This or That Path

I was torn. I was at that point, that space at the tip of the crevice between two paths. It's not a crossroads. It's two roads diverged. That's where I was: standing there looking at one and slowly rolling my eyes across the divider to look at the other. While I studied each, I started to get tense. I could feel my hostility in the knots in my neck. I was only mad at myself, either for allowing myself to have choices or for not being able to make a choice when faced with two fairly decent prospects.

I could stay in Los Angeles and work in hotel development. I could move back to southern Ohio and teach at the university near my hometown. In one scenario, my relatively new interests in architecture and planning would be indulged. In another scenario, I'd be teaching - which is what, according to almost every professor in my MFA program - a serious writer is supposed to do. To go down the hotel development path was to give up on my dream of writing.

Maybe I was really angry with myself not over having choices, but letting voices from my graduate writing program plant the teaching equals serious writing notion in my head in the first place.

Maybe I was really angry with myself because I wasn't really writing, and I knew that was the only way to be a serious writer. I had to do the thing. I had to do the work. Instead, I was huffing and puffing over which path would provide me the most time to write - and the most material. Among other things. I let the choice be a distraction. Which was really another path altogether.

When I felt uneasy or uncertain, I usually bothered one person in my life. I left work early and drove over to Noel's apartment. I didn't call ahead, which said a lot about how I was feeling. We were the type of people who made plans in advance. We didn't interrupt one another's time. It was too jarring. But this time, I already felt jarred, so I just walked up to the stoop and knocked on the door.

It was four o'clock and Noel was still in his bathrobe. He opened the door, saw it was me, and swiftly shut the door before I even had the screen door open to step in. I took a breath and opened the screen door, the front door and stepped inside. Noel was sitting on the couch, remote back in his hand. I walked over and sat at the other end of the couch and started in.

"I have two options," I said.

He glanced over at me before fixing his eyes on the television screen. Light poured through the window behind the TV, and it made the fixture look like it had a halo. It glowed. I continued.

"Remember that article I read about placemaking?" I asked.

"Sure," eyes on the glow.

"Well, it turns out that there's a division at work that collaborates with cities on transforming old, historic buildings into new, updated hotels."

Noel nodded, eyes on the glow.

"I could work for that division. I could do it. I think it would be highly satisfying."

He nodded.

"Or," I said. "I have this chance to move back to southern Ohio to live in a farmhouse with L. for a year. I could teach at the university."

He sighed.

"I could work in development and help determine the shape of some towns, but what does that have to do with writing?"

He turned away from the glow. "What does that have to do with writing?"

"I don't know."

"Who are you if you're not a writer?"

"I don't know."

Letting go of that identity was the hard part. As long as I had a low-responsibility job, I could say I was a writer - I was working one gig while working on my art. If I was teaching writing, I could still claim to be a writer - I was seeking refuge in academic life while working on my art. If I started taking meeting with developers and talking about historic architecture and usability, I couldn't be a starving artist, a struggling artist, or an aspiring writer. I would be this other thing.

The choices were so limited in my southern Ohio imagination when I was a teenager that I couldn't grasp a life beyond the one thing I chose - and then I couldn't imagine a life being that choice, either. I didn't know hotel development jobs even existed. People became teachers or civil servants or nurses or school administrators. I only thought of being a writer because I read magazines and saw the bylines. I also saw them rubbing elbows with celebrities, but some of that was just the magazines to which I subscribed. As my experience in the world expanded, my idea of who I could be did not. I wanted to be this one thing. Who was I if I didn't want to be that anymore?

Who would I have been if I'd known that things aren't always all or nothing?

I was this one thing. I had to do whatever the heck I could to stay this one thing.