Let's face it. Feelings can definitely suck at times, but they're a part of life. There are good days and bad days, but without working through the rough feelings we wouldn't have the happy ones.
If there's one thing I can say without a doubt, it's that I am not always too great at expressing my emotions. In all honesty, I just kind of have a barrier up between my feelings and other people.
Since I've started writing for Odyssey, I have been able to say a lot more than I normally would've had I not decided to pursue writing as a hobby.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of work and thinking that goes into writing, but I also am able to get so much out of it. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not saying things face to face to others, or maybe it's the way writing and publishing my thoughts to the public allows so many other people to read and relate to me and my stories, but either way, writing has become such an outlet for me within the past few months.
Some people have always enjoyed writing and that was their favorite part of school, but I wasn't one of those people.
I never really thought about writing and when I did write, it was for an English or grammar class, so I was usually given a prompt, which for the record, isn't doing me much good in letting some feelings out.
Not too long ago I saw something about becoming a member of the Susquehanna University Odyssey community, and I was debating on trying to join or not. I knew a few people who had used Odyssey as a place to publish their articles, but besides that I didn't have too much information.
I decided to go out on a limb and try it out and see how things went; that was undoubtedly the best choice I could've made.
Like I mentioned earlier, writing had never really been something I enjoyed or thought about doing outside of school, as a matter of fact I used to absolutely dread essays or writing samples.
I'm not really sure why I even looked into writing for Odyssey with my old mindset, but I guess things happen for a reason because it all worked out.
Since I've been writing, I've grown as a person more than I ever could've imagined. Along with now having a way to express my own emotions and be a real person, I've also found a way to connect with other people on a personal level and at times I feel like I can actually have an impact on other people's lives with writing.
I know that before I started writing it was nice to be scrolling through my newsfeed and then see an article about something I could relate to, but didn't necessarily feel comfortable talking about.
Those were the types of articles that gave me the optimism I needed then, and now I hope to be the person writing the articles to give others the same exact kind of motivation I was given.