Dear Yours Truly,

PS: If, during this grieving process, you acquire an additional dog, will you start sliding down a slippery slope that winds up with you on ‘Hoarders’? Because I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it.

I’m glad you brought up Hector and Harriet, actually, because they provide a pretty good cautionary tale when it comes to love affairs. Hector’s love for Harriet was based totally on fantasy–he’d only seen her on the stage one time, and didn’t even understand the language she’d been speaking! But he decided she was the girl for him, and so he relentlessly pursued her in what I think we can all agree was a phenomenally creepy fashion (he wrote a symphony about murdering her). Then they got married (!?) and realized it was really hard to be married to someone you couldn’t actually talk to. The fantasy was not reality. Reality is way harder and you have to actually be good together instead of just daydreaming about how good you’d probably be together if ever you actually met in person. And they were miserable, and ended up breaking up, and it was awful, and then their son died of yellow fever in the Navy.

I think this is a good analogy in general, for certain relationship trauma. The deal is, if you broke up–even if it was totally the other party’s idea–it pretty much means that the relationship wasn’t working, wasn’t right. Your true life partner, by definition, would not break up with you. And thus your grieving, while totally valid and understandable, is at least partially based on fantasy. You are at least partially grieving your FANTASY about what the relationship was (or could have been, if only! etc.). Confronting the reality of why you broke up is a good thing to do, I think, instead of just being sad THAT you broke up. Also look just at the wording of your letter to me–you were “pretty happy.” Not even in your letter do you say “he was my soulmate” or “I was blissfully happy.” You were just “pretty” happy. That’s not good! That’s not ideal. That’s pretty fucking tepid, actually. What are you, my grand parents in the 50s? On the one hand I agree with Freud that life isn’t just about being happy all the time, but on the other hand it’s also not automatically about settling for something with a shrug. You’re a modern-ass woman, you should aim higher than “pretty happy.” Really think about it, on paper (see below), identify what made it just “pretty” good, instead of “rad.” You’re young, your whole life is ahead of you, why can’t you shoot for rad? There are all kinds of rad dudes out there, for one thing, but also simply being alone in a rad way is way radder than being “pretty happy” with someone else. I fucking believe that shit!

I think a part of you is clinging to your pain because maybe you feel like it’s the only way you can continue to have the relationship, even though he’s no longer in it. The pain is all you have left of him, so you don’t want to let it go. This is understandable and everyone does it, but it is also crazy and you should stop doing it, as you realize. I think you should respect your grieving only up to a certain point, and after that point it becomes sort of self-indulgent and, more insidiously, a HABIT. Like you habituate yourself to feeling that grief and then you forget how to not feel it. That’s a bad scene. You need to give your unconscious opportunities to forget to feel grief. Do you know what I mean? You need to create spaces of possibility for your mind to get so engaged in other stuff that it forgets for awhile to agonize. the more spaces you create for forgetting to agonize, the fewer and farther-between the agonizing will become, until one day you’ll forget to agonize and that forgetting will last forever and then you will be free. There are types of grief that probably never cease and maybe SHOULDN’T HAVE to ever cease, even (your child being murdered; a plague killing 3/4 of humanity) but this is not one of those types.

In my experience, the only thing that creates these forgetful spaces is jostling. You have to jostle yourself in all kinds of ways. Go have a Lost Weekend somewhere with a fun friend. Move into a new apartment. Start taking some weird class like Latin or Soil Health. Volunteer at the humane society, walking dogs! The goal should be real-world jostling–getting yourself out into the big messy colorful stinky world and shaking things up. Maybe do some things that push your comfort zone a bit. Bungee jump! Just kidding (OR AM I)! Go to a weird hippie hot spring retreat. Projects, projects, projects. And of course, you don’t want to do these things. You want to sit at home and cry. But you make yourself get up and do these things. Imagine yourself like you are your own friend–what would you do, if your friend were feeling the way you are currently feeling? You need to be Sarah Jessica Parker’s slightly less attractive friend to your current Sarah Jessica Parker self, and pull yourself out of bed, and buy yourself a great new pair of Louboutins or whatever. Is that a real thing? Imagine yourself in a musical montage. It’s dumb! But so is grieving a break-up forever! Life’s way too short, man.

