Priorities and Stuff

I just read the post on the MFA/MFYou blog about setting priorities in one's life, which is an issue I've been pondering a lot recently. As I get closer to landing a full-time teaching job, I've been daydreaming a lot about what my life will be like once I'm in that position. I had an interview a few days ago, and questions came up about my view of the term "professional development" and job duties outside of the classroom. I think I was able to answer those questions satisfactorily. I expressed interest in a variety of possibilities, such as serving on committees, working with student organizations, developing podcasts to supplement my coursework, attending professional development seminars, evaluating Advanced Placement exams, and so forth. Since the interview, I've thought even more about these things and have played out various scenarios for the future in which I take additional classes at the local university and complete an advanced writing teacher certification program or maybe another degree. I think of how I can make myself as attractive as possible for advancement and tenure or for other full time jobs down the road.

Now those are all good possibilities, but those are also things that take a lot of time and effort. So the question is whether I want to devote myself to those things at the possible expense of my writing. And this is really tough to evaluate.

One particular issue I've been considering is how I should best use my summers if I get a full-time job. It turns out that at the school I just interviewed, all full-timers are contracted for the regular school year, and any summer teaching is done for additional pay as adjuncts. This means that I could simply decide not to teach during the summer and take that time completely for my own writing. Or I could teach additional classes that perhaps I don't have the opportunity to do during the regular school year. Teaching extra classes would be a great way to expand my experience as well as make more money. The extra cash could go straight toward paying down my student loans or into savings. Choosing to teach extra classes would certainly have a lot of benefits. But I know it will be tough to write much during the school year when I'm teaching full time, so that extra time during the summer could be my primary way of maintaining an investment in my writing. But how do I weigh the various options against each other?

Part of me kind of feels like I need to reevaluate my writing goals significantly, that I need to sort of step back from how I think about writing and myself as a writer. I don't mean that I'm planning on giving up writing, but I sometimes feel like I let it dominate my thoughts too much. I think of myself as a writer. It's a major part of my identity. Therefore, when I don't find time or can't muster the effort to write, I feel like I'm unsure who I am, like I've lost part of myself and am living somebody else's life. Also, when I continue to get rejected when I send out my stories, I have trouble reconciling that failure with my image of myself as a writer, and rather than simply undermining my confidence in my abilities to do an activity I enjoy, it undermines my entire sense of self.

I'm mostly able to counter doubts and fears and whatever else by reminding myself that I'm still awfully young. It's unusual for writers to achieve success by my age. So I often think that the best plan is to allow myself the extra time to continue developing my craft and hope that I can break through in the next decade or so. In general, I think this is a good attitude to take. But the difficulty I face is that in the past, so much of my dreams about the future and where my life will go have hinged on being successful as a writer. This isn't to indicate that I planned on making a living as a novelist (which I know is highly unlikely), but I figured that if I could publish enough to establish myself a bit in the literary world, then I could teach creative writing and likely teach a lighter load as a university professor than the five-five load of a community college teacher and, thus, have more time to write. The teaching and writing would go together and feed back on each other.

Recently I've been facing the notion that such a dream may never come about or that it could be years or decades before it does. And in the mean time, I still need a job. But do I want to have "just a job" or do I want to have a career? I'd like to be paid to do something I care about. That is one of the great things about teaching. Even as an adjunct, I get to do something that makes a difference. And the reality is that I would love to do it full time while making more money and having health insurance and so on. Yet the sacrifice that comes with full-time employment will be less time to write. But that is something I'm willing to trade, I think. I still hope to pursue my writing, but I know that, especially in the first years of a full-time position, it will be hard to find time for anything else. But I think that's a necessary trade off. And more and more, I'm thinking that it might be that I'll really have to set my writing goals aside for a few years, or relegate them more to hobby or side interest status.

I don't know. It's tough to accept that I might not realistically be able to write much while pursuing a teaching career, but I do suspect that that's pretty much the way things will work out. Part of the problem is really the issue of priorities. If I'm willing to slack as a teacher, then I can probably find more time to write, but I don't think that's fair to my students or the school that pays me. I think I should really make teaching a priority, even if it means downgrading writing. But I'm awfully conflicted about it.

Maybe it's still premature to fret over such things. I don't actually have a job offer on the table right now anyway. It's possible that the end result of all my stressing over applications and interviews will be that next fall I'll be doing the same adjuncting I've been doing for the past two years. If I don't get a full-time job, then much of what I've been obsessing over is moot. And maybe that will be truly beneficial. After having thought through the implications of full-time employment, perhaps I can take better advantage of a part-time situation for another year and spend as much extra time as possible writing. At the moment, I've only been offered three classes as an adjunct for the fall, which will mean a much tighter budget but more time to write. Then when the day comes that I have to shift my priorities further toward teaching, I at least will have had more time to work on my writing between now and then.