The Lit Crowd

October 9th, evening

Xander and Miranda are going to a housewarming party for one of Miranda’s friends from the Oxford Brooks writers program, and I get to come along. We walk a few blocks to Iffley Road past rows of stone houses that could be described with the same adjectives as supermodels: tall, skinny, and fashionable. Miranda’s friend has moved into one of these. Her parents own it and are renting it to her. Oh to be a poor writer who has parents with money. >> /end bitter rant<<

So there I am, talking with three other twenty-something female writers. Two of them, including Miranda, are writing novels, the other is working on a collection of poetry. I think Miranda’s friends have both been published in The Guardian. But, despite their literary achievements, their perfect, poreless matte skin, and their posh intellectual accents, I actually feel pretty cool in my own right. This is a first for me. I have really amazing and impressive friends – and, no fault of theirs - I usually feel like a hanger-on underachiever when I’m with them.
.
For the first time, I feel like I belong with such a stellar group. I quit my despised day job, which these ladies would all like to do; I am successfully supporting myself by writing (though most of the paid work is ghostwriting); and I’m traveling all the way around the world. There is no company in which that is not really cool. I am not embarrassed to say what I do or where I work anymore. I don’t feel like I have to make excuses for my life. I don’t feel like a wannabe, doomed to dream in a cubicle decorated with postcards of places I’d like to go someday.

I am so happy.

And that is worth giving up a thousand fat paychecks.