As for the grief itself, I have some annoyingly pragmatic suggestions for homework assignments. But like, what else can anyone tell you? There’s no magic bullet–all you can do is small pragmatic baby steps, and here are some ideas. Take them as you will:

1. Make some lists. This is the single greatest task a person can do for themselves in almost any situation. Lists have literally saved my life (not literally) on more than one occasion. They can force you to really actually SEE stuff, and confront it, and deal with it. Instead of just your ooky feelings that blob out all over the place, you write down specifics and then think about them. Honestly this helps me so much, please don’t scoff until you have tried it: Here are some suggestions:
– what don’t you miss about him? Be honest! What don’t you miss about his physical person, his behaviors, his beliefs, his life attitudes, the way he made you feel, conversational tics, awkward smells, whatever. Go deep! Nothing is too small to include on this list.
– what kinds of things would you like to have in a partner, that he did not provide for you? For example, would your ideal partner break up with you at your brother’s wedding? Probably not, right?
– this may be my own personal perversion but I have always found it helpful to write down the things that are humorous about my current trauma. Write down the things that you can tell, logically, will become humorous anecdotes later. Funny places you have cried; improper revelations to strangers on the bus; safely and responsibly operating your car while simultaneously hysterically sobbing; crying at a really stupid AT&T commercial about family; etc. It helps you get perspective, and helps jostle you out of your secret belief that you’re just gonna feel this way forever until you die, which is just not true. One day certain things you are feeling now will be funny to you. This is true! Try to anticipate them.
– What are all the things you are secretly relieved you don’t have to do anymore / can start doing again now that you are broken up? There have to be some things. Write them all down and study them and then do/think regularly about all those things. Maybe you had a recurring argument that actually it is incredibly awesome that you never have to have again, EVER!! Maybe you always felt weird about watching Spartacus on Netflix instant in your underwear, even though that is obviously awesome of you. Maybe there’s some weird sex issue you can be relieved you don’t have to deal with anymore. e.g. I know someone who found it hard to change his eating habits because he was living with a super junk food girl. When they broke up, he really threw himself into dramatically changing his diet in all these ways he’d always been wanting to but could never hold himself to because she was always ordering delicious pizza. This new life made him incredibly happy and he is still happy to this day, and he looks and feels great and eats shitloads of kale all day long.
– what are all the things you like, in the world. Make a vast list of all the things you like. Dogs. Chocolate. Rain. Michelle Obama. Coffee in a special mug. I mean, this is my list, yours may be different. Just list and list and list and list, and notice how many millions of things you are listing, and how great it is to be alive on the earth eating chocolate, and what an incredible privilege to have access to so many delights both large and small, and isn’t that a joy and a comfort, and maybe you shouldn’t sweat the other stuff so much, or at least not all the time.

2. Something Like Yoga: I know people get annoyed when someone in their life tells them to do yoga no matter what their problem is, but honestly. The thing about yoga is that you spend a lot of time just sitting and breathing, which at first is intensely annoying and you sit there thinking about bullshit cultural appropriation and how much you hate the instructor, but after awhile you almost start wondering if the sitting/breathing part is the part that makes you feel so loose and light and gentle afterward. I have cried spontaneously just while lying in “corpse pose”. It’s like you create an emptiness where feelings can come out, be acknowledged, then dissipate. You do have to find a good teacher–one who doesn’t make you chant in phony sanskrit or whatever. But it’s worth it to get a monthlong membership at a yoga place and just go to classes until you find one that suits you. Just get a huge punch card for like $400, which really isn’t that much money considering you have a marginally grown-up job, and commit to that punch card. Go twice a week at least, for at least a month, before you make any judgment call whatsoever. I would be legitimately shocked if by the end of the month you did not feel better in your soul. Plus committing to something outside of your dogs and your grieving process will be a good step in the right direction. You have to actually commit–you can’t buy the membership and then never go. This will make you feel much worse about yourself, which is the opposite of the goal here.
(really any kind of physical exercise can stand in for yoga if you just hate yoga. But I do think getting those endorphins pumping (?) and that sweat pouring out automatically puts you in a better mindset. Plus being physically tired means sleeping better, which you need! Get a gym membership at a gym with a sauna!!! Nothing like laying in a sauna for letting feelings bubble up and get dismissed–it’s too damn hot to cry in there for long)

3. Stop Getting Dogs: You don’t need any more dogs. You are trying to distract yourself from inner pain by creating a vast herd of animals you need to constantly care for. This is a textbook example of some sort of psychologically fraught situation, I’m sure. Focus on the dogs at hand, and not on additional dogs. You might think an additional dog would be a good example of the “jostling” mentioned above, but I personally don’t think so, in this case. My two cents!!!! I think if someone had zero dogs, then getting one dog could be a great example of jostling. But this does not describe your situation. Maybe volunteer at the dog pound instead, walking dogs. Dogs galore, but not owning any more of them.

