Recently, I was a writer inside a multi-university article hosting website named "Odyssey." It was an easy position to acquire, as the site is meant to be OPEN TO EVERYBODY, offering different levels of responsibility. A person can work independently or choose to write inside of an Odyssey community. Choosing community work means expectations and responsibilities for the writer; namely, a promise to submit one 300 to 800-word article, or what they call a "listicle," each week by 5 PM on Wednesdays, or face the receivable of a strike. Articles can be about anything as long as they're done properly; attention to formatting, grammar, and an "eye-catching" copyright free image. However, the choice to write in a community presents its own awesome advantage – an editor review and feedback on work submitted.

Fortunately, my words always add up quickly and I'm filled with thoughts and stories, so I figured myself prepared for this Odyssey community opportunity. Especially with considerations to the other advantages Odyssey offers someone like me; like 12,000+ regional communities which hold together an audience of 30+ million readers. And all over their site and in their emails, Odyssey was requesting people like me to write with them on their site. Thinking this was possibly an awesome opportunity, not just for me, but Odyssey, and those who read at Odyssey, I entered in.

My interest in becoming a "Content Creator" in a community placed me into a branch of Odyssey at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The following day, their Editor-In-Chief, a woman who will now be named Marica, emailed to introduce herself and to thank me for my interest in Odyssey. We began sharing emails of information as we scheduled to speak on January 9, 2018, at 2 PM.

In the time prior to this phone interview, I wrote to her about myself and my situation; trying my best to explain what I like to write about, and how it always comes out containing my own, intelligent, yet sarcastic, voice and tone. I really wanted to let Marica know that I'm equipped with opinions, from varying points of view, loads of intelligence, and yet, with an inability to tolerate stupidity quietly. But I didn't want her to bring me into her crew only to be surprised by my smart, yet creatively crafted opinions on real-life things.

This happens to me much too often. So much so that even though others have witnessed it, there's no way to understand or explain the happenings. Although, I'd guess most of the time the blank stares or silence created after something I've said probably has more to do with how I physically appear in the wheelchair. Nobody's expecting the person in the wheelchair to be dangerously intelligent with this much bite and personality.

Yet, it's the same situation that brought my attention to Odyssey. One of their emails led me to read several stories other female students had written in order to proclaim themselves as anti-feminists, mostly because they believe there's no longer a need for feminism to exist in 2018. Their irrational rationalizations struck me as sheer stupidity and left me with a deep need to write a more proper, true, opposing view. My willingness to argue was the first thing I explained to Marica, along with several other info-bits about me; like I'm older than others in her community, making me Gen X, not Millennial, and I live in La Crosse, not Madison. I don't shrink away from writing as true as true can be about reality. And again, I explained that I'm physically disabled, always needing to use assistive technology, although well aware that the computers hate me.

Along with this information, I told her about the anxieties I've grown after years of being marked as different or perceived as odd because I'm always engaging and interacting with what I see, hear, read, learn, and observe in my surroundings. Yet, Marica believed all these things were exactly what I'd need to be a grand addition to her Odyssey team. By 2:30 PM that Friday, she invited me in, unlocking all Odyssey technology platforms and sharing Odyssey documents containing rules, requirements, expectations, and most of the important information I'd need in order to set up and begin creating.

I spent the remainder of my Friday building my personal places in the cyberspaces Odyssey uses. There are two of these; Muse for article creation, and GroupMe, an app for group text messaging. Of course, and as usual for me, my setup process didn't happen smoothly and I had to go a couple of extra rounds with the technology. I really believe the computers hate me, even though I understand that's a bit crazy. Yet, by the end of the day, I'd hacked and cracked my way through it all as I aim to hit the first possible deadline to submit on the following Wednesday.

Occasionally, I had to use GroupMe to ask my community about small technical difficulties I encountered along my way to submission day. I don't know if Odyssey knows this but their documents are missing some major pieces of information; like what the tech messages mean or why word counts keep changing inside the same screen. Fortunately, my community provided the answers to me. And I did what I set out to do and by late afternoon on Tuesday, February 13th, my homework was complete. Now, I'd simply have to wait and see if I'd received feedback on my first piece or if it would just go live on the following Sunday, January 18th. At least that's what I believed based on the rules and information I'd received.

Unfortunately, this isn't what would come to be either as I must've proven to be some kind of exception to ALL THE ODYSSEY RULES! Instead, I found an exceptional way to get myself shut down, killed off, and COMPLETELY REMOVED from Odyssey prior to feedback day. Yet, NO ONE will explain how this came to be; although, I think it might be because of the words I made late on Saturday to my community on the topic of cat emojis. And I believe these messages sparked a great fear in Marica, and this caused her to INSTANTANEOUSLY and INDEPENDENTLY kill my Odyssey opportunity.

I've come to this conclusion because my situation went to shit quick – like in the minutes between 7:27 and 7:53 PM on Saturday, February 17, when I reread one of the three incoming communications from editor Marica, who had clearly been stressed and upset with content creators not properly formatting the next weeks' articles. The issue was so great that earlier in the day she had resent the rules to everybody. Well, in my moment of homework-finished happiness and knowing the following day would be bringing feedback on my first submitted piece, I decided to send a lighthearted text to Marica and my community.

So, I tapped out, "Marica, do you feel like you're herding cats?" and I followed my words with a cat emoji. But, because I chose to use an emoji, I also needed to scroll through numerous screens of the little things in order to locate the damn cat. But doing this ignited new thoughts and me, thoughts I believed were relevant to writing and thinking, so I sent a follow-up text expressing my belief essays could be written on the topic of emojis; a true and sincere thought for me! And I questioned my community about this by asking "This cat? Or that cat?"

