There's a Purpose, Not a Destiny

Grad School, Life, and The Art of Deciding

(MFA decision included!)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

To where it bent in the undergrowth . . .

~ Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

Few poems have been quoted as widely or as colloquially as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." For decades, it has been commonly admired as a rebellious sanction for the road "less traveled by," and is seen as a bold statement against following societal standards blindly. While the poem certainly holds a place for this optimistic view, it has always befuddled me (and several English teachers) that no one ever seems to remember anything before the final three lines. Readers are apt to quote the final stanza while ignoring Frost's prevalent tone of despair, his disappointment that he will never know what lies down that other road. (The title, after all, is not "The Road Less Taken," but "The Road Not Taken.")

Having been drowning in some major life decisions lately, I can relate strongly to Frost's agony. I was recently accepted at two graduate schools for my MFA (no fully-funded ones, sadly), and the past few weeks has consisted of many phone-calls, much hair-pulling, and much sleep deprivation as I weighed my financial and family needs carefully. In the end, I decided to attend Southern Connecticut State University's MFA program in the fall, going part-time my first year.* When I was applying for grad schools, SCSU just seemed like a safety-net option, but after speaking with past students and current professors I realized that it was a perfect fit for me right now: it seems to have that same close-knit, supportive environment that I've become so dependent upon at my undergrad school, and because it's only an hour away, the home-girl in me doesn't have to uproot her life alone. It wasn't an easy decision, though. By nature, I'm extremely risk-adverse -- which is good for keeping me out of trouble on the weekends, but it makes life decisions absolutely terrifying. No matter how much I analyze or map out each and every possibility, there's a paralyzing fear of the unknown, of the variables I can't predict or control.

Certainly, I'd say that my fear of life decisions is influenced in part by the prodigy-mania -- the cultural glorification of youth claiming that dreams must be achieved in the prime of our life, or they'll never be achieved at all. I gave up writing at 13, for almost a decade, because I foolishly thought if I didn't have my first novel written by 18 (Mary Shelley's age when she first drafted Frankenstein), I'd already failed. Yet I think there's been another, stronger factor in my fear of decisions: the vision of a single, perfect, right decision. As a Catholic, I've sometimes found that the concept of a vocation (God's personal call for your life, e.g., to the married or religious life) can invoke a sense of a destiny set in stone, some predetermined path that contains the highest achievable happiness for one's life. Of course, God doesn't expect perfection, I knew. We may stray from that path or wobble on it here and there, but if we only stay as close as possible to it, everything will fall neatly into place.

Unfortunately, from a young age I created my own obsessive, warped perception of what a vocation meant, and as a result developed a sense of guilt around the idea of not "getting it exactly right." I felt as though I'd be tampering with some perfect, divinely ordained system if I messed up along the way. As I've gotten older, I still struggle with a subconscious belief that if my life journey isn't clear-cut and well-planned, it means I haven't dedicated enough time or thought into it, or am wasting part of myself, or am letting others down.

This kind of thinking can be especially hard on writers (and artists), I think. In an ideal world, we'd write to our heart's content, publish a New York Times bestseller by age 30, have big-venue publishers begging us for a contract, and spend the rest our days churning out a couple books a year while balancing a professional career in the English field. Add an MFA degree in there and you've got what I've often thought my life "should" look like. But, for a field as competitive as ours, it's not reality. I may not publish anywhere beyond no- to low-paying magazines until I'm 60, and that may be a self-publish breakthrough at best. I may try a professional career like teaching and decide I hate it, even after working so hard for it. Life has interruptions, unexpected turns -- in short, it's goddamn messy.

I've matured a bit, thankfully, from my guilt-ridden days of vocational extremism. While I do think that God is active in our lives and has plans for us, I've realized that the idea of a concrete destiny is both absurd and harmful. I think it's easy for religious people (or even non-religious people, like Myers-Briggs fanatics or horoscope followers) to find solace in the concept of a predetermined path, to feel that the direction for our lives is not on our shoulders. I relate, but I disagree now. Though it may give us some comfort to think that it's not all "up to us," I don't believe God would give us the beautiful gift of free will and then impose such a fastidious life map on us.

We have a purpose, but not a destiny.

That may sound depressing and intimidating, but don't get me wrong: I honestly believe, with all my heart, that we each have a purpose, in the form of unique gifts that we are meant to pursue passionately and with generosity. How we pursue those gifts, however, is anyone's guess. It depends on where our interruptions and unexpected turns take us. Hell, I may figure out at age 35 that I can't stand writing and want to be a fencing champion instead (okay, bad example, but it could happen, hypothetically). It's easy to feel shame for those miscalculations, to view them as marks of failure. But those feelings all stem from the idea that success is measured by the smoothness of our journey, by its predictability, by how close we stay to one path.

Self, and Reader, I give you permission, right here and now: do not feel guilty for how messy your life looks, for how imperfect it is. You are not letting anyone down. If tangles, steps backward, and a little (little) debt is what eventually makes you realize that fencing is for you (ha), so be it.

It is this realization that gave me courage to accept enrollment at SCSU. There were so many factors to weigh, so many what-ifs, but I finally sat myself down and came to terms with the fact that mistakes won't kill me. I may love SCSU; I may not. I may want to stay; I may not be able to stay. That's the nice thing about not having a destiny: there's no reason I can't go back to that road not taken.

There will always be a million and one things you can do with your life. The only things you must do is to be good and happy.

Grace and peace to you.


