Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 27: Summer/Fall 2025
      • Issue 26: Winter/Spring 2025
      • Issue 25: Summer/Fall 2024
      • Issue 24: Winter/Spring 2024
      • Issue 23: Summer/Fall 2023
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Young Adult
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 27: Summer/Fall 2025
      • Issue 26: Winter/Spring 2025
      • Issue 25: Summer/Fall 2024
      • Issue 24: Winter/Spring 2024
      • Issue 23: Summer/Fall 2023
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 27: Summer/Fall 2025
      • Issue 26: Winter/Spring 2025
      • Issue 25: Summer/Fall 2024
      • Issue 24: Winter/Spring 2024
      • Issue 23: Summer/Fall 2023
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 27: Summer/Fall 2025
      • Issue 26: Winter/Spring 2025
      • Issue 25: Summer/Fall 2024
      • Issue 24: Winter/Spring 2024
      • Issue 23: Summer/Fall 2023
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Click to open the search input field Click to open the search input field Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Link to Facebook
  • Link to Instagram
  • Link to X

It’s All Uphill (Unless It’s Downhill) From Here

May 20, 2016/in Blog / Rochelle Newman-Carrasco

When I graduated from University of California, Irvine in 1980, with a BFA in theatre, I didn’t stick around for the commencement speech. The day of my last class was the same day I boarded a plane and flew back to New York. I hadn’t been in Southern California by choice. Six years had gone by since my aerospace engineer father lost his job on the east coast and found one out west. I was about to start high school when my life was interrupted. I had vowed to get back to New York as soon as I possibly could.

In New York, I began to pursue my creative passions. I wrote plays, auditioned, and co-founded a theatre company. Sustaining those pursuits, however, became a challenge. It wasn’t long before my part-time ad agency job went fuller-than-full-time. In 1990, I was asked to open the agency’s first satellite office—in Los Angeles. I said no. But my actor boyfriend was interested in the career possibilities, and agreed to go to L.A. with me if I went. I said maybe. The reality was, since going the steady paycheck route, I wasn’t really getting much acting or writing done. So, against my better judgement, I agreed to give the west coast another try. Maybe if I was 3,000 miles away from the agency’s main office, I could squeeze in some creative time.

In L.A., I signed up for a weekend workshop on personal branding for actors—the basic premise being that we all have an essence that informs how others perceive us, and, before we ever say a word, our essence projects more about us than we realize. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can get comfortable in our own skin and leverage our strengths. Self-awareness goes a long way, but we don’t get there alone.

After a series of exercises, my seven classmates and I tried our best to capture each others’ essences, and synthesize our findings into slogan-like statements. I was excited to hear what they came up with for me. Until I wasn’t.

“The truth is Sisyphus loves the rock,” my classmate read aloud.

There was a lot of head nodding and smiling.

“Yes, definitely,” the others said. “That really fits.”

I tried to mask my reaction with a question that would be read as thoughtful and not disappointed: “He’s the guy who has to keep rolling a boulder up a hill, even though it just rolls down again?” Just checking if we were all talking about the same Sisyphus.

We were.

I wanted to disagree, but I couldn’t. It really did fit. I just didn’t like the way it made me feel. They were right, and I realized it bothered me. Virtual strangers could see right through me. They could tell the reason I was still struggling with work, relationships, and time—the reason I was still pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll down again—was because I wouldn’t know what to do if that rock wasn’t there. The rock represented burden, struggle, futility, a day-to-day monotony filled with meaningless tasks. And, as dreary as all that sounds, there was something to love about sameness, the known versus the unknown. There had to be, or I wouldn’t keep pushing the damn rock, now would I?

Whether or not my interpretation was right, just the awareness that my internal struggle was visible and nameable had an impact. I relaxed into the role, tried to live with it instead of fighting it, and looked forward to, one day, an amicable divorce from the rock. Sisyphus faded as time passed.

*     *     *

Over a decade later, a sleep-deprived workaholic, I decided to go back to school and get my MFA. The decision awakened dormant passions, and reconnected me with authors I had not thought about since college, Camus among them.

Camus’ belief that “it is legitimate and necessary to wonder if life has meaning,” is the fundamental subject of his essay collection, The Myth of Sisyphus. In recounting this myth, Camus leaves the reader with this thought: “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

So I did—this time through the lens of a fifty-plus-year-old writer. I started to question ingrained assumptions. Maybe Sisyphus did love the rock after all? Who’s to say that, conscious of life’s absurdities, Sisyphus didn’t embrace the whole experience? Perhaps one person’s rut is another person’s flow. I started to think about the rock as a writer’s blank page. How rolling that rock might be as much task and tedium as revolution and rebellion. The journey up hill is the focused, intense effort of moving work forward.

“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me,” writes Camus. “If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.”

