the next 12 months

(contemplating life on the roof of a hotel in NYC, many months ago)

The severance package offered by my firm gives me a year's worth of (significantly reduced) compensation and health insurance.  That will take me through March of 2012.  I can't really afford to go back to school without some funding, and I am not willing to completely finance more education with debt, the way I did with law school.  The timing should work well in one sense, because I will find out what my offers are with respect to school at just about the same time that my severance money will run out.  And at that point, I will have to actually earn some money.  This, of course, panicked me.

A little later, I sat down and started reading this piece about making art.  To tell you the truth, I haven't finished it yet, because when I was partially through it, I had to walk down to the garage and pick up our car, which had been getting its annual emissions/safety inspection.  Which meant that the first couple of points had time to swim around in my brain as I strolled along.

Now, I realize I have plenty of time to figure out what to do with myself, and that I don't need to obsessively worry about what to do when my severance runs out at this point.  I mean really, it hasn't even been a week.  In fact, I probably shouldn't worry about it at all at this point.  Because the thing is, this year I've taken (been given?) is such a rare luxury.  I should take advantage of it.  I should write.  When else will I have the opportunity to sit around in my bathrobe at 11 am (which is what I am doing right now) and just write?

So.  I am going to take a writing workshop over the summer.  And not in business writing.  In fiction writing.  And not an online workshop, one where I have to go sit in a classroom face-to-face with other crappy writers.  Of course it's scary.  But whatever, when else will I be able to do it?  And who knows, maybe it will help me to overcome my fear that I don't have any original thoughts, and I'm not a "real writer" anyway (whatever that means) but actually just some kind of fraud playing at writing.  Ahem.  Not that I'm insecure or anything.

And won't writing be a nice break from reading Beowulf and Canterbury Tales this summer?