Dear Yoda,

Probably one of the worst parts about being young is being aware of it.

It makes it really, really hard to enjoy your own sweet youth when you're conscious of the fact that in 2-5 years - or even in one year, in the case of you really unlucky bastards - you'll be so much better at what you're so fucking excited about now. This realization paralyzes you. It takes the naivety from your youth and makes you want to just sleep that time off, rather than being wide-awake on a nightmare ferris-wheel of alternating enthusiasm and failure.

Lately, I've been interested in writing, editing, publishing, and I screw up ALL THE TIME. I get upset at the staff of my 'zine for forgetting to do things or bring things, then twenty minutes later am scrambling to cover up the fact that I've just forgotten the same thing. I forget to mention the name of the company who paid us $1500 to mention them (nearly double our yearly budget). I have ignored my gut and paid the price. I have asked one person to do a project, then gotten somebody else to do the exact same project, just in case, and offered to pay only one of them. I'm always late. I have ambitious ideas and overlook the fact that they are not financially viable. I forget to book the caterers. I have made my share of mistakes, and will continue making them, because I'm young, and I suck.

But I love what I do: whether it's apparent or not, I care deeply for my staff and for the writers I help publish, and for the content of my own writing. I just wish I could fast-forward to the time when I'll be able to really do them justice and to when my mind won't be a buzzing swarm of "coulda, woulda, shoulda"s.
It's like running as fast as you can with a black sack over your head - you don't even really know what you're running towards or in what direction you should be running, you're just running, aimlessly, and you know it.

You bump into shit and you knock over old ladies and you wish someone would either intercept you and pull the sack off saying "Hey! STOOPID. It's that way," or do you a real fucking favour and knock you out cold. Because it's not the running around that sucks - that's the kind of blind faith in the universe which you'll look back on in 10 years and be filled with misty-eyed yearnings for your adorable former self - it's the being aware of it that robs you of the chance to enjoy your youth.

That, and the being made aware of it.

There are some older, more experienced sages whose luxurious, immobile apathy mocks you quietly as you scramble through the bookfair, gathering business cards like plastic-wrapped collectors' items, and talking for thirty minutes to the guy who runs the newspaper written by animals (not in the point of view of animals, by them) for a chance at five with the guy at the next table who you've deemed 'really matters'.

The kind thing for these sage individuals to do would be to take you aside, gently, under their wing and say, "Listen, that guy you're suffering to talk to? His ideas are shit and he jacks off his dogs. He's in cahoots with the animal newspaper guy, don't talk to him, save your precious time. The real guru is the deadhead at the corner table." Yet, instead of letting you enjoy your idiocy or of helping you maximize your youth and vigor by giving it a little direction, they sit and sneer as you knowingly humiliate yourself for lack of better alternatives, glaring in a way that says "you're doing something wrong, but I'm not going to tell you what it is."

One does well to remember from time to time, however, that this guy used to be just like you, and that, just because he's employed his selective amnesia to make you temporarily feel like shit, it won't stop you from using that blinding, ruthless zeal to get hired as an intern at his magazine, get a hold of the tax records, and take that shit down from the inside.

So green-leaves take heart: the day is fast approaching when you'll either figure it out or get better at disguising the fact you know nothing.

And yodas, stop giving me that 'I'm going to roll my eyes at you as soon as you turn your back or sooner' gaze. I can't help it; and it's not so many millennia ago that you were just as green on the inside as out. Strain to remember. Use the fucking force if you have to. And, after all that, if you still aren't going to help a sister out, at least put a fucking smile on your face and restore to my glorious youth what little dignity it has.