Neil Young Showers and Johnny Cash Baths

The first semester of grad school that I also taught Composition 101 to college freshmen, I reached an unprecedented level of stress and anxiety. Not only was I having to BS in courses like my Medieval Lit Seminar and schmooze with professors in campus hallways, but I also had to pretend I knew what the EFF I was doing as an instructor. "Use you resources" was the phrase I used with 90% of my students' questions, hoping that I would not be their resource of choice. Then after 12-14 hours of class, office hours, studying, and lecturing, I would go back to my shared rental home, drag myself up the steep stairs, and turn on the shower to as hot as it would go. I would press play on my iPod and for the next nine minutes and 58 seconds, the length of Neil Young's song "Natural Beauty," I would, for the first time all day, relax. All of the pretending and pretentiousness would vanish. The grammar rules and literary theory, analysis and academia would slough off of me and swirl down the drain at my toes. It was just me, that shower, and Neil. He saved me that semester and made me feel good in my skin.

When I first moved to Brooklyn, I was jobless and hopeless. I interviewed and applied and cried, a lot. Everything about my life was tense, and every day the prospect of moving back to South Dakota seemed more like a possibility than a reality. I didn't know what to do with myself, my mind, my body. So one day after a particularly grueling and fruitless job interview, I came home, filled my bathtub up to the rim, and put the song "Girl from the North Country" by Johnny Cash on repeat. Then, I soaked. I listened to that song at least 10 times, adding hot water to keep me warm and extend my respite from reality. When I finally pulled myself from the water, I dried my hair and felt like, for the first time in a long time, things were going to be ok. After many, many more crappy interviews and job rejection letters, I continued to go to my bathtub and Johnny for solace, and every time I did, I came out feeling like things would be ok. And eventually, they were.