I used to want to be Brian Jacques.

I only ever seem to post when I have something very deep and meaningful and life-questioning to say. And that happens like every six months. Maybe less, depending on how exciting my life is, how busy I am, if I'm sleepy, and if I'm pensive. The mix of those four things has to be perfect for me to get a really thought provoking piece of writing up. And it's always something that I wrote late at night when I should have gone to bed. For some reason those are always the best.

It's funny, because I used to think I was the best writer ever when I was little. Like seriously, the next Charles Dickens, minus the man parts. Or Beverly Cleary, because I thought she was funny. Okay, who am I kidding. I wanted to be Brian Jacques. He was so exciting and entertaining and had like a thousand books published, and I seriously wanted to be him. Although I also kinda wanted to be a mouse, especially after reading his books, so my aspirations were pretty high.

So I would write these elaborate outlines for these crazy books, and wrote all of my favorite scenes and chapters for them. I had so many notebooks full of these kinds of stories. Unfortunately, I never came up for endings for any of them. I know that is supposed to be the hardest part, but really, Little Me?! You couldn't end a single story?!

 

Little Me (aka. future Brian Jacques enthusiast, because I don't think I could read quite yet)

Anyway, I digress. Like I said, I was convinced I was the best writer ever, in all of history, at least for my age. And then I went to high school. Most people might get the sense about this kind of humility stuff knocked into them, but not me. High school just more thoroughly convinced me that I was a great writer. I had ever grammar rule ever memorized, even if I didn't always use them. I took all these extra English classes and wrote cutesy emotional stories that my creative writing teacher liked. And I took Honors and AP English, and I did great. So obviously, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I was the greatest writer. I had proof. I mean, come on, if I could write in high school, I was set for life!!

And then I went to college.

Hillsdale College.

Now, I love Hillsdale College. But few other colleges will look at your youthful cockiness about how awesome you are and laugh in your face so loudly. Even the best of students have to work hard at Hillsdale, and even the best writers get mediocre grades on papers. And that's when I learned that I really wasn't the best writer ever... Fortunately, I wasn't terribly disheartened, because I had already found something I liked waaaaaaaaay better than writing stuff about Fairy Muffins. ART STUFF!!! And I call it that because I like to experiment in literally every branch of art I can get into. Crafting, painting, dry media, digital media, I will try all of it at least once.

Anyway, that's the long, kinda unfocused story of why I'm not an English Major.




PS. "Albert and the Fairy Muffins" was a short story about a bunny who found "fairy muffins" with his woodland friends one day. No, I don't actually know what fairy muffins are, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that if you ever read the story, you'll probably agree that all the forest creatures were on shrooms anyway, so it really doesn't matter. Actually, maybe you would just think that about me since I wrote it, but I swear, I definitely had no idea that "shrooms" could be anything other than a pizza ingredient at that point in my life. And well, that's pretty much the same.