Text and Hubris

Excuse my heavy breathing and the audio. That wind was brutal! Playing in the snow is always fun, though.
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One of the more challenging issues about returning to school for me is that it has, in some ways, actually led me to feel a bit more incompetent. After all, when one is starting over it’s hard to feel prepared and able no matter how nice that GPA looks. In many ways this can be a good thing. It helps to diminish that desire to coast through class and it pushes me to continuously work as hard as I can. In a professional sense, though, it does breed a sense of inexperience and lack even when that lack shouldn’t be there.

It’s something we all have to deal with from time to time. The danger comes when that sense gets internalized and we start to actually believe our lack. I know that is how it works for me. I find myself deliberately holding back and I don’t quite know why. All I know is that it reflects poorly on me and it has to stop.

Quite honestly, the worst thing any of us can do is give in to that feeling and accept it as truth.

There has been a lot to discuss over these past few weeks, but I haven’t really figured out a way to discuss things without getting a bit melodramatic. Now that things have settled, I think I can post without letting the drama overwhelm the message.

The biggest news is that I have decided to put off grad school for a year. The reasoning behind this is primarily financial but other factors did weigh in my decision. I need time to pull a real portfolio of work together and I want to make sure I know what my options are instead of leaping to hit a deadline. I also need time to develop my work and my style outside of the University. I do love academia and I think that writing and teaching are a big part of my future but without time to explore, I fear becoming little more than a cookie-cutter writing trying to imitate rather than truly create on my own.

This has, of course, opened up a whole slew of panicked thoughts in my head. The truth is that I don’t know what to do about a job. I know the tech industry and I know how to land jobs there. I don’t know how to even pursue a job in my field, right now. Worse yet, I am not even sure what my field is. I tried to apply to a job last semester that was part-time and for an organization that I respect and admire. I wanted to simply be an assistant digital librarian. I wanted to research and collate because that is what I had time to do, and it was something that truly interested me. I ended up being dropped into a coding position which meant a lot more hours and I had to quit because I wasn’t able to commit that much time to the project while still meeting my other obligations.

I’m really worried about that happening again. While I won’t have the obligations, I don’t want to end up where I was before I started this whole venture. I don’t want to end up falling back into my tech job simply because it is easy. I chose this path because I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t progressing. That sense of growth is important to me, but I also accept that I need money. That’s something I am becoming more and more aware of every day. Things are getting tight and I am feeling the pressure. I graduate in four months and I need to find something to stay on track.

This is the scary part. I knew it would be. You don’t decide to make a change this drastic without some stress involved. I also know that getting past it won’t be easy, but it is part of the journey. It is part of what I accepted when I chose this path. I know this was the right choice, though. I know that English is where I was meant to be and that the merging of tech and literature is the most interesting thing in the world to me. If you read this as merely my log of my journey then there isn’t much more to say. If you read this and you’re thinking about how terrifying it must be to make the change then I am here to tell you that it is. I still wouldn’t change it, though, not for anything.

I am officially back from my holiday reprieve; although, reprieve may not be exactly the right word to describe my winter “break.”. I am still in the midst of a winter term class in order to ensure that I hit my dates for graduation this spring. That’s made what is usually a quiet time something a bit more intense.

I am working on examining personal narratives in modern social networks. Specifically, I am looking at the definition of self. This is something I have written about earlier and I won’t go into too much detail as the class itself is still somewhat in progress, but I find myself returning to this idea and it intrigues me. I think I’ll be spending a bit of time examining this topic more intensely over the coming year.

As for this new year, what can I say? What has been left behind, for me, is a complete chapter of a life. My job, a direction that I followed intensely for nearly a decade and a half, now lies a half-year behind me. I miss the stability, but I love the opportunity. I’ve been able to work on projects and help people in ways that I never could and I have been actually excited and happy about the prospect of the future. In 2011, the stage is set but where does that take us? Graduate school, new directions into publishing and digital media, and even the idea of self-employment all loom as serious possibilities. I’m not entirely sure where any of that is going to end up. What I do know is that this is what life is about. It’s about exploring opportunities, learning how to communicate and teach, and discovering what it is that truly add value to the world around us. If I can come to the end of 2011 and feel that what I do and what I have done has added value, then I will have had a tremendous year.

