Life as a Box

From the annals of SK1:

Well, I'd like to share something, since it's gonna come out anyway. Bear with me...

Whenever someone talks about school or college, I get a slightly ill feeling. Whenever someone makes a joke about retards not finishing high school, I get that same ill feeling. You see...

1) I never finished high school. When I moved here, I still had 2/3 years of high school left, but because of my age, I was told to go straight to college instead.

2) I never went to a single day of college. I worked in a restaurant just before classes started, basically getting the experience required to follow in my entire family's footsteps (i.e. work in the food industry, in this case as a chef). I was going to study business economics or some shit like that (further solidifying my position in the "family business"; my brother would work in the back - head chef - and I'd work in the front - as the manager).
Well, I lost my chef gig just before college started, and then when something came up on the college front, I had an epiphany.

AND THE EPIPHANY OF OUR HERO OF THIS TALE WAS:

1) I hated working in a kitchen. As I've said before, I love making food, but only when I'm the only person eating it. I could handle the pressure (twas the environment I grew up in), but the whole routine just didn't appeal to me. I know a good meal is like a work of art, but it's not my sort of art. The chef is not my sort of artist.

2) Realising that I hated working in a kitchen made me think about college and my days back in school.
When I went to accounting class, I spaced out for those forty minutes. I'd do my English and science homework in that class.
So, if I hated accounting, why'd I want to go into business?

3) One of my best-remembered memories of school is when we spent some time studying film in English. When the teacher announced we'd be do that for the next month, I literally stopped what I was doing and pricked my ears.
And, really, film had me only slightly more interested than other moments in class. My creative writing was consistently well-received and I was well known for my speeches (I'd just show up and just start spouting shit, so they were either brilliant or disasters; a high mark would be when I discussed a pill bottle with added stunt man effects, a low point when I rambled about The Matrix and the nature of reality in front of the entire faculty).
So, why do business when film and literature has always pricked my interest?

4) Another motivating factor was that I wrote my first screenplay when I was 14, and I already had a couple treatments before I left primary school.

AND, NOW, BACK TO OUR MAIN TALE:

Well... I suppose most of ya'll know how this story ends, since I basically identify myself as a "writer" nowadays.
Walking towards the class and a life chasing money, I stopped, thought for a moment, turned around, and never looked back.

The point is, there was always the odd kid in school that would call me a "genius" after reading one of my stories or the graphic novel I drew all by myself; and having to tell that person that this genius, that did so well in school and claims to have an IQ higher than 98% of the people on Earth, never made it out of high school really, really makes my gut clench. And, worse, that I just walked away from the opportunity to have cash in my wallet, a swanky apartment to live in, and one of those expensive suits... what a bonehead.

Obviously, none of those things are me. Anyone that knows me well enough will know I don't want to be rich and I'm perfectly fine with my 5 year-old shirts with paint stains on the sleeve. I don't, for a single second, regret walking away from that, and I don't care that I don't have my GCSE's or A-levels or whatever they're called, because then I wouldn't be here typing this.

I wouldn't have met you guys (well, I may have, but I doubt my friendship with, say, 113 would be as deep as it is now) and gotten the chance to have some of those wild chats, and I wouldn't have stumbled upon Cynic one late night and rediscovered the joy of existence, and I wouldn't have gotten to spend eighteen difficult and ultimately joyous hours typing until my fingers hurt, and I wouldn't have had that mental breakdown that, at the very least, proved I'd created a character worth crying for, and, you know, if I hadn't been so stupid, and so unlucky, I'd never have that box perched on the chair behind me with Bicro's name on it.

And, yes, if I'd taken the other path, I could've had it a long time ago, and I would've had a better computer for it, too. But then, I'd never have a box to point to and whisper to every person that's called me a talentless, lazy bum: "In that box is nothing but air, because I already took out the card. Okay, I kid, I kid... in that box is the physical manifestation of my life. It's not worth (that) much, but getting it to this point has been difficult and amazing. And I'm glad I took that chance once upon a time and don't have your fashionable diploma."