ABOUT

What better time to start a blog that is entirely oriented around writing than in my first semester of graduate school? An English grad program at that! One that I tend to spend an insane number of hours reading, writing, editing, and researching for per week already. Let me throw this into the mix. Smart for sure! No, in all seriousness though, I think that Homo Irrealis could be a good thing. It is a great space to write informally, and, in my mind, all writing is good writing. I just need to write. I can “strengthen the muscles”, if you will as one of my professors likes to say, (that is, count it, the 3rd time I have used that phrase so far on the site and there will probably be many more) that I, you, we all use when we write and communicate.

 

Here in Charlottesville and at UVA, I have taken on so many new roles that have come with different demands regarding how I am expected to write and verbally communicate. I feel as if I am constantly code switching! (I also feel the need to say that I don’t really intend or want to be taken super seriously. Not even that you were! I’m not owed seriousness! But if you were and you’re getting cringed out by my use of “code switching”, know that there is some level of irony to everything I say on here. Now, if you venture on over to the Literature tab and you read the section on Shelley, that you should take as me being earnest. This, too, I guess is earnest but I’m not taking myself seriously. Earnestness vs. seriousness,

maybe something we (I) should think about at a later date. But anyway,

what I’m trying to say is… yes, I’m code switching, but I use

this term with no air of pretension and I actually wanted you to laugh

at it. Anyway!) Whether I am attending a meeting with the English

faculty at Bryan Hall, or hanging out with some friends watching

The Summer I Turned Pretty, or serving customers at the restaurant,

or participating as a student in class, all of those roles require

something different of me. I need and want that same variation in

my writing! This is my code switching space for writing.

 

I used to journal all the time when I was in middle and high school, but over the past five or so years it has mostly been fragmented bursts of journaling / poetry that usually happen in intense moments of feeling and emotion. I’ve done away a bit with the journaling style of “today I did ‘Y,’ and then I did ‘Z,’ and because of ‘Z’ I felt this way, but also let me give you the context of ‘X’ so that you can even understand ‘Y’”. That was just too much for me. It’s so tedious. I remember specifically when I was in high school, I realized I don’t have to journal like that. I can simply say what I want without context because, to an extent, the context doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling. I feel like of the things I have written over the last five years they’re mostly useful enough to put together a pretty clear picture of what has ensued. If not explicitly, I think the feelings were conveyed well enough to earmark a lot of the major events of that time even if it was with some abstract metaphor. The problem is, since I did them so sporadically, they’re physically all over the place! There’s no collection of them or an actual linear timeline. And honestly, the timeline isn’t the most important thing to me, but sometimes I do get scared because I think that when I’m 80 it might be. Once I read my great great grandmother’s journal and her’s was like a timeline. I could so vividly picture the work they were doing on the farm and how she went about her everyday life that I get scared that the fragmented bits aren’t going to be strong enough, like her's was, to bring back all of the memories and feelings I had once I am 80 and so far removed from them. So, the jury’s still out on that.

 

Okay, back to code switching. For school the writing is all formal. I love formal writing. I feel like I am best at it in some ways because it’s safer. All writing is a risk, but at least with formal writing your heart is wrapped up in your thesis on Othello or your argument on the Creature’s narrative voice in Frankenstein. Someone can rip apart your argument and, sure, it’s going to feel like a blow to the face, but at least there are other stakes involved. You write informally, and suddenly it’s your brain’s actual thinking voice, vulnerable and less polished, that everyone is welcome to take a swing at. It’s scary! But here I am, and all that to say I would like to strengthen the muscles of informal writing. I think that writing to an audience will also force me to bring back a bit of that timeline writing that I previously swore off as “tedious” because you all, in fact, are not in my brain and won’t understand ‘Y’ if I don’t explain ‘X’.

 

I think that there is a lot of value to be found in seeing behind the curtain of someone else’s experience. It’s not that I think my experience is some enlightening tool that is going to help someone bypass all of their cycles of reincarnation, but I do think that it could be a show of solidarity: one wide-eyed and struggling person in their mid-twenties to another. This is something I value and have been lucky to find in a lot of ways over the last year. I have made friends who have recently gone through heartbreak and are trying to pick up the pieces and create something new in Charlottesville. I’ve also met friends who feel like they’re out of their depth in graduate school, riddled with self-consciousness and imposter syndrome. (Me too, man! Me too!) And I’ve met people who are choosing every day to take steps toward ending unhealthy cycles of trauma… all things that don’t appear on the surface. This is not to say that all of these affinities were found in Charlottesville, because they weren’t. But they’ve all come from relationships where one person has drawn the curtains and embraced vulnerability.

 

Homo Irrealis is for drawing the curtains! Drawing them on everything I love and think, am sad about, or feel is important, things I wish I did or want to do, and the subtle work that it takes to make life richer.