Sitting down and asking, "Who do I want to be?" had usually never been a very difficult question. Of course, I wanted to be a lawyer. Both my parents were lawyers. It makes sense that I should be one too, I'm surely gifted in that respect. Then, throughout a process in which I needed several years to grasp the concept, I realized that the transcendentalist within me was crying out at the notion of law school wiping out my creative writing talents and forcing me into 9-5 slavery. The first step in asking myself what I really needed to become was counting the times in your life when I felt truly self-worthy. Perhaps for you it was when you recieved a foster child's photo and realized that your help was making that person stronger. Or maybe it was when, after months of practice, your fifth grade teacher congratulated you on your exemplary multiplication skills. Yes, both of these have happened to me, but the final question, and answer, is what do I want to be? A writer.
It feels kind of self-deprecating to write about why I want to be a writer, because I'm trying to explain what I think I do best with the thing I believe I do best. Frankly, that leaves a lot of room for pompousity to set in if I allowed it to. But I'm not going to say I'm the greatest poet since Charles Bukowski, because that leaves me in a horrible position to have to live up to that, and deal with the fact that I propounded myself as greater than I really am. Being humble is no virtue in my eyes- to some degree it's even more ostentatious than the alternative. I can recall plenty of times where people would have you think they were selfless and caring, only to reveal later on that they only acted this way because they wanted the sweet reputation of being this way so they might lord it over you, feeling superior. Anyways, although I can say I'm a better writer than your average American angst ridden teenager, that's not much of an accomplishment to throw in peoples' faces.
