[towntravis]

I did it.

I’m the first (maybe the only) person in several generations of my immediate bloodline to earn a post-graduate degree. My grandmother got her Bachelor’s in English, and my brother earned his in history. I got my Bachelor’s (sociology/creative writing). But I wasn’t satisfied with a BA; I needed that BS. Next, as of today, I graduate with my Masters of Science in Journalism.

Now what?

So much of my life has been in school, I’m somewhat at a loss for what to do now. A strange emptiness has replaced that part of me that has been accustomed to classrooms and professors. When I graduated from high school, I knew college was next. I applied and was accepted to a mediocre university; the mediocrity was offset by an ample stipend and a string of gorgeous coeds. Before graduating from undergrad, I had already secured a profitable job with a former professor — so once again, I had no moment of uncertainty, no loss for words while pondering the road not taken.

This time, however, graduation has caught me off guard. The quarter was so busy, filled with writing stories and creating the site you see below, that I found little time to consider what might come next. Earlier this week, I interviewed with a couple of the editors at Wired magazine for an internship. I put out some feelers to the notoriously-hard-to-contact Evan Smith of Texas Monthly. And I’ve applied at a couple of jobs at publishing houses, half-heartedly following in the footsteps of my late grandfather, J. Edgar Grove, who worked most of his short life (died age 36) at various publishing companies and vanity presses. Somehow, that avenue seems oddly attractive to me. While researching my book, The Cinder Path, I learned that Grandpa Grove and I have a lot in common, and so it seems appropriate that I might pursue the same path that left him so unfulfilled (see his scathing comments about vanity authors in the March 1961 issue of Esquire).

Frankly, I don’t know what comes next. Not only am I perplexed as to what job to take (should any be offered), I am uncertain about what kind of job to pursue. Am I a journalist? Or, as I was for three years of undergrad, a sociologist? Or a Web designer? Or just a writer? Should I write for a magazine? Write my unfinished nonfiction book, and finally pen the novels parading in my mind? Edit the writing of others at a publishing house?

Or should I enroll in school again (perhaps the most comforting option, since it’s a retreat to the familiar) and earn a doctorate degree? (Which raises the question, in what? Journalism Ph.D — useless. Sociology — research and teaching are the only viable options. English—requires years of a foreign language I never properly acquired.)

My existential turmoil comes, appropriately, only weeks before my 25th birthday. The prospect of having lived for a quarter-century stirs emotions in me that range from depression to confusion to disbelief to … pleasure. I can’t really fathom it. I guess, relatively, I’ve accomplished a lot for my age. And yet I can’t help but feel that all of it — the paper degrees, string tassels and hours in the classroom — isn’t worth a real job, real cash in my wallet and a real experience in the real world.

Shortly before his death, my grandfather wrote something that has weighed heavily on my mind ever since it was brought to my attention:

Do not believe for a moment that the plans and ideas you have now will endure; it is not one’s talent that one loses but one’s enthusiasm. If you are going to write anything, do anything, this is the time. Osler was right when he said: “Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature. . . . The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.” This is not because one does whatever he can do less well at forty; usually he does it much better, has improved his skills, knows more about it, has made tremendous advances in technical facility. It is because he no longer gives a damn whether it gets done or not.

The young man does not believe that forty will ever come—I am sure that I didn’t—what young man can imagine himself at forty?—but it is just around the corner, having a beer in some quiet tavern. I think, actually, that I lost interest in writing when it came home to me that I did not like my audience, that I was, in point of fact, writing for a bunch of clods and ignoramuses about whom I cared nothing, except to see them in hell.

Having reached that point of my meditations, I repaired to a blind tiger and got drunk, and have been, off and on, with short intervals of enforced sobriety due to failing health, drunk ever since. I have never since had the thought of transmitting my thoughts to paper, because I don’t, actually, give a shit in hell whether anyone reads it or not, or whether, having read it, they like it or dislike it. My observations of the human race over a period of thirty-five years have left me with so little regard for the human mentality that I can no longer take seriously the sum total of human opinion on any matter.

At 35, my grandfather was, or at least wanted to appear to be, a misanthrope. He had given up on mankind at an early age, but upon giving up on his passion for writing (at least for an audience), he soon gave up on life entirely.

At 25, comparatively, I’m not in such a dismal state. I’m much less cynical than I was four years ago (but still much more so than I was at 18). My one-time hatred for God has receded into a respectful disapproval. I still believe in the finer things in life — happiness, true love, etc. — and hope that I still might experience them. But I don’t know what path leads to those goals.

And that brings us back to — Now what?

The end’s not near… It’s here. So now I’ll wipe the mistiness from my eyes and bid Medill farewell. Another chapter in my life is finished. So far it’s been a real page-turner. I can’t wait to see what’s next.