Trent Watkins

Over the course of my life, I have wandered many roads and thought I was many things. When I was young, I explored the wilds of my backyard like a feral animal with my trusty dog, Whiskey. As with all dogs, they never live as long as the people they are attached to, and so it was true of my beloved Whiskey. She passed at the age of thirteen, and I looked to my love of mechanical things. Clockwork wheels spun in the night by strange equations written in a stranger language, but the road of pure scholar is fraught with peril for one such as I. It is a life without love, and without love, there can be no happiness. Without happiness, there can be no scholarly pursuit. I have fought the notion of sin, of seeming selfishness and greed and found them to be wanting. There must be a little jealousy; it inspires us to have things we do not have. We must be a little selfish; it inspires us to look after ourselves. There is no sin in moderation. I suppose Aristotle would be proud of such a conviction whether his writing is my best cure for insomnia or not.

I have thus constructed my own road: a road for me and no other. For the past several years this road has led me to and through Southern Polytechnic State University. This semester, it takes me through a course in writing. Writing is my long-abandoned home. It is the place I have returned to for me and no other. Occasionally, when I am predisposed to do so, I share. Mostly, my notebook and pencil are my sanity when all the things around me are anything but. It is a chance to observe the world and record what I see. It is an opportunity to shift lenses and see things from different perspectives and different contexts. It is a chance to put the animal back in man and put the man in the animal. It is the opportunity to share who I am with myself first and then with the rest of the world if I so choose. I have been many things in my life, but today I am many things. It is only the recognition of the dichotomy that makes me whole, that makes me human.