In 2018, I had taken a semester off of poetry school.
I was depressed and the man I was in love with didn't want me (yet......). I took four months off to write and go to the library. Edgewater, Wicker Park, Logan Square. Eileen Myles, Kae Tempest, Morrison, Ca Conrad, Chelsey Minnis. Those months were some of my favorites in the city - living with my brother, getting up at 5 am to my cafe jobs, watching the snow, doing theater, crying, dating around. Kathleen Rooney offered me a prose poetry course at the Iowa Writers Workshop during the summer, so I went. It was hot and I was poor but I enjoyed the silence of the season. Chicago back then was a movie and I was its indie star.Â
And I would read a book and immediately read another. I sipped cortados and stole clothes at the Village Discount. I learned more about writing then than I did in my whole time in school. And I wanted to work in libraries.Â
Soon after, I got a job at a bookstore in Wicker Park manning the display sections. Then, the man I loved loved me back. A miracle!
I soon broke up with a drummer and spent my days between the library, cafe, D's house, mine. Then, and then, years happened: The pandemic hit, my college went remote, Dad almost died, and I was now writing my thesis (about libraries, archives, and Irish-ness).
My bookstore job laid me off and so I took an offer at another one, delivering hardbacks on my bike. Then, I got a new full-time bookstore job and worked there until I graduated, balancing my time between an archive contract in Humboldt. After my thesis, in 2022, I went to Italy, studied archives for 10 days, quit the bookstores once and for all, and got a job in an auction house. Between all this, was everything.Â
Redacted and I had gotten two cats and I loved them. We had a life we built and I visited archives all over. I became the AD of my experimental theater company, along Dylan. My thesis was published with Track and Field Studios. Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, New York, Cornuda. Philly. I was learning what it was I needed.Â
When I got the job at the auction house I assumed it meant I figured it out. But then my student loans kicked in, and I moved out of Diversey. All that, gone. I had little to no coping skills, so I went back to old habits like running too much and smoking weed. (I should not do this). I got rid of all my shitty stolen clothes and started over. Months passed, days, minutes. I visited Davis in New Orleans, smoked weed there, stared at my body to the graves, and felt better.Â
I left the auction house job after a year. I couldn't take the heat. With only a few grand in savings, I was freaking out. I flew home for a week, looked for any jobs I could, spent the next three months freelancing by teaching poetry and archive workshops, and then was a barista for the rest of it.Â
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For ten month I did this. I got so cranky. No health insurance, deep in student debt, caring too much for books as if they were children, not objects. What drove me was the desire for stability. And it’s a curse to love jobs. They offer me little scapes to learn. But I learned I loved teaching. I taught some one-off poetry and cataloging workshops, and enjoyed that. I took up cataloging for a design store and that was fine enough. In a moment of reprieve, I was offered a long-term contract as an archivist on the south side. I was given some health insurance, I started T. With the library and the teaching, I was back to a baseline. God is everywhere if you just look.
I was in the archives at Vivian harsh for like, idk, 7 months? Monday will start my first full time job in almost a year. It has me feeling very reflective of my time in the city, No. 10 on the most expensive city in the world list. And it’s true. We scrape and scrape and then we hit some sort of metal. I want to learn every new skill and write it all down. I used to get so jealous of the victories of everyone around me, because my progress felt so dismal to that. Some people got jobs because I helped them, and when I was down, it made me feel worse. Like I was only good to others but useless to myself.
In 2021, I started my own bookselling hustle because it was a fun way to make money when I was laid off. Now it’s a little micro-store. Not sure how long it will last. But a fun project it was, nonetheless.
Anyways, I am employed! Doing work relative to my goals,…. databases, and literacy. And I have time to work on other projects with other peers, which is cool. I am just feeling sappy is all. My close friends will celebrate with me next week. Congrats to Ryne and Niky and Rio as well. When I think of this time, between my thirties and 24, I will think of all of this, the heat the planning the worry the running the yoga the hugging the laughing, the trying.
I’m gonna finish this manuscript. And "I’m gonna love the world so much.
Scottie Wilson (Scottish ,1891 - 1972) Blue Birds in the Tree, ca. 1960 Ink and crayon on black paper