That Moment When Less Leads To More

So here we are again.

I’m starring at another job application, an unsigned roommate contract, and an email informing me of my impending student loan start date.

There's a four letter explicative I would like to insert right about…(here).

This month’s goals are daunting, and all the while summer is slowly slipping away into that unstoppable, seasonal darkness. The days are less likely to reach their climatic noon, or stretch so delicately into evening. It’s only September and I feel that approaching winter dread – or is it subtle excitement? I can’t tell which anymore; maybe these perceptions simply arrive as an inseparable pair.

Back to that job application: “First name, last name.”

With each keystroke I’m reminded of my temporary position. No, I think cruelly. Not one temporary position – you should be reminded of them all.  Four months here, six months there. How pleasant it must be to have a salary, my mind says. To have benefits, to have footing – dare you dream to have some clout! Oh don’t you long for these nuisances? Or at least… they would be nuisances for you.

I click off of MediaBistro or Journalism Jobs or whatever the hell website I’ve dragged up from the depths of the internet. Enough of that for now. I sip water out of a glass fashioned from an old jelly jar. How is it so damn stuffy in this apartment when autumn has already robbed us of late evenings and 9 o’clock sunsets?

I stare off into space for a minute. Then I allow myself to ask the dangerous question that's never truly examined: What am I doing?  

Sure, I know what I’m doing today, tomorrow, this weekend and probably the next. But now I sit in silence and blink hard; hard enough to stop a flood of possible tears. Breathing in three times, I acknowledge the moment of weakness for what it is: I’m overwhelmed by possibility – choosing wrong, choosing right, choosing anything for any sphere of my life. Making a choice toward one particular direction or another has paralyzed me into an apathetic numbness.

So here we are again.

Jobless, penniless, tireless, listless – less less less!

Ah ha.

But wait?

I am not less.

We, my friends, are not less.  

The mere mention of the world less strikes up a rejuvenation in me that spurs the antonym more. And then I remember…it hits like a ton of bricks!... I am faultlessly hungry for more.

THAT is what I’m doing. And the question isn’t even “what am I doing” but how, and why, and for what reason. Do I have a worthy reason? If not, then best to jump ship now before sinking into some unexplored doom.

But the reasons, too, come flooding back to me. I don’t want a salary, or benefits. I don’t need footing, or clout. If I did, I never would have moved to New York to be that tirelessly cliché writer-type who works for ten bucks an hour and eats eggs like they’re going out of style.

No, no, no… My mentality was momentarily smothered by desires that will never fulfill what I truly long for, which is, most easily described as a voice, a story, and possibly (if I’m so lucky) an impact.

What am I doing? I’m living. What am I doing? I’m writing. What am I doing? I’m trying and failing, and succeeding and flourishing, and attempting to do all of the above over and over again until there’s not an ounce of me left I haven’t given to this story.

My story. 

Your story.

Our story.

So let me write these stories... because I can. 

[Editor’s Note: A big thanks to all those in the past couple of weeks who have been retweeting, reposting, and responding to my HuffPost articles and the blog. It really means the world to me that you spend precious minutes reading my work. So thank you, thank you, thank you one thousand time over].

That Moment When Less Leads To More