“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.”
– Tupac Shakur
You can’t blame yourself for the choices other people make.
You can’t tell yourself that if you had done something, anything differently, they wouldn’t have made the choice they did. People are going to make dumb decisions, and they do it all on their own. And you can’t blame yourself for any of that, because it’s not going to help you at all.
People who are lost and confused try to take others down with them so they don’t feel so alone. Misery loves company, it’s as simple as that. You can try to help them work through it, but be prepared to feel the same things they probably do: pain, frustration and alone. You can care about them with all of your heart, but sometimes people just can’t be saved. At least, not by anything of this world.
Not everybody makes good choices. Not everybody considers other people’s feelings when it comes to decision making. And not everybody wants you to be happy, because they’re looking out for number one. It’s a disgusting feelings realizing that you’re coming second in their eyes, but just because you’re coming second in their eyes, doesn’t mean you are second. Remember that they’re just one person, and they have no power over your self worth.
You decide what place you’re in, and you should always come first.
Not second, not third and most certainly not anything less than that. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not worth your time, and you need to remember that. They can push the blame all they want — make it seem like what happened was in no way, shape or form their fault at all — but the truth of it all is that everyone is to blame because everyone gave their time to the situation. It’s not worth deliberating over who’s more at fault, because all you should really be doing is moving.
Find someone who’s worth your time. Find someone who makes you want to get up every morning and do crazy and exciting things. Find someone who pushes your limits in good ways, and makes you feel happiness that you’ve never felt before. Find someone who’s going to look you in the eye and say “You matter more than anyone else to me,” or “I will always be here for you, no matter what.”
And find someone who not only says these things, but means them too.
You deserve someone who’s going to fight for you as much as you fought for them. You deserve someone who’s going to make you stronger and feel invincible, and show you a love that has no limits.
Some people deserve each other in the worst kind of way. They’re going to destroy each other, even in the smallest way. People accept the love they think they deserve, and sometimes they do that because they don’t want to try, other times because they don’t want to work for something that they’re capable of getting if they push for it. These people need to push harder, but they never will because they don’t have the motivation. Or the strength. Or the courage.
But you do.
That’s not to say that you don’t deserve someone either, it means you deserve more, and everything happened because there’s not a chance that you should be stuck around someone like that for the rest of your life.
Don’t let this destroy you. In time, it will heal and you will feel powerful and confident again. You will find someone who makes you feel completely and does nothing but lift you up, but you have to wait for it. Rushing it won’t make it come any faster, it’ll make it flawed. And you don’t want flawed. You deserve amazing and wonderful, just as you are.
Don’t settle for anything short of what you deserve just because you think it’s what will help you find love again. It’s only going to disappoint you in the end. I promise you, if you wait it out and work on doing things for yourself for now, it’ll all come in time.
And when it does, it will take your breath away.
I’m starting to lose track of how many cover letters I’ve written, clips I’ve put together and times I’ve edited my resumé this week.
It’s internship application season in the School of Mass Comm, and anyone who plans on being successful post-graduation better be out there looking, applying and connection-building right now. All of this reminds me of my senior year of high school when I had to apply to colleges.
Make sure you fill out the application.
Pay the fees.
Send in your transcripts.
Write a kick-ass essay that shows them why you deserve to be there.
Yeah, I think it’s just like applying to colleges.
I’m realizing that with each program I apply to, I’m learning a little bit more about myself. When writing a cover letter, I have to ask myself why I’m applying for the program in the first place, and what is it about it that makes it so interesting and makes me think it will be beneficial? It’s not about the money for me (some of them don’t even pay), and I’m not even sure if it’s about the bylines anymore.
I’m looking for an internship because I want the real world experience, and to prove to everyone that I can handle a job in the professional work place. I want to tell powerful stories, present information to the public in new innovative ways, and to expand on all of the crazy ideas I’m being told in my journalism classes about where the media industry is headed.
Today in class we watched a storytellers presentation where the speaker was talking about how no one knows for sure where the field of journalism is going. People who say its dying are close-minded, and those who think it’ll grow beyond belief aren’t completely for sure either. But because nobody knows, the possibilities are endless.
To me, it’s kind of exhilarating walking into the realm of endless possibilities.
I like waking up every morning and never knowing what’s going to happen. It keeps things interesting, and being blind sided by the day-to-day can also lead to some pretty interested story telling. I’ve been asked a couple of times in the last week about what it was like being a Hearst Award Finalist last semester (top 20, breaking news competition), and I can’t honestly say that it changed my impression of that story at all.
What I do remember about the day that I wrote the story nominated for Hearst is this: I was sitting in the newsroom checking my Facebook, and the bloody piece of chicken photo was plastered all over my newsfeed. I couldn’t get away from it, and fellow students were commenting, liking and sharing that photo all day long. I think by the time we went to print, the likes were in the thousands and the shares and comments in the hundreds. It was crazy watching it all happen, and because it was the talk of campus for the day, it became a story.
