Thursday thoughts on my bike ride from the university:

I want an inhale that never ends

Where the wind becomes breath

And my lungs the atmosphere

To never exhale again, to feel

My chest rise endless with the sweet

Clean air, I want to go dizzy

With my own capacity, I wish

The air passed right through instead

Catching in my lungs like water

A cup, a vessel that must

release. I cannot breathe

Like the wind, but I will take as much

As I can, and wait until the last

Moment before I give it back,

Until I am the wind once more

It’s been a rough couple of months. I had a horrible flu in February, and three weeks later, I came down with a bronchitis/pneumonia thing that gave me a horrible cough for over two weeks. During that sickness, I was in the middle of a breakup, and I got rejected by all but two schools for MFAs in creative writing. Even the non-rejections were essentially rejections. I was waitlisted at NYU and accepted to the University of Montana. I received notice of my acceptance to Montana right before my birthday. I had three weeks of dreaming about what life might be like in Missoula before the program director returned my email and confirmed that their limited funding had gone to other incoming students.

Before I got that email, I talked to one of my English professors at UW about my concerns about funding. She told me that while you don’t get a ranking on your acceptance, you’re internally ranked, and funding is offered to the top candidates. Some may not accept their admission, and because of that, their funding moves down the ladder.

In my case with Montana, I was too far down the ladder. That wasn’t great to think about. While being waitlisted at an elite writing program at NYU with a cast of instructors like Jonathan Safran Foer, Ocean Vuong, and Jefferey Eugenides felt like a compliment, being accepted to a lesser-known program at Montana without an offer for funding was demoralizing. That sounds entitled, but I don’t mean it that way. I just thought my writing, my college work so far, and the essays I wrote for applications were some of the best I’ve ever written. I believed that I was a high-caliber candidate, even if I had much to learn. I worked incredibly hard to get to this point and put everything I had into those applications. As rejection after rejection landed in my inbox over the first two months of the year, I tried not to let my hope die, and when Montana’s acceptance came, I initially held back joy. Then, I allowed myself to envision the possibility fully, and the idea of getting out of Seattle to a smaller mountain town seemed like the change I was craving. I wanted to go.

When I decided to pursue an MFA, I told myself that I would only go if I could get funding. Only the top programs in the U.S. offer full funding, and they are nearly as competitive as medical school. Anywhere from six hundred to a thousand writers apply for eight to twelve slots. Often, these slots are divided by mode, meaning poetry, fiction, or non-fiction. On average, acceptance rates are 2-4%, so getting into one of these programs is no small miracle.

Pursuing an art degree already seemed to me a privileged thing to engage in, and I’ve never felt like I belonged to the tax bracket of people who get to consider such degrees. Before I thought critically about applying for MFAs, I believed them to be something for bored, directionless rich kids which their parents fund because they don’t want them wandering aimlessly around the house. I don’t have any evidence to support that imagination, but it was how I conceptualized graduate art degrees. To be clear, if I did not have a viable career that I could return to at any point, I would have thought my current task of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in English to be a risky decision. Before looking at data on outcomes for students with English degrees, I would have thought anything less than a degree that translates immediately into a meaningful job economically as foolish. It takes a certain degree of privilege to study English in this early period of the twenty-first century, and I’m not blind to my own privilege.

But an MFA felt like an even larger privilege, a degree for which I did not have the luxury to pay for or the ability to greatly extend my debt when I didn’t know if the degree was something I needed. Sure, I imagined it could only help me become a better writer, connect me with other writers and mentors, and get my foot in the door of the publishing world, but the truth was that most people who complete MFAs never publish anything, and even fewer make a living from it. The training, degree, and exposure don’t hand you a career as a writer. Finishing an MFA does not mean getting a book deal. There are many pathways to becoming a published, respected author that made the prospect of two years and over a hundred thousand dollars of debt (which would be the case at either Montana or NYU if I funded myself) seem like an unconscionable bet. Yet, I didn’t know what path to take my life after I completed my bachelor’s. Going back to a soul-crushing career, despite the economic security it allowed, seemed like a waste of my efforts so far. It also made me tired and gloomy to think about it. Yet, the path forward was anything but clear.

So, my decision to apply for MFAs was a question I was asking the Universe. The stipulation was that I would not go if I didn’t get the needed funding. I decided to believe that if I put my best energy into the world and the universe had a reason for me to go down this path, the way would be made clear.

On Tuesday afternoon, after my Shakespeare class, I sat out in the sun in the grassy park outside the student union building on campus. I opened my email from the program director at Montana. A few lines of text made my world shrink. There was no funding; the path was blocked. 

In the mornings of late, I’ve been reading Marcus Aurelius Meditations. That sounds like the most Joe Rogan/Andrew Huberman thing, but I actually picked it up because my older brother had recommended it to me repeatedly.

There is a line in it that I read recently, which I’ll paraphrase:

When anything bad/unfortunate happens, don’t become bitter. Don’t say, “This is terrible,” but “To bear this worthily is a good thing.”

There’s another one where he says: Has something bad happened to you? Good. It was part of your universal lot, assigned to you before time began.

I don’t agree with Aurelius a hundred percent. It sometimes seems like he was trying to convince himself that these things were true and that there was no chaos, only divine order, but he had a point about acceptance.

I believe in mourning, even the small things or the things that never happened. I believe in allowing myself to feel whatever I feel in response to external circumstances.

I also know that I tend to wallow. I’ll sit with my disappointments much longer than with any of my accomplishments. It’s not a good habit, but it’s real. I often fail to recognize them as fortunate circumstances until I can see the long line of history much later.

With my health, the end of my relationship, and the path to grad school all but closed, my mind has been flooded with what to do next. In doing so, I’ve been trying to incorporate Aurelius’ philosophy.

How might this be the best thing that could have happened? Where should I direct my energy now?

All I can do right now is accept the result, regroup, get crystal clear on what drives me and what I want to give the world, and then get to work on that in any way I can.

I think that’s where my musings on breath came from. Partly because my breathing was made difficult most of February and March because of illness and partly because I’ve been holding my breath about what to do next. I crave a never-ending inhale because I’ve been shallow breathing for months. I want my mind and heart to mirror this, but I forget that my body is a blueprint for experience. Just like breath, I must hold my disappointments for a moment, and I must let them go. If I hold on too long, I will suffocate myself.

There is a line in Cast Away (2000) with Tom Hanks that I’ve often returned to whenever I feel blue about life’s circumstances.

*Spoiler alert*

After surviving a deserted island for years, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) was rescued only to discover his fiancé, Kelly, had moved on, married, and had children of her own. The life that he had before was gone, and there was no getting it back, even though it was that very dream that kept him alive.

Chuck: I came back, only to lose her all over again. I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly, but I’m so glad that she was with me on that island…  And I know what I have to do now, I’ve gotta keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide will bring.