Where do I come from? Who am I? Where am I going?

Lately I've been wondering if writing has been a phase of my life. I went to get my MFA in creative writing from 2005-2008 at the University of Idaho, where we practiced the craft of writing, where we all were writers, where we prepared for a life of writing. I've hardly written anything since I turned in my thesis precisely a year ago. I don't feel like writing. Sure, I've had some other necessary projects keeping me busy--moving to California, then moving to New York, finding an apartment, an internship, a job, looking for a "real" job, trying to solve the enigma of my health. For a while, I was depressed because I couldn't get anything published...but now, successes are trickling in: two stories have been accepted for publication, at a lit mag run by people I truly admire as well as the anthology Best New American Voices 2010. Each time, I feel inspired to write. I think about writing, and I don't write. I think about other things I want to do: take an art class, take a trip. I'm tired of imaginary people; I can't fall in love with my characters. I just want to live.

Sometimes the other parts of my life feel like phases, too. Until I was eighteen, I was the dork. Then for four years I was an Ivy Leaguer, of the variety that was proud of my academic prowess but later ashamed of the wealth and privilege that was associated with such an institution (I was, after all, just a hardworking, glorified dork). Subdivded, my freshman year in college, I was a rower, and the rest of college I was a singer. The year after college I was the expatriate, the world traveler--I taught in Morocco, traveled Europe and West Africa. The year after was my year of odd jobs, in and around Boston, MA, everything from tour guiding to dog walking. Then followed the summer of wilderness, working at a camp in the woods, in a canvas-covered shelter, where I learned (but maybe not well enough, because I still feel the urge to leave civilization behind sometimes), that I am not a nature girl. Then followed the month of trying to write in New Orleans followed by the near-year of trying-not-to-be-ashamed at moving back home with the parents. I applied for MFA programs partly because I thought literature was noble, partly because I didn't know what else to do.

Do all these phases make up in integrated whole? Who is Claire O'Connor, really? I recently read an article in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace, who was many people's favorite living author until he committed suicide last fall. DFW was not my favorite author, and I was touched to see that he feared "that he had been driven by a 'basically vapid urge to be avant-garde . . . and linguistically calisthenic.' " As I read the article, I became more and more entranced with DFW's life. His biography is amazing...to be cont...