I've been writing with the Odyssey for about five and a half months now and a lot have people asked me the same question. "What made you so passionate about writing?" And in my article this week I figured I would answer that more in depth than I normally do when people ask me.

I've been writing for years. Short stories, songs, poems, etc. I used to sneak out onto my grandma and grandpa's roof and write in a notebook almost every day. I looked at it as a way to escape and/or express what I'm feeling. All my life I felt as if I wasn't allowed to show emotion and be myself. So writing everything I was thinking down in a notebook was my way of getting my emotions out without feeling like I was bothering anyone.

As I got older, the feelings I would write down would eventually turn into poems. Rhyming was easy and I felt like they flowed nicely together. It was a way to organize my thoughts. And eventually, they turned into lyrics. I'm not much of a musician, but lyrics would just pour out of me whenever I sat on that roof. I had at least six notebooks full of poems and songs that I had wrote while I was in high school.

When I was a senior in high school I took a creative writing class. There, I learned to write short stories. That was an even better escape. I could make up my own characters, their stories and lifes, and how it all ended. I loved that class for so many reasons, but mostly because one of my favorite teachers was in charge of the class. She made me feel like the content I was turning in was amazing. She would always leave cute little comments on my papers and it really encouraged me to keep writing. To this day, I still write short stories when I have the time.

Unfortunately, after I graduated I had to stop writing for a while. Between going to school full time, working full time, and helping my grandmother who was in and out of the hospital a lot I didn't really have a whole lot of free time to write my name on a piece of paper much less think of and type up an entire story.

Then, in the fall of 2016 I saw an old friend from school make a post on Facebook encouraging people to be come content creators for the Odyssey. I loved reading articles that had popped up on my news feed from time to time and had always wondered how to go about writing for them. I took my a leap of faith and messaged her immediately. Since then I have written a ton of articles. I love the community I write for and everyone in it. I've made so many amazing friends due to the Odyssey and I wouldn't trade them for the world.

But I also want to send a special "thank you and you're great" to Kirsten. She knows a lot about me and my every day life now and always messages me to make sure I'm okay. She's also super understanding when it comes to life and how it gets in the way sometimes (or almost every week) and allows me extentions past our "due date" for our articles. I'm super thankful for her and all she does for me.

I'm also thankful for all of you. The readers. Without you we would be nothing. Writing would be a chore, more than a hobby. I can speak for my entire community when I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading our articles and sharing them with your friends.

Until next time!