September
For the first time ever, I'm not going back to school.
When it came time to sign annual contracts at the nursery school last year, I told them I wouldn't be coming back. For seven and a half years I'd worked in the office of that beloved school, calling it the best job I'd ever had. The best people, the best feeling, the best schedule. Right up until last autumn, when I returned for the school year and felt numb with burn out. Depression crept into bed with me and it became impossible to get up in the mornings. I went back on my medication. I went back to therapy. As winter dragged on, I knew something had to change. Some risk had to be taken. I took all my personal days in the month of April to go to a four week writers residency. And then I announced that I was going to quit.
I've never not had a job. My first job was at the Waldenbooks in the Exton Square Mall when I was seventeen. From there I swung to a work study job tutoring fifth graders at a public school (the kids called me Ms. Courtney). Right after college, I became a special educator, and then I landed at the nursery school. I have two Masters degrees. Two! Willfully being unemployed feels shameful, decadent, stupid, incredible. I told people I was quitting to write full time, and every time I spoke that phrase aloud, I wanted to punch myself. Who do you think you are? My self-doubt can be deafening. I had no idea how to freelance full time. I could cobble together a few hundred bucks a month in essays and book reviews, a fraction of what I needed to pay the rent, the bills, buy food, live modestly. All summer long I counted every dollar I spent and saved. Every taco, every iced coffee, every tube of sunscreen felt like the beginning of possible financial doom. It's hard to enjoy free time when your default is anxiety. I wanted it to be a summer of aggressive writing, hoarding finished essays like a squirrel with nuts; of biking to the beach; baking one million peach pies; basking in abundance. The truth: I spent most of the summer on my couch, playing Turbo Snail Racer on my phone, avoiding myself while my final paychecks from the nursery school came and went. Emily would go to work in the morning and come home to find me still in my underwear, complaining that I'd ruined another day. "I wish I was a cat," I whined, sliding off the couch. "I'm gonna write to Sallie Mae and tell them I can't make payments anymore, I'm a cat."
This writing life may never, ever look like what I expect it to look like. This writing life may never, ever look like it does for other writers. Who am I to judge that?
The heat of early September always makes me nostalgic for youth. I moved to New York fourteen years ago this month. It felt like such magic: to have an address in Manhattan, freedom from the small town where I grew up, a gaggle of other young people around me, all of us eager, searching, full of swagger and naiveté. It was a September when I did not know what would happen next, in so many ways. I remember being so young that my idea of future was simply New York. I had this imagined picture of myself, riding a bicycle down some gritty street, the basket of my bicycle holding a bouquet of flowers for the girl I loved, whoever she may be. That's as far as I got in my imagination. I did not want a career, a house, a marriage, a family. I just wanted to live in a city where girls liked girls.
I thought about that young, simple hope as I rode my bicycle home last night. It's a different New York than the one I arrived in, but the heat remains the same. Everyone outside long past dusk. The jingle of the ice cream truck. A breeze through the trees, blowing plastic bags like tumbleweed. Traffic lights popping red, green, yellow against the blue black sky. I got the city I wanted. I have the bicycle. It lacks a basket. But the girl I love is more partial to books than flowers. A better surprise than a bouquet is a bottle of Grady's Cold Brew. My younger self would be most proud that we had survived. That the heat still bloomed every summer off the blacktop and sidewalks and we had not left the handsome city yet.
The name September comes from the Latin septem, for seven, because it used to be the seventh month in the Roman calendar. Right now it feels like the first month. Like a warmer, more potent January. The heat hasn't broken, but the light fades faster. It's a brink. It's a beginning. We'll see what happens next.
xo,
c
Post Scripts:
* I co-host The Hustle, a reading series that brings writers together to talk about how they work. Our next Hustle is September 13th at WORD with writers who are also editors: Natalie Eilbert, Melissa Faliveno, and Lincoln Michel. There will be mimosas and donuts. (Also, yeah, I see the irony in creating an event called The Hustle and then being so decidedly afraid of said hustle. I know! Girl, I know!)
* The Brooklyn Book Festival is September 20th. I'll be hanging out at the BinderCon table all day. We're going to have fantastic pencils as swag. Come say hi.
* Do y'all know about 10Q? I can't recommend this practice enough. It's a little questionnaire about where you're at in your life, inspired by the reflective practices of Rosh Hashanah. They keep your answers and send them to you the following September. Mine always surprise me, always inspire me. Check it out.
* It's a major month for book releases. May I suggest: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Dryland by Sara Jaffe. Under The Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta. And if you haven't read it yet: Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam is so full of heart and daring.
* My brother and his wife are expecting a daughter this month. Many of my friends have celebrated their nephews and nieces, and I always shrugged, wondering what the big deal was. But in 2014, when my nephew came into the world, I learned what all the fuss was about. (Heart growing three sizes that day, etc. etc.) So if this is the month my niece is born, then it is fated to be a beautiful month. Love.