Do you ever have the need to go? I'm not talking about to the bathroom, but to somewhere unknown, uncharted by your eyes. Somewhere unrestricted by time, due dates, and social events? I do. I need to go. And the feeling is stronger than ever.

I went home over the weekend for fall break, a quick four days in which a good 12 hours of it was spent driving between Hastings, Nebraska, and Conifer, Colorado. On the way back to school that Tuesday I was listening to the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It's a beautifully written book about O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam war (I highly recommend it but be prepared to cry). In one particular part of it he tells the story of his daughter asking him why he always ends up writing about the war. He said that she was right; that's all he did ever write about. He wondered why he couldn't ever let it go, but the answer is simple enough. The war had such an important impact on his life that everything he can ever reiterate in his writing goes back to it. Every lesson, every bit of emotion, every goal in life somehow links to the war for him.

I thought that was pretty cool, you know, until the writer's crisis set in. I'll write about the writer's crisis in a later article, but the basis of it is the crisis a writer has when they believe they have nothing to write about. It's not writer's block. Writer's block is a lame excuse for perfectionist stubbornness, but we won't go into that debate either. Back to the story, the writer's crisis set in. I realized then that this guy Tim was around the same age as I am when he was drafted. He literally went to war at the same age that I am. It made my stomach churn. I felt useless. He went to war, and I, the same age, was sitting in my car, going 80 mph down the highway trying to fish a McDonald's french fry out from under my thigh. The most important thing in my life at that moment was getting that fry because it was the last fry and I needed it. But he went off to war.

The writer's crisis. Oh yeah, it hit me like a train. I got back to my dorm a few hours later, the idea still fresh on my mind and I laid on the floor and thought. I thought about how stupid this all is. I thought about grades, how those don't really matter, how getting a C versus an A doesn't matter in the long run. I thought about relationships, how much time people put into those things, when in the end we all end up the same way. I thought about living in one place, how much I was missing out on just by being in one place. Stuck, not moving. Not going. Suddenly the seconds ticking by on my clock were louder than ever and the need to go grew stronger. I panicked because I thought I was going to die before I could experience life and write a good story.

I basically hit my mid-life crisis at the age of 19.

I knew I needed to go. I needed to just go. Get in my car and go. No suitcase. No money. Just the open road and life before me. I almost did it. I almost went, but something held me back. So here I am, in my dorm, still. Absolutely still. The need to go is still there, in fact, I've begun to act upon it. I told my Mom about the longing I had. She supported me, told me that she was once spontaneous like me, but lacked the bravery. I told her I needed to go, so she said "go."

I'm gonna go. Not as spontaneously as I want (I'm gonna finish out the year, bleh), but I'm going to go. I'm going to just get in my car and go. I'm going to experience life as it should be: spontaneously. Then I'm going to write a damn good book about it.