"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home. "

I've really never wanted to do anything except to be a writer. I always fancied myself a writer from the time I was very young, figuring that eventually I would gain enough experience as an actor and a musician that my writing would become transferrence. You see, a great number of the actors and musicians whom I respect are (or were) able to write well outside the scope of their chosen mediums.

When Bill Cosby spoke at my college graduation ceremony (I'm a Tisch School of the Arts veteran), he reminded my parents that their kids had chosen "the worst professions in the world" and that "they are going to come home. Just be prepared for that, they're coming....and that...is...that."

Some years later, I seem to be trapped in the cycle of "coming home" when all I want to do is walk away. I lack the tolerance for dealing with people in the workaday world. I'm flooded with ideas and plans, processes that have sparks and real roots. I'm so scared that if I give in to the pressures of everyday life that somehow my creativity will be snuffed out.

I have never had a long period of financial stability as an artist, as a writer, as a musician, or as an actor. But I'm here to tell you that I don't blame other people. I don't blame the world for not bending to my will and I don't blame my parents for how they raised me. I don't blame my friends for engaging my every whim or my family for having faith when faith seemed pointless.

But today...just today it's really getting to me.

I stare at three one dollar bills, an apartment full of non-descript furniture and assorted items, the bare cupboards, the two remaining cigarettes, and I am suddenly in check. Everything looks like a bleak splinter of firewood whose paperweight dreams were crushed by a snow globe.

Then the phone rings, and I have a conversation that gives me hope. Real hope. I look at what I've accomplished and have yet to accomplish, what I have in front of me and what is behind me. The poverty suddenly doesn't seem that bad to me.

It seems very temporary. Filled with hunger pains and hustling, but temporary.

World, you will not break me if break me ye so wished to do. Life, you may crush me but not today. Forces of the universe, you may crush me but not today.

So Mr. Cosby, if home is where I am supposed to be then here I am. I'm going to have to make the best of it. And, as your immortal quote suggests, my desire to succeed exceeds my fear of failure.