The universe had no beginning

I have no idea how to say this, so I will just say it. I did not get into graduate school. Anywhere.

None of the words one might use to describe it - disappointment, dashed hopes, crushed flat on the sidewalk like old ugly gum - seem adequate.

I suppose I had too much riding on it, on a personal level.

I had a lot more riding on it than the first time I applied, when I got into one school that was far away in a city I didn't like, in a program that would have put me into debt for decades, and decided not to go. I had a good job at the time. I wasn't ready to drop everything, to change my standard of living. I just wasn't ready.

This time, I was ready. I am ready. I have been for a while now.

I don't know what to make of this, except - and please just let me say this without telling me how wrong I am to even think such a thing, without piling on the platitudes. I know it's hard to hear someone you like say such a thing, but I need to say it. Because I mean it. Because this is how I feel.

I don't know what to make of this, except that I am maybe not going to be a writer the way I'd always imagined I'd be. The way I always felt, deep down, at the hard substrate layer of myself, in the bedrock, that I was meant to be.

I am too old for this. I am too old for the plucky, give-it-another-shot-someplace-else strategy. And there is something to the idea that if this is the right time, and I am in the right place, and in the right frame of mind, and ready to do the things it will take, that it should have - and would have - worked. I would have gotten in.

Maybe just to the one school that felt right to me. That was what I expected, actually. Just the one school. And it would have been fine - heck, it would have been wonderful. I was prepared to be delighted.

I was not prepared for this, and I didn't know what to do with myself afterwards, except get on my bike. But I couldn't get on my bike, because my back still hurts, and I don't want to do what I usually do, which is to leap back into my normal activities too soon and keep it from getting all the way better.

So I didn't get on my bike. I got on the couch and cried. I called Boywich.

When things are really, really bad, I told him, he is the only one I can bear to talk to. So he's the only one who knows. And it is likely to stay that way for a few days.

Why am I telling the blog? Well, it may be because I don't really know most of the people who read. I don't interact with you. There are exceptions to that: I do feel that I know a couple of you, and that we are friends. Friends in perhaps a different way than the people I see every week. But in a way that has its own specialness.

That's not why I'm telling you, though.

Sometimes when one is writing a blog, one is conscious of writing to the people who may be reading it. But sometimes one is just writing to oneself. This is one of those.

I just need to write it down, I guess. Which may make me still a writer or it may not. I don't know. I've been wishing for a more creative space lately, a space I felt I could paint in. A space surrounded by more creative types than my apartment is. I was thinking of moving closer to the school I thought I'd be going to. Now, obviously, that isn't a reason, and moving is expensive, of course, but I am still a little attracted to the idea.

We shall see.

Note: Headline stolen right off the cover of Astronomy magazine.