Holding Uncertainty
I have ant bites on my stomach. For nine days, I have watched them parade across my kitchen counter, a few days later making their way to my desk where I was bitten while typing, and a few days later still, I watched the line rise up the walls of my bathroom and crawl over the ledge of my tub. It has taken me nine days to realize that—despite knowing they were getting in through the crack in my kitchen window—I could open the window and close the outer double-pane that's been open since I moved in.
Sometimes I think that my mind sees these solutions and that my consciousnesses refuses to acknowledge them. Because I'll feel them at the edge of my awareness, and I'll know that if I stopped and actually took the time to puzzle it through for just a minute or two, I would see all the dimensions. So this is what I think. Subconsciously a part of me resists the solving. The same way I think I subconsciously lose things. I make things more difficult for myself, though I don't know why. I'm sure there's some puzzling I need to do about it.
But I bring it up for this reason. This past weekend I met a girl, one of the prospective students. And she already accepted at Vanderbilt. She's still finishing her last semester of undergraduate work. She wasn't the only accepted student there who was still in school. But she was so quick to justify her reasons for going straight into an MFA program. "I'm young, but this is what I want to do." But right after saying this to me, she was telling me how she'd spent three years majoring in psychology, how it took her that long to realize she'd been taking workshops the whole time, and maybe she should be writing instead. And I remember that feeling. I remember the point when I realized, GOD, I miss literature and creative writing. This journalism stuff isn't for me. But why the rush to become a professional student? Because even as she was telling me she was sure, I saw her get defensive about her age, I saw her needing reassurance from me, when what I wanted to say was, why? Why do you need this? Why do you need it now? What is your goddamn hurry?
I am so grateful that I had writing teachers who said, This isn't an easy path. Get out of school for a while, go live. See if you have to write. And if you do, go somewhere else. Find a new place, a new city to be in. Live in the uncertainty is what I wanted to tell her. Revel in it. Get dirty, get drunk on it. Just exist. You're floundering, I can see it, and I don't even know you. The truth is, she reminds me a lot of one of the students who came last year, and who I think probably shouldn't have come. He accepted and he is in the program, and he is floundering. Sometimes you have to do what feels like the stupid thing in order to find your own feet, and the only way to do that is to not have a safety net.
As for me, I'm currently holding onto all kinds of uncertainty. And trying to feel good about it. I've recently come to terms with the prospect of not getting hired this summer. I held onto a student loan check from the first year that I never cashed (which has unfortunately been accruing interest but which will fortunately help in an unemployment emergency) in case I do not get the teaching job I applied for. And I've actually gotten to the point where I'm rather hoping I don't get the job. Of course it would be a great experience and beneficial for my resume, but once I teach in the fall, it wouldn't be difficult to get the same job next summer. So I'm trying to live with the prospect of slight future poverty. A summer of submitting to journals and selling books and clothes on ebay, lying on my bed, plying myself with ice packs while my AC struggles for the third summer in a row to cool my attic apartment. Heat rises.
In the meantime, I plan my escape. I'm thinking a spring exit. Where is uncertain.
Sometimes I think that my mind sees these solutions and that my consciousnesses refuses to acknowledge them. Because I'll feel them at the edge of my awareness, and I'll know that if I stopped and actually took the time to puzzle it through for just a minute or two, I would see all the dimensions. So this is what I think. Subconsciously a part of me resists the solving. The same way I think I subconsciously lose things. I make things more difficult for myself, though I don't know why. I'm sure there's some puzzling I need to do about it.
But I bring it up for this reason. This past weekend I met a girl, one of the prospective students. And she already accepted at Vanderbilt. She's still finishing her last semester of undergraduate work. She wasn't the only accepted student there who was still in school. But she was so quick to justify her reasons for going straight into an MFA program. "I'm young, but this is what I want to do." But right after saying this to me, she was telling me how she'd spent three years majoring in psychology, how it took her that long to realize she'd been taking workshops the whole time, and maybe she should be writing instead. And I remember that feeling. I remember the point when I realized, GOD, I miss literature and creative writing. This journalism stuff isn't for me. But why the rush to become a professional student? Because even as she was telling me she was sure, I saw her get defensive about her age, I saw her needing reassurance from me, when what I wanted to say was, why? Why do you need this? Why do you need it now? What is your goddamn hurry?
I am so grateful that I had writing teachers who said, This isn't an easy path. Get out of school for a while, go live. See if you have to write. And if you do, go somewhere else. Find a new place, a new city to be in. Live in the uncertainty is what I wanted to tell her. Revel in it. Get dirty, get drunk on it. Just exist. You're floundering, I can see it, and I don't even know you. The truth is, she reminds me a lot of one of the students who came last year, and who I think probably shouldn't have come. He accepted and he is in the program, and he is floundering. Sometimes you have to do what feels like the stupid thing in order to find your own feet, and the only way to do that is to not have a safety net.
As for me, I'm currently holding onto all kinds of uncertainty. And trying to feel good about it. I've recently come to terms with the prospect of not getting hired this summer. I held onto a student loan check from the first year that I never cashed (which has unfortunately been accruing interest but which will fortunately help in an unemployment emergency) in case I do not get the teaching job I applied for. And I've actually gotten to the point where I'm rather hoping I don't get the job. Of course it would be a great experience and beneficial for my resume, but once I teach in the fall, it wouldn't be difficult to get the same job next summer. So I'm trying to live with the prospect of slight future poverty. A summer of submitting to journals and selling books and clothes on ebay, lying on my bed, plying myself with ice packs while my AC struggles for the third summer in a row to cool my attic apartment. Heat rises.
In the meantime, I plan my escape. I'm thinking a spring exit. Where is uncertain.