pt 2
It’s like anything else I guess, some moments (days) it doesn’t take any real work to feel focused and hopeful, and others times there’s a black mood that stretches on and on and seems incurable. I am, like some character in a movie I wouldn’t like one bit, entirely sure of what I don’t want to do and not so sure of what I do want to do. So far the things I’m far away from aren’t things I miss - not graduate school or obscure Victorian texts or dissertation writing or even teaching, now - and maybe that will change or maybe it won’t, but what in the meantime? Reading and writing, sending out resumes for jobs I do or don’t want, wondering if I should go to school to do something I'd like to do, feeling horrified or excited or merely amazed that I live here now and not there and I am doing this and not that.
But also: this situation, I know - I’m reminded especially while I’m here - is in some ways one of privilege. The desire to have a calling rather than a job, the assumption that you deserve a position that will allow you to be creative or challenged or content is something you learn or something you’re given. My mother, who grew up with very little and put herself through college and then taught for thirty years at the same school, is so bewildered by me; I ask her if she loved teaching and she looks at me as if I asked her if she loved brushing her teeth.
So what has been gained, post-graduate school, so far: The last several months have been the best stretch of reading the best books since before I started school, and there’s this hope of writing, of making something out of it, and this experience of relearning the place where I grew up. Still sometimes fearful but also less afraid, still and too often judgmental and arrogant when it would be better to remember that compassion isn't a feeling that needs to be hoarded, that humility is a lesson that should be put to good use.
But also: this situation, I know - I’m reminded especially while I’m here - is in some ways one of privilege. The desire to have a calling rather than a job, the assumption that you deserve a position that will allow you to be creative or challenged or content is something you learn or something you’re given. My mother, who grew up with very little and put herself through college and then taught for thirty years at the same school, is so bewildered by me; I ask her if she loved teaching and she looks at me as if I asked her if she loved brushing her teeth.
So what has been gained, post-graduate school, so far: The last several months have been the best stretch of reading the best books since before I started school, and there’s this hope of writing, of making something out of it, and this experience of relearning the place where I grew up. Still sometimes fearful but also less afraid, still and too often judgmental and arrogant when it would be better to remember that compassion isn't a feeling that needs to be hoarded, that humility is a lesson that should be put to good use.