And he didn't do this as some political statement.
Janet Robertson: He did this out of love for us.
Several times he went back to Indiana to try to get his sister to leave her abusive husband.
And at that time, the Catholic Church was telling women to stay in abusive marriages.
And so she did,
and he couldn't get her to leave.
And I want you to imagine this.
Janet Robertson: We're out on the back porch swinging
Janet Robertson: on the porch swing, and my dad
Janet Robertson: looks at me and I'm like.
Janet Robertson: Like 8 years old.
Janet Robertson: And he says, if a man ever hits you, you're leaving.
Janet Robertson: And I'm like, yes, Daddy,
Janet Robertson: this is this little girl. What? What? Where did that come from? You know, this is this little girl. And then
Janet Robertson: what happened was a lady across the street from us got a divorce and she didn't have any credit. Oh, and this was appalling to my father.
Janet Robertson: So suddenly, my mother has her own checking account. My mother has her own credit cards, everything. And we did too
Janet Robertson: when I was 13, as was my older sister when she turned 13. Turned 13, and my younger sister.
We were given an allowance, a substantial allowance every two weeks.
Janet Robertson: And from that we had to purchase
Janet Robertson: our clothes, our hats, our shoes, all of our makeup, our shampoo, our deodorant, everything like that.
Janet Robertson: And you know what? If we ran out of deodorant at the end of the month and didn't have any money, that was just too bad.
And my mother set us down and
Janet Robertson: told us how to balance our checkbooks.
Janet Robertson: And we were given rules. You will not carry credit card debt
Janet Robertson: from month to month.
Janet Robertson: You will never pay to use your own money. On, on and on. And, you know, there I was at
Janet Robertson: 16 with a brand new Texaco card that had my name on it. And dad paid for my gas, but I started getting credit right then.
Janet Robertson: So here was this really strong influence,
Janet Robertson: this man, my father, my life, who created three strong, independent women because he loved us.
Janet Robertson: And this is such a different
Janet Robertson: mindset to what I see as the backlash against feminism.
Feminism, for me, Isn't about taking from somebody else.
I'm not taking from some guy.
I don't want to do that.
I'm loving and cherishing myself.
It's a totally different mindset, and I wish I could explain it to so many people, because my feminism came from my father.
Not out of any.
Janet Robertson: He was a staunch Republican, too, Let me tell you. He was.
Janet Robertson: And it wasn't out of any sort of political motivation. It was out of love that he did this.
Janet Robertson: So that's my background.
Janet Robertson: That's how I. How I grew up.
Christina Donovan: And where.
Tara Bansal: When did you leave Texas and where did you go to school?
Janet Robertson: Well, I went to school first at Texas A and M.
And I want you to imagine how happy I was. I mean,
I guess I suffered for years. Texas schools were not the best schools.
Janet Robertson: The elementary and high schools were really rather abysmal. They were. And that hopefully has changed.
Janet Robertson: So I didn't expect. What happened when I went to college. What happened when I went to college was there was a whole bunch of
Janet Robertson: smart people there and they wanted all to learn just like me.
Janet Robertson: And I was so happy on that college campus that literally, people would stop me. Other students would stop me as I was walking to class and say, what happened to you today?
Janet Robertson: And I was like, what do you mean?
Janet Robertson: And they said, you have the biggest
Janet Robertson: smile on your face.
What happened to you?
And I guess I just walked around every day with this big smile on my face because I was so happy to be there.
And I would do. You got to understand people. I was grim. I was.
I would do things like I went to multiple sections of calculus just so I could learn more. Like, like, you know, you. I'd have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class, but I'd also find a Tuesday, Thursday class of the same class.
And I'd go to that one, too.
You gotta understand this. This was a strange person who loves to learn.
Janet Robertson: And.
Janet Robertson: Yeah, so. So here I am doing all these things, and I can well remember it.
Janet Robertson: One scene.
Janet Robertson: I'm sitting outside my dorm room with my lap board on my lap, which was a gift from one of my roommates,
and I'm doing my calculus homework. When walking beside me are all these people going to the new stadium to watch the football game. Because, of course,
Aggie football was a big thing, right? So they're all going to watch them play. And as they walk by, they say, what are you doing?
