Updates

In an effort to maintain academic momentum, while also realizing that graduate school must wait until I actually know what I'm doing with my life, I have decided to enroll in a post-baccalaureate writing certificate program through UC Berkeley.

It should take a little over a year to complete the course work and hopefully by the time I have finished, I will have figured out grad school.

It means a couple things, for me which are exciting and scary-- excary if you will. It means I will be sticking around the bay area a little longer, first of all. Second of all, it means committing to writing for the first time in an academic setting. Third of all, it means taking responsibility for my fate, something I haven't done a huge lot of since graduating college 7 months ago.

I have always liked writing, even if I didn't think I was very good at it. And it is something I have always done (even when I was too busy to update my blog or follow through on my new years resolutions to write more).

It sort of goes back to this thing I posted here recently, which I think a lot about, where I said that I think people deserve a calling. Or, not deserve exactly, but should have-- in like a perfect world.

But also maybe that Malcolm Gladwell was onto something when he said that people who do a thing a bunch of times are destined to be the best at something, rather than say, destiny deciding things.

So I'm doing a little of both and I figure I will see what happens.

I think about my life and here's how I rank it based on how many hours I spend on it collectively throughout my life:

1. Sleeping
2. Eating
3. Talking
4. Reading
5. Writing
6. Studying
7. Watching Netflix
8. Showering

And here's how I rank my life based on how much I like things:

1. Sleeping
2. Eating
3. Talking
4. Reading
5. Writing
6. Showering
7. Gardening
8. Watching Netflix

So I figure, unless I can find a way to make a living sleeping or talking, I should try making a living by writing. If we are talking passion, I've got it, and if we are talking 10,000 hours, I'm at least well on my way.

The nagging feeling about the practical details of being a writer has not disappeared but I am at the very least comforted by the fact that by the end of this process I will have three things:

1. A certificate certifying my certification in the realm of writing
2. More concrete information as to whether writing is my "thing"
3. Another stepping stone to grad school, whatever that may be.

It is official, and my first class is "Fact or Fiction: Reading and Writing the Personal Essay". Woohoo!