I can only hope that for all of us!

I’ve been out of commission for well over two weeks now. At first, it was the usual chaos of school and work compounded by a nasty cold. While this combination made my days rough, at least I was still moving. Apparently, though, even moving was too much. On my way back from a meeting, I tripped like the graceful ox I am and landed on my ankle. I felt something pop in the ankle as I crumbled and I must say that I have rarely felt so exquisite a pain as that. The only bright spot was that it wasn’t broken but the doctor did pull me from classes and basically told me that if I wanted to walk normally again, I had better stay off it and keep it elevated.

So, that’s been my November.

Now, on to more important things. If you’re like me and you follow the literary community and MFA programs then you have seen the Slate reprint of an N+1 article by Chad Harbach titled “MFA vs. NYC
America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?”¹ He seems to posit, at least in his conclusion, that the MFA is the only way to really survive as a writer. He states that MFA culture exists primarily to provide writers with an economic foundation and he’s certainly right in that regard. Of course, he also notes with some regret that this means a movement away from writing as entertainment and performance. In some ways, it means moving away from writing in general. It also tends to feed the insular nature of literary fiction being written for writers. This has long been a problem and Harbach seems to conclude that it will only get worse. If fact, he ties much of his discussion on writing to that of the poet and how poetry and academia have merged in many ways.

He’s right. If you want to write literary fiction, get your MFA and start to teach. It’s pretty much the only way to go. The same is true for poetry. Academia is the safest way to ensure cash and funding while writing. Paradoxically, it will reduce how much you write. I have had the opportunity to read a lot of my instructors and I have been impressed with their work. I would like to see more of it. Far too often, there just isn’t that much content available even from the highest-ranked teachers. Don’t get me wrong, they are fantastic teachers but the best teacher I have had in my time at college is probably the one with the most outside creative work experience and whose overall classroom ethic is quite different from any other instructor I have met.

All of these realizations are coalescing at a very important time for me. I am nearly to the end of my English degree and I was pretty much set on going into an MFA program. As the time gets closer, though. I find myself resisting and I know I need to listen to that resistance. I switched from literary criticism to creative writing because I wanted to create the art not just study it. I still want to do that. I am here to write. I want to create. I don’t mind teaching, in fact I rather like it. I am not interested in being a full-time professor, though. I know this. In fact, I have been on this part-time job and full-time school thing for about three months and I am going out of my mind. I like the capitalist money game. I want to create stories and content that people will buy and I believe that my ideas are salable. I look forward to proving that. I do love the academic world and it is filled with a lot of creative people but it doesn’t fit my needs as a creative individual.

Of course, if I am not going to pursue an MFA, I am left with that nagging question of what should I do? Courtney wants me to get my education certificate for secondary schools. While this is still teaching, it is in a slightly different dynamic and she thinks I would excel there and, to be honest, she’s probably right. That said, I say a lot of things, and I tend to be a rather passionate fellow. I’m not sure how well my beliefs and politics gel with our educational system as it is.

What I really want to do requires funding and direction. I want to play in the indie space. I don’t want to be part of the academic or the NYC culture (It helps that I am not so interested in literary fiction). I tend to think that we have more than enough culture to feed a whole variety of tastes many of which are not being fed in the current climate. So, that is my focus. My only rule is that I won’t go back into tech. Does this mean that grad school is out? Absolutely not! It does mean that what I am looking for has shifted though and I need to find programs that reflect that. I may even still get an MFA but it will come on my terms not in an attempt to shoehorn myself into someone else’s definition of writing and creative work. That, if you ask me, is the surest way to die as an artist.

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1. Chad Harbach, “MFA vs. NYC: America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?” Slate, November 26, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2275733.