Homework #2

Dear Joe:

Decide on one thing and focus so obsessively much on it that everything else just melts away. Don't try to please everyone that comes across your path. You can be good at several things, but you can really only excel, I mean really excel at one thing. So don't feel bad about telling the other people that you can't play soccer anymore, or can't play music anymore, or can't study anymore, or can't whatever anymore...just do it and move on. As you get older, try to understand that your one weakness is completely manageable. You have the ability to do whatever, but you have to focus, you have to be obsessive and go crazy over that one thing and dive so deeply into that abyss that you never come out, you have to believe that you'll sprout gills and start breathing under that water; that you'll find a mermaid who will teach you how to breathe without oxygen; that life will suspend itself and you'll just be there, suspended in mid ocean so completely given over to the abyss.

Don't date bartenders, even if they're fun, its just not worth it...and don't feel bad for homogenizing all of them, for rounding them up into one corral. It's okay, really.

Call your mother more.

Don't be intimidated by people who read philosophy books...not the old ones...the new ones...the sexy post-modern ones.

You will be gay...and you will have to deal with the unsavory accouterments of gaydom in the 21st century; despite its apparent cache, you will wonder what planet you are living on sometimes.

Become a poet...no matter what.