When I was 14, me and my geography class got herded down to the library. They forced us to endure a presentation about careers. It wasn’t very good. All I remember is our guidance counselor sweating behind a podium.
Then we were given worksheets. The first question (after our name, I guess) was the hardest:
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I thought about it for some time.
Eventually, I scribbled down:
“Writer.”
I remember looking down at that word. I remember holding up the sheet of paper before me, shrugging, and saying to myself:
“Yeah, okay.”
In a lot of ways, I’ve been lucky. Some people have no idea what they want to do with their lives, what they’re good at. I figured it out pretty quickly. Then it was just the simple matter of spending 10 years hammering myself against an anvil until I was halfway decent at it.
Fortunately, I’ve never needed much encouragement to pound my head against a brick wall. In college I got assigned to write a short story and, six weeks after the due date, I handed my professor an 86,000-word manuscript (and amazingly, campus security WASN’T called). In university, I’d wake up at 6, drive to the school library, grab a coffee, and work for two hours before my first class at 10. One summer I’d wake up at 4:30 in the morning to write before my restaurant shift at 8. I spent another extended period of time rising from my coffin at 3 in the afternoon, going to work at 5, coming home at 2, and then tickling the ivories until the sun came up like the Phantom of the Opera.
I have a lot of sympathy for my teachers. My essays would just go on and on and on. Sometimes I’d even address the topic.
Anyway, I’ve been really, really lucky. Passion is a rare thing to come by and, on good days, mine just comes gushing out of every pore. If you’re reading this, I know you’re great at something, whatever it is, and I hope you find it. And I hope that something doesn’t just make your heart race–I hope it makes you spring awake at 4 in the goddam morning and think:
“I should get back to work.”