*Writer's Note: Since the writing of this article, my plans at SCSU have changed; thanks to the generosity of the graduate program, I will now be attending SCSU full-time with a graduate assistantship in the Office of International Education.

Publication Alert: "Something"

Dear Reader,

No, the title is not a joke. "Something" is really the name of my newly published piece.

I was delighted to have this little flash fiction piece picked up by Cheat River Review, a lovely journal run by the MFA program at West Virginia University. You can view my piece here.

About the Work:

I consider this piece as proof of my conviction that intimate conversation fuels creativity. I was working on a series of experimental forms for a Writing Fiction class. After playing around with condensed prose, parables, and strategic conceits, I had only the flash fiction form left (also known as micro-fiction or a short-short), which essentially means an extremely short story. Having never written a story without all the usual elements of plot, I found myself suffering from severe writer's block with this assignment. At dinner with some college friends, I lamented to a buddy of mine about my futile attempts to start and start over this project, to which he perked up and replied, "I know who you should talk to."

Ken (name changed for privacy) is a mutual friend known among our school's music students for three things: his dry sense of humor, his insane sax skills, and his habit of having crazy things happen to him. When he told me one of his ridiculous experiences at dinner that night, the wheels in my head turned madly. As soon as I finished eating, I rushed to a computer lab and typed up an off-shoot of his story (taking creative license, of course) in about 45 minutes. For someone who usually takes half-a-day to write the first words of a story, that kind of inspired drive is refreshingly thrilling -- that excitement is what writers live for.

Moral of the tale: converse with others often. You have no idea what amazing stories they have to share.

In other news, I am happy to say that I wrote my first decent poem in months yesterday while recovering from a cold. It's been a slow process, but with more reading and hard work, my writing confidence is gradually coming back. Hurrah writing!

Grace and peace to you.

Publications and Goings-On

Dear Reader,

You are beautiful and kind for your patience as the old soul in me gets used to keeping up with this befuddlement called the Internet. As evidenced by my creation and consequent neglect of a Twitter account (God help me, I succumbed), maintaining a reliable presence on social media is a skill I have yet to master. (Seriously, how do I not bore you with random 140-character spats throughout the day?) However, I am determined, and hope that with more practice I can improve.

My recent absence on this blog, however, is not due to inactivity. On the contrary -- I am happy to inform you that my writing life has been rather busy in the past few weeks.

First, I have two exciting publication announcements. I was recently informed that a flash fiction piece of mine has been accepted for publication at a national journal. That should be out in April, so I will be sure to provide a more formal update when that appears.

Secondly, after a lovely Spring Break in sunny Southern California, I came home pleasantly surprised to find that one of my pending publications had now been sent to me in print. My short story, "Big Things," is now available in the current volume of The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, an international journal featuring the creative works of chapter members of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society. As far as undergraduate-level publications go, this is huge; my understanding is that I'm one out of only two or three students from my college who has ever been printed in STDR. I am deeply humbled, then, to have my little story (one of my best, I think) published by such a distinguished journal.

You can view the story via PDF online (page 116) here.

Third piece of news: two days ago I returned from my first Sigma Tau Delta International Convention, held this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I have to admit, I truly loved this trip -- all day, every day, the convention offered numerous student readings, round-table discussions, featured speakers, and all-around geekiness to satisfy any English-loving heart. I was elated to experience the intellectual stimulation I've been missing through some lovely presentations and discussion sessions (I got to witness the full meaning of "Janeite" at a round-table discussion of Jane Austen fan-fiction). My muse went crazy hearing some wildly talented peers at creative writing readings. And Bad Poetry Night? Well, overused sexual puns aside, at least I got to see the amusing side of the English language.

The Westfield State University chapter of Sigma Tau Delta
at the Sigma Tau Delta International Convention's Red & Black Gala Dinner

Additionally, I read my one of my own short stories at a student reading session on Thursday. I'll have you know, as a crowd-fearing introvert, I was terrified for this occasion. In the days leading up to the convention, I can't remember how many times I made family and friends listen to me rehearse, stumbling over piled adverbs and awkward conception jokes (why do I even put those in there if I can't stand to read them aloud??). However, karma was kind to me, and the overpopulated audience I had envisioned turned out to be an intimate group in a tiny corner room of the convention hall. I was relieved, preferring this setting not only for the smaller numbers but for how freely it allowed me to express myself. Literature was never meant for the stadium, folks -- as a written form, it is meant to be experienced closely, quietly, conversationally, never flaunting loudly in the stage-light (at least, that's how I feel about it). So the small group was a welcome venue, and in spite of slightly shaking knees, my reading went rather well.

What I enjoyed most about that reading, however, was the discussion afterwards, in which audience members were invited to pose questions to the writers. Speaking extemporaneously is not one of my strengths, but I was surprised to find that it came easily when asked about my writing. If you ever want to make an artist's day, ask her about her work -- and I mean, really ask. Dig deep beyond the general "What do you write?", and ask about her inspiration, her process, her philosophy. It's not so much a desire to brag (hey, I still think my story sucks) as it is an unbridled passion for one's field and its possibilities. A wise poet once told me that writing is conversation. However awkward I was, then, I was unexpectedly thrilled to further an appreciation for art by participating in such wonderful dialogue.

I am going to try to be stricter with myself in the coming weeks (i.e., not leaving blog-writing to the last minute) so that I can bore you at a more regular pace. ;) In the meantime, thank you to all who have followed me up to this point, and for all those who have supported me in my silly writing pursuits.

Grace and peace to you.