Caitlin: Must Rekindle Sense of Adventure...

The guy I've been seeing for 12-8 months (depending on how you look at it), is moving to NYC for grad school in two days (ironic, isn't it?). So I've been spending the last week or so licking my wounds and trying to be helpful, stay sober, and in some way or another, remain positive.

But I am very blue about it, and on top of just losing someone I really care about --- I am also having a personal crisis of my own. Like, what the fuck am I doing with my life? In the past I have set my sights on graduate school, or a lofty writing goal, some sense of adventure that seemed infallible, or the love of a man, but right now I don't have any of those things. I can list off all the things I do have, and I do feel really lucky for the family/friends/cats/housing/health that I have but at the same time, I still have that endless void inside that only gets covered, and never filled.

So I need advice! So should I just get another desk job? Should I reconsider graduate school once again? Should I travel? Should I teach English in some crazy part of the world?

My question is: If you suddenly lost your job and your relationship, but you had a somewhat hefty severance package and a totally empty plate, what would you do?

I will consider anything.

Mary: Sunday.

This morning I ran 13.2 miles through New York City for the Annual NYC Half-Marathon. This being my second half-marathon, I knew what to expect in length, time and points of extreme fatigue along the way, but my experience running today was like none I've ever had before.

We started in Central Park around 86th street. My dad and I drove into Manhattan from our home on Long Island at 5:30am because we knew after such a long run, the last thing we'd want to do is sit on public transportation for a 50-minute train ride home. On the way in, the rain was so thick and so strong we could hardly see through his windshield. Neither of us said much as lightning stuck overhead through the blotchy sunroof of the SUV. We were screwed if the rain didn't stop, even worse if there continued to lightning. But as we approached the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, the rain slowed to a drizzle and all the storm commotion came to a stop. The car went into a parking garage and we walked to the start line.

But first, back uppppppp.

On the first Sunday in May, my dad and I ran the Long Island Half-Marathon. It was my first half and his 7th. He turned 56 this week. Pretty impressive, old man! The previous year, he was recovering from prostate cancer surgery/treatment and obviously was not exercising at all. 2007 was the only year he missed his spring/summer marathon routine and I vowed to be his running partner once he was back on his feet. My first serious run was a 5k in September 2007, which I happily completed at 9am with a notorious hangover, then another in December. It was fast training, which did not work well with my first-year graduate school schedule, but I needed something to obsess about and running was a perfect object. As suspected, my dad dragged me through the last 3 miles of that May marathon and as tears streamed down my face, with only a mile or so to go, I knew I couldn't have finished alone. Tears of pain, frustration and regret, I should add - not tears of joy, happiness or accomplishment. I told myself I would never do a run like that again - and yet, a few months later, I found myself training on hills in the local park, preparing for the steep and difficult elevation of Central Park.

It's difficult to describe how exciting it was for us to finally be together, running through the park, at 7am on this Sunday morning. 70 degrees and 90% humidity was far from ideal. But coming out of Central Park on mile 7 and running through Times Square, on 7th Avenue, looking around at the barricaded streets lined with spectators - the emotion was something I've never felt before. My dad and I laughed and smiled and slapped high-five's with people standing close. Police officers gave us thumbs up, yelled to keep on running, told us we were doing great. I'm sure they were bored and exhausted of standing around since 7am, but they showed no signs of weariness. For whatever reason, running through Times Square, it felt like all of New York City was cheering us on to finish the race strong.

And we did - almost 10 minutes faster than the May marathon, despite the added heat, humidity and elevation. Andrew waited with a huge smile at the finish line, jumping and yelling my name with such pride. He came running over to give me a congratulatory hug, sweat and all, sticky with the Gatorade being handed out along the route. He held tight onto my hand while we walked around the after party, while my dad and I collected our free bags of apples and water bottles. He id not let go after we found our way to the 4/5 train back uptown.

