a small taste of victory

I took two weeks off work and drove to Chicago. The freedom therein is glorious: I have two weeks that are my own, entirely, to spend however I want, money being the only limitation. I have planned to go to Chicago, and I want to go to Chicago, but if I feel like it I can change my mind at the last minute and drive instead to Mexico or Oregon or anywhere on the continent, actually. My decisions are just about as unconstrained as they get for a single woman in her mid-twenties who pulls down a smallish salary (and that, let's face it, is pretty unconstrained.)

What did I do with all this riotous freedom? I drove, as stated, to Chicago. I ensconced myself firmly on the couch in my brother's living room. I found a coffee shop that I could walk to from my brother's house. And for ten out of the fourteen days I was there I wrote, usually at the coffee shop, for three or four or five hours on end. I went to the beach once, I hung out in the evenings with friends, but mostly I wrote.

And this is the best part, this is the victory: my brother has also been writing. His kitchen is littered with scripts from the sketch show he and his roommates are writing, for which they've already booked a theater. He's acting, too, I got to see his play twice. So as I sit here, having finished the opening act of my novel, making plans to return to Chicago to see the show my brother has written and is acting in and directing... I'm just so freakin proud. Of both of us. Because we're doing what we wanted to do, what we said we wanted to do back when we were in high school. Because we haven't gotten pulled under by the necessity of supporting ourselves in the "real world." Sure we both have jobs, which means we have less time for writing than we'd like, and sure we both have fairly minimal jobs, which means we have less money for beer than we'd like, but we're making it work.

Take that, naysayers.