Entry Ten: Post Grad
If you’ve read anything I’ve ever posted on this blog, you already know I’m a very sentimental person. As soon as a moment passes it’s shrouded in the shimmering haze of what was. Just the idea that something happened to me and it won’t happen that exact way again is enough to move me to tears. Simultaneously, I hate change. I prefer things to stay the same, even when the thing in question is actively making my life worse. I like when things are predictable; I like to know what’s coming next. For most of my life, I’ve valued comfort over anything else, even my own happiness. So you could imagine when I graduated from college, I was expecting to feel a lot of big things—sadness, nostalgia, the mourning of the bright-eyed girl who stepped into Little Building freshman year. But to my surprise, and everyone else's, few of those big feelings came. The biggest feeling I’ve been grappling with is the joy.
I’ve spent my entire life up to this point doing what other people wanted me to do. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to do it, as a teenager, I wanted to dance 6 days a week, 4 hours a day. I wanted to get straight A’s, and go to a good college, and get a good degree. It’s strange because I feel that if I were left completely to my own devices as a child, with no pressure from the adults in my life, I would have ended up in a very similar place. I wanted those things primarily because I was told to want them, but a part of me actually really did want them. I knew I could do hard things and come out on the other side better for it, and so I did.
That worked for a while. Pushing myself to my limit, giving all I had to my work and respective time commitments. But by the time I got to first-semester senior year, it was done working. I was exhausted and ready to live. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the tendency to look down on the person you once were and the mistakes you made. To be embarrassed, or even feel anger towards the version of you that knew less, but did what they could anyway. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I think you are the person you need to be at the exact moment you need to be them, to become who you are now. I was a high-strung bitch in high school and for most of college because that’s the only version of myself who could’ve endured those things and come out on the other side better. And now that I’ve done it, I can say I’m thankful for her, but even more thankful that I’ve shed that skin.
All that to say, I officially graduated from Emerson College last week! Hooray! For the first time in a while, I feel completely and totally proud of myself. There’s no doubting how hard I worked and how much I endured, there’s no discounting the hours of physical, emotional, and intellectual turmoil I pushed myself through. There were many times I picked myself up off my dorm floor in tears, sat at my desk, turned on my city traffic noise for sleep YouTube video, and handled it. And while I’m proud of myself for that, I’m even more joyful that I (hopefully) won’t ever have to do that again. I’m really happy to be free. I’m grateful to have no expectations placed on me (at least by myself), grateful that I can go where the wind takes me, and grateful that I can take advantage of any and all opportunities that come my way. I’m also grateful that if I choose, I can do absolutely nothing at all. This is my plan as of now. I’m living at home again, I’m job searching, I’m sleeping all day, and watching movies all night. I’ve started calling myself a full-time writer, because while I’m not getting paid for it, I still am writing full-time. Even when I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing. I’m watching and reading things that inspire me. I’m going on walks and looking up at the trees.
My first move as a full-time writer is: to stop writing. This sounds counterproductive, but I’ve spent the last year going and going, writing two theses, taking 6 classes, writing over breaks, submitting to journals, applying for jobs, my god! It’s exhausting, I’m exhausted. My brain is fried, and I want to give it a break for a little while. My intellect and my creativity are like a plot of land; I can’t reap if I don’t sow. In the frenzied rush that was my senior year, I had even less time than usual to plant the seeds, take care of my mind, let it wander and wane. And so, my first step to building a sustainable writing life is to take a little break. This doesn’t mean I won’t be writing at all. I have a few projects I want to work on, specifically non-fiction—I’ve had a few short essay ideas on things I’ve watched that I haven’t had the time to write in the last few months—it just means I won’t be forcing myself to write, specifically fiction. I know! This is the exact opposite of what every writing teacher tells you to do (cue the Faulkner quote about inspiration). The thing is, I don’t care, and I feel I know my brain and process better than anyone who’s not me. I’m open to being proven wrong; in fact, I’m expecting it. But please, let me make bad decisions while I’m still young enough to.
Instead of writing, I will be prioritizing reading, and I’m inviting you to join me! Introducing the Ariesx summer reading list, a list of books I plan to read and write about on the blog this summer. I selected them based on author craft and genre interests, and once I finish each book, I’ll write a short essay/review on my thoughts. There’s no set timeline, no specific day when each essay will come out. The goal is every 3-4 weeks, but who knows what will happen.
Ariesx Summer Reading List:
The White Hot - Quiara Alegría Hudes
A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James
Água Viva - Clarice Lispector
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
American Appetites - Joyce Carol Oates
If this list interests you in any way, I encourage you to read along with me, and as always, send me your thoughts. If not, you can just read what I think about them.
That’s all for now! Now that I’m free from academia, I’m hoping to post much more regularly on here. Less fiction, probably, more journal posts, poems, and essays. It’ Aries-x season, baby.
