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A few days ago, I was walking to class using the notes feature on my phone to write. I started talking in my head, hearing these ideas flow out. Not in words or phrases, but in full sentences. Stream of conscious paragraphs, if you will. And I almost smacked right into another girl, followed by a pretty large metal pole holding up a “no parking” sign. Ouch, that would have hurt.

“Single-minded to the point of recklessness.” – Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I’m giving Blake Lively a run for her money.

I started thinking about all the things I could end up doing with my life. For three years, I’ve gotten crap from other people about my major. You want to write? Film? Do you know how hard it is to break into that industry, how hard Los Angeles will knock you down and make sure you don’t get back up?

(Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit, but many people who don’t know me are a little less than kind when I tell them what I want to do with my life.)

Clearly, they don’t know me well. They don’t know that I would choose something unconventional over something traditional any day. That if it were easy for me to just go to school, take a lot of classes, work super hard, and graduate with an almost guaranteed idea of how to get an entry level position, I’d be bored. Challenge is my middle name.

If I could tell these people something to make them understand, to make sure they’re not doing something for the wrong reasons, it would be this.

There should never a more acceptable alternative to your life and every moment in it. This is what you have, what you throw your heart into, and if you don’t love it, why are you doing it?

It’s like running on a treadmill, getting nowhere at all. Maybe it feels great at the time, but then an hour or a day or a week passes and you start wondering how you measure progress. In calories burned, miles logged, songs played on your iPod?

There are weeks, like last week, where I wonder how Monday became Friday. I wonder how I survive being on campus from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., busting my butt for another larger than life To Do List that only expands, never shrinks.

And then I hit that burst of adrenaline that only comes when you’ve reached a certain level of sleep deprivation. Everything becomes at least marginally entertaining. I feed off those moments, hopping from one to the next.

I’ve never been the 9 to 5 kind of girl. I’m the Go To girl, the one you call when you need something done on time. I find a way to make every commitment meaningful, and when I say that I love to write, that I love to make up 300-page stories about girls I’ve never met with problems I’ve never had, I mean it.

You can be sure that I mean it. Even as the biggest klutz in the world, I’m risking my life to capture my stories before they slip away.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.