Mug

The idea of writing a book about me and my life and what I’ve learned and what I’ve done seems a little…arrogant? Narcissistic? Self-righteous? All of the above, really, because I’ve done nothing worth writing a whole book about. Only people who live differently are allowed to write about themselves. You go into any bookstore and look at the memoir section and I guarantee you won’t see Betty Housewife’s How I Life: A Day in the Life of a Normal Person. Not only is this offensive in this day and age (welcome to the post-feminist era), but it’s also flat-out, nuts-and-bolts, get-right-down-to-it boring. No one – and I mean NO ONE – gives a rat’s ass about how you carried out your routine, day in and day out, for weeks and months and years on end until you meet that end that we all – normal or otherwise – must meet.

“Nobody gives a damn about the uniforms, they just want to hear about touchdowns and injuries.”

Let me be up-front with you: I am fairly normal. One might dare to say “average.” I was an average student in high school – thirty-fifth out of ninety-two – which got me into an average university, which got me a decent education for a shit-ton of money. I have traveled extensively but not exotically (I’ve never been anywhere near an elephant), and the stories I brought back with me never got more adventurous than “we were locked in a train station for ten minutes.”

I have spent the night on the floor of a French train station, but that was only because our leader of that particular “mission trip” (used very loosely and almost laughably) didn’t see the gap between our 1 a.m. arrival and our 6 a.m. departure.

By all accounts I have no reason to write a memoir that people will want to read. And that, I think, is where the wind is let loose from my sails. I don’t think so much in regard to what I want to write so much as what people will want to read. You can’t sell a book without readers, and you’re an idiot to think about only yourself as the writer when you write a book.

Unless, of course, you don’t mind being the only one to read it, in which case you should probably just write a diary instead.

Do people really care? Are people interested enough in what I’m presenting to drop $12.99 at a Barnes and Noble and sit down for an afternoon to read what I have to say? What I am writing is terribly important to me: my journals over the last few years are the chronicles of a girl who has no idea what the hell she wants while revealing exactly what she wants to do. In my words I see the transformation of a child of wild imagination and wishful thinking into a woman with thoughts and ideals and dreams that are well within her grasp. I am proud of the person I am, I am beyond excited at the path my life is carving out, and I am thankful to the many experiences I’ve already had at almost-twenty-three years old that have shaped the person who stands before you.

But does it matter to anyone else?

While I’m not sure of that, I am positive that nobody will care one way or the other until I sit down and crank out a few hundred pages. After all, you can’t test a hypothetical question until you take out the “hypothetical” and make it a reality.

And so, dear friends, I begin.

I am going to write a book.

I’ve been journaling/blogging for the past few months about the “quarter-life crisis,” described as the feeling of doubt about what being an “adult” entails. For me, I thought that by this point I would have a teaching job and probably an apartment and most likely not a boyfriend. Instead, I’m planning a wedding while working at a grocery store with no desire whatsoever to teach. And the realization of that, combined with the epiphany that “if you don’t teach, you have to do something – anything – else,” has been bumpy.

Correction: rocky.

Correction: frustrating beyond belief.

After doing some research, I’m finding that I’m not alone in this ballgame: if I were the only one, there wouldn’t be a name for it. And while at the moment that story doesn’t have a resolution, I want to share the journey that I’ve been on so far. I love to hear the stories of others who have gone through such an experience and come out on the other side wiser but unbroken. And the goal here is not to write a bestseller and chill in those comfy chairs on “Ellen.” The goal is to be read by one college grad, one twenty-something who feels that their plans and dreams are garbage. It is to enlighten, to entertain, and to encourage.

I have something to say that I would have liked to hear. And so, regardless of who hears, I will say it.