4. Go to a coffee shop to do your work instead of doing it at home: Go be in the world of humans. Even if you’re just grading papers and feeling bad, it’s better to do that in the world of other people. Overhear a hilarious couple-fight and be relieved you don’t have to fight with your ex anymore! Have a funny interaction with a barista and remember that you are funny! Walk home in the delightful springtime and make yourself notice at least 3 things that are awesome. A funny toddler, a beautiful flower, a hilarious “Nixon: Now More Than Ever” bumper sticker.

5. No Contact: Don’t call him or text him or email him or IM him or sex-blog him or whatever else. You need to unfriend him on Facebook. If you were the first person to ever actually successfully take and implement this advice then you would be a great genius and your grieving process would get way better in a hurry. Will power!

I don’t know if any of this is helpful or un-Ann-Landersy enough. Ultimately breaking up with someone is awful and nobody really knows how to do it exactly right, we all are just fumbling around doing our best. And obviously it is easier to give than to take advice–if my old man broke up with me I would be an absolute fucking wreck of a human, and all this advice I just gave you would seem flaccid and insulting to me, for truly no one on the earth has ever known such anguish, etc. And I would get ten dogs. That’s just how you feel when you’re in this position, it’s just reality. It feels horrible. The only thing I know for sure though is that you have to focus on realities and specifics, and on jostling yourself, or nothing will change. Sitting around grieving just perpetuates the grief. Whatever it was, the relationship, it’s over now, and it’s not coming back, and that’s OKAY. It’s going to be okay. People don’t actually die of broken hearts like this. You heal, and you have to give yourself opportunities to access that healing grace of time and inner strength and etc. etc. And you can’t wait until you feel better to start doing things again, like yoga or carpentry–because it’s the doing of the things that makes you start feeling better. It takes will power and self respect to walk out the door to some fucking spinning class you have no desire to go to. Take control of that power and respect! Harness it for good! You are smart and a nice person and you can totally do it.

I need some career assistance. I’m torn between two pretty stupid career paths! How does a person become an archivist? Not necessarily a librarian, maybe more of an image or document or collections specialist? Is it a special Grad program? Is it library science?

Archives are so lovely, quiet, sacred, ordered… so many things I cherish. But if I go that path will my art get abandoned, or stagnate? Will I regret not getting an MFA? If I get an MFA will I just feel super stressed and freaked out about participating in the rat race of the “art world” and trying to get a faculty job? Help! -Anonymous

First off, I have no idea how one becomes an archivist. But you know who would? An archivist. Why don’t you contact a few collections specialists and find out how they came to their jobs. Go far, go wide. Contact someone at a University, at a museum, at the Library of Congress, at a corporation. I’ve been to the Coke archives. Did you know they used to make Coke gum back in the 1900? They did. And an intact pack is work like 5k. They had a few of them.

But I digress. You seem to be going in a lot of directions at once, but if read between the lines and try to listen to what you really want, it’s archives. Lovely, quiet, sacred, ordered. While art can be any or all of those things, the art world is none of them.

So go, figure out how to be around the things you cherish and make sure subsequent generations can enjoy them too.

Assuming you go down that path, your art might be abandoned. Or stagnate.

But that’s okay. I’m not much a believer in making art for making art’s sake. If you need to make art, if it compels you, awesome. You will make art. But if you feel your art stagnating, don’t fight it. Let it fall by the wayside for awhile. You aren’t going to lose your capacity for coming up with ideas nor lose the skills to bring those ideas to life.

I hate to hear artists complain that they can’t make art because they can’t get inspired then force themselves to make art anyway. Bad idea! Great art doesn’t come from forcing yourself to make art because you think you have to make art because you tell everyone you’re an artist.

I’ve been on a kind of hiatus from making art for a few years. A project here and there, but no major shows. That’s okay. I’ve been doing my version of archiving. Inspiration hit recently. I’m doing a new project. This, you’ll either be happy or frightened to know, is part of it. I’m certain the world isn’t hurting for lack of the uninspired shows I didn’t bother making in the interim because I wasn’t inspired. And I didn’t lose my touch from a few years of stagnation. If anything I’m coming back to the table with a wealth of new talents, insights and experiences.

