Life Rambles Part 1 -- long.

Although things have been a bit hectic around here, I've had some time to sort of process my life and where it has led me, and where I think I want it to go. So, fair warning. That's what this post is about, and if that bores you, click a sidebar link. My life has always been a bit bizarre, which is what makes it also sort of interesting. I was in a band for ten years as a kid. I was a single mom at 19 years old. I was raised in a cult. The list goes on and on. But part of the problem with an abnormal life is that there aren't any real role models for success. And yeah, yeah, you have to be the change you want to see in the world, but it makes it easier if you can see somebody doing the things you want to do. When I found out I was pregnant, I was only a few months past 19 years old. When I gave birth, I turned 20 two weeks later. I decided when I found out I was pregnant, that I would keep the child--it was crystal clear to me. I also decided two other things. First, that he would never suffer for things like education or experiences because his mom was young and poor, when it wasn't his choice nor his fault. And second, that I wasn't going to give up on what I wanted out of life to be a successful parent.

I'm not knocking stay at home moms or parents who give up stuff to be with their kids. I'm not saying you've made a bad choice. I'm just saying that at 19 years old, especially with all those models of teen moms around me, it wasn't a choice for me; because for us back in Podunk, Kentucky, that sort of thing leads to welfare and live-in paycheck boyfriends, no education past high school, an extra kid or two, and bad teeth. Seriously. Nobody else did it any differently than that. And the one girl whom it looked like was going to break the mold ended up in prison for prescription pill fraud just a few years later. Her sister got pregnant at nearly the same age she was when she first got pregnant, and I'll be damned if the sister didn't end up going to jail for the same reason, too. I'm the only one of my graduating teen pregnancy class, if you will, who went back to college after dropping out once (a few of them made it to college, but didn't last), graduated college, went to graduate school (a major first), is not in jail, does not have outstanding warrants, does not have yet another kid, and has a successful job. With insurance. And all her teeth. I'm a fucking role model. You're laughing, but it's true. There was this other girl who got pregnant almost exactly when I did, and she got through school too. But her parents paid her way, and they had a lot of money. I did it myself. She's fat now, anyway. :p

It sucks always having to be the pioneer. And that's how I felt a lot of the time, like the one cutting through the brush for other people. I've sort of "grown into" myself and the way I approach things, but it took a while. It took a while because I didn't have a lot of external validation. There weren't many single moms in college with me, for example, or at least single moms like me. I know they were there, but they were never around, or maybe I was just working too hard at a full time job to notice. Or they were older women whose kids were in school and who decided to go back when they were 35 or 40 years old. I was twenty or twenty-one. I had a toddler. And I didn't fit in with other twenty year olds; our world experiences were just too different. And so even now after all this time, I still struggle with being a good mom and pushing forward to my own version of success. It's fucking hard. It's hard in part because I want so much. I've never really been good at narrowing down what makes me happy. "I want to be a nurse," or something like that never worked for me.

I knew I wanted a life based on doing, but also on thinking and creating. The world I inhabit now is full of artists and activists and academics, but rarely do you see one who fits the bill of all three. Or at least one who is more than myopic about the scope of his/her work. And none of that usually squares with being a mom. It has always been the pull of the domestic world against the lure and need for the external world. It's very hard to do both. At least it was and still is hard for me. I was damned determined to be both a nonprofit worker and a graduate student on top of being a Mom. So, while other GTAs were out getting shitfaced, I was cooking supper and doing homework and running laundry and grading until midnight. Every single night. All my free time was spent with reading and writing my essays, and it really used to piss me off when people would bellyache about not having enough time to get something done. What the hell were you doing all week?? I just didn't want to give up what I wanted, and I still think that's not a healthy thing to do. My life has been about finding that balance between what makes me happy and what it takes to raise a son and hold a family together. Because the two things don't always go together naturally for me. Most especially, I didn't want to ever just be somebody's mother, no matter how much I love Dante. I need my own sense of identity, and when you're a young single mom, it's too easy to get trapped in the identity of "single mom". I knew at 19 years old when I had him, that I never wanted to lose touch with the outside world, the world of doing things.

