April 1, 2012 – Following my Bliss or Teaching Again
In The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell says, “You have to follow your bliss.”
I’m lucky enough to be doing this.
“How are you subsisting?” a friend asks me.
The question brings me a surprising amount of guilt because
as Dr. Michael Wayne says, “We are programmed to think that we need to make a
living, and that we should make the most pragmatic choice in that regard.”
And I feel this sharply, it’s as if the fact that I’m not
currently earning an income is despicable. That somehow I have to apologize to everyone
who is working at a job they hate. That my meager savings (which is becoming
more and more meager) is an indicator of my value as a human being. Or that my writing
isn’t worthwhile enough to justify my current lifestyle. The trickling stream
of rejections from agents seems to emphasize this – even as I know it’s only
par for the writer’s course.
Silly me.
Writing is my bliss. This is what I’ve worked my whole life
to be able to do.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A writer,” I’d always said. My second choice was to be an
astronaut, but I knew I didn’t want to invest the time I’d need to improve my
less than perfect math skills. Right brain thinking has always been more my
forte than the left.
Yeah. To write. And now I’m feeling this is somehow wrong.
That the words I string along aren’t enough. Aren’t big enough. Aren’t good
enough. I’ve always struggled with the drive that says, “You must accomplish
Things.” Things. Things. Things. I’ve resisted our world’s emphasis on the
value of paper and metal. I hate it. But, even resisting, I know that money facilitates
things. I have plans. And as most plans do, these involve money. I’m counting
pennies, wondering just how far my dollars will stretch. I’m thinking maybe it’s
time to do something that brings in a little plata.
Yet, even with this thought in the forefront of my mind, when
Katrina passes my name on to two different English Class Seekers and they call
me, I freak out. I love my daily groove. I love the fact that I don’t have to
set an alarm in the morning, that I can afford the gentle easing into the day
with a workout followed by coffee and breakfast then settle down at my ironing
board desk to work at words in between snacks. This is all gonna get
interrupted if I have to make lesson plans, travel to a student’s home, work
around their work schedules and actually teach.
I realize anew the fortune-dense life I live when teaching
five hours a week nearly sets me into a stressed frenzy.
That question is what I try to communicate to my mom when I explain
my ridiculous aversion to this new work. I hear in her voice the latent
scolding and I understand the reason for it. I know I’m being absurd. My
greatest fear is that I’ll get too caught up in trying to gain money for the
future that I’ll lose out on this Now which I’ve worked so hard to have.
It’s a strange and contradictory life I live out in my head.
On Thursday when Rodney and I are out for a vegetarian lunch
and a quick walk to the ocean he says, “I’ve got a great idea for you!”
“What is it?” I ask.
“I was thinking that you should write yourself as a
character in your fiction.”
It’s a great thought. I toy with the idea while I pick the
corn out of my food. During the rest of our time together I ponder the main questions
that come to my mind. What parts of myself would I put into fiction? What would
my greatest flaws be? How would I react to situations? Would I make myself to
be greater, bigger than life, or more ordinary? Would I ruin my fictional life
the way I do so often with my characters? How would it look to blend truth in
fiction? Maybe that’s what all writing is anyways.
In real life, I take on the new students. I hate how happy
the cash makes me feel. How relieved I am to get paid. That I feel I have to
justify me to myself. Sometimes it’s just adjusting to the new that throws me.
I’m a creature of habit that loves adventure. I’m a human thing that craves
freedom over all else, but wants structure, my own structure. I’m a paradox of
needs and wants.
I’m rich in this life I’ve got going on.
And I do truly feel rich. “I didn’t feel poor,” Campbell
said, “I just felt that I didn’t have any money.” I feel that way too.
The two people I’m teaching both want to learn English in
order to make better lives for themselves and their families. This is
worthwhile. This is something I can do. It’s living outside my own mind and contributing
in a small way to another. Even if it’s in exchange for cash. 
Whether I'm teaching, reading, writing, living--there back behind it all, in the archives of my brain, I tuck
words into files and record experiences to use for later. And I write. I worry
sentences around. And I write. I doubt myself. And always, I write.
This is living.
This is life.
This is following my bliss. 
I can so relate to this! Not working right now and having a scolding, pragmatic oldest child voice in my head telling me that tinkering with perfume making is not a legitimate thing to do. Making money vs. freedom.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of writing yourself as a character. I was just reading about Stanley Kubrick writing himself as the Jack character in The Shining (no wonder Stephen King was so miffed about Stanley's interpretation of the story!)
Kip was telling me that his favorite Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky rewrote the main character in the original Solaris as himself, somewhat changing the story from how Stanislaw Lem had written it, to tell his own story.
So, my point is that you'd be following in good footsteps.