Which is to say becoming an archivist might make your art flourish. Maybe it’ll inspire you in new directions. Maybe you’ll need to do something not so lovely, loud, profane and chaotic after a long day archiving. Maybe that’s what the art world needs.

As far as regretting not getting your MFA, if after going to a special grad school with a library science type program and then going to work as an archivist you still want to get your MFA, it won’t be too late. Art MFA programs are full of older folks. And if teaching is more your eventual art goal as opposed to being the next Jeff Koons, having been an archivist with a library science degree will make it that much easier to get hired.

How does this all sit with you? Does it resonate? If so, great. Good luck. Go archive.

If not, scrap all that. Apply for MFAs and join the rat race!

We are starting to plan our wedding and I am overwhelmed. I would love to know your thoughts on making a wedding awesome!

p.s. please make the advice incredibly, incredibly long so that it takes literally hours to read! Thanks!*

Oh boy! Planning a wedding can be an unexpectedly stressful thing to do. You think “oh yeah, just my good friends and family hanging out together having wine, what could possibly go wrong or make me turn into a psychotic wreck hysterically sobbing on the phone to Steve about how “EVERYONE’S GONNA HATE ME”? The answer is: lots of stuff! Lets take your concerns one by one:

1. Who do you invite / your old man has too many friends:
Making the guestlist is absolutely the first thing you should do. Everything else follows from there (size of venue; how many forks to rent; etc.). A wise person told me once that a wedding is either 100 people or it’s nobody. If you invite friends, you have to invite all your friends, and you and your partner put together have way more friends than you think you do. The only way to have an actual small wedding is to tell everyone “family only” and then have maybe one friend each. Or just elope. However, here is a Helpful Hint: Many of the people you invite WON’T COME. So you can invite more people than you can actually afford to feed, knowing that some of them inevitably won’t make it. People have lives and babies and weird illnesses and are in France doing archival research, etc. They won’t all come! But it’s still nice to be invited! But yeah, you sit down together with a big piece of paper and you just wrack your brains thinking of every single person you want to invite. It will definitely be way more people than you could possibly imagine. Then you just go from there, culling via categories that make sense. If your list has 200 people on it you have to tell everyone they can’t bring dates. Stuff like that.

2. How do you get your friends out there? Girl what are you talking about?! That’s not your job! You send the invites and the rest is up to them and the lord. Everybody understands that weddings have to be held in some physical location, and that not everyone in the world lives in that precise location. Nobody is expecting you to help them get there. However, you should definitely reserve a block of rooms at a reasonable hotel that is near the reception, and then inform everybody about it (see about group discounts). YOU ALSO MAKE A WEBSITE! You make a fun wedding website with some dumb picture of you two kissing or whatever, and you put all the info on the website. Hotels, maps, how to get from the airport to the hotel, the address of the wedding, fun stuff to do in the neighborhood, etc. Then you just put the url on your invitations, and everybody has what they need.

3. What time is best? I don’t know! But honestly, who gets married in the morning?? Mormons or something? I think a late afternoon wedding, sliding into an evening reception, is really the only way to go. Because, drinks and dancing = the entire point of a wedding, aside from the actual getting married part which only comprises like 15 minutes of this huge hours-long odyssey. Also you have to have toasts.

4. Weather: I am the kind of person who, if I planned an outdoor wedding, would spend literally every single moment of every day in the months before the wedding stressing out about what if it rains. Then it would actually rain. If you are the kind of person who can withstand this sort of grinding daily torment then by all means, get married outside. Outdoor weddings are beautiful. However, make this clear on your website, so people can bring their sunscreen and their allergy pills and an umbrella and an extra coat. April seems pretty chilly to me, on the east coast, frankly. April at night on the east coast? That seems chilly as hell. Nothing wrong with a classic June wedding.

5. Making the wedding vegan: OF COURSE! The cliché about weddings is that they are “all about you,” which isn’t true–they are actually all about your mother–but perhaps nowhere is it more legitimate or reasonable to exercise this cliché than when it comes to picking the food. How many bullshit bacon-heavy weddings have you attended with nary an eye-blink of complaint? Now it’s time to enforce that same dietary rigidity on your unsuspecting friends and family. The stomach is the window to the soul, after all, and your wedding menu is where you get to showcase all the things most important to you, such as animal rights and how terrible zucchini is. Remember our wedding cake, with the shark and everything? Vegan also! Totally reasonable. Also please have a cake, it’s the only really fun tradition left.

