My Capstone, So You Know

Why I Write Fiction

Over the last five years, I have attended three different schools and gone through seven different majors.  I often ask myself whether I just can’t make up my mind because I’m indifferent and don’t care what I do, or because I want to do everything ever.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the latter, but still, I know I can’t do everything.  This doesn’t really have much to do with why I write, it’s just a part of who I am.

I write because I can, because I’m somewhat good at it, because I like to create and imagine, because I want to communicate something—a joke, a picture, an emotion—to anyone and everyone, because there comes a day in everyone’s life when they realize they’ll never play major league baseball, because I want to, because I can make myself laugh and I hope I can make someone else laugh, too, because it’s quiet and when I’m alone at night in my basement, just me at my desk with my trusty laptop and a single lamp with an idea for a story swimming around in my head, the only thing that gets me to bed at 4:30 in the morning, having written down 20 pages of what I hope isn’t crap is my inability to keep my eyes open any longer, because I have a story to tell, because I have a hundred stories to tell, because if I don’t write them down, someone else will, because if I don’t write them down, no one else will, because I live in the middle of nowhere, because the world is round it turns me on, because I’m easily bored, because, while I aspire to be rich and famous one day, I’m a masochist, because words are great, because grammar is my friend, because I love correcting papers, because one day someone will say, “Aaron, I want to make a movie out of that story you wrote about the blind blasphemer and his  deaf nun lover who run away together to open a kebab stand in upper Michigan and/or the coast of the Bolivia,” and I’ll say “Bolivia?” and they’ll say, “We’re thinking of moving it to the coast of Bolivia,” and I’ll say “Bolivia is land-locked,” and then they won’t want to make the movie anymore, because I can go this long without using a period, because there are times in your life like right before you graduate from college when you think, “Why did I just do that?” and for a moment, it’s all rubbish, but then you really think about it, and you remember that throughout seven majors and three schools all you’ve ever done or wanted to do or kept doing is write, and so I write.

Just a Weekend Thing

Understand that I am an English major in my final year, approaching graduation one long hour at a time.  I am taking nine credits of English, two of which are 400-level, one of which is a writing-intensive non-fiction workshop–so one of the last things I really want to do is ramble on about nothing on a blog three people read.  That being said, my weekends tend to be slower and lately I feel like I’ve forgotten how to just write, rather than write for class.  So here goes nothing–really, nothing.

I graduate in 39 days.  These are the waning days of my fifth year of my undergraduate education.  Having not applied to any school for next fall (very much on purpose), I will soon be without much of a purpose for the first time since I was four.  I’m not entirely sure where it is I’m going with this, but I just thought I would point it out.

I might go to law school next next fall.  Or maybe grad school.  I know I’ve been here before, lest we forget the Great Grad School Search of 2008, a wonderful multi-part series of this blog.  But there were a few things I was focused on instead, and really, a year off of school after almost twenty years of endless education won’t kill me.  I’m not going to Japan.  I’m permanently (medically) disqualified from joining the Navy.  I’m also vaguely unqualified for most every job out there–good thing I wasn’t interested in journalism what with the imminent collapse of printed news–oh, wait.  Admittedly, I’m surprisingly at ease with my apparently aimless future, mostly because these things have a habit of working out for the best.  I like to position myself between multiple choices, lest I feel I am being forced into something.  Right now, today, the question is: do I want to be poor and funny, stable and scholarly, or deep in debt and doing the lawyer thing?  Or…something else.

Yesterday, Tonight, Tomorrow

Seriously.  It really is an $80,000 question.  It’s a large circle I’ve taken over these past three months.  It’s been rather enjoyable (or something) to watch myself crumble with indecision every few days as I wonder what it is I’m supposed to do from now until the next thing.  I wish I could do all of it—that would be interesting, that would be a challenge (not like other things wouldn’t be).  But it seems I like too many things in a world that would rather I sit down, and for the next 45 years do one thing, the same thing, again and again.  Sitting here, right now, today, that doesn’t sound like anything I’d like to commit myself to.  Then again, I could very easily change my mind about that tomorrow.  Probably not, but then again in June I was quite certain I wanted to be a professor of writing and look how that’s turned out (so far).

When I think about it more technically, it comes down to something like this: a RED ONE HD camcorder all-together costs about $25,000 to own.  Forever.  (Let’s ignore the not knowing how to use it/paying for it in the first place problem for now.)  Two years of education in how to write films costs $80,000.  For an education that will last me forever.  But can they teach me to be funny?  To be dramatic?  Can they?  I don’t know.  From what I’ve read, it sounds like the answer is no.  And since I don’t have $80,000 just lying around anyway, it seems to me like the better option right now would be to take a more non-poverty-inducing approach on this one.  But that’s my thoughts for this evening.  Check back next week when I want to major in biology and go to medical school.

Oh, by the way.  I e-mailed the Japanese Consulate in Chicago.  That just looks cool in print, doesn’t it?  I’ve inquired about an exact interview date for the JET program and await their response.  Who knows?  Perhaps the interview will be on some other day that doesn’t work.