I am writing this to gain some closure on a point in my life that substantially painted change all over me, from my body to my mind and even hair color. Just like the last four years, this will be messy because I have very little idea about where this piece is going.
To be honest, I never liked the metaphor of life as a book. A 'chapter' of a life sounds too linear. I don't know; there is something so plain about that metaphor, maybe because clichés are exhaustively boring.
What about a web? I think lives could be webs: delicate, scary but beautiful, all over the place, from a spider's butt.
Perhaps I care little for life as a book and moving on to the next chapter of your life because an event as big as graduating college doesn't feel like moving on to the next chapter. It feels like jumping out of one book and into another. It's like going from a young adult fiction novel to a hardcover nonfiction book. It feels weird.
But I've already committed to making this leap, so what next?
No, really, what comes next?
You see, the other assumption behind lives being books is that the ending has already been written. That's crazy! I don't even know if I believe in destiny or predestination. I find comfort in the idea that we can change any projected course of our lives, whether these courses have been instilled by family, religion, or societal pressure. But who knows? Whatever the truth, I like to think that the end of my life is not already written.
However, an aspect of my life is ending, and that is the part that includes Odyssey. I was aware of what Odyssey was before I decided to be part of my university's team. Pieces that saw the widest audiences were either controversial, listicles, or very broad yet relatable open letters. Writing stuff like that sounded like bottom feeder content. Then I wrote all three of those types of articles because I realized you have to start somewhere, and most start from the bottom. After gathering a sense of who my audiences were, my pieces branched out to satire writing, obscure listicles, music reviews, and attempts to replicate Clickhole articles.
I would call my time with Odyssey wild and occasionally frustrating. Writer's block is The Absolute Worst, and pieces you work harder on never gain as many views as the ones that you think of at the last minute and mold into a fully fledged article. I would have never expected my list about Dance Dance Revolution to attract almost 6,000 people.
The team also published some amazing work, and my other fellow Denison Odyssey writers always seemed to be more in tune with how to take a trend and make it your own than I was. We all wrote about different topics in varying formats, and watching their writing styles develop has to be one the top reasons why I loved being Editor-in-Chief.
Tomorrow, a Google calendar reminder will light up my room, reading "COMMENCE THE COMMENCEMENT," reminding me of the fact that I have to leave a place I called home for four years.
So, here's to the next...part of my life, because chapters are too cliché.
