I have these moments where I’m waiting for these moments to pass. Moments of self-doubt and worry. Waiting for responses of acceptance, waiting to be chosen by an institution, to be able to move on to the next chapter of my life. In this chapter I’m so ready to be trained as a professional novelist, to write more and write different things, to hustle for making a career out of writing…these moments appear to be familiar, I’ve been here before, and had anticipated their transition before. Everything about my life is temporary, transient, I feel like a roadside gas station, or a diner. A lot has changed though, a lot has happened, and I’m no longer who I was seven months ago when I finished my BA.
I need a big change, a new country, a new flow. Will that be possible in Vienna? For the last nine years my luggage has remained unpacked. I never fully arrived in Vienna, as if I was always going to leave it. I need to grow more than my condition accommodates me, to grow in my writing life, in becoming financially independent through the work I’m doing best, actually doing it full time every day. I want to believe there is some good coming out of this liminal space. But then I finished Carmen Laforet’s debut novel, Nada, two days ago. Nada. Nada. Nada. A lot of suffering, disillusionment. You come out of that reading experience, thinking if you learned something from that suffering, or if it was just Nada. I want a good long sleep. Less worry about the future and the past. And to be here and now.