Year End List

Every year since I've joined grad school, I've recorded in my journal at year's end a numbered list of the major things that happened to me that year, the "firsts" that showed that I was getting on in life, progressing.

For example, looking back on 1998, I find these accomplishments listed in my journal: 1. Cut my hair. 2. Taught 5 college classes. 3. Bought first car. (Ed: it was an old one, and I'm now trying to sell it. Anyone want a sweet deal on an old Camry?) 4. Bought laptop. (Ed: Before the laptop, I wrote everything on a Brother word processor.) ... 8. First long solo drive, to NYC and back. 9. Planned Parenthood visit in NYC for emergency morning after pills. 10. Feather boa: bought and wore... 17. Secret Illicit Love Affair: begun. ... 29. Sex in bar bathroom. (You can see what counts as accomplishment when you're barely 22.)

Last year's list (2003 in review) was dense with accomplishment: 1. MFA and MA degrees, granted 2. story contest sponsored by tiny but national journal, won 3. first teeny publications 4.first full time job and first "real title": Asssistant Professor of English. 5. My credit, for the first time ever, was such that it was possible for me to walk onto the lot of a new car dealer. And to buy a new car. Just like that.

This year I turned 28. My fertility levels are already dropping. Among graduate students, I'm no longer young. I've published no novels and have had no stories accepted by The New Yorker. Thus I have failed to become a wunderkind on the order of John Updike, Nicholson Baker, or Carson McCullers. I am hesitating about my degree and I am barely employed. I have never left school.

But I am happier than I was in 1998.

There have been firsts in 2004. First therapist, first diagnosis (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), first prescription for said diagnosis. First time I stopped dithering and started a blog.

But 2004 is notable for its long sleeps, its long drives, its long silences. 2004 has been a year of reconsidering, of paring down. Of taking away, not adding. For the best.

Thus my list for 2004 is not limited to accomplishments or firsts.:

1. My life is not the story of a zippy rise to fame or a snappy rise to academic success, and this is perfectly fine. My life is a story of cats petted, books loved, runs coaxed from reluctant muscles, soups made from scratch, of accompanying friends to confrontations with landlords or on thrift store/diner crawls around cities. My life is a story of collisions that happen in my mind, even if no one else can see these collisions but me.

2. My life need not be defined by grading, or even by teaching. Yes I am in some cases rather good at it. Yes it is a skill, even if sometimes it doesn't feel that way. Yes I have acquired the skill, spent years doing so in fact. But none of these things mean that I have to do this. I have the option, if I want to, to do something else.

3. I am no longer willing to give up sleep for work that I am not passionate about. The second half of this year has been a year of sleep. Ten or eleven hours a night if I can get away with it.

4. I am not willing to forfeit my life -- my life, the time I have to perceive and think about things, to meet and interact with people -- to the mold imposed by a profession about which I have serious reservations. If I can coordinate my life with the profession, fine. If I can't, my life should win.

5. Blogging and reading blogs is not by definition wasting time.

6. I am getting to know my mind. This requires a lot of time. I enjoy it.



I will probably revise or add to this list as changes occur to me.