In Mr. Holland's Opus Gertrude Lang only wanted to be good at something. Both her siblings were talented, her parents were talented, she was the only one in her family who couldn't do anything. She grows up and becomes a politician, proof that yes, she was the only one in her family without any talents. However, Mr. Holland teaches her magically to play one clarinet solo by advising her to "play the sunset", a reminder of her favourite thing about herself.
Let's just say I'm looking for a little sunshine myself right now.
When asked what I do here at uni at the beginning of the semester (am I performance major, do I want to direct, to stage manage, to design) my answer was simply that I try to stay out of trouble. It's true, too. It seems that everything I do here either leaves me feeling horrible about myself or what I tried to do. I don't act, I don't design, I don't direct. All I want to do is write plays, and no one here really wants to help me do that.
To learn anything directly related to what I want to do, I have to take graduate courses. But I get the feeling more and more that that will not happen. I don't know what to do. It's gotten to the point that I can't even write what I want to write, because I don't know whether I'm wasting my time or not. As far as the passion of writing is concerned, I pour much of that out here. As far as the passion of writing what I want to write, I can't find it.
Writing is my dream, my thing, the only thing at which I have ever had any chance of changing the world. At least, so have I been told and so do I try to believe for myself. My dreams are so full of doubts, and fear.
I'm scared to try to acheive anything for fear that it will have been wrong. It is not fear of failure or disapproval, but the idea that somehow I will have done something I should not have done.
The thing of it is, in this educational limbo I don't feel I have anything to offer, anything to do that makes any positive difference to myself or anyone else. I feel like I'm wasting my time and the results of my life would be the same whether I was here, or not here. While I am certainly aware that this is not entirely true, I can't stop thinking it all the same.
I don't want this. As soon as I realise all these things I know that this is not what I want, not what makes me happy. I don't know how to change it.
To switch from the cinema to literature, when Maggie Tulliver began to read Thomas A Kempis, I had the same revelation she had. But I saw for myself Philip's remonstrances before she did. I just don't know how to stop trying to be so simple.