I had never really thought about the return. Now I give it my undivided attention, and reframe what I thought was defeat as an act of defiance. Camus suggests that when Sisyphus steps away from the rock, consciousness begins. I view stepping away as a form of digression, an opportunity for our absurd hero to wander, if only mentally, and to achieve what Italo Calvino calls the “multiplying of time within the work.” In other words, digression may purposefully slow things down. Calvino refers to digression as “a strategy for putting off the ending,” referring to death, of course. Camus’ absurdist vision isn’t about putting off the ending, per se, but about accepting the end, while exploring and searching for meaning in spite of it.

*     *     *

They say David Foster Wallace was reading The Myth of Sisyphus in the months leading up to his suicide. It seems to me that Wallace’s iconic commencement speech, “This is Water,” may have been influenced by Camus’ essays, a collection called a reaffirmation of “the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.” “This is Water” reaffirms much of the same values and possibilities. The speech is about awareness, empathy, and meaning; to quote David Foster Wallace, it’s about “how consciously choosing what to think about will make the day-to-day slog that is daily life somewhat more bearable.” I read this and I hear, “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.” And commencement takes on new meaning. “Je suis revenu à mon commencement,” wrote Camus. I’m back to my beginning.

I get on with my writing. I stay focused, taking on that blank page, moving it forward with the effort needed to birth words from a finite pond full of letters swimming around in my head, and try to understand their meaning as I descend. Until, that is, I get distracted again.

As I make my way from my writing space to my bathroom, a Sisyphean ritual in and of itself, I pause in front of the television. Footage from Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement speech draws me in. “When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again,” says the Facebook COO and author of Lean In. It is Sandberg’s first public reflection on the abrupt death of her husband a year ago. “I learned that in the face of the void—or in the face of any challenge,” she adds, “you can choose joy and meaning.” Okay, so she’s no David Foster Wallace, but the point remains the same: This is Water. Perhaps the best role model for leaning in is Sisyphus, after all.

For Camus, artists held a special place in an absurd world, and a profound connection to the void of which Sandberg speaks. “To work and create ‘for nothing’,” Camus writes, “to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”

That long ago weekend workshop in L.A. revealed my Sisyphean nature—and a revelation that awakened in me a consciousness. With Sisyphus, Camus reminds us that consciousness is a double-edged sword, a sword that is as essential as the pen. “To tell the truth is not easy,” says Camus, “and I can understand why artists regret their former comfort.”

I stare at my blank white page, pausing at the intersection of truth and comfort. I push the rock up the hill. We must imagine each other happy.

Rochelle Newman Carrasco

Born on a small island near Puerto Rico called Manhattan, Rochelle credits her Lower East Side roots with her love of culture, humor and language. She lives in LA, has over three decades of U.S. Hispanic marketing experience, and is a recent Antioch MFA graduate. She holds a BFA in Theater from UC Irvine.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Rochelle4-2-scaled.jpg 1710 2560 Rochelle Newman-Carrasco https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Rochelle Newman-Carrasco2016-05-20 10:58:152022-02-09 15:19:42It’s All Uphill (Unless It’s Downhill) From Here

Friday Lunch Archive

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Dig Into Genre

May 23, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Michelle Hampton
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lauren-Howard-credit-Terril-Neely-scaled-773x1030-1.jpg 1030 773 Michelle Hampton https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michelle Hampton2025-05-23 23:59:492025-06-17 18:29:02Dig Into Genre

The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

April 25, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Michelle Hampton
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/paparouna-photo.jpeg 960 720 Michelle Hampton https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michelle Hampton2025-04-25 23:55:312025-04-24 15:06:46The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

On The Map

March 28, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Michelle Hampton
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/20220807-ariadnesaxt-MurielReid-01.jpg 1123 2000 Michelle Hampton https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michelle Hampton2025-03-28 23:55:152025-03-31 11:49:32On The Map

More Midnight Snacks »

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Tale of the resistant apple tree

June 6, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / paparouna
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TaharBekri.jpg 512 340 paparouna https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png paparouna2025-06-06 11:00:072025-06-17 18:56:48Tale of the resistant apple tree

Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

May 30, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Michelle Hampton
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ghazal-headshot.jpg 867 590 Michelle Hampton https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michelle Hampton2025-05-30 11:00:492025-06-17 18:59:20Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

May 16, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Michelle Hampton
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/headshot-translator-Gabriella-Bedetti.jpg 400 400 Michelle Hampton https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michelle Hampton2025-05-16 11:00:362025-06-17 19:02:56we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Lizzy Young
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Lizzy Young https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lizzy Young2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Lizzy Young
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Lizzy Young https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lizzy Young2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Caroline Shannon Karasik
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Caroline Shannon Karasik https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Caroline Shannon Karasik2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

The state of the world breaks my heart every day. Broken hearted, I stay online. I can’t log off. Because my career and schooling are all done remotely, I tend to struggle with boundaries regarding screen time, with knowing when to break away.

Like many of you, I have been spilling my guts online to the world because the guts of the world keep spilling. None of it is pretty. But it’s one of the things that, having searched for basically my entire life, I found that tempers the chaos that lives rent free inside my head.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instaX
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2012-2025 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top Scroll to top Scroll to top