The Eggs Are In One Basket, and The Writer Can't Read

How random is that title?  It's a little scattered like my brain these days.

I've nearly fully recovered from the jet lag that's been kicking my bum, and this week I've been determined to finish my application to grad school. Gah. I knew I'd been losing brain cells since the birth of my first kid, but I had no idea exactly how mushy my brain had become!  Trying to write two essays, one personal and one a critical analysis, has been beyond frustrating. I'd like to just point the people who read those things to the blog and say, "There I am. That's about as me as you can get."

Except, you know, I want them to think higher of me than this. So I'm cracking open books and relearning how to properly quote and structure a paper, and I'm reading over other's MFA critical analysis (which, truthfully, is making my eyes glaze over... how can writers make books sound SO boring??). I'm crying, pulling hair out, starting over from scratch every 8 hours. There is a tiny side of me that says it's been too long since I've been in school: I can't do this anymore.

The funny thing is that during college, I took every writing class I could, and my senior year, the senior level professor invited me to join his graduate writing class. At graduation, when considering my options, he told me: Don't make the mistake of going directly into a masters program. You won't have anything to write about. Go. Get a job. Live and gain experiences. Mature. Then go back to school.

It totally made sense to me. Everyone in my writing classes except me was writing about college kids and fraternity parties gone wrong. I was writing about teens who'd been abused and a kid who's sister was dying of cancer (I LOVED that story!!). But even I could admit that my frame of experiences was pretty thin.

The problem with this is that the longer you are away from school, the harder it is to go back. There were bills to pay, and a job we needed me to have to pay those bills. And then there were kids. And there was no time.

And now my brain is mush.

But I don't think the timing will get better, so I'm going for it. In a way, it's a fitting continuation of the question that started my writing career a few years ago: I always said I was going to do it. Do I really want to get to the end of my life and not have done it?

But in typical fashion, I only have one school I want to apply to. So I'm putting all my theoretical eggs in one basket, and hoping I will be one of the 20 or so students they accept. Odds are slim, but I'm hopeful. If I don't get in, I'll start looking at back up schools. For now though, two essays are all I can tackle.

And as for the other part of the blog title.... there is a link everyone should click and read. It's a story about a detective writer who woke one morning to discover he couldn't read. It's both scary, and inspirational. And makes me thankful for the little things in life.

Like being able to read the drivel that is my critical analysis.