There are three local celebrities to interview. There are six topics that need research. There’s a website I have to design. There’s the video I need to shoot. There are essays I want to write, anthologies I want to submit to, photographs I want to take, events I need to attend, people I’d like to have dinner with, and books I’ve bought to read.

If only there were 42 hours in a day, and 13 days in a week.

I look at my schedule sometimes and wonder if I haven’t taken on too much, become too ambitious, given away a part of my life to write an extra article or interview another expert. I’m lucky in that I absolutely love what I do. I love interviewing these experts, learning more about life and the world, analyzing events of the day, combining them with what I feel, and informing others. I’ve fallen in love with images and video in a way I never would have imagined. I’ve created a life that, just a year ago, would have seemed like a precious and distant dream.

And maybe it’s because I feel I was denied all these opportunities, these freedoms, and these modes of expression, that I want it all. There’s no one any more, to tell me who I can or cannot be. There’s no one to say what I can or cannot do.

Here in America, more than any time in my life, I have been given the gift of choice. The freedom to be whoever and whatever I want to be. And I’m sure as hell not wasting it.

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I’m listening to: Soak up the Sun by Sheryl Crow