I am an asterisk leading you to the fine print where the details of my life will finally be revealed, given a large enough magnifying glass. Most of who i am is this meaningless legal nonsense that follows the most benign of statements; and if i've had to make you work a little harder to find out what my life is really like, then maybe this fine print isn't so meaningless.
I awoke from this stupor in first grade, after a few tender years of trying to decipher where I wanted my life to point. All these people around me, their dreams involved some uniform. Football Player. Cop. Fireman. Fast Food Worker (I'm not kidding. I knew a kid who wanted to work at McDonald's because he figured that he could probably get free Chicken McNuggets). And in a greater sense, there were those who wanted (although some unknowingly) to be bound in the uniformity that is a modern workplace. Suits and ties, skirts and blouses, something in a comfortable swivel chair and a well lit environment. These people, they were not me. They wanted to spend their whole lives living in the suburbs, Driving their Saab's and drinking their espresso. This vision may not have been imminent to them in first grade, but along the evolutionary timeline through school, this is what has become of the environment that surrounds me. We're not at this point in time yet. Yet. Right now, we're still stuck in a 5th hour class right after recess, and we're talking about Shel Silverstein and reading his poetry. We're eating cookies left over from snack time. And we're attempting to write some poems. Roses are Red, all of that stuff. Violets are are blue (though, they're really purple. It's just that nothing rhymes with purple. I was horribly mislead and my perception of colors was distorted for some time afterward). Something something something, something something something. One right after the other, everything sounding relatively the same. It was at this point that I had an epiphany: I could do better.
In a few minutes, I had a poem written; it was about myself, an ode, you might say. Here I was, a self absorbed 7 year old musing about how crazy and wild I was. In truth, I was (and still am, really) a very subdued person who just deals with bouts of absurd fantasy. What I wrote was not so much prophetic as it was a landmark; My own version of Nirvana's "Nevermind" album. My own narcissistic masterpiece. I have that poem memorized for all-time's sake. But I'll spare you, because it is really quite awful. Still, from those humble (or, depending on your perspective, not so humble) few words, I understood that my purpose in life was not the same as those around me. If I was going to be anything, I was going to trek the arduous mountains of being a writer. Of course, at that point I had no concept that writing is largely an under-appreciated and often economically fruitless effort. All I knew is that I enjoyed writing Poetry; but, that was just the beginning.
After I had long exhausted my options of writing self involved poetry, I started writing a series of stories based upon my home life; they were stories that needed to be written. Not because of any great impact they would have in society, or anything like that; Everything around me at home was so peaceful that it would cease to be interesting at all if i didn't try and spice it up. Mostly, I wrote the same story 15 times over, about the great displeasure i encountered with one of my brothers. I learned very early on one key to marketing, in this respect: Anything that can be made and enjoyed, can be repackaged in a sequel. Or two. Or fourteen. There wasn't any staggering literary content; but the fact that I was trying seemed sufficient to me and those surrounding me to make it popular among my teachers and friends. So popular, in fact, that I decided to write a one act play about it. I managed to secure the performances of a number of my classmates; we were actually allowed time out of class to stage the play for our mates in 4 classrooms. I look back, and it surprises me that my teachers were so flexible with letting me do the play; but as far as i can recall, at the time there was no real surprise or trepidation about any of it. By the end of elementary school, i was author to over thirty poems, fifteen short stories, one play, and I'd like to think, inspiration for generations to come to that elementary school.
But, there is nothing like the smack of realizing that real academic life didn't come that easily. Sixth grade came, and i left behind Highlands elementary for the shiny, sparkly, south view middle school. Whereas elementary school was just an amalgam of playtime, arts and crafts time, recess, snack time, and very little actual academic time, middle school actually required me to do homework, and have a firm grasp on how things other than glitter glue and safety scissors worked. For a bit there, I was in hell. It was at this time, however, that I was diagnosed with a learning disability (though I am still unclear as to what they cited when i was first introduced to the special education system, i would later be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder), and I began to Receive a study hall period every day. Later on, when i was diagnosed with ADD, I was prescribed Adderall for treatment, as well as psychotherapy. Academically, I improved slightly before starting