Janet Robertson: I said, I'm doing my calculus homework.
Janet Robertson: Chicken going to the game?
No, I want to do my calculus.
This is who I am. And so there I am doing it. And I could hear him cheer. And I know exactly what the score is.
Janet Robertson: I can hear all the cheers from the stadium.
Janet Robertson: So anyway, that was me. So that it kind of gives your viewers, you know, the weird person me.
Christina Donovan: So you graduated from Texas A and M and then went to work as an engineer.
Janet Robertson: Well, I got my graduated with my
Janet Robertson: BS and my Ms. In Electrical engineering.
Janet Robertson: Then I went to work at a
Janet Robertson: wonderful place at Honeywell in Richardson, Texas.
And the reason this was so wonderful is because originally that facility had been called Spectronics.
And Spectronics was an offshoot of Texas Instruments.
Janet Robertson: See what happened was at Bell Labs
Janet Robertson: up here in New Jersey and at Texas Instruments in Dallas, the integrated circuits had first started up.
Janet Robertson: So you had these two twin places
Janet Robertson: across the nations developing integrated circuits. And out of these, especially Texas Instruments, came all these startups.
Janet Robertson: All these startups. So my boss was the guy who
Janet Robertson: invented the led, the light emitting diode.
Janet Robertson: Those little red lights.
Janet Robertson: Do you remember those little red lights? And do you remember the little number displays? They used to be red. You can see them still on some alarm clocks. They have segments and they make like a four.
And he invented that.
Janet Robertson: So here I am and I'll tell you this.
Janet Robertson: Jack Kilby, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the integrated circuit along with two other fellas. He used to come and sit in my office. Wow.
Janet Robertson: So these were the guys that were around me. So it was a wonderful happening place to work.
Janet Robertson: So that's where I went to work after I got out with my master's.
Tara Bansal: And then what happened?
Janet Robertson: Well,
there were changes in the upper echelons of Honeywell.
And I am very sensitive to stress, I really am.
And I began to be physically ill from these changes. It wasn't the people right around me, it was the people above them. And that's what made it so hard, is I could see it coming down on them.
And to give them credit, they tried really hard to buffet me from it.
They really did.
And so finally I decided that I needed to get to leave and I went and went back to the University of Michigan to get my PhD.
And that was really hard.
I think you don't realize how much faster knowledge is coming at you in college than it is when you're in the workplace.
And I had really slowed down and when I had only been three years at Honeywell, but when I went back at like 28, 29 or whatever it was to the University of Michigan,
it was like starting a cold engine for the first time in my life. I thought I was going to fail.
I did. I thought I was going to flunk out.
Christina Donovan: But he didn't.
Janet Robertson: I did.
Janet Robertson: And it was one of the hardest things I ever did, is go back to get The P. My PhD.
Tara Bansal: Where did you meet your husband?
Janet Robertson: Oh, I met. I met Eric at.
Janet Robertson: In Stella Pang's class. And I used to.
Janet Robertson: When we were drawn together, I say
Janet Robertson: by vocabulary, because Eric was from Mobile, Alabama, so.
Janet Robertson: So I would say, stella Pang is
Janet Robertson: the blight of my life.
Janet Robertson: And he would say, no one uses the word blight but you and my mother.
Tara Bansal: So where did you guys meet?
Janet Robertson: We met in her class doing the crossword puzzle. He would always bring the crossword puzzle from the student newspaper in, and we would do the crossword puzzle together.
Tara Bansal: At Texas A and M or at University of Michigan.
Janet Robertson: At the University of Michigan.
Tara Bansal: Okay.
Janet Robertson: That was my question. I wanted to.
Christina Donovan: And he's a chemical engineer, correct?
Janet Robertson: He's a chemical engineer. And I want to say to Tari, there is some complexity in chemical engineering. I want the rest of the audience
Janet Robertson: to know that in chemical engineering, they have these graphs. I want you to imagine this.
Janet Robertson: And they plot nothing against nothing.
