Education 115
January 26, 2003
Journal #1: Goals

    When asked to write about a goal of mine that I have for the future, I found myself so overcome with ideas that it created a mental block of sorts. The flood of thoughts and ideas was so large that I found myself actually trapped by it all. However, I have decided on one goal in particular to talk about, and it directly involves what I have long since wanted to do as a career: write. (Simplicity is best sometimes.) Frankly, though I have done a lot of writing -- both fictional and otherwise -- I am limited by my surroundings. Farfetched though it sounds, I envision myself as eventually traversing the vast world. Solitude is what brings about the best writing that I do; here at home, I am usually found writing, alone, surrounded by the shadows of the night. Living within the confines of an insipid, small town, however, is not stimulating. When I close my eyes and contemplate the vast unknown we call the future, I can see myself standing before the ancient ruins of a Mayan temple; beholding the Sphinx gazing out at the sands of Egypt; crossing the green landscape and passing the castles of Ireland.

    Perhaps I would be well-suited to become a travel-guide writer, or simply a writer who occasionally returns to the hustle-and-bustle metropolis for long enough to publish a journal of sorts. Specifically what type of writer I would like to be is, obviously, an unknown, but it’s goal enough for me: I know there’s more to the world than currently meets the eye. It is too bad that, when admiring a painting or reading a book, we cannot enter into the depicted landscape itself . . . were it possible to step into the imagination of an artist or a writer, the world within their mind would be so vast that all the books in the world would not have enough room to contain the imagination and thoughts. Maybe I am a dreamer, but I prefer to set my sights high rather than low.

    For now, I am restricted to the margins of the town I live in. I am a prisoner of my own mind at times, held back by uncertainty and blocked in. I once challenged myself to write a fictional story with moral dimensions and to make the story one that was based on people I know. When I stumbled on a patch of writer’s block, I had to stop and think. I came to realize that I could overcome the mental barricade and turn it into a part of the story. It all comes down to one thing I learned from it: Paradoxically, boundaries can create freedom.