I was athletic once. Basketball. Was even a registered woman's athlete in college (true story). Now, I am so out of shape that when I have a stomach ache, I can't tell if it's because I am starving or sick.
My name is Johnny Dantonio. I am mercurial and have a Diet Coke dependency.
I went to the University of Tennessee where I had to bask in debauchery to gain maturity. Majored in English. Concentrated on creative writing. And beer.
Moved to Nashville. Wrote at the Nashville Business Journal. About as fun as getting a handjob from Edward Scissorhands.
I've been writing for as long as I can remember. First as a therapy. Then as a way to get through college with a GPA that would keep my parents sending that cash-money. Writing paid the bills for awhile. But now me and writing are finally settling down together. We are happy. We have fun. I am entrenched at its core. And once you hit the heart of a thing, doesn't mean you'll ever find an escape. Or want to.
Born to baby boomers, we are a generation that hurried through our childhoods on skateboards, rollerblades and mopeds.
We walked into chat rooms with our adolescence and gave up the phone and love letters for instant messages and emails.
We are the generation who tattoo our stories on our bodies, who pierce what appears impenetrable; we fly our scars like pennants.
We held hands as a millennium passed, coming out of classrooms to hug hard in the smoke left from snipers, campus killers; crumbling towers.
We are a generation, creative and depressed and thriving and vibrant with uncertainty, awaiting an ever changing future that we estimate with promise and anticipation.
We grin optimistically at an ambition to suture the world's wounds. We dare to defy dreams of wealth and luxury with notions of hope; progression.
We are steadfast and thick with resolve. We are resilient and revolutionary. Shrugging at impossibility, we are here.
