I was suddenly assaulted the other night by a now long-forgotten memory: there was a time in my life when I loved to write. Writing gave me not only a burst of joy, it gave me a sense of identity; I was a person who wrote, and wrote rather well, I was pleased to think. Others shuddered at the prospect of an essay, but no, not I — I was a writer. And, of course, having now taken an introductory course in graduate level Literacy studies I understand well that if one writes, in any way, be it grocery lists or lyric poetry, one is a WRITER, though that progressive stance has done little to allow me to attach the title to myself once more.

For, in the course of however many years it’s been since the writerly mantle slipped from my shoulders, I have enrolled in and attended a graduate program, which has fully convinced me that not only am I not a writer, but that I can barely write at all, and that which I do write is certainly not fit for the light of day, much less for the eyes of my committee. To attempt to write anything, now, is to struggle to proceed through a suffocating miasma of self-doubt and anxiety (I have been reading a good deal of Dickens recently — my mind is quite occupied by miasmas). Even now, I have a deep sense of fear that my sentences are, in fact, unreadable, and punctuated by far too many clauses (in fact, I know this to be true–so much so that I will stubbornly refuse to reread any of this before it is posted to the expanses of the semi-anonymous web).

And so and so, I must come to a point soon — though as I suppose I have no intention to have any readers I really must not do anything but exactly what I wish. Though the point — do I intend to take upon myself once again the honorific of WRITER? No, I have no such aspirations, nor allusions about my wounded ego’s ability to sustain the title. But, through daily exercise, I should like to make setting hand to keyboard easier, to impose certain environmental regulations upon the anxiety-miasma-producing polluters, as it were (yes, I am well aware of how strained that metaphor is — I shall continue nonetheless). Will my writing improve? I certainly hope not! But whatever state it is currently in, or to whatever state it may devolve, I intend for my writing to be leisure once more.

Adieu,

M