Connect the Dots

Everything happens for a reason…and I hate that I am constantly being reminded of that.

During my first semester at ASU, I applied for an internship interview day with various publication groups. Looking back on it now, I was definitely in over my head, mostly because I felt like I had to do everything I was “supposed to do” as a journalism student. Long story short, my specific day when all of my interviews were fell right in the middle of Halloween week and ASU’s homecoming week—which I was working. So you can imagine how I must’ve looked and sounded in each of my online interviews: barely holding it together and tired, attempting to look as put together and professional as I could. I fumbled through each interview running on a couple blinks of sleep and half a brain cell AND to add insult to injury I ended up in an interview for a position I did not sign up for and essentially was 100% not qualified for.

With all of this in mind, I was not super shocked when I found out no one wanted to hire me out of the 5 or so positions I had interviewed for. While I was not surprised by this I was disappointed in myself. I had failed the one thing I thought would give me peace of mind that I was choosing the right career path.

So as I was pulling myself together, trying to convince myself I was not a massive failure, I discovered Keysmash.

A production all about mental health was being put on by one of my favorite theater companies. It was like God had placed the perfect opportunity into my hands. (if it isn’t clear already, one of my dreams is to simply write and create art all about mental health)

I applied immediately on my phone and waited patiently for the next step. Now I can say I have written a script and aided in creating a full show. If I had received an offer back in the fall for something my heart wasn’t in, I wouldn’t have been able to do the one thing that floods my heart with joy.

I think back on the idea that “everything happens for a reason” a lot. There are hundreds of dots that connect in my life and yet every time I am faced with a new path, a new dot, I forget everything else. Reminding myself that there is, in fact, something better coming is so difficult to do, especially when worse things precede it.

No I Didn't Want to Stay In-State

If you’ve known me for a while then you know that one of my main goals for life is to leave Arizona and plant roots on the East Coast. As much as I love my hometown, I want to leave its confines and let it be “my hometown.” So, when college admissions season ran me over and left me for dead, there was an atmosphere of disappointment and apathy that covered the excitement and anticipation of college.

To be completely honest, I hated the fact that I was staying in state. I felt dejected and like I had failed myself in a way. I told everyone around me for years and years that I was going to the East Coast, that I was going to get out of Arizona and yet here I was attending a state school roughly 20 minutes away from home. It was the lesser of the three evils, my options at the end of the day were: Tucson, Phoenix, or Tempe, and only one of those places didn't make me want to cry.

I know it sounds like I’m being dramatic and I am, but there’s something sobering about settling for staying in-state that makes you feel kind of sad when you think about it too much. Most people assume I wanted to stay in-state, because if I didn’t then why was I here. I hate having to tell them that Arizona was the last place I wanted to be and I held a bit of resentment towards it. I hate the fact that I don’t get to have the same kind of “first time” experience that everyone else gets to have in college. Yes it’s all new but at the same time it’s all the same.

The restaurants, the weather, the scenery, the people, it’s all the same, even being in a different city, it’s only 30 minutes away. This is such a champagne problem and I’m aware of that, the fact that I even get to experience college and a higher education in any capacity should be enough for me. And I feel guilty that it isn’t.

I feel guilty for the fact that I wish I could transfer to somewhere new, but the thought of having to do the first year all over again makes me cringe. I don’t want to have to experience all of the lonliness and isolation that came with my first year no matter how much fun I’ve had. I hate that I want to leave because no matter how shitty I feel at times, I am also living my best life.

But I can’t look back now and start to feel regret for a time I’m living through now. I am making the best of my situation and I am doing well considering everything at hand, so while no, I didn’t want to stay in-state, I am okay that I am in-state.

My Dear Old Friend: Burnout

My new favorite item on my to-do list is simply: “ALL OF THE EXTRA CREDIT BECAUSE FOR SOME GOD FORSAKEN REASON YOU DECIDED THAT “just passing” WAS ENOUGH…NEWS FLASH IT’S NOT”

It speaks for itself and doesn’t really need any additional context but I’m gonna provide it anyways. I constantly joked before coming to college that “C’s get degrees” and that was the bar I was going to hold myself to instead of the absurdly high one I had set previously. Then I realized that I rely way too much on academic validation to ever do that. And then I ignored the well-thought advice of my peers, family, and therapist and have dug myself into a burnout cave where I simply am hanging on by a hair.

It’s funny how little I understand when it comes to time management. I don’t think I’ve ever said “wow I’m balancing really well” and was executing a time management schedule that wasn't unhealthy. Sure I thought I was the peak of balance, but in reality I was just too sleep-deprived and caffeine ridden to realize I was crashing and burning at a rate that cannot be viable.

