Folks? This is my 49th column with the Broad Ripple Gazette.

Yes, you can clap. Feel free. Stand up from your coffee or breakfast or reading circle and give a little shout, a little yelp of glee, a little standing O - because you'll be clapping as much for yourself as for me. Without you reading these snippets every two weeks in the Gazette, I'm sure Alan Hague would've asked me to stop writing them a long time ago.

But with my demands for you to, y'know, clap for me and you and the Gazette and this column and Broad Ripple (sure, lets throw Broad Ripple in there, too), I have some bittersweet news.

I think this might be my last column. Or second to last, depending on if I write one last, final column from Boston. A little "Beats from a Bean Town Brat" column.

I mentioned my Big Move an issue or two ago when I was playing my last Peggy Sues show. I'll be going to Emerson College to get my M.F.A. in Creative Writing. What do you guys think? Do I have what it takes? You've all been my guinea pigs (RIP) as far as my writing is concerned. I don't think I'm a great writer, but that's part of the point, the majority of why I want to go. I want to learn more. I want to become better at "this writing thing," become this grand wonderful writer (I don't know when that happens, when a person switches over from simply a person who writes to a Writer with a capital W). I want to talk about all the books I read (here's a note for all the dudes out there: you'll be infinitely more attractive if you read books. Really.) with people who care about books, too. I want to tear my writing apart with people who've never read it before. And I want to tear theirs apart, too! I just want to learn. I want to get better.

So I leave Indianapolis in one week to stay with my parents until I force my way to the northeast on September 1. I have a 12'x15' studio on Brighton Avenue near a Planned Parenthood, a concert venue, and a smattering of restaurants and supermarkets. You can all come sleep on my futon.

But my surface excitement is a front, a façade for how I really feel. I am excited, but I am painfully unexcited. I leave my best friend here. My boyfriend. My band. My favorite bars. Excellent music. Excellent food. I've lived here for six years and I can finally not get lost trying to find the Rathskeller. I am not lying when I candidly admit to you, fearless reader, that I've been having trouble sleeping for the past month, normally getting anywhere between three and six hours a night. Leaving my life behind is stressing me out, guys. I've been tearing up at the thought of leaving all of this, all of you. I tend to be pretty sentimental.

But I feel like a stupid girl knee deep in puberty. I blame the weepy nonsleep on hormones.

Change is good, though, right? I will never forget my wonderful friends here, but I'll meet new people. I'll find new hang-outs. The food in Boston is absolutely wonderful. And I won't be finding a new boyfriend, but we'll take that whole thing one day at a time. I keep having to remind myself of all of those things. And having to remind myself of the whole reason for going: to learn to write better. And all new experiences - like this whole Boston thing - they all add to the well of things to write about, right?

Sure thing. Definitely.

I tell myself that when I can't sleep.