I went to the Five Branches orientation on Monday. I really enjoyed meeting my new classmates and being on campus. The rooms are light and airy. For what ever biochemical reason, that architectural and latitudinal combination makes me feel physically and emotionally energized.
I've registered for 9 classes. I already feel overwhelmed but really excited too. I'll be taking herbs, needling, tongue and pulse diagnosis, and most exciting of all, I'll begin my rounds in the clinic. I'm finally getting to the good stuff!
Most of my OCOM credits have transferred, so by next semester, I'll officially be in my second year of school. I might just see graduation by the time I'm 49.
Coinciding with all these happy, excited feelings about getting back to school, was an e-mail from a friend from my writing days. She is one of the organizers of the Willamette Writing Conference. I attended this conference twice--once as an attendant taking seminars and the following year as an instructor and to pitch agents.
My friend pitched her screenplay this past conference and got picked up! I'm so excited for her. Things are churning their slow, painful pace in Hollywood, but at least they're churning and her work may get produced.
As I was driving my scooter back from school I realized I had more energy than I'd had in months. I knew it was because I'm returning school and doing what I love. I compared that to my time as a writer.
I spent 20 years writing in all its various forms--ad copy writing, text book editing, writing software user manuals, string and free-lance newspaper reporting, screenwriting, teaching, and finally, the most tedious and soul-squashing of all, writing quasi military and government documents.
Those 20 years of odd writing jobs were really about me doing everything possible under the sun to get my fiction published. I had little success and lots of heartbreak. In the end, I walked away from fiction because I couldn't take the rejection anymore.
So here I am, much happier and not really missing the writing habit. When I walked away, I felt like a failure. I had bought into the idea of the noble writer, punching the keyboard all day in isolation, trying to translate the fantasies in my head into something readable, enjoyable, and most important to the industry, saleable! I wasted years nursing the fantasy of having bound pieces of paper, with my name on the cover, prominently displayed on those cleverly placed tables at the entrance of Barnes & Nobles everywhere!
When you're a fiction writer, it's a sort of madness. The characters become alive in your head, bothering you with their emotional baggage and convoluted life crises every waking moment. I never truly relaxed when I was writing fiction. I even, proudly, wrote for hours while on vacation. Not healthy at all.
I'm still not so good at taking breaks, but I no longer have voices in my head demanding that I commit their every action to paper. I've told those characters, "Sorry, the market doesn't see the relevance of your story. Time to go into the trunk."
Now I enjoy reading fiction without comparing myself to the writer, or worse, critiquing their work! So much easier to just enjoy a story instead of analyzing it. Best of all, it's rare for someone to ask me to read their work-in-progress. Such relief.
Chinese medicine, though truly an art form when it comes to diagnosis and treatment, seems so much more straight forward and it's way more satisfying to help a patient feel better than receiving a rejection letter.
Writing hasn't left me. There are a few more books scratching to be written, but for now, it's good to put the obsession aside for something that feeds me, too. School starts Monday!
