Handwritten Existential

Juls Macdonell

Juls Macdonell

— 4 min read
Edges of a blue lake on a rocky valley bed, surrounded by mountains with sheer cliffs. In the foreground, the dark spikes of evergreen trees which have gone through a forest fire.
Medicine Lake, Jasper National Park, AB

On the first day back to school this semester, I wrote a little bit in the back of my planner. Here it is:

This being my last semester didn't hit me until just now. Well, today more generally, especially being in fiction workshop, a class that's meant so much for me and my craft over the last few years.

I think in a sense I'm shocked I even did this thing I decided to do way back in Banff, terrified that I was lying to myself about feeling capable. But I am capable. I'm just still struggling to believe it, and to trust. It feels like January now, officially, and knowing I'll be hearing back from grad school options soon is scaring me shitless.

My contract at the garden is up in April. I don't know yet if I'll be reapplying or not, and I don't even know what I'm hoping for, which in a way I guess is nice but it all just seems so completely up in the air. It's hard to concentrate.

One of my profs is confident I'll have multiple offers, which is really nice to hear, even though I'm wary of allowing myself to hope (just generally - I did the same when I applied to UVic to begin with). She suggested I start figuring out my priorities now so that when I do start hearing back, it makes the choice easy. Funding is one of the biggest factors for me. I wish it didn't have to be.

End entry.

It's true I applied to UVic while I was in Banff. But I also opened an application a year earlier, while I was in Jasper. I was spending a few nights alone in staff accommodation at the Fairmont there, looking after a branch of the flannel company I only lasted at about 30 days. It was a cool trip, actually. It was September 2020, I'd recently given notice at the spa at the Fairmont Banff Springs, and I was waking up.

Back in June, when I first went back to work, I wrote about how "one shift back has me questioning everything."

"I feel so much more myself after not working. I feel grounded. Going back has me suddenly wishing I'd spent my time better. Sounds familiar.
I just want to write."

I also wrote about my job interview with the flannel company:

"...she asked me what my dream job was and it's not that I don't have one, I just can't answer it honestly. Not when my dream job is to get paid to write."

Jasper in September was pretty liminal feeling, because while things were in the very, very early days of bouncing back after the lockdowns, it was also shoulder season and heading into winter. I might have sold a handful of shirts those days at the flannel shop, but I spent most of it writing. During some free time I took a drive up the highway to Maligne Lake and back, took in the sweeping panoramas, the sheer sweeping mountainsides, the incoming fall gold, the glimpses of little treasures off the side of the road. Saw a moose. It was 100% magic. Seeing new landscapes, especially in the mountains, does wonders for my soul.

Under a mostly cloudy sky with a few patches of blue is a still blue lake sitting in a rocky valley bed between mountains, some sloping and others with more dramatic, sharp cliffs, spotted with sunlight.
From my drive - Medicine Lake, Jasper National Park, AB

When I left Jasper, it was 8pm and pitch black. It's the sort of adventure you tell your mum about after you're home safe; the icefields parkway gets snow even in the middle of summer, has spotty service at best, and a single gas station at a halfway point through the 3 hour trip, which would be closed by the time I passed it. My main fear was hitting an animal, or having car issues.

I was fortunate. It was a perfectly clear and cloudless night with a full moon. I remember thinking I'd almost see better without my headlights, the moon was so bright. I had a road trip singalong playlist blaring and I sang the entire drive. I think I saw 3 other cars the whole way, 'til I hit the Trans-Canada again by Lake Louise.

But those 3 nights away had gone slow. I remember sitting on that bed in staff accom, listening to the elk bugles, opening an application to UVic. A few days later I got the job at Mountaintop Flowers, jumped ship from flannel, and stalled for another year. I'm glad I did. But I'm also glad I decided to see it through.

There are a few decisions I can look back on in my life and see where it branched. The decision I made to take the bus to Safeway to try for a job, without which I wouldn't have met Terry; and then again, agreeing to a second date with him after our first; applying to SAIT; and again applying to UVic.

In the foreground, two people sitting on a canoe on a vast lake look out at a panorama of towering rocky mountains dusted with snow under a partially-cloudy sky.
Terry and I did finally see Maligne Lake together; this view is of the "Hall of the Gods".

There are other, smaller choices I remember too, like a choose-your-own-adventure video game. But those ones are the biggest. And the person I was when I chose to apply to UVic is a very different person than I am now, but the coolest part is, that version of myself was making the decision to turn into this version of myself. I can't forget now that every choice I make is really about who I want to be, and what not only makes me happiest, but what feels true.

I know that if the time comes, and I'm lucky enough to have multiple grad school offers to pick from, I'll choose with the same principles. And if grad school isn't on the horizon, there'll be another choice to make.

The truth is I never stopped worrying if I was capable. It's a constant anxiety, not just as a writer with my craft, but as a functioning person. That all these little choices brought me to where I am now is a good reminder to trust myself.

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