I must confess that I haven't been around here in a while. That's not to say I haven't been here; rather that I've devolved back into the lurker I was so many months ago. I can justify most of this I suppose; I've been oh so very busy, you see, I couldn't possibly have found the time to actually node, goodness no. This excuse however has recently run quite completely out of steam, and so I am forced to come to grips with the fact that I'm either going to have to start noding, or I'm going to have to accept my station, by which I mean "the fact that I'm a deadbeat"; and as comfortable as I am with that label, it's not one that I'm particularly proud of, nor one which I necessarily want to be broadcasting worldwide, as it were.

I am now an ex-high school student. I'm actually kind of reluctant to actually out and say this, because I suppose it isn't quite a done deal yet, but barring the most unfortunate acts of god, yesterday heralded the end of my not-quite-illustrious secondary school career. I live in the province of Ontario, and our secondary school system recently shifted from a four-plus-one year system, where students could fasttrack and get their diplomas in four years, but where students who intended to attend a post secondary institution were encouraged to take a fifth year (called OAC), to a straight four year system. This additional year of high school was a welcome payoff, because Ontario students could get a 3-year University Degree, instead of the four years required pretty much everywhere else. Our recent conservative government, noticing the sheer beauty of this system, decided it had to go, starting, unfortunately, with my graduating year. This means that the people graduating the year before mine would be expected to take five years, whereas the people in my year would be expected to take four. If you're not very good at counting, this means that two years of students would be graduating at the same time, causing something that came to be known as the double cohort, swamping Ontario universities.

I'm getting off topic. Due to my earlier educational-transgressions, I had to take an additional semester; and assuming my marks are respectable, that should be all she wrote. If they aren't, of course, it means I'll be back to the grind next week, but at this point I think I'd rather submit to a career in the food-preparation industry.

This whole "no more school" thing has opened up a whole new can of metaphorical worms. I'm actually more leaning towards a Pandora's box metaphor over that can of worms one, but I guess what's done is done and all that, so let's move forward. This can, or box, or general colourful synonym for dilemma is really rather significant, and It is what we are going to refer to as the "now-what-paradox". The NWP (making up acronyms makes me feel cool) first arised when it came time to apply to university. I have developed what I feel is an almost crippling range of interests, by which I mean I have fantastic difficulty narrowing down what I'd like to do post-secondarily. Luckily (not really) for me, my aversion to maths has narrowed my range of options quite significantly, being as they (in their various forms) are a prerequisite for a great deal of courses. I should take this time to point out that I do not have an aversion to math per se, but rather that I have an aversion to math as taught in high school. While I am currently looking into taking my calculus by correspondence, I have already had to apply for post-secondary. I am fairly limited as to what I can do without math; I have an aversion to studying english (deconstruction makes my dick soft) and nothing else really caught my interest. In the end then I've applied for various poli-sci/international relations/computer and information policy courses, but with the exception of the latter, none of these particularly rock my boat, so to speak.

There is, however, something else. I have recently been considering the prospect of taking creative writing. I enjoy writing, which is something, and in my initial perusal creative writing was written off merely by it's association with English and the horrors of literary critique. Writing, however, is something that I've always sort of viewed as a tool, or a hobby, but not the sort of thing I would ever want to rely on to put food on the table. In taking creative writing, I am more or less conceding that, well, I'm going to be a writer. This makes me really, really uncomfortable. That, to me, sounds an awful lot like commitment, and commitment is something to which I have developed a healthy allergy. Bee stings might cause me to break out in hives, but commitment causes me to break out in fleeing.

Serendipity is something which has stalked me quite closely in my young life. I had intended to apply to creative writing at Concordia, and then to spend some of the next 6 months writing, testing the waters, running it up the flagpole, etc. So when I logged on E2 yesterday (the day, it is worth noting, of my last exam) I was welcomed by one of those little things that seems to just scream "hi, this is the universe, and we're watching you".

(e2prose) Lucy-S says Hi
all. Let me know if you'd like to
give the new quest a try

The quest in question is a really rather timely one. It's really rather simple; to fulfill the quest, you've got to get published. There are several ways I could go about trying to fulfill this quest; I have written fiction that isn't terrible, but It is also not a venue I particularly enjoy. More professionally, I could do creative non-fiction for the small-market magazine... market, or I could do basic BS for a school paper. This latter option is one I am very reluctant to pursue, because it seems to be a pretty cheap and basic way to fulfill the quest. The fiction route is one I am also reluctant to pursue, but which I would feel slightly better about than the school paper. The creative non-fiction would be perhaps the most difficult, but would make me feel warm and mushy inside.

I don't have any real idea how I should go about this whole thing, but luckily there is a great metanode available, which is giving me somewhere to at least start browsing. Other than that, I'm going to go through the back of some old Utne Reader's, and looking into general niche-market alternative magazines, which seems to be as good a place to start as any.

Lets see how this goes.