When we got to the parking garage once again, I collapsed into the front seat of my dads car, trying desperately to stay awake while we sat in traffic on the ride home. Once again, the skies opened up and it began to rain. The wind increased and the roads turned to steamy mud-like pathways. In our car, we laughed at the irony of rain on the way in and rain on the way out but a perfectly clear run time. Once back in our home, my mom waited with the electricity flickering on and off as local telephone wire breakage caused a problem with the lines, my dad and I told stories of the various people we saw on the run. A man without a shirt had his butt crack hanging out the entire time. A woman was basically wearing a bra and panties in an effort to show off her Amazon-like figure. With perfect patience, my mom smiled and laughed and encouraged us to share what we had just completed. And after all the excitement, as the afternoon wound down, we went to the 5 o'clock mass, like usual, out to dinner with Andrew, like usual and got home in time to watch the end of the Yankee game.

I find it very difficult to communicate the importance of an experience like this, that involved so much dedication and preparation, but is all done and over with in a simple mornings time. Maybe because it's 1am and I've been up since 5am - what's that, 20 hours? I should rest up.

(The next one is September 21st, this time, in Philadelphia.)

Beth: Documenting A Womyn's Life

So by writing this blog I am procrastinating on a writing project that needs to be done really soon. But I need to take a break.

I am co-authoring a biography on a womyn named Jodi Tilton. She passed away, almost exactly a year ago. And she wasn't just anybody, she was one of my best friends both in life and organizing. So in a lot of way's I am chronicling a fallen comrade.


How do you document the life of someone who by HIStory's accord was nothing spectacular? She didn't cure cancer or event a bomb or start a war or something. She didn't slaughter anybody, although she often joked of filling a tote bag full of nails and screws and beating her boss with it.



By HERstory's measure she was nothing SHORT of spectacular. She lived a life full of sincerity and integrity. She was always excited about a friend's new endeavor-even the shitty band you were in-and there were so many shitty bands. She was the kind of person who sent post cards for fun; not the kind you buy but the kind she hand stamped herself. She was the kind of organizer who actually has her shit together and returns emails. She would get to an event at Long Island Freespace to set up, stay late to clean up. She would eat a huge piece of cake with me and complain about how the other vegan cake shop had bigger slices. She would jump into a bar alongside the LIRR for a quick shot.


There are other things I am having trouble documenting. She had a chronic illness. How do you write about how that impacted her life EVERY SINGLE DAY without victimizing her. Because she was no victim to ulcerative colitis. She was PISSED about it, and would let you know, but in so many ways, until the last months of her life she was in charge.

How do you chronicle the complicated love affairs. The really shitty ones that were disempowering and made her feel stupid? They shaped her too. How do you document the happier, fluid loves that still contained a dynamic I still might not understand?


How do I document a womyn's life? All the beauty? All the sadness? All the laughter? All the of the body's pleasures and failures? Are there any examples of people who got it right?



I am glad I came to San Francisco to be surrounded by this group of womyn for this week. A year ago I was sitting in a hospital room, holding my friend Jodi's hand as she lay in coma, praying that the legality of dying would just go through. I need to be surrounded by this group of womyn this week. Because documenting the life of a womyn isn't easy, let alone your friend.

Blyth: The Day I Met Angela

from 9.16.07

Yesterday I met a womyn named Angela. She was screaming on the street below our window as Kristina and I made some Hangover Potatoes. We glanced down like we often do, expecting to see a man piss on a wall or vomit on his already stained and worn shoes. There is a detox center on the corner of our street (coincidently run by St. Vincent de Paul, the organization I now work for) and things like that aren’t so uncommon. People lose their minds from time to time, detoxing off this drug or that, and sometimes things can get loud or volatile. But when we looked down today a womyn was slashing at hir wrists with a piece of dull metal.