Janet Robertson: They don't have any dimensions on the graph.
Janet Robertson: I'm right, aren't I, Tori? I'm right. Well, I don't know.
Tara Bansal: I just, like. The hardest class I ever took was transport phenomena, and I can't even explain what it is.
Janet Robertson: So I don't know.
Tara Bansal: We should not go out on this segue. But.
Janet Robertson: Well, I would tell people that I married the best engineer I ever met. Oh, that's so good.
Christina Donovan: So how did you guys end up here on College Hill in Easton?
Janet Robertson: Oh,
that's a hard story. See,
when I graduated, I was in such a hot field that I was getting unsolicited job offers by email from people I had never met.
Eric was sending out resumes after resumes, and he generated a complete filing drawer full of rejections.
And this was really difficult because I truly believe he's just a brilliant engineer.
And so when he got a job offer here, where we live now,
I
Janet Robertson: said, okay, take it, and I'll find something there.
Janet Robertson: And that's what I did.
Christina Donovan: Yeah.
Tara Bansal: And where did he get the job offer from?
Janet Robertson: Air Products?
Janet Robertson: Yeah.
Christina Donovan: In Allentown. Yeah.
Janet Robertson: Yeah, nearby.
Tara Bansal: So you came out here, and then you did find a job, I assume.
Janet Robertson: I went to work teaching at Lafayette College, which I enjoyed immensely.
I think that's part of this search for identity.
I was teaching at Lafayette College, and I lost that position.
And now, later on in life, I'M circling back around and finding my true home again and teaching again.
I love teaching. I absolutely adore it.
Christina Donovan: But then you, you had Anthony.
Janet Robertson: So I had Anthony and I came home and. A bunch of things happened when I came home. And so, let's see.
Janet Robertson: I don't know. I haven't thought about how to talk about Anthony.
Janet Robertson: I did a lot of things.
I taught at Lafayette College.
But what happened was then I had Anthony and really our lives were really crazy.
We had two hard working engineers.
We had a child who was about, at that time,
six or seven years old.
And the situation really got impossible.
I remember at one point crawling up the stairs because I was too tired to walk up the stairs.
And there was this real pivotal conversation that Eric and I had.
He came to me and he said,
janet, I can't work any harder.
He said, I'm at my max. This is the maximum sustainable amount I can work.
And I remember hearing those words and I just told him the truth. I said,
oh, I'm way beyond that.
I said,
I'm going downhill, babe,
fast.
And so we had to make some changes. And all of that was gut wrenchingly difficult.
It was very, very hard.
And I don't wish those times on anybody.
Those are terrible times.
And so I came home and just to give you an example of how bad it was.
Oh, I took Anthony to the doctor and I came home and I told Eric that the doctor had told me I was stupid.
And Eric said, what?
And I said, yeah,
it was Anthony's pediatrician. And he had said this in front of Anthony when Anthony was just sitting there.
And so Eric said,
find a new doctor. Well, for the first time since I was home, I actually had enough time to run all that race. And I did all that. And we found a new doctor.
And here's what we discovered.
That my son was allergic to cats.
Not a little bit allergic, a lot allergic.
And because he was so wonderful with the cat, it was sleeping by his face, by his head,
usually with its head on his cheek at night.
No wonder my son could barely breathe.
Later on, the allergist we found told me that if I had not corrected this problem by the time Anthony was 18, his lungs would have been permanently damaged.
And so here we were working so hard,
not knowing that our child had
Janet Robertson: a common correctable problem.
Janet Robertson: And so we got that straightened out and I. We gave away the cats and miraculously,
all of his asthma problems disappeared, like within two weeks.
And suddenly he could breathe and was
Janet Robertson: running around and playing and everything.
Janet Robertson: And of course Eric and I were devastated, thinking, oh, my gosh, what almost happened to our child? And, you know, things had to change.
Janet Robertson: So that. And I never intended to come home
Janet Robertson: permanently,
to stop working permanently.
And this,
I would caution the listeners,
if you, as a woman, do not want to come home permanently,
you may need to keep up with your profession as you go along,
even when you're trying to stay home and be more of a homemaker or work at home or get the home situation straightened out, as I was.
