Of course

Life becomes a hell of a lot less stressful when I accept mediocrity.

What a waste of time, energy, potential happiness, to strive for anything more!

Aftermath.

The first lecture panel...it went OK. Of course there were typos--The Karamazov Brothers instead of The Brothers Karamazov, for example, which killed me. The first lecture was boring, the second emotional, the third just a tad too long, the fourth riddled with bad words, which no one told me were not OK. So still good that I dressed well for the all-eyes-on-me moments. I'm glad, though, that it's over, and nervous about the next one, as the expectations are now higher.

Silly me. I thought I was here to write!

First.

Today is the first of the Iowa City Public Library Lecture Series, which I'm in charge of orchestrating. Today's topic is Translating and Writing Across Languages. My boss told me that if anything goes wrong, all eyes will turn to me. Pressure, anyone?

It's stressful to have this job while I'm doing my MFA--babysitting and meeting with and editing the ramblings of 38 writers from all over the world--but a nice excuse not to write and a little respite from solitude. So for now I try and make the best of it, and hope that nothing goes wrong. And if it does, and all eyes turn to me, I'll at least be dressed for the occasion.

Passage.

I can't believe how much time I wasted--working office jobs, doing things I didn't want to do, being a masochist more generally--when I could have been ostensibly writing. Why all that suffering, really? To what end, for what purpose? Surely not money, as I made just enough to get by and keep doing the shit I was doing. I feel so behind, so at a loss, so threatened by the passage of time because I've wasted so much of it. I see these 22 and 23 year olds, straight out of college, doing MFAs alongside of me, and I think, fuck, they are so much smarter than I am. They went straight for what they wanted, while I went for character-building experiences in which I consistently placed myself in challenging and uncomfortable situations. I could've been sitting in a cozy, familiar room, writing. Why oh why oh why do I always take the more difficult road? What does character-building mean, anyway? It means I've suffered, seen the world, seen parts of myself that I frankly wish I'd never seen.

And yet I wouldn't take back a single experience. Not one, really. OK, maybe the last office job I had. Though it took that one to bring me here. It took severe disgust and fear of "this is it, forever and ever?" to make me apply to go back to school less than 6 months after graduating. So who the hell knows whether it's ever a waste or exactly as much time as it takes.

1.

I wonder, sometimes, about loneliness. Why it seems to sneak up. Why you can be having a wonderful time with yourself, and then suddenly feel very alone. I am glad to experience it, as I reminder that I need.

Paradox of Choice.

Writing is a series of decisions. What to include. What to leave out. Where to begin. Where to end. What to expand on. What to condense.

I hate decisions. This is why writing is difficult.

Revived.

Iowa City's where I've been since Thursday August 12th. I came here by plane, with two suitcases, a back pack, a purse, and a small carry-on rolly bag. I took a shuttle to my apartment, and on the way learned that while Iowa City and Cedar Rapids had experienced heavy flooding this summer, Des Moines "got it in the pants." I overtipped the driver (I know this because when I gave him ten dollars he said, "wow, geez, gosh, thanks!") and then I got out and he helped me carry my bags to the doorstep. I typed my code into the front door keypad, retrieved my key from my open mailbox, and unlocked the door to the most high-ceilinged light-filled hardwood-floored empty apartment that I've ever been able to call my own. I laid out my sleeping bag and went to Target on a bus. I bought a shower curtain and a pillow and a window fan. I got drunk that night on gin--too drunk--and woke up sweaty and hungover and nauseous and depressed. I continued to sweat and dry heave until a fellow first year nonfiction student drove me to Walmart in search of a window AC unit. They were sold out. We went to Lowe's. They, too, were sold out. He took over and called around until we found a place--K-Mart--that had four left. "Tell them to put it on layaway--we'll be there in 15 minutes!" We drove and it poured. I ran into the store, to the back, retrieved my AC unit and paid $250 for it. We waited for it to stop raining before unloading it from the backseat.

I came to Iowa, as I said, by plane, without a car. The plan was to have mine shipped here for fear that it wouldn't make the drive. "It'll take at least three days!" Said my dad. "What if you break down in between Ohio and Indiana? You'll be in deep shit." So we made a reservation for the car to be picked up, only, it never was. Apparently car transport companies can't guarantee that the car will ever be picked up. So it sat in my dad's driveway for a week until he called the shippers, yelled and canceled the order, then drove it here himself. But the previous Sunday, I decided to rent a car. My friend Jen drove me to the airport to pick it up. I spent the week triangulating between Walmart, Target, and various consignment shops in search of furniture. At Walmart I watched an infant fall from a shopping cart. I peered around the corner to see what happened, and his mother, who was scraping him off the ground, shot me a look that said "Don't tell anyone!" Later in the week I overhead an incoming freshman tell her mother that several girls on her floor spoke Spanish. "Wow, well, you might as well have moved to Spain!"

Last Monday I also began my research assistantship at a place called the International Writing Program. On my first day I was asked to read Arabic poetry and fiction written by high school students and check for errors. Third day it was translating English to French. I am not trained in translation. This week I'm writing a grant proposal. I've never written one. Did I say I knew how to do these things during my interview? I can't remember. Tuesday I went to a steak dinner at my neighbor and friend Amy's apartment, and it was intimate and warm and I felt happy.