I'm looking out my office window right now, which is just about the only thing getting me through this Tuesday afternoon, I guess. I mean, it’s not exactly a scenic view or anything, it's mostly just other buildings and the kind of perpetual grey sky you get in a big city, but there's this little pottery studio across the street, right on the ground floor, and I can see people in there, actually *making* things. With their hands. And it just kind of… hits different, you know? Like, I’m sitting here, staring at spreadsheets and trying to figure out how to make a campaign go viral for some brand I don't even care about, and they’re over there, getting their hands dirty, making something tangible and beautiful, and I just feel this kind of cold, hard ANGER bubble up in my chest because that used to be me, or at least it could have been. I mean, I went to art school, right? Or, well, I *started* art school. For like, two whole years. I loved it, I really did, painting and drawing and just having that freedom to create, it felt like what I was meant to do, like it fit. But then everyone, my parents especially, started in with the whole "what are you going to *do* with that?" thing, and the student loan debt just kept piling up, and my roommate was already stressing out about finding a job in her major, and it just got to be too much, I guess. So I switched. To marketing. Because it was "practical" and "stable" and "had good job prospects" – all the things they said an art degree wasn't, which, maybe it's true, I don't know, but it feels like a lie sometimes, a lie I told myself to justify giving up on something that actually made me happy. And now here I am, pushing paper and pushing pixels for a paycheck, and yeah, the health insurance is great, and I can actually afford my insane rent, which is a big deal in this city, obviously, but every single time I see those people across the street, molding clay, or when I walk past a gallery, I just get this overwhelming sense of regret, like a physical ache in my chest. It’s not just regret, though, it’s also this simmering resentment, at myself for being such a coward, for taking the easy way out, for letting my dreams just kind of… fade away into a really comfortable, really soul-crushing corporate existence. What am I even doing? Is this it? Is this all there is? It just feels so… small, compared to what I thought my life would be. And I don’t even know how to fix it, or if it even *can* be fixed, without completely blowing up everything I’ve built, which would be just, a total disaster, I guess.