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I don’t think I ever aged from four years old. The little version of me who loves to explore, to pretend and play—the one who could look at some medium-sized rock and call it a mountain… 

It’s still here.

What do I seek in life?
For many it is love, money, or time.
Others seek fame and power.

I seek fame and power.
But not in the way you are thinking.

Fame comes from doing something no one has thought of before—or doing something that people have thought was impossible. Power for me is the power to control my own life. The feeling that I crave is the feeling that I can make my own decisions, suffer from them, but learn something unexpected. I don’t want to be bound by society, bound by grades, bound by a job. I don’t want to be in the book. I want to do something new, possibly world-changing, and have a feeling that I am the first person in the universe to experience something. That feeling is true power.

No, I do not want to be sitting on the throne of a vast empire. I don’t want to be in some White House. I don’t care for such.

What I want is to be standing atop of a towering mountain, looking upon a vast new world that no one has ever seen. No buildings, no streets, no artificial lights… no, I’ve seen thousands of those. Everyone has. 

When I heard the podcast Play Mountain by 99% Invisible, I was fascinated by this concept of abstract parks. These strange new landscapes that influence realities and creativity. Play Mountain has no concrete interpretation. Everyone can’t understand it. That is where you can be the first to imagine it. These parks are something I’ve never seen before. They’re new, they’re something that I could play with. “If adults are confused by a piece of play equipment it often means that kids will be all over it,” says Roman Mars. I’d love to visit one. 

Parks these days are bound by rules and specifications. They are pretty much in the book, unfortunately. Today, there are rules everywhere, it restricts…

…

But life for high-school students like me in 2024 there is no such thing. Everything is in the book; grades, learning, applications… It’s all so repetitive, the memorization, the following in the footsteps of your acquaintances—there’s no novelty. Everyone around me is preparing for college, in the same damn way. 

My dreams are just a fantasy, and it makes me cry that I will never fulfill the feeling of exploration I crave so much. The closest I can get to it is going backpacking on a trail far away from civilization. A trail that not many, but still a lot of people have walked. 

I feel like breaking the rules. I know I’m a well behaved student with straight A’s. But four year old me does not give a [oops I said a bad word please don’t tell mom!!]. I want to go off on my own, break the rules just for the sake of it. I want to say I don’t care.  

I want to be an inventor again, one who uses creativity and innovation to build something no one has even built before. I want to be an explorer again, crossing the treacherous mountains of [unnamed]. I want danger, excitement. But will it ever happen for me? No, not in 2024. 

Rules rules rules… I want to be four again. I want to be stupid so that I can find things fascinating. I can’t find life fascinating anymore.