Background for this week’s Bad Blog
In October, I took a Zoom-based writing class with my favorite writing mentor and teacher Lisa Fugard. Each week the class would receive a writing prompt after our discussion. We’d then mute ourselves for about 45 minutes and write our first draft. After that, we’d come together and read our work aloud and get feedback from the class. Reading my work aloud was definitely outside my comfort zone, especially a first draft. But like writing “bad blogs”, reading first drafts aloud was freeing and vulnerable. Let the mistakes be there, and just get it out. The vibe of this group was so welcoming as well as challenging. I was sad when it was over.
I’ve been going through my drafts from this class and reading through the feedback I was given. The idea was we’d leave the class with several drafts with critiques for second and third and final drafts, hopefully some winding up good enough to submit for publication somewhere.
I’m posting one of those drafts today because I think it was probably one of the more vulnerable drafts I wrote in class. And by vulnerable, I mean I was slightly embarrassed to admit that I desperately never want to be seen as a joke.
The prompt for that class was to write a college admissions essay about a life lesson I’d learned in my life thus far. It didn’t have to be a life lesson I learned before college. We were always able to take come creative license with the prompts, so “Winning” is what I came up with. Thank you to Lisa and my writing class for allowing a safe space for this perfectionist to share her first drafts with you. Hugs!
Winning
By Melanie Lentz
Draft 1 – October 19, 2020
I have a confession. A guilty pleasure if you will. But also a confession. I love the TV show Schitt’s Creek. I love a good brainless comedy, and this show has the uncanny ability to bring a belly laugh to a difficult day, or, in some cases, a difficult month or two or three.
It’s been a difficult few months, I’d say. It’s 2020. What can I expect at this point? But it’s more than that. I’m feeling restless, like I’m not quite where I’m supposed to be. It’s time for some changes, and I feel a little stuck in that I’m open to change, but I’m trying to figure out what I should do.
Nothing is going simply or according to the timeline I had hoped for. A job didn’t progress as planned. The second book draft went so badly I deleted the whole thing and started over. A big storm caused damage to the house. My car needed a new transmission. It snowed in October before the leaves had time to change.
The final season of Schitt’s Creek recently came to Netflix, and it came at a good time. I needed a brainless belly laugh binge, that cigarette break-esque life pause to uplift my spirit so I could think.
In the final episodes, David Rose, the quirky son, is planning his wedding. Over six seasons, the Rose family went from wealthy New York socialites to penniless in a small town called Schitt’s Creek. They evolved and grew into better people as they started over.
Maybe I appreciate the show so much because the concept of starting over and feeling clueless resonates hard in my life as well as in the show. The whole family transforms throughout the seasons with little nuggets of life wisdom tucked into outlandish scenarios and witty banter.
At one point, David Rose finds out at the last minute that his old New York friends won’t be attending his wedding because another event was deemed more important to them. Alexis, David’s sister, asks him why it was so important to have those friends at his wedding. Hadn’t they abandoned him when he likely needed a friend the most?
David’s response:
“I want those people to know I’m not a joke, that I’ve won.”
I grabbed the AppleTV remote, and replayed the scene. I don’t know if I should be embarrassed or embrace the fact that this line describes exactly how I feel about my old life sometimes - the life I left, the people I left, the relationships I left, and all of the things I thought would be in my life for a long time.
Those people.
Who are they?
They’re ones who doubted me, the ones who thought the kid from the desert wasn’t good enough to be a collegiate swimmer. They’re the bosses who dismissed me because I was young or female. They’re the friends who disowned me when I finally stood up for myself. They’re the boys who hurt me. They’re anyone who rejected me in one way or another.
Those people…like David’s New York friends.
Deep down I desperately want those people to know I’m not a joke, that I have also won.
“I’ll show them!” That attitude has gotten me far in life. Perhaps it has a time and place. “Oh, yeah, you don’t think I can do this or be this? Watch me.”
But are those people really what I should be thinking about?
A good friend would say, “Who cares what they think?” and they’d be right. I know that.
I want those people to know I’m not a joke, that I’ve won. God, I feel that.
As the last episode ended, and the credits rolled, I stared at the TV for a few minutes, sad that there’d be no new Schitt’s Creek belly laughs for me to binge watch.
And then my cell phone dinged: a text from a friend asking if I wanted to go for a run with her in the morning. An email in my in-box chimed from another newer friend asking when I was free to meet up for chai lattes. Later that night I saw my boyfriend, the one who’s by far a better man than any others who came before him. I went to work the next day and chatted about writing with a coworker. My parents FaceTimed me as they sat down to watch a movie. My sister texted me a couple dozen TikToks to make us laugh, something we hadn’t done together in a long time because our lives turned upside down in their own ways.
These are my people, not those other people.
Today, I go home to a smaller house in a smaller town, in a car that’s far from new, with a heart that’s fuller than my bank account used to be. And like the Rose family in Schitt’s Creek, when I look at what and who really matters in the end, I’m winning. Even though I’m unsure of my next move, I’m sure I don’t want be the person who still cares so much about what those other people would think.