On Following Your Dreams (a work in progress)

1. 

I was sitting in the car with my brother, father and mother at Thanksgiving. We were driving back from dinner on the Cape and my dad had just said he was tired and would I mind driving. We were looking for an exit and my brother started talking about who amazing his internship was. I kind of wanted to hit him.

2. 

I had a friend in high school who was perfectly nice, if a little needy and clinging. When we graduated she became rather agoraphobic, and didn't go to college as a result. She wrote a piece for a website about something that happened on Bones, and Hart Hanson responded to it. The creator of the show responded to it. I hid her status updates on facebook after that. 

3. 

At Christmas we discovered all of the ornaments had gone missing in my mother's purge of the house. I offered to make some paper cranes, do a little search on google to figure out some paper flowers I could make. I ended up making a kusudama ball -- it involved folding 60 petals and a lot of patience. My brother told me I was doing "craftwork". It wasn't a compliment. 

4. 

I wrote an essay for an application recently that started out like so: "Most people like things that come easily to them – I am not most people." 

5. 

When I told my parents I wanted to be a doctor my mother looked at me and said "Really?" and not in the "Really? You think you can do that?" and not even in the "Really? That's so interesting" way. The kind of "Really?" that means: "Is that really what you ant to do with your life?" The kind of really that speaks to the fact that my mother dropped out of secondary school when she was 16 to go to art school, and now, years later, makes her living from following her art career. The kind of really that means: "I brought you up in privilege so you could find your dreams, and I don't think this is what your dream is."

6. 

Have you ever wanted something so bad it hurt?

7. 

I read this today and there was a longing there -- a scared knowledge that you are not good enough. Its what I feel all the time, the secret behind why I don't tell people about my writing, why I think I won't be able to publish anything ever. I want to live as much as possible, to let go of everything and free fall. I want to go to California and write TV, publish a novel, be someone. But I'm waiting. 


8. 
I'm too scared to jump.