april notes
i survived my april curse even as grad school decisions put me in a #hamletsituation
Historically, the bad things that have happened in my life tend to happen in April. Late April, to be specific. Dogs die (twice), relationships end (twice), grandparents die (both), stuff like that. Towards the end of the month, I tend to look over my shoulder in anticipation of the inevitable Bad Thing. This year, nothing personally catastrophic happened. Deep down, I know that the legend of bad-luck-April is more of a joke for my friends than anything real. It’s a story I tell myself to protect me from the horrifyingly random, narratively inconsistent nature of tragedy.
I saw SF Ballet’s production of Frankenstein yesterday. It was stunning. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like Frankenstein should have just made the monster a girlfriend. Like, what was the big deal?
Spent an entire Sunday trying to figure out how to download Lady Gaga’s Coachella set and watching said set on the big screen. It made me really want to bleach my eyebrows, dye my hair black and get a severe, cartoonish bob, but my higher self knows I need to resist.
As a Katy Perry apologist, it’s been a difficult month.
an announcement:
I am the sort of person who likes to keep my cards close to my chest. I tell people that I am moving in silence, or I evade conversations involving non-guaranteed possibilities. I learned to behave this way in sophomore year of high school, after the embarrassment of telling everyone about my driving test and failing (twice). Now, after talking around it for half a year, I can finally say that this month I committed to a grad program that will begin this fall. I have already accepted and signed the offer, and yet I still feel nervous saying anything until I’m actually seated in a classroom.
When applying to nine programs last December, I told myself that I only needed one yes. This of course was true, but I secretly wanted several, for my pride and my sense of validation, which are equally terrible sources of motivation. I also wanted the decision to feel as easy as accepting a briefcase full of cash. It felt magical in early February when I had not heard back from any school I applied to. All nine possibilities existed in front of me equally, and one by one these opportunities either vanished or took on a realistic and flawed shape full of logistics and financial considerations. The one real decision will never be as perfect as the nine simultaneous futures; expectation vs. outcome is never a fair competition.
The grad program is an MFA in creative writing. It’s not something a person needs to do to be a writer. It’s not something a person needs to do in general. When I was working on my application, I had a meeting with a previous professor who gave me feedback on my statement of purpose. Reading my self-aggrandizing paragraphs, they asked, Why do you need this program? I didn’t really have an answer other than I really wanted to do it, and the timing felt right. Which is enough of an answer, really. That’s the difficult thing about making decisions as an adult: there is no clear, mandatory path. Whereas moving across the state for college was a natural, well-charted progression, now any change I make has to be initiated by me. My timeline is no longer synced with my peers. This is mostly liberating but also leaves me perpetually second-guessing my choices.
I have spent the last four months thinking almost exclusively about myself and my future. Every second of it felt intolerable. I found myself retreating inward, scrolling gradcafe forums and admissions facebook groups like a zombie, comparing myself to others, generally acting as moody, indecisive and harmful to myself and others as Hamlet. I thought I was over the rejection sensitivity and desire for external approval that made me miserable while applying to college seven years ago, but it turns out these feelings might follow me forever. In my heart of hearts, I still want several anonymous committees to tell me I am special and wanted. But when this doesn’t happen, I am at least a bit more equipped to recover and keep moving.
I’m still not sure if going back to school is the 100% right thing for me, though I doubt that the 100% right thing even exists. I’m not sure if uprooting my life during such a politically and economically horrible time to write fiction of all things is wise. I just want to do it.
I’m excited for the program, but I’m even more excited to move on from thinking about it, to play more basketball, to see my niece next weekend, to check out books from the library, to eat meals outdoors with my friends, to swim in the river this summer, to one day delete facebook off of my phone.
Thank you as always for reading <3
recommended reading:
I really enjoyed Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte, which was recommended to me by my friend Alex, who just started her own Substack. Usually I have a low tolerance for very Online or meta fiction, but I think the stories pushed through gimmick towards becoming genuinely funny and outrageous. Another title to add to last month’s incel reading list.
I also read The Flick by Annie Baker and really enjoyed it
on the topic of expectations vs reality, this scene from 500 Days of Summer used to have such an unbelievable chokehold on me. Also, a blog post I wrote two years ago about fantasy, decisions, and the multiverse.
Katy Perry in another timeline
1) totally agree that he should have just made frankenstein a girlfriend and 2) congrats!!!