There is so much beauty in a story, so much potential to find yourself in a word. I want that! I want to feel that zest for the written word that burns in Harlan Ellison’s scathingly clever essays and all throughout e.e. cummings’s stunning poetry. I want to know what it’s like to have something be so much a part of me that it makes me sit up and notice I’m alive, that there is so much more beyond me. To be able to put words to what I think, to be able to express every complex and erratic emotion- that is what I desire. So what’s the problem, you ask? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. However, I do know that the only way for me to figure myself out- is to write. Which is convenient since I seem to be unable to rid myself of the writer in me. It’s unavoidable I suppose. Whatever my future holds, writing will be a part of it. I figure I might as well make the best of it and cultivate this passion of mine into something productive. In order to do that, I need to be guided, but also encouraged to explore and find my own self-expression. I crave an atmosphere that encourages me to scream, cry, and whisper in a voice distinctively mine. I need to find my muse so that I can experience life, write about it, and hopefully, not bludgeon her to death in the process. The truth? I don’t know. I don’t know if, ten years from now, I will find myself a professional writer or some secretly passionate scribbler. But I am certain that the only way to find out is to plunge into life, pen in hand, and take things as they come. Was it not Franz Kafka who believed there was a grave danger in living an unexamined life- not living it at all? I won’t ever let that happen, not to me. There is just too much I want out of this world and it all starts with something so delightfully simple: Write what you know.