I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure lately. Surprisingly, this time it hasn’t been coming from my mother. It’s been coming from me. Pressure to write more, read more, blog more. Pressure to tweet about interesting things, to know where I’m going in life, to write about something worthy of literature. Pressure, even, to find someone and fall in love; get married and say that I have someone. It’s both silly and serious.
In college, I realized there was a good way to write and a bad way. Genre, it seems, was the bad way. The only good way to write was the literary way. On one story, a professor commented that my main character needed to be older than five years old. At first I thought maybe he just thought the character needed to be older for the situation I’d created around her, but then I wondered if maybe he thought the story would be more “literary” if she were older. Especially since I was creating a fantasy world around her in the story. I was perturbed. If I wanted to write about a five year old, I would write about a five year old. I needed her to be young – to be vulnerable to imagination – in order for her to see the things she saw and to believe she really saw them. I came to resent the restrictions around what was considered good writing in college. I don’t want to be made to feel bad about what I decide to read or write about because it may seem lowly to certain groups in the literary world. Genre writers go through the same heaving process. While I will say that there are a lot of genre books out there that are really, truly bad in ever sense of the word, they’re not all horrible; just like there are plenty of literary-style novels out there that merely try to be literary and fail miserably. We should be taught to write what we care about, not to conform.
Before I went on my trip to New York, I was already failing. I was running out of things to blog about. That’s what it felt like, anyway. But then I wondered if maybe there was plenty to write about and I just wasn’t taking the time to dig deep enough to uncover the potential content. It feels like I’ve let my brain flatline since graduation. School used to provide so much thought and curiosity and theory and words. I’ve stopped having a student’s mind. Dangerous? It feels like it. I feel like I should be a student all the time, whether formally matriculating or not. I don’t want to let myself grow too comfortable with the status quo of life as I know it. I want to question and answer and theorize and learn.
In middle and high school, I was a wonderful reader. One summer after my freshman year of college, I read several books a week. I wish I would’ve kept up with how many books I read, because I’d be willing to be it was close to 50, maybe more. That was the last stretch of time I read that way. School became a priority, then I inherited a social life from my cousin. I’m not as lonely as I used to be, so I haven’t been turning to books as much to compensate. But I miss them; I miss falling in love with good characters and their stories. It seriously distresses me when I get out of the reading feeling, because it’s so not me. I’m the kind of person who always likes to have her nose stuck in a book, and I miss being that person. I haven’t seen her in such a long time, because the adult side of me has been busy growing up.
Then there’s love. Something I’ve never felt for a guy. Something I’m even somewhat scared of. The other day, my cousin, Abbey, asked me if I liked anyone. Then my Nana was talking about me getting married. Then my uncle pointed out I didn’t even have a boyfriend yet, how could we talk about me getting married? “Thanks for pointing that out,” I said. Sometimes I fear I romanticize and fantasize so much about The One and possible meeting scenarios that I’ll have thought of all of them, so of course they’ll never happen because the element of surprise will be lost. “That’s impossible,” Emily told me. “You can’t think of everything. You still have no idea how God is going to bring The Guy into your life. Don’t you think He’s a little more creative than you are?”
“Life is hard,” I said to Emily last night.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve learned that we are always our worst critic.”
Age old knowledge. I’ve learned this, too. I’ve found it both a blessing and a curse.
