> I'm curious. What do you really, really want to do? Restrict it to activities you *could* conceivably do in the real world...

This is usually the kind of thread that I like to read but shy away from participating in. But this one made me pause. IS there one question you could ask whose answers would be more revealing about someone's character? And so here is me, all written out plain as day:

- Direct films. I had wanted to make the first really good epic fantasy film, but Peter Jackson beat me to it. Still, I have so many ideas about different types of stories and styles that are as yet untapped by the medium of film. I'd also want to do some good old fashioned suspense flicks as Hitchcock used to make. (I would have loved to have made "Joy Ride.") Con games, heists, and other sorts of intellectual crime stories. The running theme would be entertainment on the surface, but with substance beneath, to inspire, encourage, and/or set people thinking.

- Write novels. Of all the things in this list, this is the one whose actuality probably most closely matches the ideal of my dream. It's also the one I am most inclined to pursue, off and on. Much like the films I want to direct, I want to write stories that cannot be put down, because they are entertaining and fantastic, while containing, at its core, real people with real emotions. I'm fascinated by experimenting with what happens to ordinary (yet passioante) people when thrust in extreme and dramatic circumstances. In real life, these are the ways in which heroes and villains, martyrs and cowards, emerge from the behind the masks of social convention and normalcy, and what we become in such situations is usually as much of a surprise to ourselves as anybody. These are the stories I want to write.

- Visit everywhere. I want to set foot on all seven continents. Look at the view from the top of the world's tallest building in Kuala Lumpur. Gawk up at St. Basil's Cathedral at Red Square in Moscow. Go on an African safari and watch the most awe-inspiring mammals on the face of the earth migrate and hunt. Find out what everyday life is like in Kyrgyzstan. Or Argentina. Or Iceland. See every last thing there is to see on Nauru, the world's smallest republic. I grew up in western Europe, so I've already got a head start. I've been up the Eiffel Tower and over London Bridge. I've seen the castles in Germany, skied in the Alps, and sunbathed at the French Riviera. So I'm thankful for that. But there is so much more to the world.

- Be able to sing. Go to this year's RinkUnion and have something inspiring and something funny to sing. This will not happen. I'd love to be able to play an instrument really well, too, but I don't have much interest in being able to play one only half-heartedly. Perhaps this is the reason I choose not to pursue this goal. I know what I can do, and this is not one of them. If I *could* get really good with something musical, it would take more time than is worth it to me. I'd rather write.

- To be understood, completely, by a small few, who have it in them to be able to know what it is to have the passions and dreams I have...to experience the euphoria, the epiphany that I do when I experience a pure, inspirational, visceral, or dramatic work of the art of storytelling...to know the peace that cannot be described in words when one is awestruck by the largeness of small stars in the perfect calm of a summer's eve...to know I have faults that normally earn the instant judgment of the world and still to understand -- not to excuse, but to know that we all have reprehensible things within us and that it is but by the grace of a loving God, author of all of the above that inspires me so, that we may rightly look ourselves in the mirror without the burden of guilt.

- A still greater dream than to be understood is this: to help someone understand.

I've attained none of these dreams to such satisfaction that I no longer have them, and I'm thankful for that. But I've attained some of them to extents beyond what I thought possible, and I'm even more thankful for that. There are more Rinkies younger than me than older, I think, but I'm still young. To be 28 years old and be already further along than I ever envisioned I could be, well, that's a gift from God if ever there was one.

Thinking back over the feedback from RinkWorks I've gotten, I am amazed at how large and diverse the world is. I've gotten mail from people who read one or other of the humor features regularly and write to tell me how much they value the stress-relief of a laugh amidst a wearying day. I've gotten mail from people who think RinkWorks is an idiotic waste of time. I've gotten mail from people who were so inspired by Book-A-Minute or Pea Soup that they've sought to try their own hand at it. I've gotten mail from people who could not be more repulsed that I would encourage parents to shorten the time they spend with their children by reading them three line stories. I've gotten mail from people who have thanked me for praising a movie that no one else seems to, and mail from people who have disparaged me for not liking something they found worthwhile. Dave and I have both gotten a surprising number of marriage proposals (!) and death threats. I've gotten mail so well written, I wish I could write as well, and I've gotten mail so illiterate as to be indecipherable.

Nobody can please everybody, and so I don't sweat the bad stuff. The good stuff is what keeps me going. It's always nice to get an email from someone to thank me for an enjoyable diversion. But it's euphoria to get an email from someone who said that RinkWorks changed his or her life. How many regulars here on the forum and in RinkChat have told me that they found here a community of friends that came through for them when they needed help and couldn't find it anywhere else?

Amidst it all, one feedback comment springs to mind. Not because it is greater than anything else anyone has ever told me. Not because it means I've made progress on a goal I value above all others. It's a little thing, really. It was unexpected and yet exactly in line with so much of what I want to do in this world. This comment was made by a regular here, but I won't say who. This person said that when he (or she) played Game of the Ages -- a frivolous adventure game, mind you -- and read through one of the climactic scenes at the end, when hearts and livelihoods long lost are restored again, she (or he) was so moved by it as to come to tears.