6. How do you keep your dad from saying something embarrassing in front of Ian MacKaye? I’m not sure what kind of embarrassing we’re talking, here, as I’ve never met your dad. Do you mean your dad will say awkward republican/homophobic things? Pretty sure Mr. MacKaye can handle that. Or will your dad deliver a very nuanced and well-researched diatribe about how punk rock was stupid? Again, I think dude has been there, done that. Or do you just mean your dad will tell him adorable stories about the time you pooped your pants in second grade? Well, everyone loves those stories and I’m sure Ian MacKaye will be charmed. One thing about weddings is that nobody judges you for some weird guest you invited. Nobody is like “Hmmm, the bride’s aunt is certainly very drunk–the bride must be a terrible person.” Weddings are all about groups of random strangers coming together because they love you, and everyone “gets that.” I say don’t sweat it.

That’s it! I have lots of other advice about money and fork rentals and how to deal with your mother who may suddenly turn into a Crazed Wedding Energy Dervish but I don’t know what your deal is. If you have follow up questions don’t hesitate!

Oh, one final important piece of advice: GO ON A HONEYMOON!!!!! I know, I know, you’re thinking, weddings are bullshit anyway, I’m not going on a crap bourgeois honeymoon, but trust me, you want that honeymoon. You can’t just go back home to your house or whatever, with the dirty dishes in the sink. You need a couple of days to decompress and talk about the wedding and freak out about all the shit you did wrong, and also you need a couple days to look into each others’ eyes and be all “WE DID IT, WE’RE GONNA DIE TOGETHER” and go on dreamy walks through the countryside where you meet an old French farmer who starts furiously telling you that “America and France need to be united against the Chinese menace” and you have to back slowly away, but even that isn’t enough to break the delicious reverie of honeymoondom, for no one is as blissfully self-centered as newlyweds, and so even 40 years later you’ll be like “remember that racist French man we met on our honeymoon” and your old man will be all “oh yeah, that was DELIGHTFUL”

*I added this p.s.

At what point should you decide that your chosen career isn’t going to work out, and you need to figure out something else? I just got my PhD and didn’t get a job, and I’m in a field where roughly only 16% of candidates actually land tenure-track jobs each year, so even if you’re really spectacular it’s like you may never get a job. Everyone says to give it 3 years (of being on the market), and so I’ve just finished my first year. Being a professor is all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. I’m almost 35 years old. At what point do I sit down and really pray on the fact that I need to drastically reorient myself in terms of what I do for a living? How many years do I spend on the academic job market? On a related note, what if I do get a good job, but years later it turns out it was a mistake to move away from Portland, the city I love most in all the world? How do you reconcile all the competing things that go into a modern life?

You’re asking some great questions, so I’ll ask a few in return.

Is being a professor still all you want to do? If not, start praying on a new career path now.

But if it’s still your life calling, don’t let statistics and one year of searching sway you. Stay on the market until you get a tenure track job. Hopefully that takes less than 3 years, but you’re still young and tenure lasts a long time. Don’t give up. If it takes 10 years, so be it. It’s not like your dream is to host the Today show. Yours is attainable.

In the meantime, what is it about being a professor that you love, teaching or the research and publishing?

If it’s teaching, start teaching. Teach a few adjunct classes in Portland. Or create an experimental course or mini-school at a place like YU or at a facility appropriate to your field. Perhaps you could offer to teach a once a week class to a charter high school. Or see if that guy who quit Stanford to start an online university needs a course in your field. Or try something similar. These things won’t hurt your search. They might even make you more attractive. And you can still work paying job on the side if you need to. Especially since you might need to offer to teach for cheap or free to get started.

If research and publishing are where your passion lies, start writing articles and submitting them to journals. Or better yet try and sell a book to an academic press. Or go in the other direction and publish an academic Zine or start an online journal. If money is an issue, perhaps the first step is blanketing fellowship and grant applications far and wide. Point is a new piece in a journal, or even the news that you’re piece is being considered lets next year’s potential employers know the train has left the station, it’s just a matter of if they want it to stop at their town.

Ultimately, being a professor is about sharing wisdom. While the security of a tenure track job maximizes your ability to do so, it’s far from the only way to do what fulfills you. So don’t wait, start sharing.

As far as the eventuality that you get a job outside of Portland, most professors get the summer off. Which, it so happens, is the nicest time of year to spend a few months here in Oregon.