I'll Take It As a Sign: Sweet Serendipity

I have always known one thing for certain: I am a dreamer. It’s not that I live in a world of fantasy, or even that I am impractical or unrealistic. I just try to have an open mind and hope that everything will turn out for the best. I am in love with serendiptous moments, because I believe the best things happen on accident. They aren't forced or planned, they just happen. But sometimes I get frustrated when I don't know where things or going or how to get where I want to be. I just want simple things to turn out well.

Like for instance, it would be great if I could sit down and write an essay with confidence. I love to write. So that clearly isn’t the problem. And I can see how far I have come since my first essay in second grade on rhinos. I could sit and analyze why I struggle writing with confidence until I have written an entire analysis paper on myself. But it would be much easier to simply tell you the only thing I know for certain about my writing: it is reflective of my personality. Sometimes I struggle to find my voice, just like how I sometimes struggle to find out about myself. I hate answering questions about how I would describe myself and what I like to do. Most of the time, I struggle to answer them because I don’t know how to describe myself or what I like to do. I just am this way. And I just do stuff.

I have weird quirks and sometimes I talk too much. Sometimes I say too little. I love being around people and laughing with my friends until I think I am going to cry. But I also love to be myself and write about everything. I write down funny things people say and keep them in my quote book. This is where I keep things that make me happy or make me think. Some of the things in my quote book make me hopeful for the future and what it has in store for me. I have no idea where I am going to end up or how I am going to get there. But at the moment I am more focused on figuring things out that are right in front of me. I need to know which way to turn right now.

When I sit down to write a paper I need all of my resources in front of me. For my rhetorical analysis essay I laid everything out on my desk and gathered my materials. The pages of the marked up article sat side by side with my CRJ in my notebook on the right side, so I could add to it. I had highlighters, markers, G2 Pens (the only kind of pen I will use for homework), a glass of ice water, my iPod (just in case I couldn’t tune out my obnoxiously loud family), and a hair binder. As I stared at the blinking cursor on the empty document, I thought about which way I wanted my paper to go. At the beginning of everything I write I think of where I want it to go and then try to get there. But sometimes I am limiting myself. I’ve realized that there is no one way in writing. There is a million different ways it could turn out and sometimes that is freighting, but most of the time it is exciting. With writing I can really get in the zone and tune the rest of the world out. It isn’t like math where I can get distracted and end up doing something else because I am so bored with trying to solve for the freaking X. In writing I get to control the outcome. If I got to choose the value of X, maybe I would like math more (but probably not).

In the end, no matter what grade I end up getting on a paper, if I feel get about how the paper turned out, then I was successful. Sometimes I stress out about whether or not other people will like my writing because in the words of Ms. Prokott, I don’t want people to think I have an Ugly Baby. But I’ve realized the writing process is hard and it’s messy and sometimes you end up having an Ugly Baby. Thankfully in writing you don’t have to be born with the genetics to produce a beautifully formed paragraph. You just have to keep writing. No matter what direction your writing is going in, you have to keep going if you ever want to get anywhere. I've learned it's okay to be a dreamer and hope for the best because in the end, you'll always end up where you are supposed to be. Somtimes you just have to set out without a destination and rely on serendipity.