I did a strange thing this week. I dropped out of graduate school before I even stepped in. I washed out before I even got dirty.

Ever since 2006, when I began attending the University of Nebraska, I have been studying math in some fashion or another. In 2011, I finally completed a bachelor’s degree. Since then, I have been taking online classes from Coursera. In 2013, I applied and got into a Ph.D. program in computer science and mathematics. The progression was perfectly natural.

Here’s the problem: I never knew what I wanted to do. I had a lot of talent, and I put a significant amount of work into my degree, but I never had more than a few passing interests. Some were particularly compelling, like steganography, but I didn’t want to do all the extra work in other areas before I could work on what really interested me. Basically, I was going to spend the next two years doing a lot of nothing on the off chance I would get to do something later.

There was a lot involved here, and I was perfectly willing to do what I needed to. I was going to commute from Lawrence to Kansas City, paying for gasoline, tolls, parking, and (naturally) tuition. I would spend 4 nights a week in class, and a significant amount of time doing homework during the day.

Now I’m not going to do any of it, and I’m tremendously relieved. Instead, I am going to abandon the world of academia to pursue a career as a writer. I know that sounds like the life plan of someone who really wants to fail.

The truly wise say you can never become a writer if you don’t write anything, so my goal from here on out is to continue writing. I will also continue tutoring math to pay the bills and such.

I have a bunch of ideas to work on, but I am going to be bold and work on the ones I care most about, even though they might be difficult to carry through. I am confident, and somewhat optimistic. If I can get other people interested, I can make things work. Unfortunately, things won’t work unless I make them work. That’s the cynical part.

Anyway, I will continue to post random updates, but now they’ll be less about graduate school and more about figuring stuff out. And maybe I’ll be a little more excited about it.