I Could Have Been a Pharmacist

I don't believe you choose to be an artist. It's something you are compelled to do, obsessively. It's something that you can't fathom life without. It's purpose, a reason to keep going, and every other cliché thing a thousand other people have said about the act of creation. Free will and choice only comes in when you decide to make your art into your career. And that's a decision we can't make haphazardly.

My mother wanted me to be a pharmacist. In fact, she probably (most definitely) still does. For a long time, I didn't get it. I didn't get why she was so insistent that the thing I loved the most should just be a hobby. I didn't get it, but now I do.

She was scared for me, for all the hardships I will inevitably face in chasing this dream. In the beginning, I was so blinded with ambition, it never really crossed my mind that I may not succeed. It never really occurred to me that I should be scared too.

I'm past scared now. I'm fucking terrified.

I'm living in this liminal space between undergrad and graduate school where the only thing keeping me together is the stories I still want to tell. I'm twenty years old and I feel washed up and burned out, even though I haven't done anything. This is the reality of your gap year, friends: you work a bunch of odd jobs that have nothing to do with your degree, pour your heart out in applications for your dream schools, and spend the rest of your time worrying that this is all there is.

I think the universe is trying to teach me a lesson during this time off and I hear it loud and clear. I'm just not sure it's the lesson I'm supposed to learn.

The prospect of failing to get into graduate school and having to continue mindlessly working away for the foreseeable future probably should have made me second guess my choice to make writing a career. It probably should have scared me shitless and sent me back to Geneseo to pick up another, more practical, major. It didn't though.

What's got me petrified is now I know: writing is the only thing I want to do forever. This is it for me. I'm not good with commitment, but I have never been more sure of anything in my life.

I could have been a pharmacist. I could have stuck it out and finished the Pre-Med track. I could have done anything other than be an artist. That would have made my mother happy. I have to wonder if that would have made me happy too.

Sometimes, like now, when it all seems so daunting, I think it could have. I think I could have been content working a 9-5 and leaving it at the office when I come home at night. But then, I remember. I remember what it felt like finishing that novel and I remember what it felt like winning that award for my screenplay and I remember what it felt like when I stood in front of a class and read a story that mattered to someone. That's when I realize, yes, I could be content as a pharmacist, but I would never be happy. Being an artist is the only way I'll get there.

So as I fill out these applications and the weight of what they mean comes crashing in around me, I have never been more scared in my life. I don't know what will happen when I hit "submit." I don't know what will happen next year. I don't know what will happen if I'm told I can't do the only thing I know I'm good at.

I do, however, know that, no matter what, I will always be an artist. Career or not, no one gets to decide if I'm one. I just am.

Grad school application season is a horrifying time! If you want to talk applications, fear, or why you've decided to go into an artistic career, send me a message or comment below. As always, thanks for reading!