Unsettled – Moving, and Deciding When Poetry is Worth the Pain
- At August 23, 2015
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 14
There’s a kind of energy that comes from not knowing where to go next. The discomfort of being, technically, emotionally, and physically “unsettled” can make you edgy, uncertain, but also forces you to reevaluate what’s important to you, where you’d like to go, what bothers you about your current situation and imagining what a better situation would look like.
As I may have mentioned in previous posts, we’re going through a move, in town, but still, a slow process. We’ve now sold the house, and are living in it for the next couple of months as renters as we shop the crazy real estate market for a house without too many downsides. Because what is really important? What are you willing to spend money for? Is it a garden, built-in bookshelves, seclusion, a quiet neighborhood, convenience, safety, a neighborhood where things are “happening?” Sometimes shopping for a house feels like a reflection of where we are in our lives right now. We don’t have kids, so we don’t need a sprawling home; Glenn works too hard and I’m not able to do as much gardening and landscaping as, say, an acre of land might require, and besides, land is so expensive! Where do we picture ourselves in five years, in ten? Will we still be here? Will Glenn want to keep this particular job at this particular company? Will we have friends in a different part of town, will we be as enamored with this or that neighborhood then? I know we’re moving because doctors have said I’m not going to recover stair-climbing ability – but what else do I need to worry about?
Another thing selling the home did was make me think about my student loans, those outstanding debts that seem like they will be outstanding forever. Student loans niggle at the back of my brain, reminding me I don’t make enough money, I don’t have a steady job anymore, remind me of the expenses that are part of being a poet that really, I can’t afford. I think about my dream of getting a (probably impractical) Phd someday. Where am I going with this whole poetry thing, anyway? I make some money freelance writing, editing, teaching, and other sort of piecemeal things, but from my books? I hardly make enough in a year to buy our groceries for a month. It’s discouraging. Then I think: maybe I should do something else, something steady, something that pays the bills. My health is pretty regularly not great, but I could do something from home, maybe go back to tech or marketing writing – a grind, not inspirational, but steady and monetarily rewarding.
Being an artist of any sort requires sacrifice, and it’s not always just your sacrifice – it’s your spouse, your kids, your friends and family that have to sacrifice the time and money you might otherwise have that’s devoted to that art. Is that sacrifice worth it? As a poet, I have to say, I don’t always know the answer. Rejections are many and payment is rare; poets, even when they win significant prizes, do not usually become rich and famous, or even gainfully employed. I am older than when I started, and not just in age, but in reduced expectations and increased cynicism. But there is a part of me that still loves reading and writing poetry for its own sake, and that part of me won’t give it up. It’s impractical, it’s often unrewarding, but it is something I’m passionate about and, just like visual art, makes me happy to be around.
Yesterday I went to a coffee shop to meet and talk shop with other writers, to take stock of what we were trying to accomplish, what we had accomplished. Then I came home and read poems I loved from my first time in college, in my twenties – Margaret Atwood, Louise Gluck, Rita Dove, Susan Musgrave. Times like this afternoon are very important to my sense of “what I’m doing with my life” – that even though where I live is impermanent, the state of my health impermanent (as well as, sadly, as I’ve seen lately, the state of my spouse’s health), and often writing is a lonely and discouraging venture – we are not alone in our pursuit of our art, we are not crazy for wanting to be published, read, recognized, and paid, and one of the most important things we can do as writers is encourage each other along a rather rocky path as our lives change and our paths veer wildly. Writing is something we take with us wherever we go, at any age and income, something we can hold onto, our way of interpreting and interacting with the world. Buying an MFA (one route to a writing community) may be expensive, but it is free to go and meet a friend and exchange manuscripts, talk about rejections and acceptances, or talk to a writer you admire and ask advice. As I try to find a house, define what I want going forward personally and professionally, I hold on to the fact that writing can make a difference in my life, in others’ lives, and that we can help each other out along the way.
