Battening on huge seaworms in my sleep

Been wrestling with myself about going back to school. There are, thankfully, a few verities: (1) My present life is not satisfying, particularly in the sense that I am keenly aware that none but a half hour to an hour a day is spent doing something that is my heart's wish, not counting the happy time with my family which is my heart's pleasant reality; (2) I have become convinced that among a number of impractical 'practical' choices, an academic lifestyle would most fit my desires, abilities and self-image; (3) I just barely, on just a couple of occasions, had a glimmer of belief in college that I might actually like the academic study of English Lit; (4) I am never going to find the "difficult" versions of literary theory to be anything more than mental masturbation, and in some ways there is no part of the academy I hold in lower regard than the cultural studies people who treat the bookworms (who actually read books) with disdain; (5) I must wait until at least the Fall of 2008 to start, due to the date of my starting to think about this vs. application deadlines, and the daily grind has already made me feel old and desperate now - which is to say, 1.66 years away from that start date; (6) I am troubled by disturbing memories of underperformance and embarrassment during my undergraduate years, and more generally by a fear that what seems like determination now can easily dissipate over the unthinkably many years it will take to get my PhD (by which time I will be nearly 40 and therefore dead), leaving me once again feeling trapped in an unhappy profession.

So those are some of the verities. To talk a bit more about the theory thing, I decided to study English in the first place because I wanted to have an excuse to read and learn from the most beautiful and witty writing in English. I could hardly fail in this more completely than I would if I ended up spending most of my time reading criticism, which I rank with motivational literature and statistical abstracts as among the worst of all writing ever committed. I know that there is plenty of room in the academy for English Lit people who are not that interested in theory (although I admit we all have a "theory" in how we approach literature). But I don't like being the slow kid in class, and the theorists all act like the "mere researchers" are either dupes and dummies or downright dastardly. After my brief career in journalism, the last thing I want to have to respond to is continued accusations of being evil, narrow-minded, in on the conspiracy, etc., which is a regular part of my life and very hard on a person with as overdeveloped a conscience as mine.

I should also note that I have dreamed about other possibilities, and the relative sweetness of those possibilities transmogrifies itself into another drop of poison in the well. For instance, I think I could truly, geniunely if not unequivocably enjoy studying music in graduate school. Exactly what I'd study, I don't know. I do know my failure to get past the first timid steps of a music career mean that I would have a tough time getting a reasonably good teaching job with my PhD - it seems that every professor of music I've ever seen, other than the composers and the historians, had at least the semblance of a professional career before joining academe. The same seems, by the way, to be true of communications professors, though I don't think that's something that truly tempts me. I've also though about going the medical school route, which doesn't seem at all exotic for a Harvard grad, given that it seems like everybody and his uncle I graduated with is now a doctor, whatever they might have studied at school. I've never had the heart to treat the possibility seriously, but wouldn't it be nice to make a lot of money by doing something that isn't particularly evil? (p.s., I wouldn't be a plastic surgeon.)

So at the heart of the thing stand, I think, three questions, all interrelated:
(1) Is there any real option other than English Lit grad school for me?
(2) Can I truly enjoy English Lit grad school and what follows, or am I fooling myself?
(3) Can I wait almost two years to change things? (This question should take into account the fact that things WILL change in various ways over that time if I do nothing else - the wife and I are having another baby (in June - sorry if I haven't told any of my three readers), she is planning to start working and therefore giving us a healthier income, and she is planning to return to school herself at the local college. And then of course there are the unpredictable things, which we can safely predict will, in some form, occur. Of course, it must also take into account question one - we are always surprised by what we can stand when we have no choice, aren't we?)

An H.-grad who doesn't make money
Is like a bee dis-liking honey.
The dung-beetles prat
As they chew on their scat,
"For us, you know, life ain't so sunny!"