The Writing Life

                        “Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” – Annie Dillard

            As I sit here in the Rockhurst Library slogging through one of two annotated bibliographies I have due in the next few days, I am asking myself (and my friend and fellow English major Andy Boland, who has the privilege of being in over half my classes and therefore my partner in late night writing and complaining) why did I think it was a good idea to major in English?

            Andy and I determined that it is because we want to be writers who wear bathrobes and have boxes of Chinese takeout and stacks of scattered over our one room apartments, which contain nothing more valuable than our typewriters.  (As I finished typing that sentence, I got another text from Andy saying “don’t forget the indie music playing while we wear our converses”—duly noted.)  I don’t think either of us really plan on going down that path, we are thinking more along the lines of editing (me) and teaching (him), but nights like these do make us look at our lives and ask why in the world we are doing what we do. 

            And even though it is 11:44 and I have about 7 more sources to skim and cite before I can hit the sack, I find that I do have some answers:

It was a good idea to major in English because…

I now own a complete anthology of the works of Shakespeare. 

I have earned the right to say “that’s soooo postmodern.”

I got this sweet Rockhurst blogging job.

I’ve gotten strangely good at IDing what movies are based on books. 

Thanks to my attendance at every Rockhurst Poetry Jam, I could probably recite “Kublai Kahn” from memory because Dr. Kovich reads it every time.

I am one of the few and the proud who is trying to preserve the Oxford Comma. 

I get to do an independent study on Chuck Palahniuk that essentially involves hanging out in Dr. Arthur’s office discussing countercultural fiction. 

I get endless joke mileage out of telling people that one of my jobs is to blog about toilets and small office rental (don’t worry, not this one).

I can confirm from attendance at the English Club Tea Party that Dr. Miller does in fact have a mummified bird in her living room. 

I know entirely too much about the best literary research databases (Literature Resource Center, people, it’ll make your life so much easier). 

I get to read all the time.

Reading The Wasteland rocked my world (“the awful daring of a moment’s surrender/which an age of prudence can never retract/by this, and this only, we have existed”).

I know that no matter what I do, or how much money I make, I will probably really enjoy it.  Or at the very least I got to dedicate four years to becoming well read.

This post is titled “The Writing Life” because that is the title of one of Annie Dillard’s books—my favorite author and the person I am currently researching for a critical analysis paper.  It might not be the most glamorous life, and right now I’d be content to just shut all my books and go to bed, but I picked it, and I know why I picked it.  And I think Andy would agree with me in saying I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

This is on the cover of The Writing Life...I had a moment of Art History pride in Barnes &Noble when I was able to say it is Albert Pinkham Ryder's Midnight Marine (he was famous for putting random junk on his canvas before Jackson Pollock)