So that's a cautionary tale there.
It turns out that the field of electrical engineering, in my field especially, was just moving too fast.
So when I tried to go back,
I was hopelessly out of date. In fact,
I would even say this. When I tried to go back, I didn't know how to interview anymore.
Janet Robertson: The way you interview and the way
Janet Robertson: you set up your resume had totally changed. The Internet had changed all those things. Yeah.
Christina Donovan: So do you want to talk about what you chose to do when you couldn't go back to electrical engineering?
Janet Robertson: Well,
Tara Bansal: how old were you?
Janet Robertson: It was 2009.
I guess I was in my 40s. I must have been in my 40s. Okay.
And what happened was I had been telling Anthony stories every night,
King Anthony stories.
And I put all of his friends in his story. I think Tina, I think Maggie was in quite a few of his stories.
So I put all his friends in his story then.
Janet Robertson: And
Janet Robertson: I decided, of course, like so many naive, stupid fools, that I was
Janet Robertson: going to write the great American novel. Right.
Janet Robertson: So I went to the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group Conference called the Write Stuff Conference.
It was just down the road from my house. It happens every March.
And there I met probably the most wonderful group of people,
and they convinced me that I could become a writer.
They convinced me with their kindness,
with their hospitality,
and with their enthusiasm for writing.
Furthermore,
they.
How do you say, they engendered in me an idea that stories are sacred,
that they come from the depths of people and that they need to be told, they need to be shared,
because they're the primary way by which we help each other.
I agree with that.
Christina Donovan: Yeah, that's really beautiful. So at that point, did you know you wanted to be a writer, or was it, I'm going to try to be a writer?
Janet Robertson: Oh, I think it's far more arrogant than that teenager.
Janet Robertson: I'm going to scribble some stuff down on a piece of paper and make a million dollars and have movies. You know,
that's what it was.
So I'll never forget I wrote this story.
And I got in a critique group
Janet Robertson: and a wonderful, wonderful person sitting opposite me. We were meeting in Barnes and Noble,
and I tell you, if she had not been so kind, I would not be a writer.
So I asked for her critique of my story, and this is what she said. I'll never forget. She said,
well,
I couldn't quite follow the story.
Janet Robertson: And I was like, oh,
oh,
that's so terrible. You couldn't even follow the story. That's how bad it was.
So not only was she couldn't tell whether it was good or bad,
she couldn't even follow it.
So
Janet Robertson: right then, I realized something.
I realized that it was going to take me as much time and effort and hard work to be a writer as it had to become an electrical engineer.
Janet Robertson: I realized what was known to thousands of writers before me, that writing is actually a field of study,
like electrical engineering, like everything else, and if you want to be good at it, you have to put in the time and the hard work.
Janet Robertson: And that moment in Barnes and Noble started my real writing journey and I started writing in earnest.
Janet Robertson: I took online courses, I read books, everything.
Janet Robertson: And here we are 19 years later
Janet Robertson: or something, and that's how long I've been writing.
Janet Robertson: And just so the viewers know, in all that time, if you were to
Janet Robertson: look at my W2 statement,
you would see that I've made something like $14.32 per year doing this career.
So I would really caution you, if you think you're going to become a
Janet Robertson: writer and support your family on this, that's probably not realistic. And the only way I was able to do it is that my husband
Janet Robertson: was still there working their products and
Janet Robertson: bringing home a nice paycheck.
Tara Bansal: Why do you keep writing?
Janet Robertson: Well,
that is actually the question I've been asking myself because a guy from a publishing industry recently gave a talk I listened to, and he said it's never been easier to publish a book because of self publishing or harder to sell a book because the field is flooded.
Since anyone can get on the Internet and anyone can email an agent in New York City their work,
the agents are literally getting thousands of story and novel submissions per day.
So it's very, very difficult to get noticed.
If you decide to go the route of self publishing,
then you have to market your own book.
So now consider that not only do you have to be a marketing a writer, you have to be a marketing person.
And marketing is also its own field.
