Five years ago this month I put down a short story by Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find", and I know it sounds trite but I knew in that moment I wanted to be a writer. For reasons I can only now see can I ascertain the validity in that revelation. Because it was a revelation. Because I was already a writer. I wrote television news copy. I produced hours of live, breaking and recorded news every day. And I was damn good at it, especially the writing side of it -- I even won an in-house "Best News Writer Award"! -- but it was ultimately un-fulfilling. Then I read a biography of some Catholic writers. One of them O'Connor and then I read O'Connor and then what fell on me fell on me hard and fast and I knew becoming a writer was my new goal. To write with such a manner and means (yes, that phrase is borrowed) as to include my faith, my observations of the world, to have those ideas that have always struck me be inhabited by worlds and plots, characters and settings. Becoming a writer. Yes. That's what I wanted to be.
Skip ahead a year. Skip over that theology class on the Problem of Evil I took. Skip over the long hours trying to write. Trying to make something out of nothing. Skip over the doldrums of work, and the applying to switch jobs to become a television director. Pause and join me for this moment. Skip the applications. The scrambling to get recommendation letters and write and write and write.
It's now March of 2007. Isaac James Guest is due. Any day I'm about to welcome my son into this world. I am writing. But mostly I am waiting. Waiting to officially switch jobs. Waiting to go house shopping. Ohio State has rejected my application for grad school. But I am still waiting. Waiting for Isaac and waiting for Dayton. Dayton comes first. Acceptance to the M.A. program (I am still thinking maybe I'll duel degree with an MTS at this point and Dayton has a great theology program). But there are stipulations. I need to take two more English classes somewhere and do well in them.
But still. Acceptance. Still. It felt like morning had broken. Jen and I hugged and cried and were excited as we lay on our bed that Saturday morning before Isaac came.
It would take an entire year. A whole long year of a new job, a new son, a new house. But I completed the classes. Even re-applied to OSU (rejected!). And so with the classes under my belt I trucked down to Dayton for a Q&A with the director. I left. Drove home. Unsatisfied and confused and not really sure if the incredible sacrifice it was going to take with our family was going to be worth it.
Jen and I had a long discussion. Laid every possibility out. And the bottom-line was that it didn't feel right. Though I had worked and worked hard. Written and gotten better. Was ready to quit my job and head back to school. Though it all seemed aligned and strung up taught on the neck of a guitar, something was out of tune still. It wasn't right. Not yet.
Read Part II: A Long Road in the Same Direction
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