Yes, a mist-shrouded lake. Think I'm exaggerating? It's all true.
This is where I came from. Maybe my writing makes more sense now.
Almost as early as I can remember, there was a computer in the house. I sat and typed in BASIC programs from a book, then tweaked them to change how they worked. Logic made sense to me. That machine, or one of its successors, or the ones I started building myself when I was old enough, were always available. It was always assumed I would end up "doing something with computers". It was what my parents wanted for me; they thought it was a way out of the working class.
That's what I was majoring in when I arrived at the University of California: Computer Science. Back then you could just call it that, and that one size fit all. I strayed, though. Undeclared for a while drinking up different topics, then astrophysics until the UC people changed the course offerings on me. I suppose the higher level math was getting challenging, too. I wanted to get out of school at that point, disillusioned by tuition gouging and politics that were affecting my experience as a student. I looked at my course credits, and realized I was almost to a BA in History. So I finished that and headed into the outside world. Not the real world. It isn't.
A caution to any aspiring writers: Trying to keep one foot in a white collar job, while you pursue your art, is a nearly impossible task. I was a fool to try. Being corporate and creative is a contradiction. How can you hold on to your muse when you are immersing yourself in a world that by its own nature pulls you away from the muse?
So one day I hit my limit and resigned. I walked away from a job that might have been what my parents envisioned for me. A few weeks after that, I paused my job search. I had found this seedling of a story while going through documents, written 5 years prior. I stared at it. It stared back. We nodded to one another. And then I began making notes, sketching out the framework of a story. Scenes started to appear, and dialogue flowed. I had decided to write a novel.
I didn't question that I could do it. Isn't that interesting? I could say that it was because at the end of my time at UC Santa Cruz, my senior thesis brought a smile to my advisor's face. He said grad students handed him work that wasn't so well written. It wasn't the most groundbreaking work. I had honestly fumbled for a topic. Yet once I settled on the crumbling of Roman culture by the time of Diocletian, to a point where you could scarcely call it Roman, it came easily.
I could say it was because in my junior year of high school, the English teacher who irritated me so much saw some promise in my writing, and submitted my name to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). I ended up on the short list of winners that year. (If you get that reference, high-five)
No, it was before that. Before I lost my way. Before I became institutionalized. Before teenage bitterness and the exile of hope.
It was one day in 8th grade, when the English teacher whose class I always looked forward to came by to hand back a paper, and leaned over to tell me I was good at it, that maybe I could pursue writing. I wish it hadn't taken so damn long. Rationally, I know that it takes how long it takes, and you have to live life a little before you really have something to say and the conviction to say it. I envy those who find those things early. But I am here now. I found it. And I'm grateful to her for spending the effort to connect with an underconfident adolescent who was so much more at home in books or on a lonely hillside than in a room full of people. When I sat down with the sharpened intention to create a novel, that memory came back vividly.
The long journey through the world of IT did teach me something. Seeing patterns, linking pieces of data, taking raw information and creating a narrative. Did you laugh at that? I did, too. It's true anyway, our laughter doesn't change it. I started with hardware, moved to applications, then to data and integrations. I was the bridge between the business and the purely technical. And that got me as close as you can get in that business to the study of history and the art of writing. Some skills are transferable. If advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I already learned how to bring magic to the masses. I do it in a different language now.
Perhaps I had to learn how to apply structure to things, so that I could make them appear not to have structure. There's a Zen riddle for you.
The rest of me? I eat clean. I cook constantly because my mother and my grandmother taught me well. I lift weights, practice martial arts, and can't wait for my next walk through the woods. I greet every animal I meet (wild and domestic), and think twice before greeting any human accompanying them. Always looking for the next live music. A wise man told me recently that every artist needs something that connects them to the world. It could be that's the lesson that took me so long to learn. All I could do was nod when he said it. Then we talked about the video games we like. Maybe you need to escape reality now and then to appreciate it.
Escape or not, the lesson I learned so long ago at that lake was to experience life. Let the wind blow in your face. Shiver in the winter, sweat in the summer. Explore. That's what it's all here for.