So it's very difficult. I've been asking myself that question over and over again and actually I've decided to change gears a little bit and to go back to short stories,
because my short stories are being picked up and are being published,
but my novels are not.
And I think the reason for that is that an agent has got to be able to sell a book.
They know how hard it is to sell a book. They've got to sell these to the publishers,
the publishers got to sell them to the populace.
So they're always looking for books that have a hook,
a way in.
And books that are commonly picked up now would be like a cookbook from a guy who has a cooking show,
a popular cooking show on YouTube,
or a book on fashion from a popular fashion influencer.
This is what's being picked up because there's already a marketing channel there.
So if I can become well enough known through short stories, I might be able to get my novels picked up,
but I'm no longer necessarily seeing that as a goal. I. I have one more novel I want to write,
and I want to write this novel because in it the two characters are both searching for God in the novel.
And so I think the novel has a lot to say about our spiritual journeys and about interacting with God.
So I want to write that one. So I haven't abandoned that.
But the other two books that I've written,
I've really kind of stopped trying to sell them, trying to get agents for them, and shifted to short stories again.
Tara Bansal: How, how do you write? Do you write a certain amount each day? Like you have designated writing hours or when the inspiration hits you? How, how do you do it?
Janet Robertson: Well,
first of all, I don't believe in inspiration.
I believe in hard work.
Okay, so, so to me, inspiration happens almost continuously, all the time. So there's, there's too many stories. In fact, this is kind of funny.
I recently went back to my writing file in my computer and discovered short stories I had forgotten I'd written.
Janet Robertson: So, so then I had to.
Janet Robertson: So then I looked at them and they were written maybe 10 years ago or something. So then I started polishing them up and then I'm sending them out too.
But in terms of how do I write?
I try to write as often as possible.
So that usually means that I'm writing early in the morning because Eric has retired now and he goes to the gym in the morning so I can get up. And from about, oh, 5:30 when he leaves for the gym to maybe 7 or 8 o', clock, there's a whole
Janet Robertson: big writing slot there, nobody's home, and
Janet Robertson: I can just write away during that time.
And typically when a story starts nearing completion,
then I'm writing incessantly on it.
So that's when I'll start writing six or seven hours a day to try to finish that and get it out.
And it always takes forever,
the story I'm working on now.
In fact, I was trying to prepare for this podcast, and I kept cheating and going back and polishing up the story because it was so important to me to get it right.
Tara Bansal: So that shows you enjoy it or at least you want to accomplish it.
Janet Robertson: Yes. So on average, it's about three hours a day, but peak writing times, it can be six or seven hours a day. Yeah.
Christina Donovan: You consider your writing work?
Janet Robertson: No. No. Perhaps I should, but I do not. And I guess that comes to an interesting point. It's because I don't get paid.
Janet Robertson: And that.
Janet Robertson: That was.
That was hard.
When I stopped working, not getting a paycheck was very hard because even though Eric thought my contributions were important and important in a monetary sense,
I didn't.
I didn't really value them.
And right now,
our house is paid for.
Janet Robertson: It's hard to even mention. We don't have a mortgage and we
Janet Robertson: don't have a car payment
Janet Robertson: and those things.
Janet Robertson: The fact that we're out of debt is what's really enabled Eric to retire at his age,
which he retired at 59.
And that's really nice.
So in that terms,
yes, I've made a big contribution because I've taken care of our assets.
I've got us out of debt.
We've tried to make wise decisions.
So,
yes, I've been. I've made a monetary contribution, but there's still this thing that I'm not getting a paycheck anymore.
And quite frankly, that's always been hard for me.
It has been.
Is it still hard? It is to feel like the money's not really my own?
And I don't know within me quite how to get over that,
but,
yeah, that's hard.
Christina Donovan: So the way you view your writing,
if you don't view it as work,
you view it as a joy. You view it as something that you do because it's who you are.
Christina Donovan: And it's.
Janet Robertson: It.
Christina Donovan: I think, in a way, I think
Janet Robertson: writing and even more watercolor, which I'm just trying to get into now,
I view kind of like the teaching as a calling.
So there's this phrase, oh, I know this is so. So typically nerdish, but it's from Star Trek and it's.
