and Words
People say
Don′t ever look behind
Happiness is just a state of mind
Rock and roll lives and breathes in the hearts of the young
So carry on
You’re runnin′ on borrowed time
Tryin’ hard to survive
Keep on runnin’
Your time is comin’
Keep your dreams alive
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
As I entered my tenth grade English class in high school one morning, I realized that we had a test that completely slipped my mind. This particular test was a simple vocabulary test. Our workbook introduced us to a collection of new words and their definition, and for the test we simply needed to scribble down the definition and perhaps use it in a sentence. Vocabulary lessons like this taught me words like ‘elicit’ and ‘illicit’ that may sound similar but are very different.
While I only needed about five or ten minutes to look over the words carefully preceding the test, I did not and thus I failed that test. Following my disastrous first year, I changed my trajectory and transitioned to nearly a straight-A student. Honestly, I didn’t worry about it. I did the math in my head and understood that this failed test would not affect my grade at all. It may bring my grade down 1-2%, but I consistently scored in the mid to high 90%.
However, one element of that failing grade still got under my skin. Having moved from Puerto Rico, I only really started to speak English about five years before. Initially, I sat in a bilingual Spanish and English classroom. I slowly learned the language through school, some friends, and an unhealthy amount of television. After enduring my horrific freshman year, I had finally arrived. I could at least function as well as an average native English speaker.
What was that one thing that bugged me? My English teacher saw something in me, and I hated to disappoint her.
While this may sound like heresy for an English teacher, reading Shakespeare didn’t interest me. Instead of the classics, authors like Robert Heinlein and Roger Zelazny fascinated me. These writers filled my mind with great journeys across physical space and even multi-dimensional space. Science, math and engineering bookended one spectrum of my passions; living the life of a hero bookended the other. In the span of slivers of paper and ink, my imagination soared; my heart raced. People like them wove their magic by pressing buttons on a keyboard and producing inspirational prose.
I too yearned to partake in that magic. In my teenage mind, I imagined one day thundering away on a keyboard as words flowed from my fingers, giving the reader on the other end of that prose that same feeling that I felt as I first read. I navigated those days with preposterous fantasies of someday becoming a novelist and writing for a living. My youth insulated me from cold hard facts. Chronologically, I learned to speak English after both Cantonese and Spanish, and I really started to learn it in the fifth grade.
I wrote some prose during that sophomore year and asked my teacher to read it. I don’t know where that paper may be this day, though I don’t imagine throwing it out. Even thinking about the plot, the writing, and the character development, I recoil in embarrassment. However, she praised me for it. I’m not sure if she was being polite, or if she understood that all writers start modestly.
In some ways, why she praised me was inconsequential. She believed in me or at very least faked it well enough.
However, reality set in. My guidance counselor and I looked at my PSAT scores in her office; she came just short of asserting that I had the writing potential of a house plant. Honestly, her advice painted a very rosy picture in the future of mathematics and engineering. She spoke wisely; those standardized tests did their job. I naturally excelled at science, mathematics, and this brand-new subject that few others had even imagined… computer programming.
I’ll risk sounding boastful and say that all my high school classes were easy getting mostly A’s and the occasional B that marred my report card. Strangely I measured my aptitude by observing others. Sure, I got exceptional grades in both mathematics and computer programming, but it came naturally and exceptionally easily, while others struggled.
I spent a summer at the University of Miami in an engineering program, during the summer of my junior year. It clinched that decision. I’d continue to study engineering and subsequently started as a computer programmer at Microsoft. That youthful fantasy of becoming a writer squelched by a tsunami of reason and natural aptitude.
It’s late in 1999; a woman in North Carolina contemplates a job offer in Seattle. She wonders what the weather would be like versus somewhere like Miami and conducts a quick web search. Instead of a page with historical data and weather patterns, she finds a web page authored by someone who has lived in both places. The post amuses her, and she clicks on the contact me form.
She’s convinced that this message will go into the ether. The author’s mailbox must be filled with messages from others who have similarly wandered upon his pages and collections of rants. Still the post amuses her, and she sends off that message.
As the internet gets established, I start to read a number of online journals. The writers are diverse, passionate, and expressive. They collect their thoughts and publish on a regular basis. I follow probably about a dozen of them pretty regularly. I follow them as they navigate through different jobs, get married and even become parents. Most posts simply follow them from day to day, though some are deeply personal and even distressing.
As I listen to this song from Triumph, it reminds me that I’m running on borrowed time. I contemplate the possibility of writing and how I may best do it. In a moment of inspiration, I follow the song’s eponymous advice to indeed follow my heart. There’s indeed no time like the present.
Though I now live a life in technology, I wade into this space. I start an online journal myself. The process of writing scratches that itch from my days in high school; it also turns out to be surprisingly therapeutic. It became a collection of thoughts as I navigate through my day. Most of it is uneventful; some of it is witty. Having lived in Miami and still feeling somewhat homesick, I rant about the weather in Seattle versus Miami.
On one eventful day, I get a message from a woman who found that page about the Seattle weather by sheer happenstance (and a targeted web search). I respond.
I stopped keeping that journal. As I read other journals, I found that keeping the events of your life online may collide with real life with disastrous results, even when the authors stayed anonymous (which I didn’t). Though I didn’t experience a horrific event, I preemptively stopped writing. My journal rotted away only to be consumed by the Yahoo-Geocities merger.
I started this blog in 2021, in a different format. This enabled me to write again, bolstered by the encouraging words from my English teacher from 1983. The words flow with barely a reference to where I go and with whom. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have achieved success as a software engineer, so that I need not worry about making a living as a writer. I write merely because I want to, not because I need to.
I credit my high school English teacher with my inclination and courage to write today in this blog, in that long-forgotten journal in Geocities, and even in high school. Who knows? Perhaps someday I’ll publish something and will make a token sum where I may legitimately call myself a writer.
What about that woman who conducted that web search in 1999? She and I share a home together. For me to say that my teacher’s encouragement led me to find the love of my life, or more accurately for her to find me, is not an exaggeration. I will continue to be forever grateful, if only for that.