Wednesday, March 28, 2012

My Totally Mind-Blowing Epiphany, Part 1

I usually don't share much information about myself, but in this case, I'll make an exception for the two people following this blog.

When I started working for my school's newspaper last year, I was totally unsure of what beat I wanted to follow. I just wrote whatever article was assigned to me, and it was published in the paper the next day. I didn't care what type of reaction I got from people, as long as it had the byline "By Melissa Wray" underneath the headline.

That first semester was pretty cool for me. I got a bunch of rumblings of approval and I felt like I was on top of the fucking world. I assumed that glow would last forever and ever and ever...

...until I returned from winter break last year and began my second semester.

It seemed like no matter what I put out each week, I elicited no response from anybody. Not even a letter to the editor about what a good/crappy job I did on whatever article I wrote.

Not to mention, every idea I pitched for a potential story wasn't good enough or interesting enough in the eyes of the managing editors.

Naturally, I felt like I was losing my ever-loving mind over a few paragraphs. What the hell was I thinking, taking on this job? Why should I even continue working here if I'm not even worth mentioning to random strangers?

These were all many different thoughts that swirled around in my head, occupying every corner of my mind. My paranoia had escalated to the point where I started having crying jags every other day because of my inability to come up with an idea for a story.

As I continued working at the paper, I held out hope that someday, someone would praise me for doing a good job, and maybe, just maybe, I could feel like an integral part of the news team.

Oddly enough, I did get praised by two people I interviewed on two separate stories I did over the last two semesters. It uplifted my spirits for a minute, and then I was back to being miserable. Miserable about the fact that I was invisible.

I don't deserve to be amongst all these people, I would think whenever I was in the news room. They've got every aspect of their lives planned out, and they've even gotten the chance to do cool stuff normal college students do.

What do I have to look forward to? Oh nothing, except taking care of my wheelchair-bound father and entertain his crazy-ass theories about things I don't give a flying fuck about, like politics.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I have no fucking clue about where I wanna work after I leave this university?

Not a day went by that I didn't have any of these thoughts in my head. I thought I would be destined to be caught up in a sea of doubt and uncertainty...

...until the day my father died.

To be continued...

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