Not knowing what to do we ran down the stairs. A womyn who worked at the detox center reached hir before I did, grabbed the womyn’s arms and slammed hir wrist against the wall forcing hir to drop the piece of discarded metal that she had been stabbing at hir wrists with. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to do. The womyn from the center was a professional, she knew what she was doing and I didn’t want to get in the way. I didn’t want to make things harder for hir. I asked hir how I could help and she asked me to call 911 but all I had was my cell phone and that wasn’t going to work. She looked at the womyn crouched in front of hir and she held hir arms firmly with concern, trying hir best to keep hir from clawing at hir own skin. She looked at hir and said, “Angela, shh shh shh, it’s ok. You’re going to be ok. You’re going to do this. We’re going to get you some help. Shh shh shh Angela”. I offered to find someone inside to call, but I could tell that wasn’t what she needed. So I sat down next to Angela, put my arm around hir back and held onto hir. The two of us sat there, listening to Angela wail about how she couldn’t do it any more, how she had tried so hard to get clean, and how he was coming for hir. He was coming for hir. He was coming for hir. She threw hir head onto my shoulder and hir hands flew up to try to scratch at hir face and quickly I pulled them down into hir lap, close to hir body, where they would be safe.

It had occurred to me that she might be dangerous, that she might try to hurt me. But as she sat screaming, arms tugging at my restraint, I realized the only persin she wanted to hurt was hirself. I was holding hir on my own now, hir face pressed into my chest, my hands wrapped around hir wrists spotted with blood as she cried. The other womyn took the opportunity to go inside and call the paramedics and I sat alone with Angela, huddled in a doorway. She returned with another womyn that I knew. Hir name is Michelle, I had met hir when I’d taken a tour of the facility on my first day of work. Michelle and the other womyn talked in calm ordinary voices, trying to convince Angela that she was safe and that she could do it. She could be ok. They said, “You know honey, maybe it needed to get this far, maybe this is it, you can do it. I know it’s hard, but you can do it”. Angela responded by calling them bitches, screeching at them to shut the fuck up, leave hir alone, all the while holding tighter to all of us.

I sat mute, not knowing the womyn in my arms, not knowing anything about what she was going through, not wanting to say anything inappropriate or insensitive. Meanwhile Angela ranted incoherently about getting out of prison, going back to hir mothers house and the father that had raped hir since she was a young girl, “He’s coming for me. He’s coming for me. How could she let him do those things to me? I tried to be a good little girl. I tried. I tried. I can’t do it no more. He’s coming for me.” We whispered that she was good, that she was going to be ok. Michelle assured hir that help was coming and we all waited.

The womyn I didn’t know wiped Angela’s tears away with a napkin and held the same napkin so she could blow hir nose. Tears filled my eyes and then quickly dissipated. I remembered all the people in my life that use/used drugs to bury deep painful truths. I remembered being a young girl and watching my mother detox in the corner of hir room, biting down on hir lip so hard that it bled. I remembered every persin that has tried to convince me that “junkies” weren’t people, that they didn’t feel or care. And I remembered all the womyn I know in my life that have been beaten, raped, assaulted. The womyn in my arms was just barely hanging on. She was in a place so raw and so humyn that it seemed impossible to do anything but love hir and hold hir.

Over time police started to show up. Two men with guns, then four, then six. Michelle reassured Angela that they were only there to help, that they weren’t going to hurt hir. For the most part they left us alone as we waited for the paramedics. They stood across the street, talking to one another, laughing about something that had happened earlier in the day, completely detached from what was happening right in front of them. Angela panicked at the sight of them and we did our best to console hir as she thrashed hir arms around. We were still holding hir, doing our best to pin hir arms down with our hands and knees when one of the officers came over to ask us if we wanted hir cuffed. “No!”. He walked away. The paramedics arrived and Michelle and I did our best to stand hir up so that she could walk over to the gurney. But as we lifted hir up, after having sat with hir for the past 20 minutes listening to turmoil spill out of hir, we were told by an old white man who had arrived in his own separate car to leave hir alone so that he could do his job. So we stepped away and a swarm of men laid hir down and strapped hir to a board. First hir feet, then hir wrists, then hir torso. As they wheeled hir towards the ambulance I waved to Michelle and the other womyn and turned around to go back into my house.

Shaken I walked up the stairs to the bathroom sink and washed small smears of Angela’s blood off my arms and chest. I washed my hands several times, knowing full well the risk of HIV and other diseases, feeling guilty for thinking hir blood might be contaminated. I had held hir, listened to pieces of hir story and then did my best to scrub hir off of me.

