Beginnings

A friend just sent me her blog. I'm jealous. End of story.

Probably not an auspicious beginning. I'm teaching a class on autobiography next fall, though, and I'm going to have the students keep some kind of blog or journal for it. So I've been thinking about starting something of my own along those lines. You know, just to get a better handle on my subject.

I'm terrible in that I never read my friends' blogs. I had one of my own several years ago, but I got tired of liking it and hating it and liking it again and always walking around wondering whether people had read it or not, so I deleted all of it.

I wish now I'd saved some of the content, maybe just so I could spread it around. My life, at the moment, feels content-free. I cook ambitiously and eat with relish; I do Pilates on the living room rug; I talk to my cats. I perform a series of tasks that have to do with my work, but a bit more obliquely than I'd like; in the evenings I watch TV and go to bed between 10:00 and midnight.

I date half-heartedly, every couple of months peeking into the dating site I signed up for almost a year ago. For a moment while scrolling through the pictures I feel a twinge of possibility. Then, as soon as I begin reading their profiles, the men in the pictures recede again. They're like TV actors, unreal, having manufactured themselves into stereotypes in their efforts to be legible. My profile is also a stereotype: I'm a sexy and sardonic redhead from Texas. I mean, that's actually what I am, but I definitely sound like a reality show contestant when I read it with some distance.

In a couple of days I'm leaving for a two-week research trip to Yale, followed directly by a week at Dartmouth. This is not a vacation. I've rented a living situation from a woman who seems a bit hysterical - she's constantly sending me panicked emails, and then thanking me too profusely when I tell her the check is in the mail, or whatever it is. I am doing all of this in my car: I will be driving for a total of three weeks. This strikes me as a dumb decision, but it's easy to see how I made it. I didn't have the money for a plane ticket when the buying was cheap. Also, being alone in the car always sounds more peaceful than it is really.

If it sounds like I'm waiting for my life to begin, that's not exactly the case. I'm just waiting for my blog to begin. I'm waiting for the writing to catch up with the feelings, for the feelings to catch up with the actions. And for the actions to catch up with some vision of what my life is supposed to be.