Originally published in Dumbo Feather. Courage might just mean discovering the lost and hidden parts of ourselves I was never a risk taker in my twenties. Not really. When confronted with a daunting challenge I usually crawled back into my comfort zone, where it was safe. I even signed up for a bungee jump in New Zealand and when I stepped up to the platform I backed out at the last minute. What happened to the adventurous boy who spent his youth climbing trees? The truth was, he had disappeared into the sanctuary of rationality—something we all do by living safe, conservative lives. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I realised being rational had its own restrictions. So in 2010 I did what any irrational person would do—I sold all my possessions and moved to Berlin. My decision was met with immediate skepticism and raised brows. I understood their concerns—I had maybe enough money to live frugally for several
human life
ONE IN A THOUSAND
My short story ‘One in a Thousand’ received Third Place in Issue #32 for On the Premises. Their prompt was: We challenged contestants to write a creative, compelling, well-crafted story between 1,000 and 5,000 words long in which a character (not necessarily the main character, but one important to the story) almost dies.
In the end they received 377 contest entries and chose six stories for prizes.
Fear Is A Lost Little Boy on A Bus
This is another literature assignment for a unit appropriately called ‘Writing Creative Non-fiction.’ We were required to write a 1500 word immersion essay—something I had never attempted before, but I grabbed my friend Tom and we headed out into the city for a ‘night on the town’ and there I was confronted with both my agoraphobia and my lost youth. It’s not one of my best pieces but it’s well worth a read – if not for mere entertainment, as there are a few memorable characters we came across.
