Cliff

Cliff’s Decision
There Cliff sat in class looking at his “getting to know you” sheet, he had been doing these since 3rd grade and now they were easy, he gave the normal cookie cutter answers that everyone gave, but the one question Cliff had never been able to answer was, “What do you want to do when you’re older?” Cliff was in 8th grade now and he still couldn’t answer this question, “everyone knows what he or she wants to be by now, except for me,” he thought. People usually know their passions by eighth grade, and everyone knew what they wanted to be when they grew up, dancers, designers, doctors, nurses, chefs, construction workers, and all the rest. Yet there was Cliff, Cliff who was clueless about his passions, he was a straight A student, he volunteered, he played piano, he was athletic, yet he never found bliss in anything he did, he never felt passion.
The confused Cliff looked back at the paper and wrote down what he had wrote down since forever, “undecided.” He knew that it’s not what the teacher wanted him to write but he also knew that the teacher wouldn’t force him to decide what he wanted to be. Cliff thought about it again though, and he knew that one day he would have to make a decision about what he wanted to do with his life. So he stuffed the paper back in his backpack, took out his computer, and typed up things he liked to do. It came down to three things, he liked to run, read, and talk. He knew that the last one was a little silly, but maybe he could find a job where you get paid to talk about something. He knew it was a slim chance he would be able to find a job like that, but it was worth trying.
Cliff started with running; he could always try to be a marathon runner he thought. Cliff wasn’t sure how exactly he would do this, “well” he thought, “the best way to start is to train.” So he went outside, he didn’t think about it, he just started to run, Morgans Mill Circle wasn’t a big community, it was just .4 mile in one lap, but it was...