Excitement Dissipates, Bringing Back Confusion

The impossible has occurred. It will now snow in Los Angeles and be fifty below in North Dakota. Oh yeah, both of those already happened. Which makes my news of finishing and turning in my article early fairly tepid news. Oh well.

So now I don't have an external deadline for writing except for those recommendation letters. These rec letters are a great irony to me -- who cares about my opinion about anything, much less the potential and perseverence of these particular students? Do you see where I am? I am living in a camper in a campground with no job. What do I do for letterhead? I guess just make up my own. Poor students.

The fact that I've actually been working on the article pretty regularly shouldn't impress anyone -- actually the article is one of the things that I feel pretty sure about. When worried about other things, it is wonderful to have a counterirritant. Other things are absurd and bumpy-lumpy in my world just now. After five years in graduate school fairly certain that I wanted to ride the tenure track, here I am, PhD'd and at a loss. I don't know where my life is going to go now. I can't tell you where I'll be living in six months, three months. . .Everything is up in the air.

Having life be eventful and uncertain means that there certainly is more to write about, but less self with which to write. Nora Ephron's parents used to remind her that everything was copy. I suppose that eventually I'll be seated at a desk somewhere writing about this. But where will that desk be and how will my life be constituted? Stephen King says that one of the secrets of his success is a happy and settled home life. Can I order that from Amazon? Special delivery?

Stephen King says three or four hours of writing and reading per day. Certainly I've only spent a couple hours fine-tuning the article. Reading would be good. Surely I should get to work on Project 2. Or find a job, an apartment, a life. Whichever comes first. I should send out some work. That might make me feel like I exist again in the literary world, at least.