Will I ever stop yearning to live in New York City? Maybe I should deconstruct these longings into a single strand of psychopathology: I'm displacing my urge to create-- which is often at odds with my need to care for others--with an obsession for a city full of creators. I believe erroneously that being in the right place, will bring out my creativity, and free me to write. On the other hand, wouldn't living in New York unbridle the shame and alienation I developed living in Grand Rapids, as the daughter of a Filipino-American. But would I be free of feelings that by now are internalized? No, I would face the same struggle Philip Roth ascribes to the writing process: frustration, humiliation, even torture. (I can relate to all of that, having just had a third book proposal go down, even as yet another book agent took the proposal up enthusiastically.) I once dared to write a short story, even dared to submit it to a contest, and was chosen to have a fiction editor critique it. He was shocked this was my first piece of fiction, remarking that I had a lyrical gift, and should keep going. I didn't. I went to Rwanda instead, a place that was way, way more certain to accept my other talents, as a psychologist, and project manager. As I retract from Rwanda now, to write more fiction and non-fiction, I am willing myself to enter a deeply uncertain, frightening place occupied by artists. At age 65, it's the water's edge, all over again; forcing myself onto a great ocean, staying convinced I have the courage to, as Andre Gide put it, 'lose sight of the shore.'