I remember being 15 years old on a brief visit to New York City, standing on a balcony listening to a Ben Lee album on my Walkman, watching people walk by, the sounds of the city slipping in between the songs, confidently thinking to myself that I would live here one day, go to college here, and this would be my city. I was so completely sure of it. I returned year after year with that same confidence, it would be where I would establish my independence and my art. This would be my home.
Now I am in my early 40s and I have never lived in NYC. I never went to college there, never moved there to work in publishing, instead chose the desert for higher ed, then back to Twin Cities for more education and stayed for a relationship, then ended up in the North Woods over a decade later after I left him, then more recently I finally returned to Arizona for a calm quiet life. I have never made New York my home.
But every time I listen to Ben Lee I still think of that girl who was so sure, so so sure of where her life was going, and what she was going to accomplish. She was going to write these books. She was going to go to college in the Big Apple and be a poet. This girl from another life. A part of her is still there dreaming.
I predominantly write essays for you now, while I oh-so-slowly work on novels that may never end.
Life is so funny that way. Art is funny that way.
You are so sure of how something will turn out. But it will surprise even you, if you are lucky.
New Freebie Lesson:
If you also never thought you would be an essayist, but are becoming one, I have made a new PDF download on how to write strong narrative essays and how to shop them around. You can download that for free here.
