Grades In . . . Lights Out
I finally got my grades in. It was really hard to get the research papers graded. I could tell that a lot of my students had put a lot of effort into the research, but the problem is always to find something—something original—to say.

Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat. I’ve been having such a hard time finding time to write these days. I essentially decided I would take a week or so off while I tried to get some grading done. Luckily I had just finished the first draft of my latest screenplay (attempt), so I didn’t have to leave in the middle of the story, but I feel really bad about going so long without any real writing. I haven’t done any morning pages. Not much in this blog. I didn’t even do my Love of Mike Article for this month. I’m just out of ideas.

So I have the same problem as so many of my students: lots of information, but nothing to say. I need to spend time with my computer in order to keep my voice going. If I’m ever going to change my life, writing is the only way I can do it. It seems clear to me now that I will never get a tenure-track job, and teaching, and reading, and writing, is really all I’m good at. Unfortunately, I have no way to make a living at this. I’ve read a couple of books on freelance copy-writing, but I don’t have time to build a business like that. Maybe, I can get to it this summer, but is that the best way to spend my time? Short stories, memoirs, even “literary-journalism,’ doesn’t really pay well. Screenplays pay, but it’s really hard to get anyone to read your work, and even if they do, to get someone to put up the enormous amount of cash to buy a screenplay and get it into production makes it a really, really tough market. Or should it be all academic writing—a couple of articles, some book reviews—in one last-ditch effort to get one of those plum $35k/year jobs?

Our rector was also looking for something to say. I had a longish conversation with him today about my suicidal blog entry. He wants so much to help, but I’m so beyond help. Everyone at Saint Michael’s is so supportive, but I don’t feel like they know me, after all, I’m never really myself there, I’m always trying to figure out what kind of person I need to be to function in my various roles. I’m certainly never what you would call, “relaxed,” except, maybe, when I’m “preaching,” because then, in that space, I’m trying hard to be authentic, and so the “real” me comes out.

Ironically, I’m more myself with my students at UCI than at church. This is ironic, because I always claim that teaching is a performance, and yet, I don’t perform when I’m in the classroom, I feel more like I’m just putting myself out there. I’m not sure why I do this with my students. In part, they draw me out. There is something so beautiful about their youth, energy, and optimism that attract me. But they also have a kind of aloof cynicism that appeals to me. They are so open to everything. They are still trying to figure things out, and they still seem to believe in the importance of figuring things out. And that is where I am, both in the classroom, and the pulpit, somebody trying to figure things out. That is when I feel most myself.

Of course, I also share with them a sense of irony. The WWII generation doesn’t share it with me. I wore my “Free Wynona (Ryder)” T-shirt to the men’s breakfast last week. They didn’t get it. “Why do you care so much about freeing a shoplifter?” Baby-boomers get the joke, but they aren’t ironic, either. They are earnest. I think I don’t relate t o a lot of my peers at the university because, thought they are Gen-Xers, they have adopted/emulated our professor’s sincerity: “Oh, my observations on Baudelaire are going to change the world!” So irony is missed on them, too. I can forgive this lack of irony in the WWII’ers, because it seems so good natured in them, but in the boomers, whether Clinton or Dubya, it seems repulsive. They all know just what everyone else should be doing and thinking, and they never tire of telling us about that time they marched in Tuscaloosa, or D.C., or Berkeley. “Good job, Boomers, your world has really turned out great.”

But my students, most of them, aren’t really there. Sure, they mimic their professors’ liberal self-righteous outrage, but, like me, I think, their outrage is personal, not political. They . . . we. . . personalize the world’s problems. The plight of the Palestinians seems less import than the plight of our friends, some of whom are Palestinians.

I am a cliché in this regard. I’m completely without principles. I’m the only person I know who voted for Ronald Reagan and Ralph Nader. I voted for George H.W. Bush-twice—but when it comes to “Dubya,” I’m “anyone but . . .” I’d like to see Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore face-off . . . in a pie-eating contest, or hot-dogs, as long as their mouths are full. Neither one of them ever seems to run out of things to say.