I made a promise to myself before I started college that I was going to graduate with the possibility to make lots of money. I had dreams of a house with a picket fence and a dog. I had dreams that I’d be well enough off that I could support my family, that single handedly I’d send all my siblings to school.

I worked at this place the summer between my high school graduation and my first year at college and that’s where I had made this promise. It was after working a twelve-hour shift with no breaks not even to eat. At the time I was making 4.75 an hour because supposedly I was getting tipped out by the waiters but they were also tipping the bar tender and the cooks. Honestly, they were getting milked dry and they hated all of us who weren’t being tipped for taking their money. I felt for them but I needed money too.

Or, at least I needed money then because I was going to make it big. I’d been accepted to a good college with enough grant money and scholarships to be okay for four years. Then, after four years, I’d be dumped back on my ass and told to figure it out. Figure things out or starve like I was in that moment.

With options like that I think it’s understandable when I tell you my promise was that I would stop writing so that I could succeed and make money. I promised myself that I wouldn’t write anymore, that I’d use literature like a past time while I made my way in the world of chemistry. Reading books was really more of a hobby anyway and I didn’t honestly think I was a good enough writer to “make it”.

It was hard for me. See, I remember writing non-stop back then. I digitally published three stories a day, at least, and I was writing more. I had a blister on my right ring finger where my pencil pressed as I wrote. I filled notebooks with stories, I’d scribble on the backs of receipts, used waiter pads for character development, I carried on email role plays (at one point I had more than a hundred role-play contacts). My life was filled with constant words and I loved it but I couldn’t sustain myself on that and I sure as hell didn’t want to be stuck stealing people’s half finished French fires out of the buss tub forever.

Obviously, by me writing this you can tell that promise didn’t stick. I tried to make it. I really did. I didn’t touch a pencil or write a word outside of mandatory essays for three years. Three whole, long, dreadful years. I forgot how to keep journals. The blister on my finger eventually leveled back out. It was like loosing my sense of taste; I knew it was gone but only really missed it in instance where I’d have been using it.

For my I.S. I decided to reclaim my writing. I had already dropped my chemistry major and decided that I really didn’t care for money but even after that I still hadn’t picked back up a pencil. I was afraid to. Somehow I’d scared myself away from doing the thing I used to love so much. But I’m breaking my promise, here, now in words I swore never to write again.

I am going to write. I am going to fill notebooks and journals and scribble bad poetry on scraps of paper. I’m going to compare the changing of leaves to what ever I damn well please whether it makes sense or not. Because I am a writer. I don’t have to be a good one, I don’t have to “make it”. I am a writer because I’m choosing to be.

So here is a new promise: I promise to stop making dumb promises.