Muppie is as muppie does

So. When I began this little endeavor, I was totally and completely without any sort of gainful income. I was taking a course in journalism, but that was about it. The course, and reading, and writing all the time.

Not a bad life.

Since then, God in His mercy has blessed me with not one, but two jobs, plus a couple of small writing gigs (not regular….yet!). Plus, still the course. Now, part-time is supposed to be the chill person’s way of earning (in my naive naive mind of February). Turns out that juggling all these things is, um…it’s hard.

Which is why Writer’s Progress hasn’t been updated in so long, why my cat is feisty with me, and why I’m so tired today I can’t even think straight.

I’m happier to be working than my whining implies. It’s just…well, I feel compelled to explain my vacation from the blogosphere, however abbreviated. I feel that I have neglected myself, and you – whoever you are – and, worst of all, my writing. One of my major loves and dreams in this life. Which is bad. Bad bad bad. Writers are to write. It’s a very simple, straightforward idea, and I ought to stick to it. Tired or no. Busy or no. Writers don’t write only when they feel like it. They write because it’s got to get done. And it does. I need to stop starting things, and finish something. One thing. Do one thing well. And in a timely manner. Yes. That’s the ticket.

It’s odd; when all I had to do was sit in a cafe all day and read, stare onto the street, observe my fellow addicts, and think, ideas came easy. You’d think that being out in the world more, becing more “active” and social with people, would fuel the fire of thought. Not so. I’m shuttling myself between Cambridge and Boston  – home and work and other work and friends’ apartments and cafes. Because I am pathologically social and, well, love to read at small tables with a mug of steaming tawny liquid in one hand. It just ain’t the same at home in my sweats. I don’t know why, but it’s not. And the thing is that I’m so segmented between the ten things/places I have to do/go to in one day, that I end up feeling like I don’t actually get anything done. Not like a normal person does. Including, sadly, thinking thoroughly and well.

So despite being introduced into the World of Consulting (about which, before two weeks ago, I knew less than the average toddler), I am hopelessly, hopelessly without insight into the world. Or myself. Or religion, or literature. Maybe my brain has just given up. I don’t know. But hi, Dry Spell, what’s up? I’ve introduced him to Writer’s Block. They’re cohabiting happily in my living room. I think it’s getting serious.

Over the past couple of weeks, I would sit down to write something, and then think: no. I can’t write about that. It’s so trite. Or transparent. So I have a few drafts just sitting there collecting WordPress dust (dust collects at roughly the speed of light in my apartment). I’m not sure to bring them out or just let them lie. Obviously I’m letting them lie for the moment.

I am rambling.

Here’s my problem: I have indulged in being amazingly personal on this blog. Which I do not regret. I am a what-you-see(read)-is-what-you-get kind of girl and I’ve come to peace with that. But the reason I can be so deeply personal is because I’ve been writing about things that (get this) I can toss out there without really caring too much. Not because I don’t care at all. But because there’s nothing really riveting happening in my life right now, so there’s nothing to conceal. Baring my secrets is totally my bidness, and I can do it without really harming anyone else, or embarrassing them, or anything. Which. You know. Is nice. But so is having an actual life. One that you feel compelled to guard from the eyes of the world. Because it’s personal. Which would lead one to think that I have a problem.

Dicey. Do I want to write, or live, more? This is kind of sad, but I waver. Actually that’s really sad.

Case in point:

When I was in college, way back in the early days before Facebook (ah, the days!), my college had this thing called PlanWorld. The fancy computer-literate people would post various images and links and things, but most of us Neanderthal liberal-arts folk were of the text-only persuasion.

I had just transferred in from an all-girls school, and the tiny tiny cliquey, jock-ridden world of rural Amherst was a bit of a shock. Plus the witty banter was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was the only social currency, and boy were these kids LOADED. It was clever, it was sparkling, and I stuck out like a sore thumb.

An acquaintance from high school kind of adopted me in a fit of pity, and I promptly engaged in accidentally seducing one of his best friends. When I became aware of this one fine Saturday evening, to my very pleasant surprise, I was totally taken in by this guy. To the extent that you can be, in the basement of a dilapidated brick dorm, with a keg in one corner and a blue strobe light in the other, and some guy named Chaz stripping in red-faced, drunken, this-will-embarrass-you-when-you-wake-up-tomorrow glory to the cheers of a circle of miniskirted, tanktopped coeds.

So. You know. Not the stuff of romantic legend, but a boy does what he can. And a girl can’t blame him for Chaz’s last keg stand. It wouldn’t be democratic.

The next day, true to my transparent, exhibitionist, shout-it-from-the-rooftops self, I wrote about my unbridled, democratic enthusiasm on my plan. And my own personal Don Juan read every word.

Which sent him running for…well, the campus is on a hill. He was running for the lowlands. Which was sad, because I did really like the guy. Silly Lizzy, mucking it up again. Story of my life.

