On Living Your Life and Fortune Cookies: A Lesson in Perseverance.

I have never liked eating in restaurants. I don't care for the way restaurants smell and I've never really cared for the way restaurant food tastes. I've never cared for servers, truth be told, they somewhat freak me out. The real dichotomy in this declaration is that I've spent most of my life working in restaurants, most of my working years cooking, cleaning or serving food. Even during the years I did other work, I still never cared to eat in restaurants.

At this point of my life, I realize that I may owe a great deal of my physical health and well being on the fact that I've eaten almost all of my meals at home from fresh and whole ingredients.

When I first got back to Denver, in the early 1990s, I was a poor college student. I worked. I went to class. I paid my way the best I could with the money I had. I lived a great life and I enjoyed being a poor college student. Denver in those days was a great place to live and work and study for the future.

Although I ate most of my meals at home—mostly beans and rice—I did occasionally eat out. Eating out, for me, was not so much a luxurious experience as it was an experience in economy. If I ate out in those days it was buffets or some sort of lots of food for little money situation. Buffets were great because I would eat as much as I could eat, until I felt sick and then I'd eat more. I was six feet tall and I weighed less than one hundred fifty pounds. I never got enough to eat.

I was even a fan of Chinese food. Talk about cheap and filling stuff. There was a restaurant in Denver, whose name alludes me now, but what I remember about its sign was the “$1 a scoop” logo. We called the place “Buck a Scoop.”

The great thing about Buck a Scoop was that it was a heaping scoop of hot food. Sometimes during the winters in Denver, you just want a scoop of hot food because an apple and cold PB&J just won't do.

When I was in my early 20s, I was still toying with the idea of working for a living, the notion of getting a degree to get a “real” job. I was still clinging, although halfheartedly, to the Baby Boomer ideal of get a degree, get a job, work there until they issue you a watch and put you out to pasture. I was not completely resigned to this idea because I was writing and I wanted to be a writer. Not a technical writer, not a journalist. I just wanted to write, you know, creatively.

There was a great deal of fear in this. First, how do I write and do what I want and still eat and sleep inside? And second, do I really want to write, be alone with myself, my thoughts, my darkness and my light? It would be easier to just get a job, let creativity fall way and live in that secure house in the suburbs with my TV and Fox News.

I don't remember the day in clarity. I don't even remember when it was, not exactly. I don't have the details to give an accurate reenactment. So, I'm going to improvise.

I was homeless in the winter and spring of 1995 (this is true) and enrolled in classes at Metro State. I worked mornings at the Colorado Department of Health which was soul sucking. I attended classes in the afternoons. I was still focused on botany as a course of study. I was relatively broke and sleeping on sofas. I owned the clothes on my back and a bicycle. I was the king of my life.

All of that is true. The omission is that I wanted to be a writer.

It was a cold day. I found myself walking the length of the 16^th Street Mall. There was a food court there, Champa Street, maybe. My books were heavy in my backpack, I carried everything in that backpack.

I had about seven dollars. I could buy a whole week's worth of food in beans and potatoes and rice with seven bucks. But I had no kitchen. I needed something now, this moment, that was my feeling. I hadn't eaten since early morning: a small bowl of potatoes and gravy at the Department of Health cafeteria.

I went into Buck a Scoop. I got three scoops and paid $3.15.

I ate in the corner of the food court. Sesame beef, fried rice and beef with mushrooms. I was reading John Steinbeck because I wanted to be a writer. I was reading this stuff during lunch because the chemistry equations did not appeal to me.

I finished my three scoops. I felt warm and happy. I opened the fortune cookie:

“Depart not from the path which fate has assigned.”

I taped the fortune to the little notebook I wrote my ideas in.

In March, I got my first publication. At semester's end, I gave up science, my job at the Department of Health. I was ready to be myself. I was ready to go out in the world at all costs and do what I want I wanted to do.

Depart not from the path which fate has assigned—is a great fortune. You can even a dd the “in bed” part and it's still a great fortune. But are they words to live by?

Fuck yeah.

Being a writer may not have been my destiny. But it's what I've always wanted to do. And when you want to do something, you just have to do it.

For me, it's the perseverance. I've had ups and downs in life, we all have. My ups have been great even if they have proved to distract me. The downs have been even better because they have caused me to think, reflect and ultimately to write. I made the decision to write. Everything I do in life, especially in ways of personal or physical maintenance, I do specifically with the end all of having time and space to write.

I made the decision about 32 years ago to be a writer. 32 years is about 11,688 days. If all I've done in that time is one page a day, I'd have 11,688 pages of words.