This is where it began...

Today is my birthday. It's also the first day of my life - officially - as a writer. Of course I've spent my entire life writing, from the "book" I wrote in 2nd grade through my days as a grad student and beyond, but I've never been prepared to really BE a writer.

Well, today is that day. 

My story starts out much like that of other artists. I always had a passion and a talent for [insert artform of choice here], but I spent much time trying to find out what I wanted to "do" with my life and denied my pleasures for a more "responsible" career path at the urging of my parents and teachers. For me, for many years, that was medicine. I became 1st aid and CPR certified by the age of 12 and then became an EMT in high school. I took honors science classes (but definitely not math... forget math.  Math is the worst), but the honors and AP English classes still dominated my schedule. In college I was pre-med, but also took on an English major. Eventually, something clicked at the end of my sophomore year. I was doing perfectly fine in those science-major science classes, but they were HARD. Was this really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? Struggle to stay above the pack, study 25 hours a day, kill myself to MAYBE be on my own in medicine in 10 years (of course, I wanted to be a surgeon). Not a chance. I dropped my pre-med option like it was hot, tossed away the MCAT books, and "came out" as the closet English major that I really was. No more "I'm an English major... But I'm pre-med too! [insert awkward self conscious excuse here]."  Nope, now I was just an English major. 

This wasn't my true coming out, though, because I choose what I thought was a more practical route - academic English over creative writing (which I now know is probably no less of a risk. At all). No, my true coming out is right here, right now - this moment where I've left my boring-but-safe office job and declared myself "a writer."  I won't hide behind a pay check just because it means I can afford food and a roof! Oh, no. You can't make me! Nope, right now, it's stomach-in-my-throat, leap-off-a-roof in the hopes that I land on something soft, or a time paradox wipes the universe out and I get to start all over again. That's where I am and I couldn't be more excited. 

So, this was where it began, this is where I was when it started, and this is what will be my [modern] American life.