If there is one thing that I hate doing it’s reading my own writing. I want it to be perfect the first time I put pen to paper, put finger to the keyboard, but it’s almost never that way. Every now and again magic happens – that effortless achievement of an extraordinary sentence that just comes to me without thinking, or editing. It almost seems unfair to experience that in spirts so rare. Knowing that a level of writing genius is in you but you can’t access it at your leisure is frustrating. But then, that would negate the utility of work. I have to work at this thing. It’s not just going to happen for me: not a writing job, a writing career, not even consistently structing a well-written sentence, if I don’t put in the work.
Until then, the magic comes to tease me…or maybe it comes to show me potential. Maybe it comes to let me in on what will happen when I put in the work.
So I’m here today to put in the work. To not only practice writing, but also to analyze stuff I’ve written before, see what my thoughts are now that I’ve been a while remove from when I wrote it. As I mentioned, previously, I selected five random stories I’ve posted here to go over.
First Up? My “How a Rat Remind Me not to Settle” post from October 31, 2022.
Things I’m looking for:
Sentence Structure
As far as I can tell, I thought the sentences were well composed. I didn’t detect any grammatical or spelling errors, but I’m not the best at that anymore. There was a time when I could diagram the hell out of a sentence. I wonder if the kids still do that in school?
My Favorite Sentence or Line
How does it feel to be outsmarted by vermin? I refuse to tell you…though I know.
The Story
I thought the story was good. It’s still kinda hard to judge, even though I wrote this over two years ago. Overall, I thought the story was told well.
It’s interesting how I’m always mentioning New York.
Things I learned about myself
The way the story opens up, it kinda makes it seem like I live in this apartment alone and I pay all the bills. And because of the way I open the story, when I mention my Mom later, it almost makes it seem like she’s a visitor rather than being at home too. I think the way I structured that story, in regards to my living situation, speaks to where I was at that time in my life. I never wanted to live with my Mom this long. I wanted to be out of this apartment by 40 and there I was 42, almost 43 and still here.
And then there was this juxtaposition. I had just gotten a job in August after being unemployed for over two years, and six weeks after I got hired, they increased my pay by $19,000. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I was making more than I’d ever made before. While I didn’t make enough money to comfortably live on my own, I made more than enough to comfortably live with my mother. So comfortable was I, in fact, that I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck anymore. Sometimes my job would purposely pay me late because I wanted a paper check instead of doing direct deposit, and it didn’t affect me at all. I still had money in the bank to cover my expenses and then some. I had no kids, no car payment (paid off in 2017), and student loans were on freeze still from the pandemic. For the first time I had disposable income without saving for it, or budgeting for it.
But I was also in a job that I couldn’t stand. It’s funny, I knew from the first day of that job that I didn’t want to be there, and on the second day, I got a call from another job that I’d interviewed for with an offer. It paid less money than this job even before they increased my pay, but it was very close to home. I remember I decided I was going to take the other job, but then felt bad about inconveniencing my current new job. Ultimately I didn’t take the other job. And the job that I didn’t feel comfortable leaving because I’d just gotten there, had no problem firing me expeditiously about a year later.
So anyway, that’s where I was at that time. Also in that post, I mentioned that I was having a hard time sleeping even before I saw the rat, and that’s because that job stressed me out so and I was so unhappy with my life, feeling like I was loosing myself. It was stressors that the extra money couldn’t take away. The only relief the money brought me was not having to stress about my bills, but that stress was replaced by another. Then the rat came and made it even worse.
Terminix had to come out and get the rat. And just as we breathed a sigh of relief another came, then Terminix came again. It went on like that several more times until they finally tented the place at the beginning of March 2023 and we haven’t seen another rat since.
I think what I meant by writing that the rat taught me not to settle is that the lesson was when you stick with something that you’re unsatisfied with – whether it be a job, a relationship, or even an apartment—it gets worse not better and you risk becoming comfortable in something you once ouldn’t stand. And that’s just one of many consequences that could play out as a result of essentially giving up. I’m really good at making the best out of situations I don’t like, when I need to channel that energy to coming up with ways to change what I don’t like.
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