The Solution of Y + Why Isn’t a Square Root

I constantly try to cast a vision of my own future. I also constantly ask myself what is the point of doing what I do. My mind wanders between two things: visualization and self-examination. The future (as it wavers) appeals to me, excites me, and energizes me. But as I do this, I will ask myself “why speculate the future when I know it’s not going to be anything like what I think it will be now?” If I write about the future, what’s the point if it will only prove to be wrong? Life goes so little according to plan that we really should expect plans to go awry.

But the point is that it’s ok that there might not be a point. It’s ok to expect something because how else can we progress unless a plan is made and then put into action? I can put all my energy into thinking of a plan, but unless I do something about it, then all that energy put into thinking goes nowhere.
It would be like constructing an extremely complicated equation, and you might put a lot of energy into making that equation really, really, great, except you don’t put any work into solving the equation that you’ve made. Maybe you’re too afraid that the equation won’t work out to a logical solution. But you don’t know if your equation will work or not unless you follow through and solve your equation. Maybe you find that you have to tweak the equation to make the solution work, maybe you’ll find out that it doesn’t work at all and you’re back to square one. But that’s ok.

I don’t even know why I’m making a math analogy — I hate math. I always have. I didn’t like putting energy into thinking about the square root of y because y is an arbitrary sign representing an arbitrary value of a something that I wasn’t exactly clear of what I was trying to solve in the first place. But that’s just it, isn’t it? The y of an equation and the why of a future can represent the same thing.

The point is, it’s ok to speculate about a future that won’t turn out the way you expected.

So where will I be in five years? What can I expect of myself in such a short and long amount of time? Well one thing is that I hope I’ll still be making overly complicated analogies for an audience that for some reason might enjoy my ramblings. I hope that I can find the right journal or publication for my poetry to call home. I hope that I can travel to broaden my experiences and enrich my writing. Most of all, I hope that I can have the courage to act on my ambitions instead of spending time crafting a hypothetical future in my mind. It’s so easy for me to think “I want to get an MFA in Creative Writing,” but it’s a whole other issue to act on it. Is it even the best thing for me to pursue? Do I pursue it immediately after I graduate or do I wait and get some working experience in publishing and possibly risk never getting the momentum to plunge myself back into the academic world? It’s this kind of thinking that excites me but can also cripple me if I’m not careful.

It’s hard for me not to fall into that existential chasm of “what’s the point, why even try?” But I feel like I’m constantly toeing that precipice. It’s like I stand on a cliff and can observe the opposite facing cliff of the ideal future, but I’m also aware of the cliff I stand on, which is my reality. But there is that chasm in between those two that I see separates reality from the ideal. If I think too much about how far the chasm spans, I fall in and keep myself from pressing forward to try to close the gap.

But I try to focus on that awful, awful math that I hate so much because I am making an equation out of my life. I’m writing that equation on a chalkboard and filling it up with all my different theoretical solutions. And I know that I will have to go back and grab that eraser and rub in circles, many circles some of those solutions and extraneous variables until the y and the why hold the same value.

Anna Wallace