The Gate Opens and The Horse Breaks a Leg

I walk this empty street
On the boulevard of broken dreams.

I walk alone.
I walk alone.
-- Green Day

I’ve come to believe it takes a particular strength of character to learn from past mistakes while avoiding the pitfalls of regret that are so abundant in each of our personal histories. In recent days I found myself navigating a particularly nasty minefield of should-haves and could-haves as I dug for the roots of the most glorious failure in my quarter century of life.

A little less than a year ago I set off on a quest. My treasure? A Master’s degree in creative writing. The end goal was – and is – a writing career, but a return to school seemed the most sensible first step for my reinvigorated passion. Unfortunately, my new determination did little to endear me to the application committees of the four universities I courted, and early last week I got my final rejection letter from my Alma Mater, Southern Illinois University. As if the rejection itself was not a swift enough kick to the unmentionables, I actually got my denial over e-mail after writing the office of admissions to inquire about my application’s status. They apparently thought so little of my wooing that they couldn’t sacrifice the Xerox toner for my notification. Or maybe it was the 34 cents for the stamp. I can’t say.

So after my inspired escape from my demoralizing Quad City employ, my southern migration, and my head first charge into the grad school application process, I come out on the other end with a few grand less in my bank account and a myriad of questions about my next pursuit. I put so much of my heart and time into this one goal that when it didn’t come to fruition I felt a little like a horse at the Kentucky Derby that breaks his leg in its first step out of the gate. My ambitious agenda, careful planning, and diligent work-ethic put me right back where I started. Or at least, a thousand miles away in exactly the same predicament.

Thanks to the wonderfully vacuous rejection letters from my dream schools, I am left with no clue about whether my continued pursuit of a Master’s degree would be a wise decision. Without an English Degree (though an approximation of one on my transcript), I wonder if I automatically begin the application process with two strikes against me; and I’ll swing at anything with two strikes. Since the rejections tell me nothing about my qualifications and my inquiries into the strengths or weaknesses of my application met with more inane refusals, I’m reluctant to sign up for another round of that horrible process when it could be a futile endeavor to begin with.

In considering this failing, I found it hard not to look back on my years in college (and the years after them) and then kick myself repeatedly in the ass for the blunders I made. This is the minefield that I speak of. If I had started pursuing my Creative Writing minor a semester sooner, I could have had it completed when I graduated instead of ending up a class shy. If I had leapt immediately into grad school I would not have needed to fall back on a family friend and former football coach (God bless you for doing it though, Vic) for a letter of recommendation. Any number of other college opportunities (Studio A Playhouse and my internship at NBC, for example) I largely took for granted. I seemed to float through them, dazed, instead of bleeding them for every advantage and experience I could.

A matter of years ago, I would have been so wrapped up in these traps of regret and self-destruction that I’d be inclined to take a backwards step into one. Instead, I’ve studied the minefield for patterns and found the most promising path ahead.

And that most promising path seems to be a figure eight. I’ve been to the West Coast. I’ve been to the East Coast. And each time I return to the center. I return home. It’s time to get centered again.

I look back on the two years I lived in Rock Island after college, and I see one of the great missed opportunities of my life. The Quad Cities is not a hopeless place for me to start a writing career. But improper perspective and a sour attitude can make the pearly gates look like Bangladesh, and anybody who knew me then would attest that my perspective was as skewed as a glass-eyed glaucoma patient.

I wasn’t trapped at the Isle of Capri. But that’s how I saw it. I wasn’t “out of the loop” as a writer in Rock Island. I just made it so. Of course, I had to break the shackles of habit and security to learn that, but I have learned it.

My Uncle Joel has lived in both corners of this country while the majority of his family remained rooted in the middle. He lived in Seattle for a number of years before moving to Florida. I don’t know how he does it. I desperately miss my family. I miss Rocky football. I miss Casino Rock Island. I miss the bleachers at Wrigley. I miss WINTER. Yes people. The real world has snow. You’re not of the world if you don’t shovel your walk at least once a year. I’m aching for the back spasms and numb toes.

My parents plan to take their vacation here in July. After a week of fishing and gator-baiting, I’ll be bringing my sharpened perspective and newly shorn skull home, ready for two-a-days and the climax of baseball’s regular season.

I really have no idea whether my life in The Cities will be any better this time around. I ate a big helping of crow on the grad school debacle. I could certainly be back on this site a year from now with another plateful.

But I’m optimistic. I daresay, I’m confident.

What do we Cubs fans always say? Next year is here? We’ve eaten almost a century’s worth of crow. We have a taste for it. And one of these years, we’re going to be right.

One of these years, I’m going to be right too.

Three months and counting…

Then it’s time to test the waters of the Mississippi River once again.