T.T.F.N.

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. I've been busy -- with school, with job hunting, with the impending birth of my first grandchild, with general, free-floating anxiety and depression.  I've probably been watching too much news, too.  And reading too many newspapers.

Between school and baby talk and dealing with the dark, I haven't been able to do much free writing. I had to pick a blog, and this one wasn't it. 

After long consideration, and realizing that I am, indeed, human and that something's gotta give, I've decided to take a leave of absence from school for a year, and try and get things sorted out.  It's for the best, really.  I can't concentrate on what I read, I can't enjoy what I'm writing, and though the material is fascinating to me, I can't keep my mind in it for longer than an hour at a time, because I'm so torn up about work and money.

When I was an undergraduate, all I wanted was to be able to go on and get my MFA.  I couldn't wait for the workshops, for the reading, the writing, the residencies.  My first residency began on my last day as an undergrad. Exhausted as I was from the last minute wrap-up that always accompanies graduating with a bachelor's degree, that first residency was heavenly.  That whole first semester, I was floating on air.  I was a writer, and I was learning to write from other writers, and all was as it should be.

Then my father began to get worse. There was only one of us among the daughters who was in a position to move in with him, and that was me.  I let go of my rent-controlled apartment, any hope of a good night's sleep and my life, and moved in with my father. That last year of his life was so awful that I had nothing left for the MFA program.  I was like a shell-shocked WWI soldier -- stunned and empty inside.  It killed my joy for school.

Now, the struggle of finding work and trying to keep things going here are doing the same thing to this program, and I can't have that.  So I'm leaving for a little.  Not forever, just long enough to be able to pick it up again and feel the love and the joy of it, without the oppression of panic and anxiety.

I will miss it, though. I will miss the day-long seminars and the study of religions and stories and ideas that never occurred to me.

Until we meet again, Myth Camp....