Aspirations

I am sore in more places on my body than I knew existed. I spent over an hour shoveling my driveway yesterday only to wake up to a new blanket of snow and ice covering it. This is why I hate living in Midwestern America- blistering summers and frigid winters. I'm more of a tepid, wet weather kind of person. I'd like to live in Seattle, or maybe Portland. I hear Oregon has a great gay scene.

Moving on.

I've been thinking a lot of my future lately, more specifically "where I see myself in 10 years". I don't want to be married and I don't want to have a family (when my mother was 28, she had just having her fourth and last child. *Shudder.*) So where do I want to be, then? Well, this fall, I want to go to Columbia College Chicago. It's got an incredible creative writing program, unparalleled by any other I've seen. Plus, the fiction writing building is on Michigan Ave., directly across from the Art Institute. How awesome is that? The last time I went, I sat in the courtyard reading poetry for hours, and what with my art-inspired poetry collection idea, what could be more perfect? I can be creative and submerged into the artists community, and that's super important to me. It's incredibly frustrating to be stranded here in Bumblefuck, IL with people who read more magazines than novels. I love being in an environment where rampant intellectualism and snobbery is recognized and embraced. I may be that self-important person who drinks red wine and reads Kafka and says, "I feel lugubrious today", but you know what? I'm okay with that. As Susan says, it's not pretension if you're not pretending. [On a semi-unrelated note, another thing I'd like to accomplish in college is to have a torrential love affair- the painful, messy, dramatic sort of relationship that all great artists have in their past. If anything, it'd be an interesting place from which to draw new inspiration and perspective. Art is nothing if not driven by raw emotion, and I definitely write best when I'm full with feelings of frustration and fear and...fastidiousness (if only to perpetuate the alliteration.)]

Whenever I think about college, I get goosebumps and nice, excited, tingly feelings on my scalp. I have a feeling that college will really be a place where I blossom. But then, quicker than I'll be comfortable with, four years will go by and I will graduate. Here's where the tricky bit comes. At this moment, I have no idea what's going to happen in college. I very well may change my major, discover new things, and take myself in a completely different direction. The thought of this doesn't bother me, as it seems that self-realization is what college and early adulthood is all about. I wouldn't mind coming out the other end of college a completely different person with new wants and aspirations. What does make me nervous is the idea of aimlessness. I can handle switching directions because at least I'm doing something, but doing nothing? Being no one? This worries me. So much of my artistic drive is made up of the idea that I'd like to "be something" one day. I have no idea what it means, what I'd like to do, but I do know that I want to mean something to people and contribute to society and art and culture. The argument could be made that every person means something to at least one person, but I'm thinking bigger. I want to influence people. I want to make people feel things, make them cry, trigger their emotions with my work. Plays, stage acting, poetry, books, whatever-- I want to be able to reach people on an emotional level. I was always the one who cried in the theater and felt a touch of melancholy when I finished a good book. I've made personal connections with almost every. single. damn. show. I've ever seen or listened to. I know the richness and depth I feel when I get swept into art, and I want to be able to do that for other people. It's a lofty goal, and an incredible selfish one, but it's what I want. When I think about where I could be in 10 years, I become frightened that I'll end up some hack writer who can't get published because she doesn't realize she's shit at writing. Or worse, that I'll give up on my creativity completely and be some boring slob at a dead-end job trying to find meaning in my dull, pointless life.

I may be too young to be worrying about this now. I should calm myself down and concentrate on just getting to college first. But having this fear, this anxiety pushes me to write and create. As long as I don't let the fear get the better of me, I think it'll help me achieve the things I'm setting out to achieve.

I'm super excited to start living my life.