oh, you know what they say about appearances

I'm teaching another section of the advanced writing course on the personal essay. On the books, it's not a course on the personal essay; I've just made it that each time I teach it. And each time I teach it, I love the personal essay even more. And I begin to think about how I can show my love for the essay. Duh, write one. Try to get one published. But that's a matter for another time.

One of the secretaries in the department has decided to take this class with me this semester. She'd been reading "on the sly" some of the essays I assign, and I keep telling her to just take the class already. So she is. And she's writing her first essay on smoking--why she does it, trying to challenge all of the cliched reasons that nonsmokers like me think we know about why she does it.

One of the requirements for this assignment is that students incorporate into the essay another person's perspective. Try to get into the other person's head as much as you can and write it how they would see things. Which is admittedly really hard to do. All the more reason to do it.

So in this essay that the department secretary is writing about smoking, lo and behold, I am the other perspective. And I am the other perspective because as she's thinking about why she smokes, she realizes that it is in part a crutch, a way to get through all the things in life she "has to" and is "supposed to" do. I come into the essay because I appear to need no crutches. I appear to have my life pulled together.

I truly was shocked when I read this. I'm not performing some kind of false humility (saying this makes it all that more likely that I am, of course, so I'm in a bind of sorts). I guess I can concede that it may appear that I've got things together. But lordie pie. Anyone who's read this blog for any amount of time has some idea of the ways I torture myself on a daily basis with constant work and constant guilt when I'm not working.

Anxiety. Guilt. Never feeling like I've done enough. It doesn't show?

Dang.