Where Would Writing Take Me?

Twenty years ago, I was about to start my first full-time faculty position. I was half way through my PhD coursework and was lucky enough to get a full-time, annually renewable lecturer position at Community College of Philadelphia (I have great memories of that place!!). While I was grateful for the position, I was a bit worried about getting stuck on a "teaching track." There is nothing wrong with teaching intensive positions-teaching is the greatest of privileges and honors—we forget that sometimes. However, I knew that I wanted to be a researcher and a teacher, and believed that a position in a "Research I" would be a better match for me.

And frankly, like many of us, I was not certain if this would be my first and last faculty position or not. I too had internalized the voices of the naysayers who suggested that there were too few tenure-track faculty positions to hope for one, and writing and publishing are just too damn hard! 

I remember I drove to the Jersey shore to see the ocean. After walking around the beach for a while, I sat in the sand and wrote in my journal. As I wrote and began to think about my upcoming faculty position, and my desire to write and publish, I posed a question/challenge to myself: What would happen if I wrote every day, no matter what--where would writing take me?

Twenty years. A lot happens in twenty years. I won’t even go into an accounting of it all—those who know me and who have read my blog know that my life has not always been smooth or easy. Whose really is?

But for twenty years, through it all, I have written. Have I really written every day?  To the best of my recollection, yes, I have. I might not have always worked on an academic article or book, but I have written. Heck, it was the first thing I did once I settled into my hospital bed after both of my total knee replacements! Let me tell you, opioids and quality writing do not really mix if your name isn’t William S. Burroughs!

But that doesn’t matter—I wrote. My challenge to myself was to write, not to write brilliantly. Paradoxically, letting go of the need to be awesome, and learning how to  stay in process, has not only led to solid productivity, but to some pretty cool writing, IMHO.

And where has writing taken me? No need to provide a synopsis of my bio- my CV is easy enough to find if you are interested. But where it has taken me, most essentially, is right here, into this moment, my fingers dancing upon these keys, open to possibility, hoping for another twenty more.