I dug deeper on that story than simply reporting that students were pissed off. I tried talking to dining to see what their stance was on the issue. I met with the student who posted the photo to find out what he thought of the pic going viral. I looked through food service records, emails between dining and students about the incident, and parental complaints about why they’re spending thousands of dollars on a required meal plan for bloody chicken and poor customer service.
Through all of this, I was just trying to get a full perspective on the situation, and portray that perspective to readers. The 6 hour reporting process led to a front-page story that eventually led to bigger media outlets picking up the story, and dining making a bunch of changes in staff and policy that semester. Change had happened.
But the entire time this was happening, what I was doing didn’t feel like work, because it was what I love to do. I love seeing a good story come together, and informing other people of what’s going on around them. That’s what I want out of an internship — the opportunity to see good stories come together, and learn what it takes to make that happen at a professional media outlet.
There’s a fire in me to do more in the journalism field, and I am beyond excited and determined to fuel that fire.
I want to learn from the top editors, the groundbreakers and the Pulitzer winners.
I want to see my writing get ripped to shreds so that in the end it can later on become great.
I want to grow, learn and gain invaluable experiences that teach me a thing or two about journalism.
And since I want all this, I must keep going.
If “Procrastination Nation” ever needed a mayor, I’m pretty sure I would be a solid candidate.
I’m the type of person that needs to know for sure that I have absolutely no time remaining in order to be able to force myself to sit down, focus and get shit done. It’s a frustrating problem, but it’s one that I’ve been trying to combat lately.
I’ve been trying to do homework before deadlines have the chance to sneak up on me. I ponder story ideas in my head so I’m not blind-sided or empty handed when the due date arises. I make lists, brainstorm and plan out everything lately, and it’s saved me a hell of a lot of stress.
I think being on a tight schedule is beneficial for me though. I churn out some of my best work when I only have an hour or so to do it, because I’m forced to pour out the need-to-know info and keep going. Deadline writes, or stories that are written with the intention of going live or to print immediately after they’ve been composed or edited, have always been an exhilarating experience for me. I love fast-paced work environments because they force me to think quickly and act quickly, and I seem to get better results that way.
Most of my work lately has been of the creative nature because of my journalism classes, and the image above is a clear representation of what I go through with many of my stories. In my advanced reporting class, we have anywhere between two to three week to turn in our stories, and I always wait until the last minute. I need a motivator, and a lot of times, my deadline is my motivator because I have to have something convincing me to finish the story.
If I get excited enough about the story that I don’t need a deadline though, that’s how I know it’s a good one.
I’m working at fixing my creative process this semester so that all the time spent in the red zone of the chart isn’t wasted anymore. Ideally, I want to spend it planning, researching and interviewing, and then spend the yellow and green zones on my writing and revision. My favorite part of story writing is when I piece all of my information and reporting together, and I want to be able to give myself enough time to enjoy that part.
That way, there’s less panic, and more passion.
“‘We swim in an ocean of stories.’ Sometimes it’s worthwhile to just toss the net into the water and see what rises to the surface.”
– Brady Dennis, on finding unexpected stories (Nieman Storyboard)
On Wednesday I wrote. And wrote. And wrote.
Some of that writing ended up turning into a story for the Montage section of the paper, something that was completely unplanned, spontaneous and left my stomach tied in knots the rest of the day. At first, I thought I was feeling guilty about why I was inspired to write the story, and that I should feel bad about it.
I realized the confusion I was feeling was because it was a feeling I hadn’t experience in quite awhile — I was proud of myself, and, finally, it was not because someone told me that I should be.
The common denominator in all the things that I write that I’m proud of is this: I love them the most when they’re something I’m passionate about. When I realized that I only want to write when I have a story that I want to tell, and not because I’ve been told to tell it, I knew I had to explore that possibility that much more. Hence why I’m blogging more, journaling more and submitting my work to online magazines more.
It always happens when I least expect it, and it comes along with a budding passion and a growing desire to create something. And I can’t fake it; anyone who has read my writing can tell when I don’t care about it because I half-ass it. I’ve been told before that sometimes my writing can be lifeless, and I’ve seen it too.
But I know there’s more potential than I’m giving myself credit for, and that’s why I’m okay with writing stories on my terms and my own time.
We had a guest speaker in my advanced reporting class who told us he was once asked whether he considered himself a reporter or a writer. For those who aren’t in journalism, there is a distinction. Reporters are curious question-askers who write about their observations. Writers write to tell stories, and the reporting is just a tool to help them accomplish that effectively. The guest speaker told us he considered himself a writer, and I agreed with him. Journalism for me is an outlet, and a very fun and exciting one at that, but it’s not all I do.
I write because I have something to say. Because I have a story to tell. Because I want people to be able to see what I see.
And that is why it is all a happy accident.
Driven By Daydreams 