Sundays In My Subaru

I’m accepting the role as my household’s writer-in-residence.

Simply because I can.

Nobody has offered me this role. I’m creating it. It’s happening and that’s that. There’s no formal process for this. At least none that I’m aware of. And if there is, please let me know so I can formally disregard it. Because I can do that.

That’s not me saying that I’m a great writer. I don’t believe that I am. That’s not me saying that I believe that I’m fantastic or eloquent or all of those other fancy, many-lettered words that help describe how good someone is at accomplishing something.

I just like writing. And my household is where I reside. Thus, you know, I’m a writer-in-residence there. From at least a literal sense.

I think there’s this interesting element of life in America in which so many people conflate and wrap up vocation and interest with identity and those things tend to get muddied together in ways that are unhealthy and should generally be unacceptable. And I want to find a whimsical way to combat that.

And at the same time, a friend of mine has described me as a “humanities-oriented generalist,” which is something that I deeply appreciate. So, I’ll lean into that. Adding a title for this particular season, in a semi-snarky way, is freeing myself in that I’m giving myself permission to do something and be something.

It’s a hobby and I can attach a title to it so that my West-molded mind can better jump into being more active in that.

I’m sure there’s a psychological explanation for that. I’m also sure there’s a John Mark Comer-related spiritual formation exercise to be done here.

But, as I mentioned, this is a semi-snarky approach to this titling of myself. There’s an element of whimsy and fun and a little bit of chaos involved with throwing that sort of title around. Because “writer-in-residence” is such a clunky title in a time when a lot of folks aren’t really doing their own writing anymore. And it’s something that is generally reserved for institutions of prestige or institutions that are seeking prestige.

I don’t care about pedigree. I don’t care about prestige. That’s not my aim here.

I just like writing and my household is where I reside. So, I’m a writer-in-residence.

It’s a little freeing and a little chaotic and I can live in that sort of space

I have aims and ambitions for writing more regularly. I even plan on writing about my writing. That’s really why I started a Substack while also having a small collection of WordPress sites, so I could generate a newsletter that serves as a space for me to compile all of my work in a living, ongoing portfolio sort of way.

What exists there is my bylines and where my bylines can be found.

Or at least that’s what is supposed to live there.

But in a season of life in which I’m working a full-time marketing job at a polytechnic university in East Texas (shoutout to the Christian Polytechnic University) and working a part-time gig to help pay off a few bills (shoutout to the world’s largest employer among Fortune 500 companies) and trying to be a fully-involved parent (shoutout to my kids) and a fully-involved husband (shoutout to my wife, our household’s artist-in-residence) and trying to figure out how to wrangle a couple of oversized dogs (shoutout to them too, I guess) all at the same time, I don’t know that I have time.

That’s not even counting figuring out how to be a fully-involved friend, community member, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, cousin, nephew, etc., etc., etc.

And so I’m trying to figure all of that out. And it’s layered and complicated and life is busy and all that jazz.

While I do that, instead of waiting for the right moment or permission or what have you, I figured I could make this hobby into something I attach a title to.

Maybe I’ll put it on my LinkedIn. Maybe it’s something I just put on a blog. Maybe it lives in my Instagram bio because I like being snarky from time to time.

I don’t know.

I do know that I’ve spent too much money on actual paper notebooks and real physical journals and bluetooth keyboards to not figure out how to use them. Maybe that’s giving into the sunken cost fallacy. Maybe it’s just me figuring out how to be creative again after a decade of trying to rediscover the spark of enjoying tiredly writing and creating things online that I had when I first stumbled into this back in college.

I don’t know. What I do know is that I can live in this space. At least for a season. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay self-appointing myself with a title. I’m okay being my household’s official writer-in-residence. In fact, I find that to be pretty exciting.