Well, I have some updates: good and bad. Let’s get the bad out of the way: I didn’t get into the MFA program. I know, I know – I’m still shocked too. Despite my anxiety and self-worth issues, I really thought I was a shoe-in. But instead I was waitlisted (an outcome I hadn’t even thought to prepare for) and then, weeks later, rejected. I was, unsurprisingly, devastated. There went my dream of spending the next two years reintroducing myself to writing fiction, and talking about storytelling with other writers, and working on my passion, and at the same time getting classroom experience teaching at the college level…that dream is deferred, and maybe dried up like a raisin. We’ll see.
But the good news is that I wasn’t completely destroyed by the rejection, because in the meantime I had been on five interviews in one week, and had been so utterly exhausted by the process of following up and interviewing and second-interviewing, all while still tutoring and copy editing and working at David’s Bridal (and dealing with all that entailed), that I couldn’t really slow down enough to let the depression take me.
And by the time I knew I wasn’t getting in off the wait list I had a job offer – I would have had a couple, probably, but I’ll never know if I could have worked in real estate or been an office manager for a nonprofit because I took the first offer. Because it was a writing job, you guys. A full time writing job, with benefits, that paid better than anything else I’d looked at in the nine months since our move. Oh, and I really liked the guy I interviewed with, so I thought maybe the company culture would be a good fit for me.
Well, it’s been nearly a month since I started, and the company culture is most definitely a good fit: I go to yoga three times a week, make weird jokes via giphy on our staff writers (I’M A STAFF WRITER) Slack channel, and nitpick people’s grammar with others of my kind. Oh, and there’s already been a company-paid beer and bowling evening and I was only the worst bowler by about 100 points.
So that’s all the good stuff. There is also bad, namely the fact that the learning curve is incredibly steep and the workload is immense – I haven’t felt this brain-exhausted or desperately tired since I started teaching middle school – but I think I will adjust (I’d better or I’ll die) and I’ll take hard work and good coworkers (and yoga) over a toxic but ‘easy’ work environment any day.
So that’s my update for now; hopefully once I’m up to speed with this new job I’ll actually have some time and headspace to write more often, and I’ll definitely have more to say from here on out than just variations on the theme of ‘going nowhere.’
It’s the little things (like health insurance, a flexible schedule, and money to take your boo out for happy hour) that make life worthwhile.
It’s a hard pill to swallow when things don’t go as planned or how we hoped but as that door shuts, another opens. We can stand in the doorway and lose valuable time brooding over what wasn’t meant to be ( at this very moment) or we can walk through the door of opportunity and create what was meant to be. Either way, you may decide to put the words down on paper and fascinate your audience with your journey.
Thank you, Stina! I hope you’re right about the door of opportunity – right now I’m just trying to focus on what I do have and work on the things I do control, like carving out time for writing and appreciating my awesome husband, friends, and cat 🙂