Hello friends! As promised, I’ve got something different for you today: a guest craft essay by Tom McAllister, friend, Barrelhouse editor, co-host of the podcast Book Fight!, and author most recently of It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays, out today from Rose Metal Press.

Here’s the jacket copy for his newest book:

In this meditative and lyrical collection, Tom McAllister challenges himself to write a short essay for every year he’s been alive. With each piece strictly limited to a maximum of 1,500 words, these 42 essays move fluidly through time, taking poetic leaps and ending up in places the reader does not expect. Funny, insightful, and open-hearted, It All Felt Impossible aims to tell the story of McAllister’s life through brief glimpses, anecdotes, and fragments that radiate outward and grapple with his place in the culture at large. In the span of these essays, McAllister witnesses a monorail crash at a zoo, survives a tornado, plays youth sports for tyrannical coaches, grieves for dead parents, learns how to ride a bike as an adult, works long shifts making cheesesteaks, and more. Each annual offering is a search for meaning and connection, chronicled by an engaging and honest voice. A testament to the power of creative constraints and finding innovative ways to tell one’s story, It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays is a compelling document of an idiosyncratic human existence that volleys so skillfully between the mundane and the profound that readers will find themselves marveling at these essays long after they have read them.

I love the concept of this book and am eagerly awaiting my own copy in the mail. I hope you enjoy Tom’s essay below, and please consider purchasing a copy of his new book or requesting it from your local library. Maybe many of us will end up reading it together!

Happy pub day, Tom! Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us.

Confounding and Transformative Works: Learning how to Defend and Define Your Taste

Though I feel I am a good teacher, I’ve never considered myself especially innovative. I’ve been teaching at the college level for nearly 20 years—for a while, it was mostly freshman composition with a little bit of creative writing mixed in, and now it’s the opposite—and although I’ve received strong student evaluations and even a handful of teaching