I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike—which is a funny thing to admit, considering that about fifteen years ago, you’d have needed the fire department and the jaws of life to pry my little fingers off the handlebars.

But like coloring books or playing pickup basketball, the ability never left me. I’m confident that if I needed to ride a bike today, I’d be able to do so just as I did all those years ago.

As fate would have it, I found that writing is the same.

I can remember my childhood as vividly as the next person—listening to Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillas, playing video games with the neighborhood kids, and searching for frogs in the marsh just next to our street, where a dozen newly built houses now stand. 

But tucked away among those memories are moments with my mom—and those long, quiet drives to and from my grandma’s house.

My grandma lived in a small Oklahoma town—the kind that would make the perfect setting for a film about farmhouse cannibals or tater-tot-loving geeks in moon boots. After every visit, my mom would encourage me to take a moment, come up with a story, and spend most of the thirty-minute drive home telling it out loud.

To me, those drives were when bundles of wood were quietly gathered—an eternal bonfire being built for later use. With every story of haunted marionettes or beasts lurking in the passing rows of corn stalks (I always leaned horror for some reason), I was discovering my love for storytelling. And like patient mothers do, she listened intently.

Fast forward to sixth grade: while our future class president soaked in every drop of arithmetic, I sat in the third row, drawing stick-figure comic strips that depicted various epics. I’d fold them up and send them down the row, asking my classmates to peel their eyes away from the curriculum and rate my story on the back.

But as middle school turned into high school, my mind became occupied with the importance of talking to girls (miserably, I might add) or appearing cool to the natural athletes around me (of which I was not). Slowly, I stopped telling stories.

Things got even murkier when I entered college. I had no idea what I wanted to “be when I grow up,” and I even enrolled in a “Choose Your Major” class during my first semester—if that tells you anything.

After graduation, I landed a decent job as an administrative assistant at a TPA firm in Tulsa, and the benefits industry became my professional home. While it was a decent job, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the wrong habitat. It reminded me of that quote often misattributed to Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Now, I’m no genius—nor did I ever think I was stupid. I knew the latter wasn’t true, proven by my inexplicable ability to get by without much effort. Still, I often felt like a fish out of water, especially when working on 5500s or ensuring compliance with IRS regulations. 

A few lily pads later, in 2023, I was presented with an unforgettable opportunity: to attend school online and earn my master’s degree from a reputable university.

I was giddy—not because I saw it as a ticket to a career change, but because it felt like a chance to redeem my very average undergraduate performance. Soon enough, I would work toward—and eventually earn—my master’s degree in (drumroll)… Finance!

I’ll spare you the unnecessary exposition, but yes, I almost went for a degree in Finance because I thought it would really elevate my career and credibility as an employee. However, as I explored the university’s website, I noticed a very different degree on their website: Creative Writing and Literature. I scoffed at myself in a “one can dream” kind of way—but the idea was hard to shake.

So much so that I dared mention it to my wife and my dad, who tend to be the realists in my inner circle. To my surprise, they were encouraging about the leap. After one more important conversation with a close friend (in a movie theater booth, no less), I enrolled in my first course in the spring of 2024. 

I got back on the bike and realized I never should have stopped riding in the first place.

The love I have for words—the way they can be crafted and refined to tell stories—is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I am eager and hopeful to get my first works off the ground.

Today, I am closer than ever to finishing my first novel: Midnight, the Stars, and You—a romantic thriller set in northern Italy. The joy it has brought me is indescribable, and even if I never publish a single thing, at least I kept pedaling.