Vacations Spent Searching by Matt Landau was the worst creative non fiction I have read yet for this blog. The author claims that the essay is about agoraphobia, which is the fear of crowded spaces, but in every paragraph he strays from the main idea and fluffs up the essay with external information that bogs the essay down. One line that sticks out for its suckiness is
“Belize, Phuket, Laguna, Atlantic City: they were all the same to me unless a tsunami was coming and I had the beach to myself.”
Obviously this image doesn’t work. The entire essay was awkward, and it reminded me how bad creative non-fiction can be and how potentially depressing it is when people tell bad stories. I would post a link to this essay, but I want to do Matt Landau a service and reduce the chance that he see’s someone linked to his story to a terrible review (if that’s even possible).
Oh wow! I just re-read the ending and it’s awful! The last line is: “And for that, the beach hunter in me carries on.” So why would a writer end an essay about being terrified of open spaces, specifically at beaches(?), with this line? I could swallow a dictionary and vomit up an essay better than this one.
reallifestatusupdate 
However your last line of this blog entry was wonderful. I shall steal it.
I agree with Julie — the last sentence of this? Wins living.