A lot of people don’t know this, but French was my first language, not English.

My parents are both of French-Canadian origin and spoke French exclusively to me until I was about three years old, even though we lived in Maryland. However, they knew well that they would eventually have to teach me English if I was to function in the United States. My mother did this by speaking and reading to me in English. I have to admit that Sesame Street and The Electric Company helped a lot with this endeavor.

Many people my age who took a foreign language in middle or high school began learning it at the age of twelve or later. Although many of the students who did so were extremely intelligent, they struggled to learn French or Spanish.

I always got A’s in French. (I took it so that I could learn to write it and not just speak and understand it.)  I credit my parents for this. Because they spoke it to me at such a young age, learning to read and write it came almost naturally to me.

The time to start learning a foreign language is in early childhood. Preschoolers’ minds are like sponges; they absorb everything and can learn quickly.

Today, living still in Maryland, I do not have many opportunities to speak, read, or write French. When I speak with my mother on the telephone, I speak it to the best of my ability, but my vocabulary is limited. I often text with her in French as well and send her the occasional French email. (I am frustrated that I don’t know how to make accents in Gmail.)

I am proud to say that I do not have an English accent when I speak French; I can roll my r’s as well as any Quebecois. My accent, I have heard some people from France say, is Quebecois. “Pardonnez-moi!”

Have you learned a foreign language? How easy or difficult was it for you?

A weird thing happened last Tuesday. I turned 50.

Doing so feels weird mainly because I feel that at the age of 50, I should be more mature than I actually am. Sure, my body is getting weaker, but I can watch Disney cartoons and play old-school video games with the best of them.

What makes me really feel old is what I remember about how the world used to be.

The technology, for example. I have written a couple of posts in the past about the now-ancient technology that I remember. Like 5 ¼-inch floppy disks, one of which I was made to buy in high school for my Computer Applications class. We worked on Apple IIe computers—anyone remember them?—back in 1990, and I think they were out of date even then. In 1989, my high school obtained a lab full of IBM PS2 machines, which were considered top-of-the-line back then and on which I learned to type. That’s right—I did not learn to type on an actual typewriter. And for my typing class, I had to purchase a 3 ½-inch disk. How advanced!

These days, of course, I save my work to the cloud, like everyone else does. I do occasionally use USB drives, but even they are out of “fashion” now.

And I remember being in college in the early 1990s and hearing about this new deal called the internet (lowercased “i” according to The Chicago Manual of Style). At that time, I could not even grasp what it might be. I remember seeing internet addresses for the first time around 1995 or 1996 and wondering what the heck this “http://” thing was. I remember loading a web page on a computer in college and the page coming up S-L-O-W-L-Y and how impatient I got with it. I didn’t even really learn how to use the internet until I was in graduate school. However, I know that Google launched the same day I defended my master’s thesis, so I can honestly and proudly say that I passed school without Google.

However, it’s the music on the radio that makes me feel old the most. Not long ago, I was listening to a local classic rock station and heard Evanescence. “Evanescence, of all bands, is classic rock now?” I thought. Then I remembered that the song being played was, in fact, 20 years old. It was all over “new rock” radio when I was 30 and living in the Baltimore, Maryland area.

If you are 50 or over, what do you remember the most?

Fellow editors, I have a question for you.

What do you do when a client decides to ghost you?

You all probably know what I mean. In the professional sense, ghosting refers to not returning your emails or calls, being silent when you make attempts to communicate, and vanishing from your life.

First and foremost, do not be insulted. Clients ghost editors for many reasons.

One reason might be embarrassment on the client’s part. I have heard of scenarios where the client takes quite a while to pay. When the editor sends a friendly reminder via email, the client pays and the editor communicates their gratitude and says they would love to edit more work for the client. The client says nothing. Months later, the editor sends a simple “Hi! How are you doing?” email containing nothing about soliciting work. Again, crickets.

In this case, the client might be embarrassed that they took a while to pay and might be avoiding the editor because they associate the editor with their mistake. Or perhaps the client thinks the editor was being pushy. Sending a polite, friendly email reminding a client to pay is not being pushy, and any client who thinks it is pushy is someone with whom it is risky to work.

Another reason may be that the client is just very busy and, whether the editor likes it or not, having their work edited is not at the front of the client’s mind. This is neither the editor’s nor the client’s fault.

Whatever the reason, the editor needs to know what to do.

Do not contact the client any more frequently than every six months—maybe even once a year. Any more than that and you will be classified as a pain in the fanny. Please think about companies that send spam to your email or make junk calls to your phone. You don’t want to be like them.

If you have contacted the client three times and are still not hearing anything from them, it is time to cut bait. You have done all you can. Leave their name and contact information on your client spreadsheet (you do have a list of all your current and former clients on a spreadsheet, right?) but make a note saying they have ghosted you and include the date of your last contact with them, even if it was years ago.

If you are an editor and have been ghosted, what was your way of dealing with it?

I recently was part of a small group affiliated with my church that read The Power to Change by Craig Groeschel, which was published earlier this year.

I had been intrigued by the title of the book because I am one of those people who keep trying to change their undesirable habits and traits but never seem to succeed. In fact, for a while I gave up on changing the off-putting parts of myself, giving the excuse, “I can’t remake myself. Why should I try? God loves me just the way I am and I accept myself for who I am.”

Those are lame excuses.

Craig Groeschel, a pastor from Oklahoma, writes in a very clear, down-to-earth way that makes his book actually fun to read. He often throws in a story about, for example, his adventures or misadventures at the gym, or a news account of a Kansas woman who sat on a toilet for two years. Groeschel avoids using fancy “SAT words” in his writing, opting instead for language most people can understand.

He gives the reader a ton of information and ideas, so for the rest of this post, I will focus on the points I took home.

Why do I do what I do? asks Groeschel. Because of who I am. If I want to get rid of a bad habit or start a new, good habit, I have to look at myself and my own personality and figure out why I do what I’ve been doing for a long time.

Changing requires discipline, which no one seems to like. However, according to Groeschel, I should look at it this way: Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want now. For example, let’s say I want to get in shape by going to the gym every morning. However, when my alarm goes off at 5:00 am, I want to hit snooze and get some extra sleep. The extra sleep is what I want now. But what I want most is to get in shape. If I go to the gym and deny myself the extra sleep, I am practicing discipline.

To get rid of a bad habit, I have to remove the cues—the things that start me doing it. This was probably the most challenging part of the book for me. I am still figuring out how to remove certain cues that make me fall into a bad habit. I have a bad habit of yelling that I hate everyone when I am angry. (I do this as a substitute for cursing. I don’t curse. The habit is still bad, though.) But which cues do I remove? I cannot avoid anger in my life, just as nobody can.

I definitely would recommend this book, even to people who don’t think they have to change. It is helpful, yet very entertaining.

Would you care to share what you have been reading lately?