Getting Started

This journal will primarily chronicle my journey as a writer. I imagine the lines will blur between my various creative pursuits—art, music, and writing—as I explore the nexus where they meet. These are the places where ideas are born, take shape in my mind, and eventually find their way into the world—whether on paper (so to speak; when I was in school, there were no computers until high school) or onto a canvas.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia at a very young age, though I can’t recall exactly when. The word dyslexia has become something of an umbrella term today—used broadly, much like ADHD, to describe almost any learning difficulty. But for me, dyslexia was very specific: words and sentences appeared backward, paragraphs ran from right to left, and letters and numbers often flipped themselves over. I still have a plate I made in art class when I was six—my name, grade, and year all written backward. It’s a perfect snapshot of that early confusion, and a foreshadowing of things to come. The plate itself is decorated with Easter bunnies rappelling from a flying saucer, tossing Easter egg grenades at the forest and house below.

At the time, I had no understanding of the social consequences of my condition. That would come later, as I fell further behind my classmates and was eventually placed in special education classes—where, at least emotionally, I felt I didn’t belong.

The turning point came one summer when I was dropped off at my grandparents’ house in Janesville, a tiny Northern California town of maybe a hundred people. Within a day, boredom set in. With little to do but pester my grandparents and their chickens, I started exploring. One afternoon, I found myself wandering down the main road that wound through the sleepy town, past old storefronts shaded by evergreens.

That’s when I discovered a small used bookstore. A crooked OPEN sign dangled from two frayed ropes outside. Inside, the air smelled of dust and old paper. I don’t remember much about that first visit, but I do remember the cramped back room lined with handmade shelves—an irresistible treasure trove for a curious boy.

I left with a single book: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I can’t recall whether it was a gift or if I scrounged up the money myself, but I do remember how it felt to open those pages. Though I was a poor reader—teetering somewhere between “terrible” and “incompetent”—I fought my way through it. Much of the deeper meaning was lost on me at that age, but it had orcs and elves and hobbits. I was hooked.

That summer, I returned to the store again and again, trading old books for store credit and scraping together a few quarters or dollars when I could. By the time school resumed that fall, I had read perhaps twenty books—and I was no longer the inept reader I once was.

I was never top of my class, not until many years later when I entered an MFA program in my early thirties and, to my surprise, made the dean’s list more than once.