I just got off the phone with Cathy. She's my former 5th grade substitute teacher, who has initiated a "return to school" campaign in the months leading to my 30th birthday. She encourages me, always envisioning grand steps to whatever future I foresee. But when I mentioned living in San Francisco for the past 6 years, we both gasped a sharp breath of air. Time's passing quickly.

So here are the options: Anthropology PhD, Acting MFA, Journalism for a year, disciplined writing while I take a break from work. Or simply no alternate route than the one I'm on now.

When I contemplate my future without the ambivalence I'm accustomed to carrying around, I see an actor, a writer, someone who'd be pleased to live a life of creativity, particularly one unfettered by the fiduciary worries of retirement & home ownership. Unfortunately, most of my aspirations are lulled to sleep by the "what if's" of daily living: how will I make enough money to survive, what if I spend 10 years lost in a crowd of would-be artists, what if I don't even like acting? I'm accustomed to a retrospective vista full of nostalgia for what I could have done. Rarely do I look back and see what's actually happened. I moved to San Francisco, I became a social worker, I rose to a position of expertise (phoney as I feel mine is), I fell in love, then out of love, I plugged in to a community of people. Now that I can look back with a certain admiration for what I've done these 6 years, I'm hoping I can launch myself forward to what comes next.

More on this later...