Resolving for Resolutions

Around the end of the year, I often find myself pondering the state of my life. The people around me are summing up their accomplishments and failures of the year, and I just can't help doing the same. I don't just think about where this year has taken me, though. I think about where I was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, even five years ago, and I wonder whether my life is taking me in the right direction, or if there even is a right direction for me.

In particular, I find myself thinking about where I was at two years ago, because it seems that New Years two years ago was a time in my life where I mentally went through a tremendous change. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, my second New Years spent living away from home, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't love my life at the time. I was working a job that I adored, with people I genuinely enjoyed being around. I had the two greatest roommates in the world. After two years out of school I had just completed my first semester back at a local Junior College - only one class, but I felt like it was such a tremendous accomplishment at the time. Things really felt together for me…except for one major issue. I was broke.

My financial deficiency had been an ongoing theme while I was living in LA. Retail work wasn't cutting it. I was barely getting by paying my rent and bills on time. Mind you, I was also out playing with friends a little more than I should have. But I owed one of my roommates money. I owed my parents money. And I had credit card bills that I was ignoring. It was starting to weigh on my shoulders - being so broke for so long.

The ultimate anvil dropped onto me when my best friend came to visit me in LA for New Years that year. We had all of these activities and plans that we were super-excited about - all of which cost money. A day into her visit, I realized that I just couldn't afford to do all of the things we had planned for her visit. I felt like the biggest scum in the world when I finally broke down and told her that we needed to cut some things out. She had driven all the way down to LA from Sacramento to see me, and I couldn't even entertain her properly. She ended up paying for my meals out for the rest of her visit, and I felt like such a shit.

Her visit made me start to look at my life and see what was wrong there. Yes, I loved my job, but it wasn't going anywhere. Yes, I loved my roommates, my apartment, my life, but I was living beyond my means. Suddenly I began to rethink it all, and for the first time it occurred to me that maybe I needed to make some changes. Maybe I needed to leave that life behind me for the betterment of my future.

So I made a list of goals. Things I wanted to do to change my life in the next year. New Years Resolutions, so to speak, but these were a much bigger deal than losing weight and exercising more. I wanted to reshape the direction of my life. Even though I was calling them New Years Resolutions, I knew that while I could certainly make big changes in the next year, the long-term goal would take me much longer to reach.

I see the results of those goals all around me today.

I wanted to make school a greater priority in my life. In order to do so, I realized I needed to figure out a way to make that a financially viable option, which I realized meant leaving LA. I moved home to the Bay Area six months after setting those goals. My game plan upon moving home? Spend one year living with my parents, get a good job, save money, finish my transfer requirements, apply to colleges, and get myself out of there again, either with enough savings, scholarships, or financial aid to allow me to live away from home, go to school, and only work part time so that my school took a higher priority over anything else. School full time, work part time. That was the eventual long-term goal.

I fulfilled those goals exactly.

I spent one year living with my parents again. During that year, I did eventually end up with a good job. It was a painfully dull and unfulfilling job, but it was an adult job, a career for most people in that office, well paying, and finally an employment step up for me. I was out of retail. I was making enough money to live off of. It was a tremendous relief after those two years of financial trouble in LA, followed by 4-5 months of combined unemployment and a terrible transition job. I saved money, took care of some of my debts. I went back to school and planned out my 1 year at community college to finish what I needed in order to transfer to university. In November, I applied to four schools for transfer, and by April I learned that I had been accepted to three of those four schools.

I chose the University of California, Davis to attend. It fulfilled my emotional needs more than any other school that accepted me. It's far enough away that it allowed me to move out on my own and regain my independence. It's an area where I have friends and a support network, something that I was very much lacking during my year with my parents. It fulfilled my financial needs. Out of my three choices, Davis gave me the best financial aid plan - a free ride. They basically said that if I can get there and pay for my cost of living, they'd pay for my school and books. On top of that, they offered me a student loan package which allowed me to reduce my personal expenses a great deal. And they have a growing English department - not one of their strongest programs, but one that they are attempting to create a name in.

It seems almost too much to ask to go to the perfect school for me, AND get an incredible job, but somehow I've managed that. I realized just last night that my current job is even a step up from my last one. I may be making less money, and I may be only a part time employee, but it is still a proper, career-driven job - and unlike my last one, it might very well be fulfilling. It's interesting, and challenging, and important work. I feel lucky to be here.

My life is together, for the most part. No life is perfect, and mine definitely has it's issues - namely, my crazy roommate. But unlike the past two years as I was going through this major life transition, I don't feel like I need a massive, life-changing resolution this year. For the first time, I feel like I can focus on the little things: eat healthier, lose weight, save money, get good grades. My resolution this year isn't to make a huge life-altering change. I just want to maintain the good life that I've managed to find and keep things as good as they are right now.

It's the little things in life that count after all, right?