And it's.
I think Leonard McCoy, who plays the doctor is speaking to Captain Kirk and he says,
you know, being a captain is your first best destiny.
And I'm not sure I have a first best destiny,
but I look at teaching and writing and watercolor as callings.
As task that I was given to.
I was, I was. As task I was given.
And they're what I want to do.
They are what brings me joy.
And I don't consider any of them work.
Work is okay. Like there are all these dust bunnies over there in the corner you can't see.
Yeah, that's work.
And work is I am going to have to dig up this peony and move it. And even though I like gardening, that's work.
And work is I have to go to the gym.
That's even called working out.
Those are things that are work.
Tara Bansal: I'm curious, how has the transition been since Eric retired? How has that been for you and for him?
Janet Robertson: Oh,
that's been really hard.
So everything about it was hard and probably predictable.
First of all,
he was getting up and leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning and getting home at 9 at night. Oh, wow.
So if you think about it, most of his waking hours were spent at work, not at home.
So most of his relationships were at work.
So he comes home and suddenly all of these people he used to talk to, oh, they're still texting him,
they
Janet Robertson: do, and they call him and he
Janet Robertson: goes to eat lunch with some of them, but it's not the same.
And then he comes home and he's trying to make a bunch of changes in his life.
He wants to lose weight, he wants to get in better shape.
So he's lost all of these personal relationships and he's making all of these more physical changes.
It's really hard.
And then,
you know,
I'm just sitting here
Janet Robertson: and there's nothing about my life
Janet Robertson: that's the same anymore because there's another person here.
Janet Robertson: I mean, if you think about it, I had to. To entertain myself the vast majority of the day. I had a routine, I had stuff. I do. And now there's this other person here,
Janet Robertson: and he legitimately wants to go do
Janet Robertson: things and, and wants to change things and so forth. So it's this huge upheaval. Not small, not whatsoever.
Janet Robertson: What's amazing about it is it's only been. He retired February 13th. And what are we looking at? April 17th.
Tara Bansal: Oh, so it's really new.
Janet Robertson: It's really new.
Tara Bansal: Oh, I didn't realize it was that recently.
Janet Robertson: And it's almost calmed down. So we've Almost settled back into a routine. And it's kind of beginning to feel
Janet Robertson: like when we were first dating, it is.
Janet Robertson: And so, you know, I'm like, huh?
Janet Robertson: And I'm beginning to like it. So we've gotten to this big change, and, oh, yeah, we had our fair share of arguments and all this kind
Janet Robertson: of stuff, and now we're back here and things are starting to look up, and I'm like, well, I didn't expect it to happen this soon.
Janet Robertson: And at moments, I was not sure it was going to happen at all.
Janet Robertson: But,
yeah,
things are getting better. And I think one of the things that's really nice is, like, this old Eric is coming back.
I mean, he used to be this
Janet Robertson: really playful, funny guy, and he's returning
Janet Robertson: and, oh, my gosh, the other night, he even cooked.
Janet Robertson: He's a real good cook. I forgot that he's actually a great cook.
Janet Robertson: I'm like, wow, he could cook again.
One of the big things that had to be done is the roof was leaking. We had to put on a new roof,
so we had to get the contractors out and talk to them and everything.
And for the first time in 20 years, he did that with me.
I didn't have to talk to him by myself.
And we will both tell you this, that we make much better decisions together than either of us make alone.
And I think we got a much better roof. I think we got it at a very reasonable price.
And I'm just totally happy with the way the job went.
They were. Yeah, they were pretty bad,
but it's only been two months, and they're a lot better.
That's good to hear. Yeah.
Christina Donovan: I mean, looking back on your journey to becoming a writer, I mean, what has surprised you the most?
Janet Robertson: Would you say,
how hard it was?
People in the sciences like myself,
often discount how difficult the humanities are.
We really do.
And there's a reason for that. I mean, it's because we can do math and people in humanities can do.
Janet Robertson: You know, just want to be blunt, you know, these people over there don't know how to take a derivative. You know, so this is.
Janet Robertson: But.