I moved on with my day, finally eating those potatoes, taking a nap, steaming some artichokes for dinner. I don’t know what happened to Angela, I never will. I hope she received the care she deserves, that someone took the time to try and understand what it might have felt like for hir to get strapped down to that board, or be driven so insane by memory that she would try to take hir own life, but I know that many do not receive even the most basic of care.

Cheryl: Links and Minx

I
enjoy
alternet,

but hate the "this can't be real" reality they have to report about this world.

memory (vag monologues style, my friends): Munich, Germany, August 2007. Bike lanes are adjacent to each sidewalk in the city, which is awesome. I also love that I see women riding to work on bikes while wearing skirts. For some reason, this screams "I will wear and do what I want!" to me. Another reclaiming of the short skirt.

memory: Hempstead, New York, April 2008. I am riding my bicycle, a piece from the 70s given to me by my grandpa (now retired - the bike not the grandpa), on my way down the street to Planned Parenthood, where I work and learn joyfully. Wearing one of my typical knee length skirts, feeling good on a semi-spring day. A guy yells at me "Girl, what's wrong with you, you can't bike in a skirt!" I don't remember if I yelled back at him or just kept going, but either way, I guess I won.

In Video: Family Meals

Caitlin: The Good Wife.

It's not cool to say you want to be a wife. But you know what else isn't cool? Loneliness, celibacy, and cat pee. Those things are all very sucky and all very likely for me if I don't settle into domesticity with a man someday. I don't mean like tomorrow, or even ten years from now, but some day I can totally see myself weeping into a large pan of lasagna, all postpartum and under-appreciated, hoping today is the day he finally brings me flowers "just because"...All the while thinking, "at least I'm not alone." Ugh, whatever, I really do think I will make a great mother and wife some day. Here are my reasons why:

1. All my ex boyfriends say so.
It's true. Upon breaking up, all of my exes said something along the lines of: "maybe we can get together later in life." And I don't think they were just being nice. No, I think they meant that I was just too wife-tastic to be part of their young, seed-spreading years. Go ahead boys, spread your seeds. I'd rather you get it out of your system now than when we are married.

2. I look like a wife.
Petite. Brunette. Perfect teeth. Hips like a peasant. I was made for both sexin' and birth'n and I ain't ashamed. Hell, I am proud of it. Older men love me because I have the face of a child and the body of a neighbor's wife. Covet on gentlemen, covet on.

3. I like food.
Not only am I college educated, but I can also cook! I enjoy baking, stir frying, kneading, and saucing. I like trying new things but I can also get down with old staples. I will cook late at night and also early in the morning. I am not terribly afraid of calories. I think Splenda is disgusting.

4. I don't need to be entertained.
I can entertain myself just fine. I read books, run errands, follow politics and popular television shows. I have my own friends. I partake in my own hobbies. I like to get drunk. And as a caveat to this, I can be brought anywhere. I don't need a chaperon.

5. I like to do it.
A lot.

6. I don't want a real job.
I want to be a freelance writer and nothing else. This means there is a very good chance I will be working from home. Working from home and cooking. Working from home and building forts for us to hang out in when you get back from your 9-5. Working from home and thinking about all the nastiness we should partake in, post lasagna.

7. I will be the Michelle to your Barack.
Even though I don't want a "job" per say, I will still be involved in many great things. I plan on living a life of both leisure and substance. I want to be involved in my community and be a beacon of female-awesomeness to the people around me. I am not sure what this means yet, but I am spending my 20s figuring it out.

8. I will live a long life.
Women in my family live to be very old. One of my grandmothers lived to be 94. My husband will most likely die first. And if he doesn't, I plan on being the haunting-type.

9. I have an impeccable sense of humor.
A truly funny woman is a real gem. When things get old and ugly, having someone around to laugh with you is essential. I don't consider myself very sarcastic though. I mean, except for this post.