Yvonne Highins Leach
I appreciate your introspection and your willingness to be so honest with us. What you shared about being a poet, and writing in general, is so true. Thank you!
Jeannine Gailey
Thanks, Yvonne! You know, I always want to be honest about the writing life, but not so much so that I am discouraging newer writers, you know? I remember when I was super optimistic and enthusiastic – it was a fun time – and never want to take that away from someone who’s still all gung-ho…
Jan Priddy
I have to say how refreshing it is to read this post. I went through much that same agonies of choice when I was in my 20s. I chose to have children and that dictated what I could do in addition to raising children. It is also the reason I became a writer—enameling on copper was dangerous, writing was safer.
But there are always hard choices. You have committed to being a poet. In twenty years or thirty or forty years, will you be content to look back on a life with more than a dozen books you are proud of or a job in technical writing and only two or three more?
I am content with where my life has gone because I made a choice and I accepted that it might lead somewhere unexpected. It has! I have another ten or twenty or thirty years to do something else, if that’s my choice. But yes, hard choices.
You will make your own choices. I wish they would be easier ones, but they will not. But you will choose and I believe you will not regret the direction you decide to turn. I think a lot of us have faith in you.
Jeannine Gailey
Thanks, Jan! I know – every twenty years or so, there seem to be these crossroads. I picked technical writing once, right after getting my Bachelor’s degree in science – and then I picked poetry, fifteen years later. So, you know, maybe I’m just pulled between these two lives – one practical and safe, the other less so, but maybe more rewarding?
Jan Priddy
Interesting that you say every 20 years or so. Now that I reflect on it, that’s pretty much how it has happened for me. Choosing art degree (3 of them), then ten years later children, then twenty after that teaching English which led me to writing, and now twenty-five years later I am at a choosing again.
Heidi Stahl
Like Jan, I appreciate your honesty, the sharing of your process. And I appreciate the dialogue in the comments. It’s helpful to see people wrestling with these choices, and also touching back down into the reading and writing that feeds you so fundamentally. Makes me realize that my worries are not unique, and I’m not “wrong” to be engaged in this particular struggle.
Lana Highfill
I consider myself a new writer and yours are the poems that I love now, and will remember, years from now, when school is a distant memory. So, for what it’s worth, I hope that you feel encouraged to keep writing, as I want nothing more than to keep reading.
Jeannine Gailey
Thanks Lana. That is encouraging!
Jeannine Gailey
Not wrong at all! I think all poets must struggle with this at least a little bit, right?
Eloise Ritter
Thank you for sharing your soul searching comments on your beautifully written blog. We all go through this process of re-evaluating the path we are on periodically…I know that I have. Sometimes I am lost as to what is next…so I stand still figuratively till My feelings are directive and not spinning.
I am thinking of you and praying for you to find the perfect home that will nourish your creativity in whatever direction it takes you.
Love you! Eloise
Sarah
I was moved by this post Jeannine. The sentence that was key for me is this one: ‘It’s impractical, it’s often unrewarding, but it is something I’m passionate about and, just like visual art, makes me happy to be around.” I’ve been writing poetry for several decades now- sometimes all out, more often in between the crises, adventures, distractions, suffering and enthusiasms that constitute a life. When I come to terms with the fact that I can’t control the world’s relationship to my art, I can only control my relationship to the creative process, then I find some peace. Of course, I have to revisit and relearn this basic wisdom every once in awhile, but when I was younger I grappled with it nearly every day, so I guess that’s progress!
Jeannine Gailey
Yes, Sarah. I think you’re right! It’s reassessment time again for me, I guess.
Jeannine Gailey
Thanks Eloise!
Noura
After organizing monlhty poetry readings for the past three years, I have been happy to find that there are plenty of good female poets to go around. On another note, my name often makes editors assume that I am a woman, so I get a lot of acceptance/rejection letters addressed to Ms. or Mrs. (admittedly, way more in the rejection category). Now, I can console myself that it might not have been a reflection of the quality of my writing…I was probably just getting shut out of the old boys network, along with some of you!