Dear Readers,
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am all about money. I can’t get enough of it; that’s why I started this blog, because I literally make millions of dollars every time you read it. How do I do this? Through something I like to call cost-flow-network-analysis-synergy. I manufactured (something we used to do in America) this method through my business degree powers. My love of money goes further back though, my friends; during my sophomore year of college, I began formulating a money making scheme.
You see, it just didn’t make sense to pay thousands of dollars each semester for school without getting some sort of monetary gain back in return, and Lord knows the degree I attained has proven virtually worthless in today’s economic climate.
That’s why I decided to begin writing a book about my experiences in college. I was so legit too, I started a Facebook group about it and everything. I was going to write that book, and I was going to become a best selling author by the time I graduated college.
Here’s the thing, I don’t think I really liked the idea of writing a book as much as I liked coming up with titles for books. Do you think that is a job? Can I just come up with titles for books?
Probably not.
You’ve probably surmised that I never wrote that book, and you would be correct. Well, technically it isn’t so much that I didn’t write it, it’s more that I never finished it; as in I was almost done with the foreword when I abandoned it.
The book’s title, as you may have guessed, was to be I Awkwardly Side-Hugged Dating Goodbye. That title has been copyrighted, and I am still writing that book (if anyone asks), so don’t even think about trying to steal it.
Still waiting for my royalties check, Mr. Young.
It would have been a horrible book full of witty banter and sardonic humor, and I believe the fallout surrounding its release would have further reassured me that the book How To Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young was, in fact, based loosely around my own social graces.
Don’t believe me? I’ll give you a small taste of my foreword.
“So, with all that knowledge out there already written and ready to be devoured by hormonal teenagers, spurned college-aged singles, hopeful romantics, struggling spouses, and in-bittered exes why would I, a mere sophomore at a small Christian Liberal Arts College, dare foray into the world of books on relationships?
The answers lies within the question, my friend. Belhaven College is a breeding ground for repressed feelings and unrequited affections. At no other time in my, albeit short, life have I been surrounded by more people completely incapable of expressing who they are, what they want, or where they want to go in life.
Over the past three years I have watched guys and girls tiptoe around their feelings for one another in a desperate attempt not to “mess anything up” with their friendship, a friendship that is completely based around an attraction for one another.
I’ve watched friends cut each other out of their lives because they don’t want to “lead the other on” because they don’t feel the same way that the other presumably feels.
I have watched good guys pass up fantastic girls because they are too intimidated by the herd mentality of girls, and I have watched good girls miss out on fantastic guys because they are too afraid to sacrifice a little security and make themselves approachable.”
It goes on and only gets more smug.
After a few weeks of intentions to write, I abandoned the project. I didn’t seriously think about writing a book for the rest of my college years. I did write editorials for the school paper, and I occasionally jotted stuff down in my journal, but by senior year I had given up on writing entirely.
Something inside of me re-awoke recently (my need to pay the rent) and it has me itching to write a book again. I have decided to stick with the plan to monetize my college experience. I am thinking a painfully honest memoir of sorts that will be celebrated by twenty-somethings across the nation.
Christians won’t quite know what to do with my book because it’ll be incredibly sarcastic and yet truthful; I’ll be an author that is a Christian, and not necessarily a Christian author. Lifeway won’t stock it, but everyone in your church will be talking about it.
It’ll be like Harry Potter in the early 2000′s; you know, back when we weren’t sure if reading those dark books guaranteed us a spot in hell or not.
What if God had given us 6 fingers? Do you ever just think about that stuff sometimes? Or like about the word "purple"? So weird.
Basically I’ll be the next Don Miller or Jon Acuff- dwelling on the Fringe of mainstream Christianity.
Don’t worry though, if I learned anything from the Bible, it’s that Jesus loves fringe dwellers.
So, really, this is my convoluted way of saying that I am working on a book, and believe it or not, this is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a kid. Be a writer.
Jon Acuff says that finding your dream is almost more of a reunion rather than a discovery, and fortunately for me, this reunion doesn’t involve hitting on girls that turn out to be my cousins. Because that was awkward.
So, be proud of me, and don’t even try to guess what my book is really about, because you’ll never figure it out, unless of course you guess “relationships in college”, because then you’d be spot-on. Granted, it is more about the college experience as a whole, and the relationships you build along the way, rather than about dating relationships.
Coincidentally, I have no idea what to call my book, and the fact that I didn’t base my book’s premise around a cheeky title I thought up on a whim gives me a bit of hope for the project’s longevity.
See you guys Friday (or Saturday considering how awful I am at my own self-imposed deadlines) for another installation of “7 Things”.
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