Before, I was on a steady course to be a successful graphic designer. I had a full merit scholarship, I had a good paying internship lined up with a design firm. After, I worked at McDonald's for a year then went back to school and got a degree in the impractical and brutal field of fine visual art. All because I followed my heart. Don't fucking tell young people that. That's terrible advice for a 19 year old. Don't follow your heart, it's stupid, it doesn't think. That's why it's not in your head controlling everything.

When I was 19 I went back to visit my friends from high school who I moved away from when I was a junior. This is like two years out from that, I'm a rising junior in college because I graduated early from the shitty public school system of Arkansas that gave me an edge transferring from Alabama. Think about that when you choose which southern state to mock. Anyway, I meet this girl who I assume is way out of my league because I'm dealing with serious self esteem issues. She actually does like me, or seems to, and we start dating. In the infinite wisdom of a 19 year old, I drop out of college and give up my sweet internship for her and attempt to move back to Alabama on my own at 19 with no money. But a romantic dream, goddammit! She dumped me in like a month. I think I made it another month before I had to retreat to my parents' to lick my wounds.

There's a lot more going on but I don't want to go into it too much. But this is really the pivot point of my life even 13 years later. Right now I make under $20,000 a year and there's mold on everything because I don't run the air conditioner.

Don't trust your heart and expect everything will work out. Don't even go after your dreams unless they're to be wealthy or you don't find the prospect of $3 dollars being a significant sum some weeks to be terrifying. Young people, there will be time for everything as you get older so if you want to major in ceramics do so knowing you're going to be dirt poor or major in something else and take classes on the weekends. You can write your book even without an English degree and majoring in something you never even heard of in high school might be financially rewarding and not as soul crushing as your punk rock, anti-authority idea of the real world would paint the 9-5 to be when you're 18.

And parents, for fuck's sake learn to talk to your children as they become adults so you can treat them as such when they become adults.