But to understand the difficulty it is in getting a story down on the page and communicating it.
I did not appreciate that.
I really didn't. And I did not appreciate how much my own personal interactions were going to grow because I had to figure out the motivations of my own characters.
So suddenly I'm having conversations with people
Janet Robertson: and I'm thinking, oh, that's not really
Janet Robertson: what she wanted to say, is it?
Janet Robertson: And then I'M thinking, oh, look how
Janet Robertson: she's holding her hand.
Janet Robertson: She's nervous. You know,
I, I'm looking at them as if they're a character in a book and I'm like, uh huh, really?
Oh,
I've been coming and then of
Janet Robertson: course I can't watch a movie.
Janet Robertson: Oh, some of the movies today are just terrible. I'm like, oh, really? That character would never do that.
Janet Robertson: That's stupid.
Janet Robertson: And so I'm sitting here and Eric's like, would you go in the other room? You're impossible to watch a movie with. I'm like, but it's so bad.
This is terrible writing.
Janet Robertson: So anyway, that's, that's, it's, it's, it's an eye opening experience. It is.
Tara Bansal: And what do you get out of writing?
Janet Robertson: I guess,
especially science fiction,
you get the ability to come to comment on something that's happening in the world in a sneaky way.
For example,
it's my own opinion, and maybe you guys want to edit this part out.
Janet Robertson: It's my own opinion that we may
Janet Robertson: have a narcissist around us somewhere in our current society today.
So I put one in my storage story and I have the narcissist do everything for themselves and he's really not a good guy.
So,
you know, I'm commenting,
you, is
Christina Donovan: there anything you would say, say, from your career as an engineer you have brought to your writing?
Janet Robertson: Oh yes.
Janet Robertson: Oh, oh yes.
Janet Robertson: I am forever, will forever be indebted to my thesis advisor for teaching me to teach myself.
There is a wealth of not only false information on the Internet, there's a wealth of accurate information there too.
There are places on the Internet where you can go and have great instructors teach you just about whatever you want to know.
But you have to have the skills within yourself to know what to do to actually learn something.
How do you learn something? And I can see this. I volunteer at the local elementary school.
I can see this in the children. They don't know how to teach themselves.
They don't know what to do to begin to learn something deeply.
They don't understand that process.
I think many adults don't either,
but I do.
And because he gave me that,
that skill,
I was able to teach myself to write.
And I keep telling myself and pounding it into my underconfident self that you can teach yourself watercolor.
Janet Robertson: You can,
you just have to go in there, you know how to do it, you have to read the assignment, you have to do the assignment.
You know,
you know what to do.
Janet Robertson: It's, it's this underconfidence that eats at me sometimes that, oh, you know, watercolor is too hard and the stupid paints
Janet Robertson: keep doing things I don't expect.
Janet Robertson: But I just actually used up the second pad of watercolor paper in my stash of watercolor paper.
And this is important because I've had those two pads for 15 years,
and
Janet Robertson: I've gone back and I'm now doing much more watercolor.
Janet Robertson: I checked out a wonderful book from
Janet Robertson: the local library, and I'm actually learning something.
Janet Robertson: I think I can now do a wet in wet wash.
I can't believe I'm even trying to. I can even say that I think, yes, I can do that now.
Christina Donovan: Do you feel like this creative part of you was always there? It just didn't have a way to come out earlier in your life?
Janet Robertson: Yes.
There are several attributes of God that I like to think about.
One, of course, is that God laughs. God has a sense of humor.
I think about this all the time, that he's a funny guy, too.
Janet Robertson: One of them.
Christina Donovan: Or she.
Janet Robertson: Oh, yes,
yes. That's my Texas upbringing you're hearing.
I think about God as being a God of opportunity.
So I think about wanting to teach and how important teaching is to me.
And then I was teaching at Lafayette College and I lost that job.
And now I've come back around and I'm volunteering in the public school system.
And it's just such a joy.
Janet Robertson: Just. I'm just always happy to go into
Janet Robertson: that school, always happy to see the children every day.
Janet Robertson: And of course,
their little gems, they come up and hug me and I'm like, oh, okay, here I am. I get, get getting my hugs for the day, right?
