Above is my six-word memoir. The idea of writing autobiographies using six words or less is being promoted by Smith Magazine. They are hosting thousands upon thousands of these little reductions, where you can submit your own.

About my memoir, though, I’ve been learning to give up my nostalgia. I’m doing this by becoming more comfortable with uncertainty. It has been fear, I think, that has driven me into the safety of remembering and living in the past. Even memories of bad events felt safer than mysteries of the future or the complexity of the present.

But that’s the wrong way to live! When you close yourself off that way to the fear, you close yourself off to experience, too. I’m determined to stop dreaming away my life.