It's not a Phase

Unfortunately, I have discovered wanting to be a writer when I grow up isn't a phase.

I say unfortunately because I figured that, at some point, I'd stop writing secretly during class in the margins of my notebooks, or that I'd find editing papers disgusting, or that I would spend more time doing anything else instead of writing blogs...

I thought that I'd grow out of being obsessed with letters, and commas, and (my personal favorite) semicolons, or even journals, and books, and blank sheets of paper.

I thought I would, but I haven't.

"Unfortunately" isn't even the word that I'm looking for. Here's why.

1. There really isn't a place for, what are they called again, oh writers...
2. I don't know how many people would actually read my writing
3. Does "Miss Falours Jumbled Stories" appeal to you at all? no? not even a little? What about "Miss Frizzle" or "Rizzle" or "Tizzle" (I still haven't worked that title out)..no? Well there goes the highlight of my high school cafeteria years...
4. What kind of people besides me write 8 paged, single spaced children stories that rhyme..all the way through?
5. I'm on chapter four of a novel in progress and I have no idea if you'd even read past the first sentence.
6. I don't want to starve

It's really a tragedy. A tragedy that goes back to kindergarten, or maybe before. Maybe the tragedy started the day I was born, I mean the first thing I did after learning to write was make books. I've literally been writing stories for as long as I've been able to put letters into words, and words into sentences.

My freshman year of college, I entered my adviser's office with two options. English and Nutrition...and what did my advisor choose between the two? English, or better said, "big nothing." SHE chose English, because though I knew how badly I wanted to write, I also knew that I wanted to live, and English didn't seem to have that option...but she chose it anyway. Sometimes I wonder if that was fate, and other times I wonder if it was stupidity, but either way, I'll have a degree in both, so we'll never know.

So I wonder most, did I choose writing or did writing choose me?

Who knows? I don't. But imagining that I'll never really get to write, even if it is just nutrition articles for some unknown magazine, makes me sad, really sad. So far, all I've ever wanted to do is write, and I know now, it's all I'll ever want to do, and the tragedy is, unlike being a teacher, or a doctor, or whatever else, you can't just work yourself into being a writer, you have to wait for someone with a name tag in an office somewhere to tell you that what you've written is worth reading, and then, they'll call you a writer, but until then, you're just another person with a hobby.