Writing was always something I used as an outlet, I was never good with expressing myself through word of mouth, communication, talking out my feelings, or explaining myself, but if someone handed me a pen and a paper I could tell them everything going on inside my head. If someone gave me a keyboard with a blank word document pulled up and simply just gave me a page of questions and an hour, they’d probably have me all figured out.

I’ve never been much of an emotional person. Sure, when I was a little kid my feelings got hurt easy, but as I grew older I found myself being able to control those feelings easier, and having less of those feelings in general. When someone asks me what’s wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to tell them, it’s that I’m not exactly sure why or how to word it. I’ve never been the best at relationships because I’m awful at communication, I’m awful at expressing my feelings. Even with the good feelings, the ones that make me indescribably happy, I can’t find the words to express that the other person, leaving them clueless on how I feel. I always chalked it up to not being a sappy person- which is true- but I also just don’t have a way with words.

I started writing at a young age with simple things like writing in a diary every day, which then progressed as I got older to writing for a public journal for my small VSCO account. This was when I learned my writing actually spoke to an audience other than myself once people reached out to me and told me how good my small journal pieces were and that that they were relatable in a way that was different than other pieces they’ve read.

I then thought to myself that I wanted to do more, expand a little more with my writing, which is when I found Odyssey. Although most articles you stumble on Odyssey aren’t of more personal nature, I tried to use this amazing platform to grow with my writing and with myself and to challenge myself and push myself with each article I write, diving deeper into myself with each word written.

Once I got to college I knew I wanted to continue my writing even further- I applied to work for the on-campus newspaper, the George-Anne, which I now write for as a sports reporter, pushing out one to two articles a week and I love it. I didn’t stop after the George-Anne though.

As I said before, writing has always been a way for me to express what’s going on inside my head while I can’t do that with spoken word. My most recent development of writing has circled back around to where I started. I started a daily blog which is a safe spot for me to figure out all the random thoughts going through my battlefield of a mind.

It seems to be pretty popular - the blog has a decent amount of followers and reaches up to 200 views per day. I enjoy writing so much, it’s a safe haven for me. Give me a pen and a paper and I’m in my own world, and for that, I will always be thankful I found and started to write.