10. One of my favorite movies is "Cool Hand Luke".

Sam: Emails from Sam.

hi friends! or others... ertt... i am moving to NH today to live with hippie dippie crunchy granola family that is taking me in while I work for BARACK OBAMA BEEEETCHES. so excited. think my heart might explode-those of you who know me know that things such as shoes, lolcats, stimulant tea, and fighting the good fight like a noble superhero (nobel prize winner) make my heart beat visibly and audibly out of me tell tale chest. i know. i know rambles. well i am going to write as much as a i can while i am there unless they dont have electricity or i am really being abducted into a cult. i think i'd be really good at culting, btw. not the occult though. i love you guys forever.oh yea and i fell in love, again, but am leaving him here. i love him, he is (redacted) you can find him on my myspace. and i love you, will read your everythings on the site soon enough and will respond, post, etcs. byes. please vote. he might not be the best thing, but he's certainly the best thing we've got right now.

by the way three good movies i just saw for the first time which are highly recommended by me:

iron man (favorite movie ever am thinking barack will have a very Iron Man-ish experience on this here trip to the mid east/central asia)

kiss kiss bang bang (american version with downey jr., who by the way will be playing sherlock holmes in sherlock holmes movie. maybe katie holmes will play winston or whatever that other guys name is)

ghostbusters. (doesnt brittawnee look like a young sigourney weaver?)

peace.

sam

Cheryl: Is Life Just Limbo?

I started college sheltered, opinionated, and judgmental. Thankfully, I met folks in the radical and progressive commuinity. So I'm still opinionated, god knows, and judgmental, of those who live in bubbles. But I became vocal and active about it. I let myself have enjoyable experience that I would have not permitted myself before. I talked to people I wouldn't have known how to talk to, about things I didn't even know were subjects before. Life became more complicated, but I felt I fit, and it was good.

Early in senior year I knew I was done. I knew how everything worked, and it wasn't invigorating anymore. When I ended the relationship I had been in since freshman year, the idea came to me by accident. Then I latched on to it and ended it hungrily. I planned my final semester carefully, with classes in yoga, poli sci, and sign language. I knew that I wouldn't want to do school again for a while, so I tried to learn about things I didn't know anything about. Since I seem to be prone to intimacy, I found a new love that is both comforting and challenging. Then graduation came, and I was ready, and I left.

Now I am at home, where I was made sheltered and often uninformed. Granted, this was my fault as much as it was the fault of my family. Despite my reservations when I first tried canvassing, I am a full-time canvasser, career-style, even. I've been trying to get my "feminist fix" from art, like Bitch, Cunt, and the L Word. I also start conversations with those around me, who don't seem to want to have these conversations. I'm getting by. But I wonder, how long will this last? 'Cause it feels like Limbo.

As in: "an intermediate place or state", and "not knowing the result or next stage of something and powerless to influence it."

When I was with my ex-boyfriend, most of the three years was spent urging him to change something. I hated his lack of planning, preparation and vague insistence that someday, somehow, we wouldn't be doing long distance anymore. I said I couldn't wait forever, and then the point came when I couldn't be with him anymore. Untangling his life from mine felt like a new kind of freedom. I should have felt guilty, but I didn't, for which I felt kind of guilty.

I didn't apply to any grad schools, or law schools (to be the next Sarah Weddington) although I am lusting over women's studies programs I could never afford. I don't even know if I want or need any more schooling, or if it is really necessary to make a difference. Since graduating, I feel vastly unqualified for all the awesome jobs I spend hours pouring through on idealist.org. Mostly I am glad that I have a work environment with a strong female boss, with advancement opportunites, at a place where I hear "social justice" and such phrases uttered in places outside my mine. But I don't know how long it is supposed to last, and I can't help feeling I'm in limbo again. I hate limbo. I like to know where I am going. Otherwise, where am I?

Blyth: From Solidarity To Sex

edited a wee bit from a blog i posted in june:

I'm hungry. But I'm hungry for all the wrong things. I want cheese and pizza and grease and fried. I want all the things that leave me feeling trapped and lonely. I want things that don't nourish me, that don't lift me up. So for now, I'm content sitting with the slightly hollow feeling in my belly. The same feeling I get when I'm holding onto something I should let go of. Holding on so tight that I can't move, can't do much of anything but lay in bed and search for distractions.

