blogging

Dust It Off and Try Again.

by theresa on April 18, 2011

This motherfucking coffee machine.

We had been trying in earnest the first couple of months of the year to get pregnant. I’d never been so heartbroken to get my period, so after the third cycle I stopped obsessing, stopped charting, and tried to stop thinking about it. We’d just keep rolling the dice and if it never happened, no big. We already have one awesome kid, and I just saw SATC 2 on Free HBO weekend and it’s re-triggered my anxiety about having another one. So, okay.

But I should probably cut down on caffeine, right?* I mean, I know I was on a steady diet of three Doubleshots a day when I got knocked up with Hugga, but that was a whole three years ago, and I’m getting kind of close to 30. And it’s April and I’m still not pregnant.

It was much easier when we had the janky coffee maker and I would make enough coffee for the house in one go and that would be it. Then two weeks ago, we had to spend half a stack on this thing and now it sits on the counter mocking me with its ease of use and cold indifference. It knows it makes delicious coffee, and it only takes two minutes with zero effort on my part. It’s up to me to have some damn willpower, which is very difficult to have at 2 in the afternoon, after getting a shitty sleep the night before, and right before picking up my three-year-old.

* Friends, I love y’all, but please don’t read this as an invitation to righteously lecture me about the health benefits of cutting down on caffeine. Coffee is my favorite part of the day and I really have no intention of getting rid of it.

—

This is my herb garden.

As you know, I am entirely new to this domesticity thing. I’m surprised the seeds even sprouted. I just realized I have no idea what they’re supposed to look like, how long I’m supposed to let them keep growing, or what I’m supposed to cook them in. Right now I just have this thing full of dirt and grass on my kitchen windowsill.

But it’s nice to know that at 28, I can still pick something up and learn my way around and through it week after week. I’m learning that it’s crucial to start fresh and pick up something new every few years, if only to give me an excuse to be patient with myself, and allow me some room to fuck up at something and not feel bad about it.

It takes a lot of reminding myself, but I know that this is applicable to motherhood too. My life as a mom is taking shape every day and should never stop. I will never be perfect at it, but I will get better every day. If, at the end of the day I realize that I was kind of a shitty parent in the afternoon and didn’t have much patience and was super tired, it doesn’t mean I’ll have the same shitty afternoon tomorrow. For the most part, I remember all that and have learned to be more forgiving of myself.

It just makes it extra frustrating when I can’t get through barriers on stuff I’ve been working on for most of my life. I don’t just have writer’s block — I have a debilitating fear of doing what I need to do in order to get my writing career in the direction I want. I do so much handwringing over this area of my life because I feel like I’ll never get to where I want to be.

I can forgive fuck-ups in gardening, I can forgive fuck-ups in my most important work as a mom, but intentionally writing something important to me and kind of shitty is just too much for me. Lately it seems I’d rather not write anything at all.

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Block Talk.

by theresa on April 4, 2011

When I dropped out of the MFA late last year, I decided I needed an immediate break — not necessarily from writing, but from thinking about writing, from planning writing, from waking up at 3:30AM to force time out of my day to write. I needed to rest and I wanted to live like a normal person. I had hopes that I’d return to a regular writing routine, finding time here and there and then being perfectly satisfied with what I wrote, but obviously that didn’t happen (and the latter part will probably never happen). Instead, it turned into a break from writing itself. A very extended one.

I wrote in my diary recently that I needed to “reevaluate my goals,” but let’s just cut the bullshit here. Being in the MFA uncovered some serious hack tendencies. I spent about six months putting my full ass into a half-assed work. Point blank, I just didn’t like what I was writing. But I also hated everything about my process, and I hated the way I thought about writing to the point where I kind of started to hate writing itself. And over the past two or three years (basically since I’d graduated college and started working in the real world) I became more obsessed with calling myself a Writer with a capital W than the actual writing itself.

But now that I’m not writing, I hate it even more.

I’m blocked. I write a little here and there, and I can’t really say that I ever have an easy time with words, but I know that I’m particularly blocked because I don’t feel creative and arty — at least, not about writing lately. I don’t feel the fire in my belly. I haven’t had a project I felt really passionate about in a while. In fact, I can really only remember the pressure I’ve put on myself to get something long and serious and writerly finished.

I spent the past few years wedged between so many different writing goals that it was difficult for me to really succeed in any one of them. Some were good, but some didn’t really matter, and I realized that some of those goals I really didn’t want. File “I want to publish a book by age 30” under things that don’t really matter. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I really want my MFA, but my gut is hinting that that doesn’t really matter either. The good thing is that I did get a little taste of each last year and was able to weed out the good goals (the things I really wanted to do) from the bad (everything else).

So I guess my aim for April is to start small. And practical. I did a couple of freelance assignments last year, and not only did they rake in some extra cash, but I also found myself working really well within those short-term parameters. So I suppose it’s time I get some ideas going and put my big girl panties on. I won’t say much else, but I did want to explain where this April goal business was coming from.

Also, I’m taking some reading recommendations. Give me some ideas for my Kindle Wishlist in the comments… please??

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MFA: A Eulogy.

by theresa on January 25, 2011

7/365: diary.

It’s been a few months, and I think there’s just a little bit I still need to get out of my system.

The idea of realistically pursuing an MFA had only been a part of my life for less than a year, but even so, I’m struggling to redefine myself out of its context.

I don’t think I’m regretful about my decision to drop out. I didn’t have any issues academically, and my mentor was usually pleased with my work (although she also had useful criticism), but I was buckling under the workload. The financial pressure was too much to manage, and the practicality of such a degree wasn’t promising. And, you know, it just didn’t feel like the right fit for me. I didn’t like writing fiction. I’m not sure that I ever did. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to say about my commitment to literary writing, but there it is: the cold and ugly truth.

It’s liberating to be outside of the world of academic goals, but it’s also scary and impossible to navigate. I’ve spent a long time feeling guilty and unaccomplished for not having a dazzling portfolio, and going into the MFA program was a brief respite — getting to tell people I was “working on something” gave me shelter, even though I didn’t really enjoy the writing I was doing. I’m realizing that this is what goals usually feel like for me. Not a list of things to strive for, but a list of things I feel bad for not having done yet.

Maybe I rushed the MFA dream. Maybe I wasn’t really ready to pursue it. I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s no longer a dream, and I’m not really sure what it is or should be anymore. To have a happy family, yes, but what about me? What is my dream for myself?

–

I wanted to say that dreams are how we hang onto who we are, how we keep from losing ourselves, but the more that I think about it, the less I believe it’s true. At least, that’s not what I’m trying to say here.

I don’t really know who I am outside of writing, but I’m not interested in figuring out who that person is. Writing is all I know how to do. I’m not sure how to make any other contribution to the world except for my baby and this. And it just doesn’t feel good when I’m not working on a writing project I’m in love with.

I’m just tired of having it mean nothing without external validation — degrees and publishing credits and all that shit. I’m tired of that being all I have to look forward to and having it invalidate the joy of just doing it. I’m tired of feeling guilty when my blog is the only thing I get to do over a period of time. I just want to make something tangible, fall in love with it again, do it because I’m making something I am proud of.

Maybe it’s really really time for me to do a zine.

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