Commentary on Luck
Thomas Johnson, editor-in-chief
WE’VE GONE BROKE. It’s in that spirit that I’ll be short.
This will be our final issue. Maybe not forever, who’s to say? But a brief recap of the last two years will make some sense:
I quit my government job on February 12, 2025, in full and without severance. You can do the math on why and when and wherefore. It was George Harrison who said, “All things must pass.” And there were no clouds on that day.
I decided to take a break and focus on my education, though of course that education came more from life than any MFA program could offer, but nonetheless I was living in the near-New York City metro and wanted to receive what the Universe had to offer. I remained unemployed for the next twenty months. In order to survive in New York City, pay rent, and ensure my dog did not suffer even the slightest blip in her exorbitant and lavish lifestyle, I pulled out all my retirement, savings, and withdrawals. I took on a volunteer teaching position during my second and final year in the MFA and taught poetry and fiction to the sixth grade population of Astoria, Queens. I ate bagels on long train rides in an unending winter. I took everything in thanks and I graduated the MFA in May of this year.
I had to vacate the apartment in July and, having spent absolutely zero time on finding a job during the schoolyear because I’d rather scrape my teeth with a bone grinder, I located a month-to-month sublet in the New Jersey suburbs, threw away every piece of furniture I owned and every belonging I possessed, and took my dog and a few boxes of clothing to a furnished room twenty miles down the road to set about finding employment. I had $20,000.00 to my name. I took up a lot of running again. I enjoyed long walks along the river. I read a lot of books. And in there during that time I was hired into publishing. I consider it lucky beyond the relevant statistical probability that I was able to find a job within 90 days, not only any job in that timeframe, but a job that I am capable of fulfilling and within the industry I have been seeking to join for six years. I feel inordinately blessed.
I moved back to Hoboken. I had to pay a broker’s fee. I had to put down NYC-level deposits. I had to buy furniture. I have had to book a trip to a wedding for my oldest childhood friend which requires flights, rental cars, hotel stays, and dog boarding, to the tune of approximately $2,000.00, this is the minimum cost of me going anywhere for four days and so I don’t go many places. But all told after a summer spent paying rent out of my pocket, the relocation, the refurbishing, and the reset, I have $3,000.00 to my name.
I have no retirement funds and I work in private industry, which in the back of my mind is unstable in the ways that the government was not. I pay more in rent than you can scoop out a bank vault. I will be lucky to make the rest of my life work here, and the point I’m making is, I do feel lucky.
I take long walks still. The trees in Hoboken have never been more colorful and the air more clear. The Hudson has never run so clean and the future never looked so bright. I battle my own demons, but for the first time in my life, I feel situated to battle them, and I will win.
But I cannot keep up with the fiduciary concerns of operating this journal. It’s a little over $2,000.00 a year what with submission platforms, websites, and creative softwares charging me by the month. And what’s more, I am, so I think, sitting in a small studio apartment surrounded by nothing but the sounds of my memories speaking to me. I am thinking freely for the first time in a decade. I know, deep within me in those soul parts of you that speak without words, that I have to let go of everything I have been, am, and will be before I can fully embark on the next stage of my life, whatever that looks like.
My beseeching to you is to take that step also. For a few years now I have been repeating the phrase, “the answer as always is to log off.”
Whatever bothers you, it’s better without the internet. Whatever keeps you up at night, it’s better without watching the news. Whatever worries your heart, it’s better without counting your money and thinking you don’t have enough. Whatever shakes you in your sleep, it’s better without the noise of an indifferent world.
In the absence of Union Spring Literary Review there remains Mother Nature and all her offers. Birds singing in the morning, the smell of rain, children laughing on Halloween. Take them in.
If I’ve learned anything in the last two and five years, it’s that nothing needs to be said. In all instances, take what is given, and keep it in silence. There is no response required to any action. The point of overcoming the world’s noise is not to shout back, but to walk away. It is an act of kindness. Turn the other cheek, Jesus said.
And in that spirit, turn to whatever your next stage is and turn in kindness. We never know what’s coming for us. This is just what came for me. No regrets for the past, no worries for the present, no thoughts of the future.
We’ll live on in someone’s memory and that’s forever.
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THOMAS JOHNSON lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Johnson grew up in East Texas, graduated the University of Texas at Austin, enlisted in the United States Army, lived in Germany, returned to the federal service, moved to the east coast, then received a Master of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from The New School, all in that order. He is poor, but he is fulfilled. He would like to dedicate this issue to his favorite girly, Finch Dog, the dumdum, the dingus.
