How to Be Miserable

Come home from a foreign country, have a fantastic couple of days, and then get really sick in the few weeks between health insurance terms. First your throat will start to hurt; then you'll be phlegmy, your eyes will get red, and you'll lose your voice. Your ears will start to hurt from blowing your nose so much, and then the pain in your ears will escalate until you're afraid you're suffering hearing damage. Complain as much as possible, but for the most part, just sit around the house like a lump until the unbearable pain starts to subside (the kind of pain that makes you fight against coughing, crying, or any other involuntary expense of energy). Sleep at irregular hours; who cares about jet lag when you're this sick? Try every ridiculous herbal remedy suggested, since you don't have access to any prescription medications or a doctor's diagnosis, and consume enough Ricola and frozen blueberries to keep your throat from staging an all-out revolution.

After a week or so, you'll think you're almost better, and you'll go out to a restaurant. It's your first time out of the house since coming home from the airport a week ago, so you try to act like a normal person. But you're still overcome by at least one wave of uncontrollable coughing.

And then write a blog post about it so everyone knows just how miserable you are.

(I really am trying to be positive, but it's somehow cathartic to admit just how bad the past week has been.)

Fiction Gets Personal

This summer, I found The Best American Short Stories 2000at the local library and started reading through it. I figured it could act as a guide to the market, and though I only ended up reading the first third of the book or so, it served that purpose well. The back of the book had an index of all the magazines it selects the stories from, which I looked up one-by-one online to see submission guidelines and to gauge the suitability of my own work (not that I actually have anything particularly publishable right now).

Needless to say, this week I was pleasantly surprised when I came across an Amherst professor's blog and saw a post entitled How To Make Use Of The Best American (insert title here) Anthology. The professor, Alexander Chee, writes about the method Annie Dillard recommended for making use of these anthologies, which bears remarkable similarity to what I was doing on my own this summer: "Annie taught out of Best American Essays in part, she told us, because it took the temperature of what was being published and who was publishing it." And I also read The Writing Lifethis summer, which Dillard was writing at the time that Chee was under her tutelage.

I only wish I'd been a student in that Wesleyan class; I absolutely love Dillard's writing. But if I don't take a class with Chee at Amherst, I may be kicking myself in a few years for missing that opportunity. The thing is that the last time I applied to Fiction I at Amherst, my pride was hurt when I didn't get in, and I haven't applied since (partly because it hasn't fit into my schedule, in my defense). At the time, I e-mailed the English department questioning the fact that there was only one section of Fiction I offered all year, which made it fairly competitive, and the e-mail ended up being forwarded to Chee and we had an intense discussion. I was deeply mortified when he took my comments the wrong way and chastised me like a child (because he felt that I'd been chastising him and the department's policies).

So what really hurt my pride was not the fact that I was rejected, but the way that exchange went. When I just went back to look at it, I realize how childish I was being, and that Chee's response was absolutely justified, but my freshman mind couldn't grasp that fully back in April of 2008. He did offer to comment on my writing sample, but I dropped the chain of communication by failing to respond to his last e-mail, and that was the end of that. So maybe I'll do the adult, responsible thing, tell him that I like reading his blog, Koreanish, and drop the baby grudge I've held against Amherst's Creative Writing department all this time. Maybe I'll also check out his novelfrom the Amherst library over interterm.

The truth is that my writing sample sucked, so I really can't complain.

Anyway, I'm satisfied that what I was doing this summer is exactly what my idol Annie Dillard recommended. And if you haven't read her essay "The Stunt Pilot" from The Writing Life (which The Best American Essays 1990 anthologizes) I highly recommend it.

2009 Year in Review

In less than one month we'll come to the end of our calendars and 2009 will fade away. So I'm looking back and reviewing the year, inspired by the first post on my favorite blog, Zen Habits.

I realized that 2009 has been the least stressful year of my life in 4 years or more, which is an accomplishment considering that last fall my nervous system was on the fritz due to extreme stress. In the spring, I took 3 theater classes and an English class, and 3 of the 4 were intro-level. Over the summer, I lived in an apartment instead of at home and acted in a show, and here in Italy I've had an academic breather as well. Granted, I've faced challenges and it hasn't all been easy, but at least I haven't been killing myself! Here are some of the things I've accomplished this year:

+ First semester of grades I'm actually proud of at Amherst. It's a tough school, and in previous semesters I had a harder time choosing the right classes and following through as a student, due to a multitude of personal stressors and poor work habits. But in Spring 2009, I knew I had to make a change, so I threw myself into classes I'm passionate about: Playwriting, Language of Movement, Materials of Theater, and Reading, Writing, and Teaching.

+ Acted in 3 shows: Vagina Monologues, Evita, and Strange Weather. Next year I'll take it a step further as a co-director of the Monologues, and hopefully act in an Amherst Theater department show.

+ Started learning a new language. I'm in an intensive Italian class and living with a host family, and while I'm far from fluent, I can at least hold a conversation. I was very intimidated at first, but spending 8 hours a week in class and not spending all my free time with Americans has paid off.

+ Traveled alone in France for 10 days. This would have freaked me out just a few months ago, but in Italy I've gained confidence and flexibility, and I was able to take the initiative for the trip. I saw one friend I knew from Amherst, but otherwise very few Americans, and I stayed with Couch Surfers and though I frequently lapsed into English, I did improve my French.

+ Made productive changes. I still waste time, but by tracking my computer usage on Rescue Time, reading productivity blogs and e-books, and cultivating an attitude of mindfulness, I've begun a process of change. I procrastinate less and feel better about myself, and I expect the changes to continue well past 2010.

+ Read 500 pages of Anna Karenin. This time I just need to finish it!

There are many other things I've done this year, and it's been populated with at least as many failures and disappointments as successes - but I'm focusing on the positive here! I have a lot of goals for the upcoming year. For now, though, I'm still in Italy, and I'm making the most of my last two weeks abroad!