Eating stale rye bread from the English department office, wondering if one of my eyebrows is indeed thinner than the other, avoiding 170 pages of student manuscripts, avoiding calling a doctor, wearing my stained "Girls on Fast Wheels" T-shirt again...
I am struck with the sudden desire to streak at least part of my hair purple.
One of the saddest lines about being grown up comes from a story by Tony Earley called "Charlotte." A character named Starla says: We can eat out whenever we want.
I remember when I was younger I used to fill notebook after notebook, then my family's first computer, writing in the basement with the water stains. Getting in trouble for writing during reading time in 5th grade English. The pages embedded like Braille with the ink letters pushing through.
When do we start calling it work? And does that change what it is, and how we feel about it? And how to get back there, to the start...?
