Boxes

It's Tax Day! Here's a story about what I kept, and what somebody more famous kept, and why it matters. Also... 7 other things worth your time.

When I graduated from college long ago, we had only a few hours to move out of campus housing.

I packed quickly and haphazardly. This included reams and reams of paper, stuffed into boxes: class assignments, job applications, random half-finished creative projects, all kinds of stuff.

Someday, I presumed, as I grew older, life would become less hectic.

I imagined a leisurely weekend would one day come along, when I’d pick up one of those half-finished, (literally) sophomoric creative writing exercises, tweak it a bit, and wind up with a million-dollar book deal or an Oscar-winning screenplay.

In reality, I moved back home with my parents for a while, worked at my old lifeguarding gig, and applied to newspapers all over the country.

Before long, I landed a comically low-paying job that nevertheless seemed like it would be fun, as a bottom-rung reporter at the New Haven Register newspaper.

Off I went!

First to the paper, then when I got sick of being comically underpaid, to law school.

The…