Ad Hoc

Where I'm going, I cannot predict the direction of the wind, and I'm glad for it.

Forgive me if I sound histrionic, but I am headed off to craft a story.

I was five years old the first time I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. And since then, I've had this notion ingrained that I must always have a plan for what I should do next with my life. With no other alternative offered, starting at five years old, I couldn't get enough of shooting up vision boards and snorting lists. What a drug forethought became--something not just useful but now akin to taking a deep enough breath to survive the next second.

The worst part about it was that I hadn't known I had an addiction. It was just life, and everyone else was doing it, so it couldn't be that bad. It took an overdose on twenty-six college applications for reality to hit me; I'd spent months vomiting up what I'd been told to say on essays and shivering through the night after wondering if my GPA would be worthy enough at some ivy league institution.

When I detoxed, I realized just how severely I'd poisoned myself and just how much my dealers had profited from it.

I will be a writer, education and its indomitable debt be damned. And my favorite part about it is that I have no idea how.

I am still in recovery, thinned from improper nourishment. But I've started eating seconds when it comes to a lack of expectations and a surfeit of arbitrary moments.

Now, I will craft a story where the direction of the wind cannot be predicted, where the birds and the wolves follow nothing but a feeling, and where the words I write next are guided by something between peace and spontaneity.

Cheers.

To no plans--and to no foreseeable future.