It's as if I'm being given everything I could want and it just doesn't fit. I'm living this strange fairy tale of a life. I have a tall, dark and handsome lover who sweeps me off my feet in hir white pickup truck. She whispers beautiful things to me in languages I can't understand, feeds me food I've never tasted, brings me bouquets of birds of paradise and red ginger, just because. Because I deserve it she says. But deserve sounds heavy, like I've been paying into it forever. Paying high. And all I get are some fucking flowers. Like she couldn't possibly understand how much I deserve and neither could I.

Since I've moved to San Francisco I've found myself talking about womyn in an entirely different way. I used to rant about solidarity, sexism, shame. I spoke mostly of the struggles womyn faced and how elated I was to be a part of a community fighting back. Now I talk about the dyke community. A world where I have found an unlikely sense of belonging. A bay area bubble that feels sooo good, if you're lucky enough to get let in.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how I got here. Not sure who snuck me in the back door. Perhaps it was Linda when she pulled me behind hir into the Lexington that night and kissed me in front of the jukebox. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps my desire paved the way. All I know is I'm here. And I've met some of the most amazing womyn you could imagine. Craigslist "date" turned great friend. Quick drink turned weekly dinners. Sly look turned unprecedented sex. Secret attraction turned four months and counting.

Now I find myself talking about the handsome butch in the corner of the taqueria. What kind of sex I had the night before. The womyn my friends are dating. The actual amount of "scissoring" done in lesbian relationships. Whether or not it's ok for hir to pay for dinner every time. Where I may or may not fall on the femme spectrum that day. Etc, etc, etc. My life is a queer sex and the city. And what's worse is I don't feel like I'm losing anything. Well perhaps I do, but right now I'm so overwhelmed by the romance of it all that I don't really give a shit.

I seesaw between feeling embraced and rejected everyday. For the first time in a long time I feel as if I'm seen. All of a sudden I'm desirable, fun, creative, beautiful. I'm all of the things that felt lacking for so many years. For so long I was the activist, the organizer, the caretaker. People called me for help processing paperwork and their shit, but rarely for silly adventures or outlandish dates. I was practical not pretty. But now that I've reclaimed some of that, people (new sf people) seem shocked when I know how to start a propane bbq, troubleshoot car problems, lift something heavy, or help them wade threw emotional shit beyond my years. All jobs that would have immediately been assigned to me just one year prior.

I suppose we are all struggling to learn how to be all of ourselves at any given point. Meanwhile, I've never felt younger in my life. That is to say, I've never felt my age until just now. Once again I am searching for balance. Searching to remember who I am. Searching for the girl between batted eyelashes and oil changes, between tragedy and joy. Searching for what I want and what I deserve.

Caitlin: The Unemployed Professional.

I was laid off yesterday. I saw it coming. Truth be told, I was wishing it would come. My work situation was really awful: a long commute, strange hours, a boss who rarely knew what was going on, general dissatisfaction with all my tasks, the knowledge that I would never really be proud of what I was doing. For the past two months I have been looking for another job, and beyond some obviously not-so-productive interviews, I haven't had much luck. But I had to get out of there, a.s.ap.

I guess in taking all that time off to go to those interviews, to stay home when I was too hungover to get on the train, or when I just wanted to hangout with my boyfriend, I managed to get myself laid off. But here is the kicker: I got laid off with severance, and benefits. Enough severance that I don't have to worry about rent for a couple months. Enough severance that I actually sort of feel like I won at whatever game me and Mr. Boss Man were playing.

I suppose there really is no sadness in losing something you're not proud of and don't believe in. I never liked the company I worked for or what they did business-wise. I never saw myself growing with them, or cashing in my stock options. The money was my only incentive to stay, and as I found out yesterday at a meeting with a temp agency, I could make more just doing standard reception stuff --- which, as idle minded as it is, I sort of like.

I often find myself so caught up in other excitement: the books I am reading, the things I am writing, the politics of the world, the food I want to cook, the sex I want to have, that I can't pin down my passions as they pertain to "a job". And sometimes I wonder if I am a "handicapped" feminist, or just a lazy piece of shit.

