Beyond the Light, Into the Darkness

When I was a young boy, I thought it was so amazing that people were actually launching into space, hovering in some science fiction spacesuit as they gazed back at the Earth. I thought to myself, from up there, you could watch everybody in the world, walking around and carrying about their daily routines. It was inane, I know, but it gave me perspective. From up there, everything was so small, so seemingly insignificant.

I remember talking to my teacher about astronauts and telling her that I wanted to explore the Milky Way. She simply smiled at me and said, "I used to want to be an astronaut, too." When I asked her why she never became one, all she had to say was, "Well, there were a lot of other people that wanted to be astronauts, too." Now, at first, I panicked inside after hearing this. For some reason, I had not even considered that only so many people could become an astronaut. I realized that whether they liked it or not, most humans spent their entire lives on this planet, and that in itself was a scary thing to discover as a child. At such an age, children are supposed to believe anything is possible. They are supposed to believe in time traveling, super powers, or leaving college debt free. Crushed and disappointed that my dreams were no longer reasonable, I stood in silence for a moment, until suddenly I responded to my teacher, saying, "What if I'm one of those people that could get in?"

Beyond our planet, beyond our moon and our sun that continuously dance with each other as the days progress, there was so much more--planets, solar systems, galaxies, maybe even aliens. Out there, our planet was a mere exit on a freeway; and when I say out there, I only mean the places we know exist. Finding something in the universe is like stepping into an entirely dark maze with a single flashlight. You can shine it all you want, but you are never going to reveal every path--every detail. In fact, you will probably just end up getting lost altogether, running around in circles as you wonder why you could not seem to find whatever it is you were looking for in the first place. This concept intrigued me as a child and I began to ponder not what we could see, but what we couldn't see.

The astronauts that climbed aboard the many space shuttles, just barely touching the outer rim of space, had the very same mentality as I had. They were fascinated with the unknown, so much so that they dedicated their lives to it. When I saw pictures of the many shuttle launches, I made a promise to myself right then and there: no matter what I would end up doing in life, I would travel and explore places unexposed to the human eye. Whether that meant being an astronaut or not, I wasn't sure. I told myself this with certainty, all at the age of nine, and already I could not wait to see where I would go from there. 

About a year ago, I attempted to start a blog entitled Life Without Theory. I wanted to start writing fiction, publishing a short story every now and then and collecting any comments I could. At the time, I thought what I was doing was brilliant; but, I could not have been any more wrong. After writing a few stories and giving some time to go back and reread my work, I found what I saw to be not only slightly disturbing, but entirely flawed in its design. My stories had an idea, but arguably not much more. They lacked the very structuring elements that made a story compelling, such as character development and causality. So, I decided to take advantage of being a college student and enrolled in a fiction writing workshop, where I got to share some of my stories and gather feedback, among learning other things. A semester later, in fact on the very day of posting this message, I realized that the passion I found was precisely what I had promised myself all those years ago.

This new blog, which builds upon my vision from a year ago, is my foundation for support and revision where I can hopefully utilize you, as the reader, to help me shape and strengthen my stories. It took twelve years of my life to finally start exploring new worlds and go where no person had gone before. I am not floating in space like I had imagined as a boy, but instead I am creating entire universes that are begging to be discovered. I can save lives, choose a person's destiny, land on an alien planet, or even spawn whole civilizations. If I find a place uninteresting, an entirely new universe is but a flick of the pen away. As my first post of this new life comes to an end, I cannot help but look back up at the sky, wondering where it will take me tomorrow. My flashlight is off, and I am ready to step into the darkness.