going

It’s so late it’s almost early, and sleep is leaning against the backs of my eyes. I’ve been listening to good music and playing guitar for the past hour, and I feel very clear and very certain, and I want to get it down. Because so little right now is certain, and, actually, it’s better off that way. Because knowing right now where I’ll be in a year would be like turning to the middle of a book you haven’t opened before.

I have a place I want to be. I don’t know where it is, but I’m working to get there. The work is not hard work, but it is work that’s hard to do. In the process of trying to convince a school that they want me there to do the work that I can do, I reinforce for myself the reasons that I want to do those things. By making a personal statement, by working on my writing samples, I’m not putting my goals on paper, rather I’m clarifying them in my mind, so the act of writing the statement is actually a formation of goals and desires. I want to write my stories, I want to teach eager students, I want to spend my life around people and books and good stories wherever I find them. I want to live with the woman I’m apart from now, I want to share something special because we all only get one go around and where I’m at is not where I want to stay.

There are things to be done, and sometimes it’s the things we want most that we try to want the least, because it’s always easier to do nothing. To do nothing requires nothing of us but out acquiescence. To do something different, to do what we want, requires from us courage and effort, and neither of those come naturally to anyone.

This a moment in which I understand that the only way to get to where I want to be is to put one foot before the next and go there.