Don't Forget to Write

This Side of the Bar

Karen came around and sat next to me with a beer in hand.

"Weird to see you on this side of the bar," I said.

"Weird to be on this side. Looks so different from over here. Anyway, I overheard you talking about your inability to pick classes next semester."

I nodded.

"I'm in the same boat," she said.

"You don't like your major?" I asked.

She scrunched her face, "Well, it's not that I don't like it. Civil engineering is useful, and it's fun. I want to build clean water sources for places that don't have it, maintain the infrastructures in our communities, and just generally improve the standard of living for everyone. But now I'm not sure that's my calling. I'm wondering if I should go back to music." She took a very large gulp of beer. "It makes me feel selfish, to leave engineering where I might change communities and lives, to pursue music instead just to make myself happy."

"Well, music makes a lot of people happy." I said. "I've listened to songs and artists who have changed my life."

"True. So you don't think it's selfish?"

"No. And even if it was selfish, it's your life and your happiness, so why not be selfish with it."

"You should take your own advice."

"I would, I'm just not sure what makes me happy yet." I immediately felt stupid and vulnerable, but Karen looked at me in a way that made things seem normal.

"Well maybe it's less to do with the things we do and more to do with the person that we are."

"Isn't what you do a direct reflection of the person you are?"

"Well, what kind of person are you?"

"I'm not sure."

She looked at me and seemed to know something I didn't. "You'll figure it out. What about writing?"

"I don't think I can make a living off of writing other student's papers. Even if I could, eventually I'd get caught."

"Not that kind of writing. How about writing stories? Do you write stories?"

"I keep those to myself. They're not very good."

"I find that hard to believe. People pay you hundreds of dollars to write for them."

"Yeah but that's easy. Writing a paper is just remodeling information you've gained to make it seem like your own idea and throwing in a couple of pretty adjectives here and there. With a story you have to build plots and characters and timelines, it's a whole mess of bullshit that I couldn't try to understand. Every time I write fiction I end up just writing a stream of consciousness, and at the end, I'm not even sure if it's a full story or just one long rambling thought."

"Well, maybe it isn't as hard as you think. Maybe it's as simple as writing one true sentence, the truest sentence you know, and then going from there."

"Thanks, Hemingway," I said.

"Well, maybe if you write enough, one day you'll write out what it is you want to do with your life."

"Cheers to that."

We pulled our coats off of our seat backs and onto our bodies, Moose with a leather jacket that was lined with wool on the inside, Bruno with a sleek black jacket with goose feathers inside of it, and me, with my thing brown coat. We went into the gusty deep chill that was brought by this first week of November, heads down and hands buried in our pockets. Denzel was on the stairs again. He had found a sweatshirt and a thick coat, but he was still shivering. There was an empty bottle next to him. He didn't seem to hear our passing.