It is some kind of terrible luck that now, just days before my thirtieth birthday, I am suddenly plagued by scores of pimples all over my face and a bad, bad head cold. I spent the entirety of my adolescence zit-free, and I’m starting to think that this is some kind of karmic revenge, though for what, I don’t know, since I wasn’t really one to go around tossing out insults based on people’s skin conditions. I was usually the one being mocked, for my clothes (admittedly ridiculous) or opinions (admittedly often opined at a loud volume).

It’s too bad about the zits, but it’s even worse that I can’t taste anything. I made a huge pot of what I’m told is a great split-pea soup (with dill and paprika — it’s my specialty), but I can’t really taste it, or the no-knead-bread-in-a-hurry that Dan baked to go along with it. (Or, while we’re at it, the semi-soft cheese that we got from the local farm, or the butter Dan made from the cream from said farm. Or anything, really.)

In my stuffy-nosed stupor I participated in sort of “state of the union” and five-year plan talk with Dan during which I uttered the phrase, like some CEO, “Let’s table the kids discussion until 2010,” and then promptly opened a beer when talk of how I would get to creating more art began. I just couldn’t handle it.

But on that front I decided to just pick something and concentrate on it for a while. Cut out the jack-of-all-trades nonsense which, let’s face it, has had me producing nothing creatively. My excuse was that I felt like I was at a buffet. Too many choices. Do I work on writing, drawing and painting, design, printmaking, photography, music? This is not to say I’m so great at any of these. The fact is, I’m a terrible, lazy dilettante. So if you want to take the buffet metaphor further, you could say that I wasn’t actually eating anything. Unless you count some of the truly lame prose poems I composed this autumn. No. No, you don’t count them.

So I emailed a professor at Williams College, which is right down the road here, and asked if I could audit his advanced fiction workshop. Apparently, locals can audit classes at Williams for free. Free college! Shockingly, he wrote back saying that I should come to the first class and see what happens. This guy was just nominated for a National Book Award, and he is a write whose work I like. Awesome. He said that people from the community often add an interesting perspective to his classes. Yeah, I am totally going to be that auditing jerk ruining some nineteen year-old’s writing experience. (Probably their writing is all better than mine anyway! Okay, now I am scared.)

Excuse me, now, I have to go blow my nose.