“WHAT IF WHO I HOPED TO BE WAS ALWAYS ME?”

I burst into tears the first time I heard this song. I was 17, it was the summer before I went off to college, and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was chasing a pipe-dream, a life that I didn’t believe I was capable of having. I was sitting in my backyard, if you could call it that; it was barely 15 feet across, one of dozens of identical townhouse plots. I just lay there, looking at the stars, hoping my favorite artist would wash away the thoughts of tomorrow.

I’d like to say in that moment I figured it all out, that all the answers I had been searching for came to me in a second of movie magic. But that’s not how life works, and I think that’s all I needed to realize. That I don’t need to have all the answer right now. That I’m going to fail a lot before I get it right. That the me of last year, 2 years ago, a decade ago would be crying tears of joy at how far I’ve come. And how far I have left to go.

That’s the kind of art I want to create. I want to make people laugh, I want to make them cry, I want them to be elated, flabbergasted, horrified, and dumbfounded. I want to tell stories of great heroes and mundane men, of noble adventures and risque escapades. I want to entertain, amaze, and inspire change. Because that’s what storytelling has done for me.