Who am I? Where am I going?

After reading Sam Kashner’s article in Vanity Fair, “Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate,” I’m totally crushing on Mike Nichols.

The quotes provided by the 76-year-old director made me laugh and contemplate things in a way that only a rich man who’s had the time and the means to reflect on life can. My favorite (and the article’s penultimate) quote is: “There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.”

Sweet, non? It also reminds me of part of the reason to I came to Spain: to find what I guess would be my second calling, as my passion for writing slowly fades. (Yes, at 28, I’m burnt out. I’m over the competitiveness of the publishing world, the countless unrecognized résumés and seeing so many hacks get ahead, especially now that anyone with a blog can call themselves a writer—linkage company at right excluded.)

You see, the last time I spent a long period of time abroad, in England, I went thinking I would return home and become a kindergarten teacher. I always loved writing, but teaching was more practical (hey, that word again!) and just as underpaid, heh. Instead, walking the same streets and learning in the same classrooms as of some of my most favorite writers uncontrollably reignited my passion for pen and paper, and so, here I am.

And now, I’m almost right back where I started eight years ago, wandering the streets of some foreign city and waiting for inspiration, for that realization to strike, however corny and clichéd the whole idea may be.

At the time Nichols controversially cast Dustin Hoffman in the lead, he was reading Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle,” about “a young man who lets life and love pass him by while he waits for a cataclysmic event to transform him.” I plan to pick this book up on our next trip to the English-language bookstore; it certainly sounds apropos.

Image: Patricia Lin