Janet Robertson: So I think of God as this God of opportunity.
But one of the most fundamental attributes of God is that God creates.
God created the world.
Creation is like this.
This revelation of who God is. You can see God in. In the tree frogs, how beautifully colored they are.
And so when it says that we were created in God's image,
I think that's the one of the ways we were created.
So, Tina, I don't think just I'm a creative. I think everyone's a creative.
Janet Robertson: I think that that is part of
Janet Robertson: the way that we were created in God's image is that we all like to create and that our creations are in many ways sacred.
Easton has taken to putting poems up on the sides of the walls of buildings.
And every time I pass by one of them, I read it.
And every time I think,
oh,
that is sacred.
I do.
I think that their words are so wonderful,
so beautiful, and so they impact me so much.
So, yes,
I think that being a creative is a gift from God. But I would tell you, Tina and Tariq, that they're gifts you've been given to not just me.
Tara Bansal: Oh, I love that. That we're all meant to be creative.
Janet Robertson: Yeah.
Janet Robertson: We're all meant to create in so many ways, whether you're.
Janet Robertson: It's fashion. Have you ever looked at fashion? Fashion is like art.
Janet Robertson: That's you wear and then.
Janet Robertson: Then like dishes. Have you ever looked at dishes? Dishes are freaking beautiful.
Janet Robertson: Or here's one. Kleenex boxes.
Janet Robertson: Kleenex boxes. I just, you know, you can just keep going and you see all these
Janet Robertson: different people and all their work. Even a wonderful piece of furniture, mold. Work of art. Yeah.
Janet Robertson: It's all.
And I want to tell you something.
If you have a leak in your bathroom,
you pretty much understand that plumber's creative too.
He's making you some plumbing that works.
Tara Bansal: And they are creative in coming up with solutions and things like that.
Janet Robertson: Do I agree? That's so, so wonderful. I feel like that was a great place to finish.
Christina Donovan: Yeah. Thank you so much, Janet. This was super interesting. It's always interesting to talk to you.
Christina Donovan: Our episode today is being released in early June.
Those heady days of anticipating a full season of summer where we look forward to vacations,
long weekends, warm weather, and hopefully a little more time.
Many families and individuals create a summer bucket list with the activities that they hope to do and places that they hope to go.
Our connection challenge today is a type of summer list, but one geared more towards people and relationships.
We suggest making a bucket list or a list of the people you hope to see this summer and spend time with,
whether they are new neighbors to to your neighborhood or possibly old friends you haven't seen in a while.
List the people you wish to see and then start making plans.
They can be informal as much as
Christina Donovan: just grabbing a cup of coffee with
Christina Donovan: someone who you don't see very often.
To a full long weekend with family.
And hopefully your summer will be full of the people and relationships that mean the most to you.
Tara Bansal: Thanks for listening to messy middle lessons.
If you enjoyed today's episode,
it would mean so much to us if you subscribed, shared it with a friend, or leave a quick review.
It really helps more people find us and we're so grateful you are here
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Janet Robertson began her professional life as a Ph.D. Electrical Engineer designing and manufacturing integrated circuits which stimulated living human cells for drug discovery research. In 2006, she left engineering and joyously rediscovered her family. Needing a creative outlet, she began writing non-fiction science articles for children. Soon she entered the world of fiction embracing picture books, middle grade, sci fi and high fantasy. She loves dragons, sentient plants, wildly free people, and hope-filled endings.
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Janet’s website: https://www.kiddwadsworth.com
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Our connection challenge today is a variation of the “summer bucket” list. Many families and/or individuals create bucket lists with the activities, outings and trips they wish to do over the summer.
We recommend creating a bucket list that is centered more towards people and relationships. (it can be a separate list or included as part of the your overall bucket list).
Start by making a list of the people you want to see and spend time with this summer. This could be new neighbors that have recently moved into your neighborhood or an old friend that somehow you never manage to connect with.
Once you have the list of people — begin reaching out and making plans.
We hope this makes your summer one that is full of people and relationships — and starts a tradition you look forward to every summer.