I remember applying to colleges and realizing I needed to choose a major. I always thought I would be more prepared to answer the dropdown. Not that this was new. Adults asked me my whole life about what I wanted to be when I grew up. My answer was always inventor. I admired the same kinds of people: Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Tony Stark. People that made their ideas come to life.

When I looked at the list of majors, I saw myself in almost every single one. The art major. The philosophy major. The applied math major. I did some searching around and learned what engineering was (building stuff?). That sounded the closest, but still felt off. I thought college was for exploring what I wanted to study. Now, they’re telling me I have to apply for each school? No one in my life was an engineer really, so I defaulted to Economics, which was my favorite subject in school and sounded like I would get a job.

All the lives you could lead. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom — kierkegaard.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

In the infinite paths ahead of me, I took a leap of faith. Stupid Bravery. To commit and impose restrictions. An act of will is to limit the self. Which is how one can become free

You can do everything but you can only do something. I don’t know if it’s right. But I’m going to live every minute of it. The purpose of a song is not to complete it.