Around 5pm on Tuesday, March 3rd, I bid adieu to my coworkers, updated my Slack status, ctrl+c'd my local servers, exited vim, killed my tmux panes, closed my browser tabs, quit all running applications, and shut down my computer. I put the laptop out of the way on the bottom shelf of my bookshelf. I was free!

I took out my other laptop, the non-work one, and sat back down on the couch.

I checked my email. There was an update to my application to The New School. (I had spent the fall applying to graduate programs for an M.F.A. in Creative Writing.) The email was bland, automated, and not congratulatory. It said to click the link to view the update in the application portal. I have seen many such emails before.

"Oh," I said to Terry, my roommate, who was lying on the other end of the couch, "I got rejected from The New School. That was early."

"Huh?" said Terry, lifting the headphone off his left ear.

I clicked the link, logged in and---and I was in! I got into grad school!

I ran to my room and called my mom, who did not answer, and then my girlfriend, who did. I was ecstatic. It was my top choice. I had never really felt this way about an acceptance letter before. Job acceptances are cool, of course, but then you have to go to work. And my previous college applications (in high school and then again to transfer) weren't very exciting between the rejections and the whole not really knowing what I wanted. This time felt---and feels---different.

But so maybe you just found that I'm going to grad school and you have questions. Or maybe you asked me a question but couldn't hear my answer over the blaring music/screeching trains/ screaming children/barking dogs/houling ghouls. Thus,

Me, of course.

A Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a focus on fiction.

Classes start in the last week of August. It's a 2 year program.

in Greenwich Village, New York, New York.

To hear back from the void, to take my writing a little more seriously, to give myself a chance to pursue my creative passions, bla, bla, bla...

What?

Yeah and?

That wasn't a question.

That's better.

Not for the next two years! (I'm also taking the summer off to chill and blog.)

Maybe... or more short stories...

Mind your own business.

Sure.