I’m working with a new counsellor, and she has me focusing on a new word this summer: recalibrate. Making adjustments to my routine or process is not always easy for me. I thrive in predictability, but looking at my plans and goals with the lens of recalibration (or making small, fine-tuning changes) has really opened up fresh possibilities for me.
I survived my first year of full-time grad school in the Creative Writing MFA program at UBC. It was busy, packed with more homework and writing deadlines than I’ve ever had before, but I made it to the other side. I learned a lot about myself as a writer. I met so many interesting and talented people. Over the second semester, I went through a crisis of confidence in my own abilities, unsure if my creative instincts and intuition could be trusted and relied on.
A few weeks off was what I needed to recalibrate and regain my perspective outside of the demands of full-time classwork and TA responsibilities. I took that time off in April, and found myself coming back to life again, the way a plant does with healthy doses of sunlight and water. I read, slept in, walked in nature, meditated, got back to my yoga practice, wrote in my journal, stretched, and watched some great TV (Search Party, Our Flag Means Death, Julia, the final episodes of Ozark, just to name a few).
Now I feel ready to embark on my thesis, a post-apocalyptic cli-fi novel I’ve been thinking about since my third year of undergrad. This story and these characters have been germinating in my mind and soul for more than eighteen months. I’m so excited to start writing and see where it all takes me.
I worried at various points over my first year of grad school that I wouldn’t be up to the task of writing a thesis over a four-month period, but I’ve come to realize that I can do things I didn’t think I could do. I’ve proved that to myself by going back to university in my mid-forties, and deciding to be a professor of Creative Writing after graduating with my MFA. It’s all in motion. I just needed some time to catch up to myself and what I’ve learned.
So now I start writing. I’m determined to hold loosely, to enjoy the process instead of focusing only on the finished product, and to cherish no outcomes. As writer Jami Attenberg said, “The safest place is inside the work.” And to quote Steven Spielberg, “The work that I’m proudest of is the work I’m most afraid of.” I’m going to hold both of these ideas close as I get down to work, taking care of myself by recalibrating my own expectations and shoring up my own confidence in a variety of ways.