(Note re: picture below that I just found: WOMEN OF THE PERFECT POSTURE CONTEST POSING WITH THEIR X RAYS. REALLY.)

I have two main goals in life:

1.) Don’t die too young.

2.) Win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

I unabashedly declare that I want this. I will not be coy. I want it, I do.  I like it as a goal: it’s not necessarily something you can work towards in any real way — other than to just, well, keep writing your plays, so the goal can just  sort of hover around you as you live and write.  I like what it means to a playwright: We hear you. Hey, Good job.  It’s okay that you were weird as a kid and that sometimes you can’t express yourself to other humans and that you can’t run very fast, or play the piano, and that you can’t remember the differences between all of  the wars. All of that is fine. You are doing what you are meant to be doing. I have been secretly and not so secretly secreting this honor since college, since before I even really knew what it was. In fact, when I was 25 I wrote a play called the Pulitzer Prize for Drama,  because I thought it would be  hilarious if a play called the Pulitzer Prize for Drama won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The Press Release would read:

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama goes to The Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

GET IT?

……And now I think I understand why I do not have The Pulitzer Prize for Drama.