By Beauty Damned

I Did It

Go TEAM! So today was the big day. SAT day. It's one of those things that feels so weird once it's over. As most already know, I've never studied really hard for anything in my entire life.

I feel like I come at life from an odd angle. It seems like nothing has taken place in what I imagine to be "the normal sequence of events." I have just done things as they happen, without a lot of thought to what should come first. Most people seem to go to college when they get out of highschool and then, after college, they seek a career. I was the opposite. I was seeking a way to make money early on in life. Of course it's never money that we all want as much as the freedom to do what we desire, facilitated by money. Getting my first job at 15 years old was pretty exciting, even if it was in a bed & breakfast in Ashland, Oregon, cleaning guest rooms and doing dishes for people that I didn't like. I've had many jobs since that first job. I worked for my dad in his law firm; for a snowboard apparel company called Soopkich'n; for a mail order music store called "Musician's Friend"; for a clothing store called "Red's Threads"; and for a nice man named Peter Carini in his small criminal defense/family law office. I even worked briefly making cold calls for "All Natural X-Terminators." That was really the lowest I ever went as far as employment goes. Nothing worse than calling people up and asking if you can come over and look under their house for rodents and termites. Working for the law firms of course, really helped. The skills that I learned gave me the confidence to move to New York without ever having been here before, and to succeed in ever better jobs once I got here.

I was even able to go to New Orleans for a couple months to hang out with Darcie and supported myself by working temp jobs in law firms there. Those administrative skills turned out to be invaluable. I would never take any of it back. But, time flies, and before I could say "school" I was 26 years old, living 3,000 miles from my roots and heavily reliant on a 9 to 5 job.

Taking this SAT today was a landmark in my adulthood. I decided to do it, I studied for it for weeks, and I showed up in the gym of Brooklyn's Poly Prep School at 7:45 this morning to take the sonofabitch with at least a hundred high school kids. I think I did okay. Of course, I will not know until I get my scores how I really did. The math sucked. The reading was not horrible, but not exactly fun either. It feels exceedingly strange to sit here now, knowing that I no longer have to study for that test. I am free of it. And in a sense, I conquered my fear of it with a force I didn't know I had.

The best thing about taking this test was getting a taste of what it feels like to be challenged and determined to break through an obstacle. It had more to do with the challenge itself than the final score.

Darcie wrote this post yesterday about never having known what she wants to be when she grows up. She says she's never had such a passion for anything that she felt inspired to persue it as a career. When I read that I thought, first of all, that Darcie is talented in so many areas that I believe amount to untapped passions - things that she is really capable of using to her advantage. It also made me think about my own passions. I have a need to write. I want to incorporate that into my career, but it's such a general interest that it's hard to know just what to do with it. I hope going to school will help me figure that out. What's the passion within the passion? Maybe I'll want to write screenplays. I love the idea of making movies. I love images and words combined and movies make it possible to bring those things together, add music, and share a vision. I think that's amazing. I would give anything to be able to accurately represent the thoughts and images that flow through my mind. I also love law. I really do. Though much as it has been a blessing to me, I have always felt that law firms have been a bit of a prison rather than a passion. I want to be with the world. But with The Firm? Not so much. It's good, but it's not the world. It's funky though, there is part of me that feels a pull towards the study of law that almost seems like it isn't worth fighting. Sometimes I indulge myself in thinking I will go to law school, and be the Carreon to carry on the family name. I think, "I should do as my grandfather did, and as my father and his brother both did. I should stand with them. Be a lawyer." It's this whole familial pride, innate calling, kind of thing. But if I am to be completely honest, I am afraid to be a lawyer. What if I find that it isn't what I want to do? (I already know I wouldn't want to be an associate in my firm or any others that I've worked at)! What if I get halfway through lawschool and decide I want to give up because it's too much hard work and I hate hard work? What if I feel that I've wasted my time and delayed the fulfillment of my real "destiny?" What if I failed the bar exam? It's silly isn't it? And then there's the part of me that just downright thinks it's the wrong thing for me and that it's going to take something else to make me happy. Like freelance writing. I love the word "freelance," don't you? It sounds so good. So.....free.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't feel this way a year ago, but I'm convinced at this moment, that in order to really discover that thing that Darcie is talking about; that certainty about what a person wants to do and to realize undiscovered passions, you have to tap into something that stimulates those things to emerge and gives you confidence to exploit your own talents. That is what I hope to get out of all of this. Anyway, I have overcome the first hurtle towards my goal of getting into school. Now I wait, and think about what's next.