Virginia Woolf wrote about this in her essay, "Professions for Women", and this morning, in a moment of nastolgia, I found a piece I wrote about Wolf's essay while I was basically unemployed and living in Brooklyn....and here it is for you*:

(*I haven't looked at this in two years. I cut out some stuff that was dreadful, and the rest could definitely use some work---but I was broke and depressed at the time, cut me some slack!)

Reflection on “Professions for Women” by Virginia Wolf

4/25/06

Lately I have felt gutless and without urge. My thoughts, though honest and light, have been based on nothing more than daily arousal by other people’s nice shoes and my own conflict dealing with my messy bedroom and desire to be outside all day. My moleskin hasn’t been properly creased with the heavy weight of my left elbow in weeks. I cannot say I have been too busy to write. I cannot say that I have been numb and cold to all raw emotion that the instinctual writer finds necessary to pour onto the page. I have more than anything else, just felt silenced.

In January I moved to a new place in Brooklyn, and I have now just really begun to settle. The urban culture and pace of life just consumed me for the first few months. I spent my time with a few different men, trying to be comfortable with the idea that I too, am a New York woman (which I later discovered I am anything but). I wanted to explore the city and learn to navigate the subway. I wanted to make new friends. And the last thing I thought about was scribbling it all down. It was all so new and I had hardly had a chance to reflect on any of it. Not only that, but I had no real emotion to prescribe to it. It was just happening, and I was doing more participating than observing. It was less of “a moveable feast” and more of a bacchanalian purge.

Upon reading “Professions for Women” by Virginia Woolf my eyes began to water and my heart began to race. She was right. So right about everything. In her description of the causal relationship between a female writer wanting to write but being distracted by her own demons, I found such an astute connection to the current events of my own life. I was at once comforted by the truth of her observation and then alarmed by the dated nature of her article. In my small two bedroom apartment that I share with a female roommate, am I really subject to the same kind of “Angel of the House” experiences? And if so, what am I doing wrong? I have to say, for all the joy “Professions for Women” brought me, it also carried with it a hefty load of guilt.

In “A Room of One’s Own” Woolf states that what a woman needs is not just her own place to write but the financial support to do so, so she has the time to stay home with her pens and paper. I have all of that, pretty much. I have time and space, and two dollars in my pocket to get coffee for energy, so why do I still feel so linguistically empty?

After much consideration I rationalized that what is distracting me from writing, more than anything else, is my age and my experience. As Woolf states in “Professions…”: “…a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity”. And how can that be possible for me, being a young twenty two year old woman living right outside of New York City? All of my friends are going to corporate parties, dating disingenuous but handsome people, shopping for overpriced clothing in obscure boutiques, and I am watching it all while at the same time trying to catch it on paper. Everything is happening so fast and there is no quiet fisher-girl in a rowboat, just a confused self-conscious Caitlin stuck in a pretentious and superficial expedition through white rapids, desperately trying to keep her pen steady and her paper dry. It is all very messy and it is all very disenchanting.

(...ed. this paragraph was boring and poorly written so I cut it).

In deciding that I am not perfect and but one dry spell does not a failed writer make, I realized something, something Woolf also acknowledged about herself: I am not a professional woman. I am not corporate. I know nothing of business and nothing of being a businesswoman in the business world. Bless those women, but I am not one of them. I am an apprentice to academia, and to writing. That is my profession, and it is a profession that can and must be treated differently. We can, as writers, buy Persian cats instead of suits. We can sit and drink a beer in the middle of the day, much like Hemingway did, and not give a damn about anything other than our own thoughts, our own experiences, and our own good punctuation. As Woolf said, there isn’t an easier profession than being paid to tell stories. So I began to look at my experiences as a new resident of the city not as a separate entity to my writing, but something attached; I can live this life, and feel conflicted about it, and still be able to write. I have some thoughts that will never change, though bustling businesses and rich city boys may try to make them. And upon realizing this, I was able to pick up my pen again and find the conscious unconscious and my security, not fear, of being (and even further becoming) a female writer.