Emojis, icons, pictures, colors, word layouts, ALL THAT'S SEEN ON THE SCREEN are part of something I studied at the University called digital rhetoric, and I found it fascinating! I had never really thought about it before, but everything we use and interact with through technology and on our computer screens is built and programmed by a human being. People update them. They choose what they should look like and what they should be. People decide what characters are relevant, and how they maintain relevancy. And all of these digital things allow for little acts of persuasion/influence with images, color, icons, and other made up mediums.

Sadly, Marica must not have seen it this way. Instead, I'd guess my texts about cat emojis cast me in the category of "crazed goofball" because, without a word of warning, I found myself unable to send my final message in GroupMe, instead a little yellow warning triangle appeared on my screen. Shortly after that, a personal text from Marica hit my phone, informing me GroupMe is for Odyssey related discussion at "appropriate times," and that we'd discuss this more in the following days. That's funny. In the rules I had read "GroupMe is the main channel of communication and a great place to share article ideas and to spark discussion about current issues." And I felt my thoughts fit that category.

Yet, that's a point I never got to argue with Marica as instead of discussing this in the next days, I received an email at 10:47 PM that same Saturday night. Marica had written to inform me I'd been removed from the UW Madison Odyssey Team. She justified her dismissal of me with reasons, but they were reasons outside of reality and impossible based on the timeframe. She stated her removal came after "careful consideration by her and her editing staff," along with some additional blame on my distance from the Madison campus, which was apparently causing me to be "unfit" for her team because of her "inability to equip me with tools necessary to be a successful creator" in the community.

But none of this makes any sense to me! If my status with Odyssey went from "On" to "Off" in less than thirty minutes, and her dismissal email came in before 11 PM on a Saturday, when was the time for "careful consideration?" Even sadder than this is Marica is studying "strategic communications," but she had to dismiss me because of an "inability" to communicate. How is this? Worse still, after she acted as THE SOLE DECIDER over me, an act outside of all Odyssey protocol, she has refused to communicate or further discuss her INSTANT REMOVAL OF ME. Not another word as to WHY or WHAT happened. She just stopped communicating. THAT WAS IT! One moment, every bit of me believed I was a part of something, something that might be useful to me, Odyssey, or maybe a reader and Odyssey, and then – I WASN'T!

As if this wasn't crappy enough to go through, I'd soon find the next four or five days would be needed to either send or receive emails with two other employees of the University and Odyssey as I inquired for just one reason why I had been removed so quickly. And here is where Marica again proved quite cold and cunning. Although she felt no need to make an explanation of her actions or justifications to me, she had no problem lying to others at Odyssey about the whole situation. After my email requests for information landed in the inboxes of others, a Content Strategist working in New York informed me that Marica's explanation of my removal had been because I'd been disrespectful with her by using "demeaning tones and communications at inappropriate times."

OUCH! This part kills me! I worked very hard to keep my reputation clean and I care about how I'm perceived and received by others. I'm certain I wasn't disrespectful to her, at least while I held the position. And if my prior to 8 o'clock Saturday night texts were at an inappropriate time, what about her 11 PM dismissal? For me, the worst part about all this Odyssey business has been that no one at Odyssey feels a need to explain what happened or what justified Marica's actions. Dang if this isn't THE EXACT REACTION that's slowly making me anxious, crazy, depressed, isolated, lonely, and confused by reality. It's being marked as different; far away and well removed from others, somehow in a region where rules no longer apply. And it's the very same nervous-making scenario I exposed about myself to Marica before I entered into her community.

Yet, all attempts to find an answer from three Odyssey employees have failed me. Instead, I was simply shut down and brushed off by all three. And here, I had even made their jobs easier with the inquiries I had sent as I asked directly; Was my content bad? Was something about my writing unfit? Was my formatting bad? What about my feedback? What did the editors think about my first piece? I mean, Marica killed me from the community, but that was mere hours from the time scheduled for me to receive the feedback. Couldn't you all share a word?

Dang Odyssey! Couldn't you at least call me a creep? An idiot? Anything besides no words at all? It's not that I like being insulted, but at least then I'd have some kind of reason. And making a reason could've been easy. My first submission contained a touch of mild cursing along with allusions to other people's points of view being desperately dumb; either because the person is young, or because they had chosen to be ignorant of reality. Yet, to my great regrets, I haven't yet received a reason to justify this insane removal of me. And honestly, it pains me! Without a logical reason as to what happened, I'm left with only me, feeling more lost and more lonely.

Although, that's not to say that I don't believe I have a fairly good idea of what went down. I think Marica, who had loads of inside information about me and all the things making me different from others in her community, couldn't stop herself from viewing me with all those differences. With this knowledge, I believe every word I wrote and shared with my community caused her to clench, pucker, tighten a little bit more until she freaked out! Her own fears that my "oddities" would somehow reflect back on her caused her reaction. Unfortunately, this means SHE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST ME! And that's not fair! When she decided to cut my feed, kill my profile, and remove me from the community, she behaved beyond the rules and regulations in place. I just wish one of the other two at the Odyssey could have thought about this similarly.

But that's not the case, and my brief eight-day history with Odyssey has broken another piece of me and taught me some terrible lessons: It's a matter of fitting in. Be sure to think and share – BUT NOT TOO MUCH! Tell us about yourself – BUT ONLY THE PARTS THAT FIT! Share your thoughts with us – JUST DON'T THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! And for everybody's sake – DON'T THINK OR TEXT ABOUT EMOJIS! Apparently, it's a topic far too racy to be discussed in mixed company and it will inevitably be Strike One, Two, and Three, along with grounds for IMMEDIATE REMOVAL FROM THE COMMUNITY!

Dang! I wish someone would've told me and saved me from this whole depressing matter. But unfortunately, no one did and it seems curiosity killed the cat and me simultaneously!