It’s early morning (10:30 am- that’s early for me) and I’ve had my cup of tea. My habit is to have a cup of tea and work on the current batch of short stories. On February 11 I will be defending my thesis, and I won’t pretend it’s not a bittersweet feeling. Like being ejected from a writer’s womb and out into the cold world of student debt repayment. Every time I think about the debt I owe my first thought is, “Why did you go to graduate school anyway? There’s no money in art, you know. You can’t possibly earn a living writing stories, and to think otherwise is poppycock.” Then a little voice says, “You have always loved to read and write. It’s who you are. Be true to who you are and the rest will take care of itself. Don’t allow the world to corrupt what motivates you.”
I’m about a quarter of the way through reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. For most of my life I’ve seen it sitting on shelves and read about other people reading it, but I’ve never been drawn to it. Maybe because of a certain “reputation” it carries from being written by a suicide. I didn’t want to get more depressed than I already am by reading a downer book. But I happened to find a copy of it for a dollar, and for me that price says, “Read me.”
