Often,
Facebook is touted as the social networking mega-tool that ultimately shows us
how similar we all are as human beings. We all have friends. We all have things
that happen to us. We all feel the desperate need to tell the universe that we
exist; that the moments in our lives should be memorable not only to us, but to
those we consider ourselves close to.
But the
more time I spend on Facebook (admittedly trying to promote Y.N.F.P. in the
Internet language-sphere), the more I realize that human beings (as they
present themselves online) are almost nothing alike. Or, I should say, almost
no one I am friends with on Facebook is anything like me.
This
realization came two days ago while I was scouring Facebook in an attempt to
distract myself from work. I saw on my newsfeed that an old friend from high
school had posted photos from her wedding. I perused the photos, spotting old
acquaintances here and there throughout the wedding party and congregated
matrimonial onlookers. The wedding seemed to go smoothly and I was happy and
hopeful for all involved. But in viewing photo after photo, I found myself
asking, “How do these seemingly joyous people have any time to party with all the
scholarly reading that need to get done? Isn’t this wedding getting in the way
of hawking their creative work to unknown literary magazines? Does
marital-status show up on CV’s, and if not, why bother with marriage in the
first place? What is there to show for it professionally?”
These
questions left me feeling cold. I clicked back to my
married-old-high-school-friend’s main page and checked out what she is doing
with her life. She is newly married, has a good full-time job, lives in a
no-name (at least to me) town in the American Midwest, participates in the
occasional arts and crafts project with her mother, and keeps in contact with
old friends because she understands the communication up-keep to be a
reflection of good character. In short, she is a happy, healthy young woman
with excellent prospects for a successful future and likely no interest in
contemporary American literature, let alone experimental poetry. Holy shit.
The title
of this post could be “How a Facebook friend taught me that there is life
outside academia/the arts/an artistic community/Word-Land” (it might actually
have this title, as I have not yet titled the piece). In seeing my old friend
living a nice, normal life (I guess “normal” meaning a type of life pursued by
many college-educated, white, retirement-planning young people between the ages
of 18 and 24ish) I completely understood how abnormal my language-dominated life
is (not to mention the lives of my word-colleagues and word-friends!). To
demonstrate this abnormality, I offer the reader the following account of my
day thus far:
o
9 :00 a.m. — Wake up and drink tea while reading Time, Juxtapoz, National Geographic,
and thinking about writing.
o
10:00 a.m. — Check various email accounts for
updates about publishing opportunities.
o
10:15 a.m.
— Search Internet for journals to publish in. Read other writers’ blogs
and writers’ blog responses to other writers’ blogs, etc.
o
11:00 a.m. — Read and highlight sections of
essay entitled “Can Poetry Matter?” for future Y.N.F.P. post.
o
12:00 p.m. — Rest eyes by watching No Reservations on Netflix. Think about
Anthony Bourdain’s style of writing. Think about how many different ways there
are to make a living with writing.
o
1:00 p.m. — Head into town to write at a local
coffee shop. Think about the writing I will have to do later in the afternoon
to make money. Think about Ralph Waldo Emerson and how I would rather be
reading his Essays than writing to
make money.
And that is it. All of it. My whole day — from the moment I
woke up to this very moment — has been completely dominated by language/writing/literature/communicated-ideas.
I recount
today’s events not to prove my dedication to my field. I recount them to show
what I, in some twisted way, think passes for normalcy in the life of a
graduate student. It’s not sick that I insulate myself in the written word
(even though it kind of is), it’s sick that I think my life-behaviors are
somewhat normal; it’s sick that I assume everyone else my age is as
hyper-literate as I am until I am shown otherwise on Facebook.
But beyond
the sick feeling in my stomach at the understanding of my life’s path (and the nasty
taste in the back of my mouth from too much tea), there is a certain sadness
that comes with knowing that most, if not nearly all, of the people I “know”
(as much as anyone can really know anyone else in a Facebook “relationship”)
spend roughly 0% of their lives thinking about the things I spend roughly 80%
of my life thinking about. And they are probably 100% fine with this.
Until two
days ago I believed writing was the easy way out of life challenges. I studied
education as an undergraduate in college. It was a lot of work that ultimately left me feeling tired and hopeless. I
dropped out of the program. My parents said I had to graduate college; they
told me to pick something I was “good” at and get a degree. “You’ve always been
good at writing,” they said, “why not get an English degree?” So I did, and
when graduation came and I had no idea what to do with myself (the working
world seeming to me to be, like my previous major, a lot of work) a professor said, “Why not get a Masters degree in
English?” So I did, and when graduation came and I had no idea what to do with
myself (the working world seeming to me to be, like my undergraduate major, a lot of work) a professor said, “Why
not get a Phd in English?” So I am, and it all seems like it came about without
much thought on my part. In fact, it seems like the academic life was destined
to be, since at every major transition point in my academic career someone said
to me, “Well what else could you possibly do outside of writing/academia?
You’re not good at anything else!” And, I suppose, that’s as good a reason as
any to keep doing what you’re doing.
But in
seeing my married-old-high-school-friend’s wedding photos, in seeing that she
has a nice job in the rural or urban Midwest (both terms kind of blur into each
other when describing Midwestern civilizations), I realized that when writers
write, they are always drawing boundaries for their lives; they are always
choosing writing instead of something else. I always assumed that I write
because I can’t do anything else (I guess I similarly assumed that writers in
general write because they are somehow unable to complete any other
life[money-making]-activities with any degree of competence). But now I
understand that I write because I can do other life-activities but, for some
reason or another, don’t.
Words are a lot of work, even when they don’t feel
like it. Writers are more than insurance salespeople that don’t sell insurance
or farmers who don’t know how to grow or harvest crops. They/we are more than
people who do stuff with words in a vacuum of all other career opportunities. Word-people
take language seriously, probably knowing (maybe even “in spite of knowing”)
that the majority of “normal” people don’t give a shit about what they say or
think. I don’t know if writers’ consistent work in the face of an indifferent
public is honorable or pathetic. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. But I suppose
I am writing this, so that must mean
something.
Thanks,
Facebook.
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