This is me. In ten days I will have finished all the requisite work to be deemed, by the University of Windsor, a master of English language and literature. Bravo, bravo, you might say…
What this really means, however, is that I emerge into the world unemployed after having spent two years with a steady job as either a teaching assistant or, in the latter year, a teacher myself, the lease on my apartment is nearly up, and all that wonderful money the fine people at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council were giving me to write long papers with small readerships stops. Daunting, certainly. I might also mention that two days ago, after a regular scheduled trip to the grocery store, my boyfriend of about a year and a half sat me down and broke up with me.
So, here I am. With a cat, some furniture, and about a million uncertainties. Where should I hang my hat now? What should I do with my days? Should I return, next year, for doctoral work? Where? How to pay for it all? I am faced with nothing short of a complete refiguring of my life.
And so I thought I would give myself at least one constant: a blog. If I can figure this year as a project, it might stop me from being completely overwhelmed by the fact that I’m nearly a living embodiment of Dylan’s rolling stone. And I didn’t get where I am by being bad at projects, after all. More than this, though, I am, in this moment, a curiosity to myself. I’ve always been able, until now, to look ahead and see where I was going to be in a year, two years. Now, I’m not sure what next month is going to look like.
I give myself, in all of my uncertainty, one guiding principle: to spend this year doing things out of either a sense of fun or of love. That means not doing anything I detest because I think it’s necessary or because I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t. This is an active pursuit of happiness. With that, I suppose I set out on something like an adventure.