At nineteen, I was too naive to understand why transparency isn’t always the best social option. I’m not sure how well I’ve learned my lesson (I still have this notion of everyone in every room I’m in being able to read my every thought, no matter what I say), but I’m certainly putting some effort into it. This all gives me a new appreciation for Jane Austen’s spinsterhood. I wonder if a married woman would have had the moxie to write what she did. It would have been personal. But as the casual observer, she was free to comment on what she liked. Was it worth it? Is it? Can it be?

I more function as a casual observer of myself, or my past, than the people around me. Because the present – well, let me put it this way. Writing is precious. But so are people, and my relationships with them. And I don’t have strobe lights to detract from the charm of it all anymore. So I am stuck, and I’m not ashamed to say that much.

(…and Joe, if you’re out there somewhere reading this, I’m sorry about PlanWorld.)

An official introduction

Hi/salaam. I’m a recent(ish) college graduate and recent(ish) convert to Islam. Hence the name of the blog. By all accounts, I should be considered a “yuppie” at this point in my life: twenty-five, capped-and-gowned, reasonably intelligent….ah, if only it were that simple. The reality is that the term “muppie” applies to me only in the loosest sense. I’m Muslim, sure, but technically I’m not exactly employed. Not gainfully. Not like I imagined, in days of textbook-laden yore.

Hitting my mid-twenties like a stuffed bunny against a brick wall has made me realize several things…and wish, above all, that someone had told me the inevitability of postgraduate letdown.

I can’t help but think, “If I had only known….” But then again, known what? What would I have done differently? I’ve spent most of my life charging ahead at whatever it is that I want without much regard for wisdom, prudence, or patience. There’s not much reason to believe that my 18-22-year-old self would have really taken it to heart if someone had pulled me out of Chem 11 and whispered: Just fyi, life is going to be a black hole of confusion and poverty after you graduate. After all, my fancy-pants liberal arts college gave me every reason to believe that I would be shoulders and heads above the other struggling post-grads. In short, I thought the world would hand itself to me on a platter. Oh, how foolish I was.

If I’d known….if I’d really known, I’m not sure what I would have done. Since graduating, my life has been fairly eventful. I’ve driven across the country twice. I’ve adopted a cat. I’ve become Muslim, to everyone’s stupefaction (including my own). I’ve worked in a lab, taken the MCAT, and flirted with the idea of going to medical school more than once. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. I’ve seen the Kabba. I’ve been a full-time student of classical Arabic. I’ve sat and had tea with one of America’s foremost scholars of Islam. I’ve interviewed for roughly one billion jobs. I’ve rewritten my resume about five hundred times. I’ve been engaged, married, and divorced. And lastly, but certainly not least, I’ve decided to abandon my scientific career for my own version of a little girl’s princess dream: becoming a writer. I don’t know if I would trade all of these experiences (which, I’m told, will build character in time) for a nice, shiny law degree, or a few cushy, predictable years in grad school. I’ve been in the grad school of life, baby. Now, if I can only make something of myself, I’ll be glad for the school of hard knocks.

In the meantime, I’ll be stumbling: towards faith, towards a temp agency that will take me (take that, ego), towards becoming a better person, towards explaining my transformation from a postmodern-feminist/superliberal/secularist to a practicing Sunni Muslim. [note: I wouldn't consider myself to be not a feminist, or a liberal, at this point. I'm only a former secularist. But we'll get into that later, I'm sure.]

I recently visited my alma mater, and met some professors and friends who haven’t seen me since before I converted. It’s funny; I can see the enigma running circles in their pupils. I come from a small, small school in the middle of rural New England (not exactly a bastion of diversity). Islam, Muslims, converts….these things are sometimes more ideas than real things. It’s easy to forget this in a city, where I can ride the T and see other women covering there hair and exchange “salaam” without the other riders blinking an eye. Back home – back at school, I am so much more of an oddity than I am here. Perhaps it’s because I’m white, and my scarf just doesn’t suit me. Perhaps it’s because I leaped into the deep end of faith and abandoned my “common-sense”, intellectually-responsible, secular roots. Perhaps it’s because I’m simply an articulation of an unfamiliar phenomenon. Perhaps my professors look at me the way a parent looks at a misbehaving child: this is not the way you were raised. Honestly, I’m clueless. In reality, they are as inscrutable to me as I am to them.

Still, I think it’s important to bridge these gaps. There’s no reason to think that this isn’t exactly what my education prepared me for…after all, haven’t I thought for myself, choosing a path I knew they would deprecate?

So this is the story of me. Struggling, like so many of my peers, to find a way to pay the rent, feed my cat, and maybe buy a new pair of shoes every once in a while. I happen to be doing it with one foot in my past of achievement, normalcy, and secularism, and the other in the present of unemployment, its accompanying humility, and faith. Do check in from time to time.

I’ll try to be as interesting as I can.