Writing for a Purpose or Writing for Entertainment?

This past quarter I took a class on 17th Century British Literature. We read a great deal of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Milton, up to Mary Shelley in 1818. Out of all the writers we studied however, my favorite was probably Samuel Johnson.

Let's start with the obvious reason why I enjoyed Johnson. He didn't write poetry. Or if he did, we didn't read it, which was an incredible weight off my shoulders after weeks of Pope. Johnson was witty, he was a critic, he understood the english language and writing in general in a way that I think few people did. One of his greatest works, Rasselas, was written in less than a week, and we're still reading it today. He wrote the first ever Dictionary of the English Language. That's impressive, in my opinion.

He also wrote a publication that he called the Rambler, with a number of essays (or rambles, as you might have it) on a variety of subjects. One such subject was on writing, and different forms of writing. In his essay on fiction, Johnson determines that fiction is worthless unless it carries a message or teaches a lesson. The only reason to read is to learn, and if you are not learning while reading than there is no point in it. A writer's main responsibility is to teach lessons to those who live their lives in frivolous ways.

This idea got me thinking. Why do we read today? For entertainment, mostly. I'll be the first one to admit that I read fiction because I like to dive into a good story and get lost in it. Sometimes I read for educational purposes. I feel a strong desire to further educate myself on the classics and will occasionally read one for fun. But mostly, I read to escape the real world, not to teach myself a lesson.

In furthering that idea, why do we write? Many writers will say that there's a burning inside of them. The story gets stuck in there and we absolutely have to get it out or it will make us crazy. So what does that mean? We write to tell a story. We write to entertain.

We read to entertain. We write to entertain. The main purpose of fiction is to tell a good story. What would Johnson think of the literary world we live in today? He would probably be disgusted by it. But you know what? I like it this way. I like to read for entertainment. I like to write for entertainment. There doesn't necessarily need to be a hidden meaning or a life-long lesson within the tale. I like the literary world as it is today. I may enjoy reading Johnson, but in his literary world I would not want to be a writer.

So You Want to be a Writer?

At the end of my first quarter as an English Major at UC Davis, I've found myself considering where I am as a writer, versus where I want to be in the future. What does it mean to be a writer? Why is it that I want this so badly, yet I can't seem to go anywhere with it?

I recall that I have been writing in some form or another for my entire life. In middle school I used to make up stories with friends. In early high school, I started telling my own stories, usually in some way related to my life, the things I wanted, and the past - things I had felt I lost and wanted to regain in some form or another. At the time it was a sentimental thing - personal, private and in no way something to share with anyone else. It was simply a way to exorcise those teenage demons that we are all cursed with.

Later in high school, I stopped storytelling in fictional form, and my desire to write instead settled into letters to my camp friends and counselors. I remember sitting and writing pages and pages of letters to these people, cataloging in some form or another all that was going on in my life at the time. Dozens of pages a month to a handful of people who probably learned a great deal more about what was going on in my mind than anyone really needed to know. But regardless of how it was released from my pen, it was writing.

I stopped writing letters in college, and started writing fanfiction. A story that didn't belong to me captured my mind and I couldn't get it out of my head. For 3 or 4 years it continued as I wrote literally hundreds of pages of fanfiction, before getting distracted by my life and my friends.

Since then, I've never quite gotten back to writing as I should.

I've often tried to find ways to kick start my writerly brain again. I've attempted to start a number of original works. I tried going back to fanfiction in a different fandom. I started a livejournal with the intent to actually use it as a blog, but somehow instead turned it into a silly way of cataloguing my life in an utterly non-writerly way. I took a creative writing class, and found myself doing the required assignments and nothing more.

Now I am officially an English major, working towards a degree with an emphasis in creative writing, and sometimes I find myself wondering why? I want it - I want it desperately, but I am completely out-of-tune with that side of my brain. I'm terrified to go into my degree program's creative writing classes for fear of using them as a tool to get a degree rather than a tool for my own personal growth and expansion. I want to make those classes mean something. And I am afraid that I won't be able to do it because I have already lost something that I may never regain.

I have approximately three and a half months before the spring quarter begins at Davis. I intend to take my first writing class towards my major at that time. Before I do so, I want to make an effort to regain my writerly roots. I have a goal to make some progress on my original fiction, and if that's not working for me, then I have this new blog. A serious blog. It is here for me to utilize as a tool to get myself to write again. I intend to update it weekly, with either a post such as this - a thought provoking look at a subject, or maybe even a writing exercise. Maybe a short story. Whatever feels right at that time.

I've named it the Literary Darkroom, as it is a studio for the writerly side of my brain. I find that darkrooms are places where I not only feel creative, but succeed in being artistically productive. After all, sometimes it isn't until I dip the print into the chemicals, right as the image is beginning to take shape, that I understand exactly what it is that I am looking for.