Ambition

It is now, in the summer before my senior year of college, that I realize my sister was right.

I don’t have the ambition I need for anything I ever wanted to do.

That hurts.
I want to make excuses, but there aren’t any really.

All I ever wanted was to be a writer. To one day have my own name on a book I wrote, with people enjoying the stories I had to tell. The frustrating part: I want to write fantasy, and science fiction. I’m good at that. I started my writing in the sixth grade with a short tale about Eurotopia, a floating city destroyed in a dark invasion. That story became the origin story of the world I built afterwards, with culture and history and heroes. I finally finished a work in the 9th grade, my 40 page (notebook paper) story, Arabad, which was about the kidnapping of the hidden princess of Indria. I lost the notebook later, when a teacher who was going to type it for me never returned it.

Eventually high school and social life caught up with me, and my reading and writing were a thing of the past. I was able to mature my literary tastes through my high school English classes, but that was about it.

College came around, and i applied for English- Secondary Ed.
After a semester of hearing about how I would never get a job in English, and pressures from family, I freaked out and decided to change my major.

But I was having a hard time choosing a new one. Family was pushing computer science, I didn’t want to.

I eventually stumbled onto Media Arts while inquiring about a manga production class (Japan is a huge influence on my life since high school) and switched when I discovered I could also take a course in TV writing.

I signed up for the pre req Media Writing class, as well as a Creative Writing class in English the very next semester.
I had a blast in both, and between the two, my idea for a tv series, RIFT was born. I would take that story into Manga, and TV writing, and am still developing it.

But since then, I have also been plagued with thinking that writing is just too risky to get a job in, i should focus on art, filmmaking, design, something to have even a remote chance at a career. I started my grad school panic. I’ve been unable to find a film production program I think I would be happy with, and I’m pretty sure it’s cuz I don’t actually want to be a filmmaker. I’m looking into creative writing programs in dismay, because I don’t feel like I have a good enough English background now to get in.

If only I had finished stories when I was younger.
If only I had been able to discover the governor’s school for the humanities.
If only I had been confident enough to just do the Creative Writing concentration in English.

But,

if only is worthless to me now. Lamenting the fact that I didn’t do those things isn’t going to help me get where I want. It isn’t going to get a script sold or a novel published. Right now, all I need to be doing is writing. Writing, writing, writing. I need to get work done and get stuff out there to be workshopped. I have a chance to make up for the lack of ambition, to really go after the only dream I ever had. There is no more time to be scared. I have to stop with what if’s and if only’s and just try my damnedest to prove that writing skills I was always praised for, the ones I loved to use are still there and worth their salt. And if they aren’t worth, then I have to get them up to scratch.

I just can’t be scared and wait for someone to notice me. I have to jump out there and make myself seen.