Happy Halloween! A Rough Week, Election Sunday Scaries, When You Feel Like an Outsider (and How to Deal with Professional Setbacks)

Glenn and I at local pumpkin farm McMurtrey’s (with pumpkin and pumpkin sweater.)

Happy Halloween Week!

Yes, it’s almost Halloween, the day of the thinning of the veil between the natural and unnatural worlds, that celebration of ghosts, candy, and pumpkins. What I love about Halloween is the nature of the neighborliness of it, the sweetness of kids in costumes and handing out candy (without asking about your neighbor’s country of origin or voting record or anything else). Glenn loves Halloween and often decorates our house to a degree that I never really saw growing up.

It’s also almost November 5th, which seems much scarier this year than mere ghosts and goblins. Having already voted early (thanks, Washington State), we are watching the polls in other states in a definite state of anxiety.

Pumpkins!

A Rough Week

So, this was a tough week, beyond the election day anxieties. My MS symptoms ALL raised their ugly heads after an infusion last week that didn’t go well, and I also had a personal and professional setback that, well, knocked me back a bit. I had some days where I felt—despair. Chronic illness, professional setbacks, and wondering if your country is actually so fascist that they’re going to vote for a fascist a la Germany in the thirties (not to mention a racist, rapist, felon who’s also deeply stupid) can be a lot, even for the most resilient among us. And this week I didn’t feel resilient. I felt sick, I felt crippled (I’m disabled, but some days I don’t feel it as much), and I felt like a failure. I felt despair. I wondered if I needed to make some big changes, one of which would be to quit trying to be a writer, another of which would be moving countries, to Ireland or France (both of which have pretty good policies towards disabled people and both of which we have family ties in, but could both be as susceptible to fascism as we are?) I thought about applying to a PhD program in another country and not in English, Biology or Creative Writing (my previous three degrees). I am looking at starting over again in some really tough things. I have a lot of friends recently who have had worse crises than mine—terrible accidents, cancer, death of loved ones, and divorce. I wish I could do more. I am so emotionally exhausted I don’t even know how to support these friends; I know I’m not as energetic as normal right now, and I make allowances for that (some of that is the MS, I know). If you read this blog regularly you know I’m not a great faker in terms of pretending things are fine when they’re not. And right now, for several reasons, they’re not.

Me at the pumpkin farm

Feeling Like an Outsider and Dealing with Professional Setbacks

On top of the professional blow that left me reeling, this week I was reading my new copy of Poets & Writers and there was an article, written by a friend of mine, that quoted exclusively people I would also consider friends. Is it possible to feel like an insider AND an outsider at the exact same time? Or that, given the number of years you’ve been working in your field, that you should be doing…better than you are? I am surely not unique in this feeling, but I just felt it more acute than usual after reading this article.

One way of dealing with professional setbacks is to simply say that you’re better off without that press, or editor, or job, or agent, or whatever, and look to the next thing. I’ve never been laid off or fired from a job, but I sure do feel “fired” from the job of poet these days. I’m trying to get up the energy to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back into it, but I’m also thinking, maybe it’s time to stop? Maybe it’s a sign? I’ve struggled with this thought many times since I started writing as a kid. In fact, I did give up creative writing for at least a dozen years or more. Turning 51 last April, I did think to myself that wow, am I STILL trying to get published in X journal, or get any professional recognition at all in terms of grants, awards, prizes, good review venues? Am I still trying to find the right publisher, the one who really believes in my work? After all the years of volunteering and AWPs and writing and submitting and getting degrees and even teaching for four years in an MFA program? What am I doing? Why do I feel like I need a mentor more than I ever have at my age? I do not expect you, dear readers, to have the answers to these questions. Just know that I’m struggling. I am visiting pumpkin farms, and eating kettle corn, and watching horror comedies, trying to keep up morale. But sometimes it’s just…hard. It’s maybe harder than it seems.

On a Somewhat Brighter Note…

Thanks to everyone who signed up for my Zoom class on Sunday with Kelli Russell Agodon! Despite feeling a little under the weather, the “Thinning Veil” class went great (despite a thunderstorm threatening power and internet – but very spooky!) and was super fun! I’m glad I had something to look forward to during this difficult week.

I’ll leave you with a spooky-ish poem from Flare, Corona, first published by Seattle Review of Books, “This is the Darkest Timeline:”