It’s a new world

Dear blog,

I decided to give you a ridiculously long name full of a lot of “p” words.  Why “p” you may ask?  Well, it starts both “public” and “policy” which are the two words that make up the name of the discipline I will soon be studying.  Other good words that start with “p” that I did not use include: picnic, post, pillory, puntilious, pugilistic, and plucky.

As you may have guessed, the creation of this new name signals other changes.  First of all, I’m going to try and write in you.  I know that sounds dirty, but I think it will be a good thing.  Second, since I am no longer campaigning, I am not going to be writing about the Obama campaign anymore.  Instead, I will try to focus on the experience of being a graduate student.  I will also be cross-posting wonky policy stuff with a blog run by students at the program I will be attending (the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, known hereafter as GSPP).  I may also be entertaining a request from a dear friend to include a serial novel.  However, I make no promises on that front; that may be beyond my powers at this time.

Love,

Felicity

thought space

As I’ve started writing fiction again (not that I’ve had time in the last week) I’ve noticed that the shift from not-writing to writing isn’t really about having time to sit down at my computer.  Of course that is a prerequisite; no time to write means no writing.  But there have been plenty of periods in my life (top example: the entire month of August) when I had lots of time and couldn’t bring myself to write a word.

What I realized (consciously) in the last few days is that 80% of the time I write, I already know what I’m going to say (for instance, I wrote most of this post in my head yesterday morning on the trolley).  Not every word, not every sentence, not the beginning and the end of the scene, but something.  I have had a thought, a spark, and spent some time playing it out in my mind.  I do this primarily at night after I turn the light out, before I fall asleep, though also when I am walking somewhere, when I am cooking, when I am sitting on the trolley on the way to work – whenever my body is engaged in something that leaves my mind free to wander.  I need those thought spaces (for lack of a better phrase) to write.  (I have frequently had minor insomnia because some part of me never wants to go to sleep; lying down in the dark is my most creative time, because there are no distractions, and I don’t want to give that up by drifting off into oblivion.)

Of course I don’t always use those spaces for mental composition.  Often I am distracted by more immediate concerns; I think about work, what I am reading, grad school applications, my plans for the future, or recent events in my life.

Or, I don’t use my random thought space to write because I am thinking about a relationship.  For instance, last August.  Also, July.  I found myself, over the summer, engaged in an unexpectedly intense relationship, and whether because of its unexpectedness, its intensity, the fact that it was ending pretty much as soon as it was beginning (due to my imminent departure from San Francisco), or just because it was a relationship, I spent a lot of time thinking about it.  More time than I would have liked, for a lot of reasons.

Not the least of these reasons is that I couldn’t write while it was going on and for a while after it ended.  I’m sure part of that was a pure time issue; even though I had a lot of free days in July, I did not have many free nights, and night is often my best time for writing.  There’s also the issue I discussed before of finding the right voice for the story I am working on; trying to write in the third person made it harder for me to work.  But it is pretty clear to me now, from a slightly removed perspective, that the real issue was that when I lay down to sleep, or when I was walking to catch the bus, or when I was chopping vegetables by myself, I wasn’t thinking about my characters and their interactions.  I was thinking about myself and my interactions with the person I was dating (or had been dating, after we broke up).  I think this is pretty standard, for me; in previous relationships I have also thought a lot about the other person, and myself, and what was going on between us.  I think it’s pretty standard, in general.  Certainly I have talked to a lot of friends over the years who seemed a tad obsessive about their current relationship.  (I suspect it is hormonal.)

My question, now that I’ve put all this together, is: can I have relationships and be a writer too?  I suspect this kind of mental obsession with one’s object of affection fades after a while, reopening thought space for creative endeavors.  I admit I have not been in a relationship long enough to get to that point, so I haven’t tested the hypothesis.  I need to throw another kink in: I thrive on emotional intimacy, and when I don’t have it in real life I create it in stories or find it in books.  Throughout my life I’ve coped with failed real world relationships by finding emotional fulfillment in stories.  So I wonder, too, if my inability to write when in a relationship is a sign that I have less need for fictional intimacy.  In that sense, maybe it’s a good thing.  Maybe it’s better to live in the real world, to connect with real people outside of myself, rather than focusing inward, creating an illusion of life.

why is everyone in law school? or, reflections on my dual personality

Everyone I know is going to law school. This may sound like an exaggeration, but spend enough time with me, meeting my friends, and you will realize that it’s true. Of my close friends – the ones in the country anyway – 90% are in law school as of this week. My acquaintances have a slightly lower rate of law school attendance, but still clock in well above average. Visiting several of these friends in New York over the weekend, I began to wonder what the predominance of law school as a life choice says about my friends, and by extension, about me.

Note: I do not want to attend law school. Occasionally I consider it for very short periods of time before remembering that I would hate it, and also I do not want to be a lawyer.

So what is it? I think there are two main explanations.

First, I think law school has become a catch-all for my generation of do-gooders who don’t know exactly how they want to do good (all of my friends in law school want to do “public interest law” when they get out). In this sense, it’s not about me at all. This characterization is insufficient though, as it makes my friends sound like they just stumbled into law school because they didn’t know what else to do. Law school was a long-term goal for many of my friends, and they all have good solid reasons behind choosing it, even if most of them don’t have a specific type of law or career path in mind (who really does in their early twenties?).

Second, I think I am drawn to intelligent, high-achieving, and public-minded people: the kind of people who excel at law school and public interest law. I’m very lucky to know my friends, who I expect to do great things with their lives. We share, generally, interest in public policy and politics, drive, and sufficient practicality (or cynicism?) to think that change often comes from within the structure of power (which is why neither I nor many of my friends are off being anarchists or protesting in the streets).

I think both of these things are true, but even in combination they feel insufficient. Why have all of my friends, one after one, gone into law and not public policy or public health or journalism or non-profit management? Is it a matter of practicality? (a lawyer can usually get a job) Or do I just like very logical people? And why am I the odd one out?

This is probably unrelated, but I realized a few months ago that I am the only younger child among my friends. I know only children, and one or two middle children, but the vast majority of my friends are older siblings. I am technically a middle child, but by the time my little sisters were born sibling roles in my family had already been established, so I consider myself a younger child. Yet I am not close to any younger children. Not a single one. Again: coincidence?

What I am pushing towards, awkwardly and with many diversions, is a sense I have of straddling a line. I get along with very logical, high-achieving people, and in those relationships I can hold my own – reason out an argument, pull apart a fallacy – but I have no desire to base my career on that kind of thought. I am happier feeling out the tangled history of a character, or a culture. I am, in some ways, more typically like an older child than my brother: driven, responsible. But my brother is holding down a solid job, saving up money, owns a house, has a nice car, and I am running around being a mess and mooching off my relatives.

It is confusing, this act of figuring out who I am. It is still a work in progress. I know it’s not any easier for older siblings in law school. Still, I think my flashes of law school consideration are due to a desire to pick one side of the line. I want to be a practical, rational person on an outward-facing career path. Or, I want to be a writer. I don’t know how to be both. I don’t know if that’s possible; will these pieces of myself be integrated, or will I veer back and forth between them for the rest of my life, always feeling out of place?

(If it’s not obvious, I have a lot of time to think just now. Possibly too much time.)