I have two kinds of friends. The first kind says to me, “Rahul, I can’t believe that you’re living here in the Bay Area when your income is location-independent and you could be living literally anywhere in the world. Why aren’t you traveling or having adventures or seeing strange new places or, at the very least, settling someplace that’s a little bit cheaper than this yuppified sprawl?”

The second kind says, “I just don’t understand why you ever wanted to move to New Orleans?You didn’t know anyone there. You had no reason to be there. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

And what’s funny is that no matter how much I explain myself, both groups continue to remain equally mystified.

This is actually what I just wrote my Stegner Fellowship personal statement on. It was a pretty casual personal statement. If I’ve learned anything from my years inside the creative writing establishment, it’s that no one cares about personal statements. If I get the fellowship, I’ll post it online. If not, it will be consigned to the dustbin of history, like all of my other failures.