Alan (Almost) Gives Up
Alan S.
Today I got three notes from three wonderful wonderful former students. I asked them if I could write them back here, publically-ish. Alan, a fiction writer who is in med school, convinced, as are all med students, that he has everything wrong with him, writes:
Help! Heather! I stopped writing. Stopped blogging. Stopped reading because they all do have something important and meaningful to say. …Too much facebook, too many old ER clips on YouTube, and new jobs that involve heart extract samples, calculating dilution factors and assays in black 96 well plates that never seem to work. I need homework. I need books to read because it’s the summer and it’s raining almost every day in Chicago and I’m craving it but I’m scared. Worried to get back into it. Like a kid on a hot day next to the deep end of a swimming pool too afraid to jump in. Help. Please give me assignments. Good fiction to read. Thank you! Alan
When I was little, I would pretend I had a Dear Abby column. I would write myself for advice, and write myself back. I still do this. (It’s called therapy.) And I like the idea, so much, of using the blog to talk to my students to talk to each other to know myself, to tether to the world, word after word.
Dear Afraid to Jump In In Chicago,
I don’t think you are afraid. I don’t think you are lost. I don’t think you are blocked or bored or anything else at all. I think you are in med school. I think you are exhausted. I think you are working hard and shining bright and making all the right mistakes in the right order. I think you know what to do.
1. Lower your expectations drastically.
2. Listen to a great book on tape. You can do this in a comfortable chair while you rub your feet or pet a cat. You need to use your literature-head, or you will feel you have no soul, no self, but you need the Gentle Program. Listen to someone read you Checkov. Listen to the Great Short Stories on tape. Go the New Yorker website and listen to the great new writers read the other great new writers’ short stories. Do you have a tub?
3. Read the Glen Rock Book of the Dead or reread Safekeeping and write tiny moments. Practice observing with your eyes-from-heart (that’s what you are training for as a dr anyway). Each week, make a list of the ten most human moments, those moments where you saw the Thing. And once a week, write one of them, you know the method. You know how. You haven’t forgetting.
4. Get the new issue of Poets and Writers magazine. The summer issue is jam-packed with summer reading suggestions, brilliantly organized, just for you. This is what you want.
Alan. You are a tired man. Tired isn’t wrong! Tired people do face book and you tube, and this is a good thing, a kind of chewing gum for the soul. But you are feeling it’s draining you, not feeding you. You know what to do. Feed your soul gently. Little soft nursery bites. Stop talking. Hush. Listen to Jon Kabat Zinn tapes (check out his website, specialize Dr. S!). Go to a reading. Go to a cello concert. Bring art back in as though it is medicine, which it is: slowly, daily, attending to your symptoms with grace.
Alan, you are running around in circles, spiraling with your body instead of your pen. Hush. Hold. You know what to do. You always know what to do. Shh. Email me next week and tell me what you saw.
Signed,
Hopefully Helpful in Holland
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