Man, it’s been a crazy fall. Every year that season feels less… “autumnal,” in the peaceful, calming sense of coming down from the highs of summer. And now all of a sudden the “holiday season” is upon us. I’ve never had to force myself into a Christmas state of mind the way I have this year. But I am living in one of the most grim, cheerless areas I’ve ever been in (well, aside from Northern Ireland, maybe). Anyway, I’ve got colorful strings of lights all over my apartment, I’m drinking plenty of vanilla honey chai tea, and I’m listening to copious amounts of jazz. Anything to keep the spirits up, really.
Part of my inactivity here has been due to broader activity on Supraterranean.com. After all, I did redesign the site in September. Then I went on a two-week cross-country road trip in October. And from mid-October almost until Thanksgiving, my work situation was consistently hectic. Now it’s December, and I’m just focusing on winding down and avoiding frostbite.
I’m also going through some personal creative transitions. I think it’s natural for a writer (or any kind of artist) to always be evaluating oneself, and asking what can be improved in method, style, and purpose. The purpose aspect is the most pressing right now. For those of you who have traced my activity on this blog, you know the general timeline of my reading and thinking process. The biggest milestone this year was Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. The book felt like a climax for the journey into literature and philosophy that began for me around the fall of 2005. The premise of the book was that we live in a world defined at all levels by one concept: absurdity. Camus argued that, despite the lack of inherent meaning in life, one can develop meaning and purpose through an unending dedication to creative work. It seemed to take a step beyond the basic tenets of Existentialism, and at least in some ways, it felt like the answer I had been looking for.
Yet in reality it was only a theoretical “answer.” I knew from the moment I started writing four years ago that I was doing it for the sake of writing — because I would enjoy it regardless of what came out of it. It didn’t matter to me if people read it or if I was paid for it, so long as I felt fulfilled by the activity. However, I was still nursing the fantasy of one day becoming a published writer, even if one with only a modestly sized audience. In other words, I never wanted to be famous; I just wanted to be appreciated, and know that I affected someone’s life or made them think. Actually those two things — changing lives and inspiring thought — never changed. I still very much want to do that.
I won’t yet be able to accurately explain what has changed here. Part of it has to do with the way my blogging and web projects like Supraterranean had become a compulsive activity. I felt like I had to do them (for professional and/or personal reasons) — and anything you have to do soon becomes something you don’t want to do.
You may have also noticed that I haven’t posted much creative writing on Supraterranean.com this year. There are reasons for that as well. My life has undergone many changes in 2009. I was unemployed, then employed part-time, then in July I was boosted to full-time. I’ve lived in three different rentals, two in Ann Arbor and one in Ypsilanti. My girlfriend is about to move far away for vet school, at which time I’ll be caring for our two dogs by myself. And every month that goes by, I start to realize how absolutely different adult life is from what I had always imagined it to be. What I mean to say is, it sucks.
Okay, so maybe I overstated that. And of course that statement is tainted by the current state of things in Michigan. In fact, a lengthy essay about being a young adult in Michigan is what broke my drought of long-form writing. I just published the essay, entitled “Indecision Over Michigan,” on Supraterranean and Generation Y Michigan (a Michigan Radio site looking at why so many young adults leave Michigan).
The essay was over 11,000 words long — making it the longest thing I’ve ever written in that genre. It was so refreshing to think that I could have just kept pushing forward, and I might have eventually reached book length. I still don’t feel like I exhausted the topic, and I keep having further realizations as the days pass. For example, I didn’t mention in the essay that, while Ann Arbor consistently gets placed on lists of the best cities to live in the country, it might be one of the worst for young professionals. What I mean is, the population of people between the ages of 22 and 30 is minuscule. To be blunt, I feel really alone here. I feel like, for every month that passes, I have one less reason to stay in Michigan. After December there will be three: (1) my job, (2), my family (minus one of my brothers, who moved to L.A. in 2008, and who will be there at least until Michigan’s film industry can offer more work), and (3) northern Michigan.
It’s not just the economy, or having to drive everywhere, or the absence of recycling in my apartment complex. The whole state just feels really stifling right now, like the air itself is weighing down on me. Part of what I want to accomplish is to make people use their imagination, open their minds, and not let themselves become the walking dead zombie adults that most do turn into. But most people in Michigan would be content if they had a job, a place to sleep, and a TV to rot in front of.
That’s not enough for me (I don’t even have cable TV right now, by the way). I want to feed my craving for adventure and my sense of wonder. I think I’ll end on that note, and the only way to do that properly is to reference the most famous (and, sadly, the most overused) Jack Kerouac quote, from the book On The Road:
“…The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” (pp. 5-6).
* * * * *
What’s more interesting to me is that most people leave out the sentence before that: “They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank.”
I still feel like the inner adventure (into one’s own psyche) is the one to focus on, but we young adults are very set on action in the external realm (as I discuss in my essay).
Well, I was going to discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, and then mention how I intend to write shorter posts here (shorter, as in 500-800 words, instead of 1,000 to 1,400) to afford myself time to work on more long-form writing projects. So much for that!