the medication; and after the medication, there was a drastic improvement. However, In the same period of non-medication, my writing habits trailed off to a near halt. Between sixth and eighth grade, I can not recollect writing a single thing for creative outlet. However, I started writing midway through eighth grade to cope with the increasingly negative moods I was experiencing. Through the discovery of this writing (which again, was not necessarily that great) by one of my classmates, I was referred to the school's counsellor, who then referred me to a psychiatrist; and this is how I was first diagnosed with ADD and depression. The experiences of that year gave me a jump start, and I resumed writing at a furious rate. In the year following my initial diagnoses, I wrote approximately 200+ works, mostly poetry. At one point, I was averaging nearly three poems a day. Granted, nearly all of them contained the same depressive and loathsome words in different arrangements, but this proliferation was still nonetheless an impressive feat for me to comprehend. Most of the works from this period have since been deleted; I have retained perhaps 10% of these in my current library.
After I passed through this phase, I started to think about writing not only from an emotional, but a communicative standpoint as well. I started to study various forms, various styles, and various authors for my own enjoyment. I found that still, even after all these years, I still preferred the simplicity of Silverstein. I also began to become an active member of a few internet sites; one being an open forum with very little (if any) regulation, the other being pathetic.org, a site i still use to this day. Pathetic is a much more exclusive peer review community which is monitored by dedicated administrators and yields the most constructive criticism I have ever discovered on the internet. Through these communities of both amateur and published talent, I slowly but surely fashioned my own style apart from those of my contemporaries. The growth i experienced there was (and still is) insurmountable. I became enchanted with the works of Frost, cummings, and Poe, as well as more contemporary poets such as Billy Collins, Lawrence Ferhlingetti, Kerouac, Plath, and others. This marks the majority of my development through my sophomore year of high school. Thereafter, another event changed my writing career once again.
Edina High School's Literary and Visual arts magazine, Images, was looking for people to be on their staff of twenty workers dedicated to publishing the artwork of the students. Images has been Widely regarded as one of the best High School Vis/Lit Mags in the country- winning the pacemaker award, The Columbia Press Association's Gold Medal, and countless other awards. It has consistently won these awards for the past few years. When I applied to be on the staff of this magazine, I knew none of this; I just wanted to be involved in something artistic within the school. I also did not realize how selective about their staff they were; of some 150 applicants, they chose six to fill out the hole in the staff left by the departing seniors. Being one of those six chosen was an amazing experience for me to be part of, and it allowed me an experience few writers ever get to taste: being on the other end of the spectrum. Being the publisher. When Images was accepting submissions, I was shocked by the volume of artwork, poetry, short stories and plays that we received for review. I was also shocked to find out how much of it was literally terrible. For example, of sixty-seven poems submitted, eight were accepted. We received well over 300 pieces of artwork in various forms, and in total, accepted 44. All pieces were chosen by anonymous review; nobody except the two editors knew who submitted what pieces. And this brings up the last of the incredibly surprising points about my experiences with writing: Of those eight poems accepted, Three of them were written by me. In other words, I had gone from being a severely angst-ridden kid writing shitty poetry to being published in a renowned literary magazine in the short span of perhaps a year and a half, which is perhaps the most surprising thing to me.
I am often a rather self deprecating person, and I am not always keen to highlight my strengths for fear of sounding overly zealous. However, I have no shame in sharing what I believe to be one of my greatest strengths. There are still things I have yet to learn, and things I may never learn. But through this experience of life, I have discovered that I am more suited to be a writer than most anything else; and am more passionate about it than i am anything else.
So, here i am again, this fine print disclaimer- and mostly, these things go unnoticed, and there are millions of words just like these begging for attention, most of which are tossed aside. There is also always that fine print adage that we come to fear and is usually the requisite "catch": Some exceptions may apply.

at least in this case, i hope it so.

09/01/2004

Author's Note: i dont really know why i wrote this; partly out of boredemn, partly because i should be writing essays for college, and partly because i felt like i needed to write something. so, yeah. comments, crits? thanks.

Posted on 09/02/2004
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