I’ve convinced myself that being able to put everything into a calendar and show up to things on time are the only two qualifications one needs in order to be good at a work/life balance. Who cares if all I’ve consumed today is one can of RedBull and the lukewarm remnants of yesterday’s iced coffee, I successfully made the 20 minute drive between meeting #1 and meeting #2 of the day in under 15 minutes. Gold star.

As I typed that out I now realize how I sound to all of my friends and all of the dots are now connecting. They are all justified in their criticisms and I am simply incapable of being self-aware.

Anyways, I have finally come to the light realization of this fact and am now struggling to recover from the absolute dumpster fire I have created for myself. Since the beginning of this semester I have been completely blacked out, not in an alcoholic sense, in a I have no idea what I‘ve been doing with my time sense. In years prior, when I would feel the creep of burnout coming I would simply go into autopilot mode and just vibe on cruise control until I was able to stop crying and think my version of rationally. This time I reverted back to default mode, like Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. Something hit my ‘reset’ button and now I’m aimlessly doing stuff in hopes something will activate me.

And something did.

Instead of the regular amount of stress and fear of failure that used to jolt me back to reality, a wave 10x that has washed upon the shores of my consciousness and now I am trying not to drown in my own whirlpool of anxiety. I am so looking forward to the summer and next year as I have adequately (I hope at least) planned out my schedule to allow me to breathe and properly function in society without breaking down. Until then, I will just run on the fumes of burnouts past and pray that I can at least go home with a fraction of my sanity.

And Again And Again And Again

If someone told me where I would be right now, last semester, I would like to say that I would laugh in their face and tell them “No way,” but I know myself better than that. I would probably just look them in the eyes and sigh a sigh of acceptance and disappointment: a combination of emotions that are too close for comfort.

I am sitting in my room, starting a project that is due in two and a half hours that I have had two weeks to work on. I haven’t done laundry in who knows how long and there are more plastic bottles and paper dishes littering my desk and floor than contact lenses in my medicine drawer. In the last few months I have allowed myself to succumb to the painfully numb feeling of nothing. I though that my usual routine depressive episodes were bad but they are pitiful against this one.

I am plagued with apathy and disassociation. There is no motive in my actions and I aimlessly wander around doing mundane things that I don’t think I am fully aware or conscious of. I walked into a gas station the other day and bought peanut butter filled pretzels and didn’t realize that I was eating them until I was back in my car with the doors locked.

At least when I have gone into autopilot mode I have purpose in what I’m doing and I am doing things that I need to do. This is something drastically different. They are uncharacteristic things and random things and things that don’t invoke any sort of reaction or emotion. It’s like when you leave your Sims alone for too long and they start doing pointless things for no reason and for no one to see.

I was so excited last semester that I had avoided any big dips in my day to day life and I was actually finding balance and adjusting to my “normal”. Maybe it’s karma for not attending any church services since getting to ASU (minus the two time I went with my parents over winter break). Maybe this is just the universe telling me that I shouldn’t get too cocky and full of myself, I apparently needed a kick to the ego.

Whatever the reasoning is, I am determined to fight it because nothing is more motivating than spite. And I intend to prove myself wrong and break out of this insufferable cycle.

Eyes Bigger Than A Schedule

Last semester I boasted about my newfound ability to say “no.” Now I am searching for where that common sense went in the last few months.

One of my fatal flaws is that I am incapable of understanding what "too busy” looks like. I have always been someone who sees an hour of free time and feels guilty for not filling it with any kind of activity. My main goal for freshman year was to break that pattern of time management and learn to create a healthy work/life balance. It got there, for a short moment in time, and yet here I am looking at a calendar with spaces of nothing and all I can think is “I’m not doing enough.”

And in my heart I know that’s not true. I know that just because I have one free afternoon doesn’t mean I am lazy or inferior to others who are out and about, it just means I have free time and that’s a good thing.

I don’t long for the days where I was running myself into the ground to the point of physical sickness and yet I keep coming back to that mindset.

The reason I feel so inclined to reflect on this unhealthy habit is that I am currently on hiatus for two of the projects I am a part of. We are using the month of March to focus on independent study and research so our regular meetings during the week aren’t happening. As I sit in my room with nothing to do on a Monday night for the first time in months, I am stricken with guilt and convince myself that I am a waste of space that contributes nothing meaningful to society. Which doesn't hold any actual merit outside of my own mind but I haven’t been able to convince myself of that yet.

A Year Ago Today...

If there is anyone who doesn't know how to read a room, it’s Snapchat. Nothing says “good morning” like a good old reminder that I was getting rejected right and left a year ago this month.

It’s funny to see where I am now compared to where I was imagining myself last year. If you had told me that I was gonna be at ASU and not completely hating it, I would’ve laughed in your face and then proceeded to refresh my email waiting for my college decisions. And I then would’ve choked on my ego after a target school waitlisted me.