When I got to academia and activism, that kind of singular pull manifested itself again. You can come into the Masters program, but you have to choose: creative writing or academic writing. You can sort of do both, but nobody takes it seriously, because you're supposed to specialize. I understand the value in that, but it never seemed like enough for me. You're also not encouraged to do different work on the outside (unless it's a project through the university) once you're in academia, and I understand why, because the conferences and the research and the requirements of the field are difficult and time consuming. I didn't listen, of course, and I actually ended up being rewarded for not listening. But at the time, nobody else was doing what I was doing. Now, they tell the incoming people about what I did. Which is a good feeling, especially when the new people drop in for my opinion on things, because they think it matters. But I'd like to know what somebody else did every once in a while, because it would make me feel less perilous about striking out on my own. When I took my current position, which I beat out a bunch of PhDs for, I quit my nonprofit job because of the time requirements; but I can't keep activism out of education, because to me, teaching is activism. Teaching people that good writing is more about a process than a product is no different than teaching people that democracy is a process, not a destination. I also ended up being a faculty advisor for a student group, and I've had to bite my tongue not to encourage/take on another one. I've been told specifically to "teach vanilla", and I just can't do it. I'm so bored otherwise.

But I guess where I'm finding myself is at a junction in the road, which is almost silly considering just how recently I took a fork in that same road. I love my job, I really do, and I'm reasonably sure I'm going to get to keep it. I probably won't be at it forever, though, and people are hinting that I should set myself up to stay in academia, which is tough to do with little more than a Masters degree, unless you just want to be a paid-per-course instructor with a crapload of classes for half the pay. You don't even get to sit in on the faculty meetings then--they don't apply to you anyway (which sucks and needs to change, but I don't have the time to work on that one). You're contract labor. I don't want to go back and get a PhD. I love the comp/rhet field, so I could probably stick it out. But I'm just not interested in more schooling; it's more that the PhD would give me a little extra punch to help me stick around. But I'm also getting more wrapped up in activism, in motivating people (students especially) to get involved, in bringing the university into the community and vice versa. I'm interested in tackling apathy, in creating opportunities for everyday democracy and activism that's based on what's going on locally rather than getting too wrapped up in national issues, and also in having a voice or an expression about those issues.

But then there's that short story collection sitting under my bed right now--twenty two of them, I think, over a year's worth of work in drafting and redrafting and a brief period of consulting with editors and mailing things out. I put it away for a while, because it needed to sit. Those stories represent one of the most important parts of my viewpoint--a different voice; not my teacher's voice or my activist's voice, but my artist's voice, which is just as important to me. Or my artist's eye in that partially finished collection of photographs I spent two or three years working on, thinking about, taping to my mirror and just looking at. I think I know what it's about now, and I need to get back to it. These things are important to me personally. But I know they could be important to other people, too, because when I gave my best friend (who, granted, could be really biased) three of my best short stories to read, she burst into tears and told me "This is what we've been waiting for. This is us, this is this place." Which was all I was trying to do, and god help me, I think she's right. It is us, and it is our place, and somebody needs to show it. Or the photo of mine we framed and gave to my inlaws, who mistook it for a regionally famous photographer's work at first, and the likes of which also sit framed in other galleries, looking like mine but from a different angle. I'm not bragging. I would do it whether anybody else wanted to see it or read it. But it feeds a part of me, and it's a way of interacting with people that I want to have, something to share, a new way of looking at things.

But where do you find the time to do all these things? That's where I find myself now. I have academic papers to write and conferences to go to. I'm not required to do it, but it's important to my career to do it. I'm spearheading a new project that's important to this university--the first of its kind. It needs to work. I've pushed my short story collection to the summer of '09, when theoretically I'm not supposed to be teaching and should have a couple of solid months to work uninterrupted. I'm not sure about the pictures. And I'm still a mom. I've spent way more time this year on homework and such than I have when Dante was even homeschooling and we were doing it all ourselves. I spend more time with him now than ever before, which is a good thing.

Somehow, all of these things need to exist in the same body and with the same level of importance and all at the same time. I'm not sure how to do that, and I don't know other people who are doing that. Sigh. But that seems to be where I'm headed, or where at least my mind wants me to go.

But right now, I have to go cook supper.

-- DV