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A New Direction, or Something Like that...(Chase Miller - New Orleans, LA)


I'm just going to start typing. That's how this works, right?

Back in high school, all I could imagine myself being at the age of 25 was being this super cool journalist that wrote amazing stories about delicious food and daring adventures in the southern region of France tasting delicious Bordeaux (that region is in the south of France, right?) I wanted to combine my love for cooking and the cool leather-bag donning aesthetic of being a writer.

Oh I how I never imagined that wouldn't happen. I thought the creative writing college class I took my senior year of high school convinced me that writing for a job or a task that I was forced to do would be so daunting that I'd never meet deadlines and that my twelfth grade English teacher would always be disappointed in me. It's ironic how crippling anxiety can be.


Eight years later and with a mountain of crippling student debt, here I am realizing that writing may actually be my salvation. You see, I've been experiencing one of the tumultuous turmoils that twenty-somethings go through (say that five times fast) over the past two years that has come to a fate-altering fruition. I hate to be so cliche at 25 and you'd never believe this, but I am finding myself at a crossroads in life. One day I'm doing one thing, the next day, oh who am I kidding, it's actually almost a month being out of work and the most joy I'm getting out of life is discovering how delicious mandarin oranges are. Yes, it took me 25 years to make this revelation about the citrus delight. I digress. Life changes. You realize what you always wanted to do may actually come true.

Let me paint you a picture-hey, I'm a writer now, I can do that. I've been working as a fundraiser for a wonderful non-profit for the past three years with the full-hearted intent that I could change the world. Maybe I actually did for a little bit. As time has gone on, especially as a dirty, rotten entitled millennial, I've tried to convince myself that I could keep the pace; I could work through a job that is quite literally draining my body of my strength and push through the daily adversity that my muscle disease puts me through. To make a difference and fight my disease, I said, or something like that. There were times when I almost gave up because of some missed deadline  or an unprofitable fundraiser that defeated me. I didn't cave though - I managed to put a smile on my face and give my co-workers a chipper good-morning the next day.

That time has past. The pen has dropped. The proverbial straw broke the camel's back (two cliches in one entry, I've achieved the Pulitzer Prize for the year, thank you). Circumstances are shifting and I have to learn to survive with them. Today, I am beginning my new melodramatic story and embarking on a mission to find some new direction in life. 

I'm not going to give you every detail with the problems I've been trying to overcome, but I will begin with this: my passion is changing. I once believed that if you set your mind to something, anything was possible. But sometimes, I'm discovering that life doesn't always work that way. You have to be prepared to make changes for a future that is as fleeting as the rain storms in the summer of global-warming-bothered Louisiana. Yes, yes, something about millennials being unable to have responsibility and too emotional for a nine-to-five desk job, yah-dah yah-dah. Hear me out though. I never realized how quickly life can change at the drop of hat. Things like disabilities, bankruptcy, divorce, deaths in the family, etc. do in fact happen to people. Oh dear reader, I hope it doesn't sound too patronizing to say that you have to learn to adapt. 

Sure, you can say that it wasn't my choice. That I was born with a progressive muscle disease that I have no control over. I'm not going to say that. First off, I'm too prideful. Secondly, I don't want to say that this disease defeated me. But thirdly, I want to say that it is my choice. I'm taking back my life, and I'm not letting some silly muscle disease that prevents me from being a body-builder take that away from me.

So here I am, writing. Hear I am, making a decision that will change my life forever. Or maybe just the next few years, I don't play with that many hyperbolas, they're dangerous. I am doing what I once thought was unattainable. I'm accepting the challenge that is a new journey. I'm doing what I was born to do. To speak. To share. To tell a story. I'm excited, I'm nervous, but for once, I know that I am making the right choice.


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