Author: Elizabeth Clapp

There is a certain feeling associated with driving to your grandparents’ house. For Thanksgiving, for the Fourth of July, anything. You may not have grown up in their house, but the snippets of life you have experienced there are vibrant and driving down those roads bring waves of familiarity.

I haven’t felt that for about two years— the last time we drove to my maternal grandparents’ house in a rental car for a funeral.

I was driving down the road my house sits on, in this summer before my freshman year of college, and I began to feel nostalgic. It was a punch in the stomach for how fast life moves.

In some sense, this house will feel less like home, as I will be visiting it only on holidays and in the summer for the next five years. Eventually “my house” will become “my parents’ house”, and perhaps one day “grandparents’ house”, myself growing more and more distant.

My room will slowly become frozen in time. I will take bits and pieces to my dorm, then apartment, then house, until it is barely recognizable except for the shape or paint color. Just as I witnessed my mother’s childhood room, with her old wallpaper and horse trophies but nothing else. I will, one day, stop adding photos or cards to my walls. One day, this room and house will feel more alien than somewhere else. And that’s okay.  

Lately I’ve been struggling with the overwhelming feeling that I’d like to imagine many recent high school graduates are also overcome with. Yes, the feelings of nervousness and excitement that comes with the idea of going to college are present, but I’m talking about something else.

The feeling of I want to do something. 

I’m going to school for, minimum, the next five years to study architecture. I find myself lucky enough to be able to attend Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Will I be a proper architect who works long hours in the office? Perhaps. Only if I find myself happy there.

Ever since I could remember, in all those meetings with my guidance counselor through middle and high school —  up until the end of junior year — I would say that my intended profession was “a writer”. I figure that I got up on my high horse when I was published in The State newspaper in the second grade for a poem about a booger (yes) and never got off of it. I went to four years of a three-week writing summer camp, entered (and rarely won) writing contests, and collaboratively wrote with my friends for hours once I discovered the magic of Google Drive.

I have not given up on little Elizabeth’s dream of “a writer”. It’s part of my ‘I want to do something’ feeling. Heck I feel like I want to do everything.

I want to write memoirs, fiction, and poetry, draw zines, paint in all mediums, share stupid doodles, travel the world, learn how to make music, make a business selling buttons, make videos, make a podcast, make a blog, make, make, make…

And there’s never an ideal time to do anything. I will always feel like I’m not ready. I will never magically improve my writing or art if I stop doing it. And worrying about what other people think about my creations or me doesn’t help either. I obviously can’t do everything right now, and I’m sure my pursuits will change over time, but this is a pretty dang good way to start.

Thanks for reading.