MY generation was told we could have it all. And boy, did I ever.

By Grade 8, I was fully loaded up with the grand prix pig-out package, fulfilling the prophecy with a super-size meal combo that included thick glasses, braces, a mess of acne, and a short-long haircut punctuated with menacing spikes. And oh boy, did I want fries with that.

Spoiled rotten, you’d mutter under your breath as I slunk past your locker.

Having it all wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The struggles of high school was my first major existential test. There I was, having it all, and gagging myself with a spoon. A double-reverse Andre Agassi situation indeed.

What a brat, you’d think, unaware that something formative was a-brew in my low-to-the-ground discomfort and self-doubt.

I spent most of my young adult life saying Yes! to everything and then writing about all the strange, wonderfulness of having said that particular Yes. I traveled. I studied language and literature and politics. I did weird jobs that sometimes involved helicopters and sailing across oceans. All those Yesses filled my curiosity, challenged my body, my heart and my brain. To the Y to the E to the S, seemingly unrelated bits and bobs and blunders and sometimes brilliance are starting to come together in the form of a short story collection.

Writing, it turns out, is a great way to make sense of all the rando.

Meanwhile, where the heck does the dog’s tail end and the critter’s bum begin? How does one know when one has finished emerging as a writer? How to corral all the wild, loose fragments of experience and attention into a single gunny sack of focus and channel it all into a single project? I do not know how all those guys did it- drugs and booze don’t help my process, like at all.

I have always been a polyamorous lover of books, reading at least two at a time, and I write the same way. From day to day or morning to afternoon, I might work on my memoir, pitch an idea for a story, submit to a contest, or pick away at one of the dozens of short stories I have on the go. Or maybe I’ve been playing scrabble online this whole time. Or re-reading that one article I wrote that was finally published.

Time to get back to work.