vertigo, part one

I'm not sure what the stages of quarter life crisis are, you know, officially, but I picture them looping like bike paths, forming something like a Venn Diagram, and covering everything from acting out to outright despair. I am somewhere in the middle, drifting.

You see, I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. Or, at the very least, what I want to do while I do it. The trouble is, I am—as ever—ill-prepared.

Sure, my B.A. will make me look good. My GPA, once dusted for cobwebs, ought to leverage me a little. But then there are mountains to scale, the first of which being my aversion to calling myself a writer. Best clear that hurdle first. Because, after all, it is not my place to decide I don't have talent. That is why MFA programs have admissions committees. So. Yeah.

I have four months to choose a genre, write forty pages of admit-worthy material, develop a profound sense of self-discipline, spend a lot of money I don't have, mail a bunch of applications and . . . relearn algebra (that last one is giving me nightmares).

Then there are leaps to be taken, from death-defying heights. This is the part where, come September, I quit my hideous soul-snapper of a job in spectacular fashion, sublet the turret and move to Florida until my applications are mailed, sipping mojitos on the Intracoastal with my mother and (gasp) re-donning the apron of my youth. Once a waitress, always a waitress. Only this time, the job whispers to me of dizzying freedom and dignity in the form of cold, hard cash. I can answer to pigs, it's the She Beast who's got me down.

Thing is, I'm thrilled. This may be the greatest, most daring—most selfish—coup I've ever attempted. Hence, the vertigo. So I breathe. I squirm. I inhabit the liminal quagmire between decision and execution. And I try like hell to shut my ears against the persistent chorus muttering in my head, saying fool, calling wolf, calling "theatre!" in a crowded fire.