I recently went home this past weekend (I say that like it was an excursion versus a 30-minute drive away) and my dad prompted a discussion on what I thought about how it all played out. And as much as I want to say I have regrets and I wish I had just done one more thing, I know in my heart that’s not true. To quote my dad, “You did your best for the time you did it.” And that is the only real thing that stops me from wishing I had done anything more, because for everything that I was battling, I did what I could and gave it my all.

But hindsight is always 20/20 and looking back on it, I can kind of see where I “went wrong.” For years I have had a strong sense of self, and I think I stuck a little too close to that idea of me and got lost in what it meant. I convinced myself that everything needed to have meaning and that meaning needed to be profound and I needed to be thought-provoking. In reality some things mean nothing and even if they do mean something it’s okay if it’s at a first grade level of depth.

I was under the impression that I was ahead of the game and was more “developed” than my peers. Call it a superiority complex or whatever, but I felt like I had to be more than what I was sometimes. And a year ago if you had told me this, it would’ve shattered the small amount of self-esteem I had left, but today it’s just a truth. Because there is such thing as too high a standard and that happens when you expect flawlessness in every movement and every word.

I’m grateful I didn't get into some of those schools and had to face the fact that I was pushing myself too hard because I have grown from it and am able to actually appreciate and see that growth now.

So whether you’re also stuck in your hometown for college or just got news that your dream school denied your application (because they don’t actually know you as a person), I promise there’s a silver lining somewhere.

Biased?

Right before Spring Break, I had to do an assignment for one of my classes through Twitter. The premise was to get used to using social media as a form of reporting and becoming familiar with how to optimize your reach on different platforms. But it also brought to light the emphasis on our image and how we carry ourselves in the public eye.

While I do see the importance of maintaining a clean record and being cautious of what you put online, I also find that there are a lot of personal beliefs and unique qualities stripped away when your image is too closely monitored.

One of the major ideas that I have been battling as I learn more about what I want to do for the rest of my life is where Morgan as herself starts and Morgan as a journalist begins. And the more I actually think about it, there isn’t a clear line and I don’t know how I feel about that yet.

I am an opinionated person. I thrive off of winning debates and feeling the wash of accomplishment after being vindicated. Could possibly be a toxic trait but that’s beside the point. I don’t want to have to sacrifice the personal pieces of myself for the sake of being seen as trustworthy. I think that the idea that absolute neutrality coincides with integrity is too black and white.

That idea is honestly what’s been keeping me from sharing more of my work and what has scared me into unpublishing a lot of my work. Most, if not all, of the people I know who have their own websites, feature work that is a lot less raw and personal than mine. Does that make me a less reliable source for news? It might and that’s the main thing that I think has prevented me from finding a total home in my major and the journey I have just begun.

I don’t want to disregard the importance of objectivity and accuracy because I believe in those two things and think they are of the utmost importance when sharing current events. I just don’t know yet if I can be that perfect unbiased voice.

Confused in College

In the spirit of being fully transparent, I never dreamed of being a journalist. I never aspired to be a big name broadcaster or a particularly famous publisher. Journalism just seemed practical to me, which now as I learn more about the profession I have decided to dedicate my next four years to, isn’t as stable as I pictured it. However, in my defense I was looking at going to Emerson to major in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, so either way I was setting myself up for a bit of job security disappointment.

Not only did I choose Journalism as my major because I figured it would grant me the most job opportunities post grad, but it was also the only major in my desired field of work that would take me away from Tempe. Fun fact, I am an Arizona native who grew up a 5-minute car ride away from the Tempe campus of ASU. Now no shame to the Tempe campus, I have plenty of good memories of it, like hiking A-mountain after the last day of my freshman year of high school and renting out a theatre at AMC with my friends for Halloween, but after seeing Mill Ave for the hundredth time, you would also get tired of your environment. And I still enjoy all that Tempe has to offer but now from a 30-minute car ride from Downtown Phoenix. Yes, the Cronkite School is housed on ASU’s Downtown Campus and that was the selling point for me. It wasn’t the world-wide esteem that I later learned about the Cronkite School, no, it was just the fact that I wouldn’t be stuck in Tempe for the next four years and it wasn't Tucson!

I feel weird telling people why I chose Cronkite now that I know of its renown and status in the journalism world. I’m surrounded by students that turned down other schools that hold much more weight in my mind to come to Arizona and study in my own backyard. A part of me feels like I lucked into a spot here. I never wanted to be a journalist, I just wanted to write and tell stories, which I guess is what a journalist by definition is, but I digress. If you told 17 almost 18-year-old me, that I would have imposter syndrome at Arizona State University, I would’ve hit you with the printed PDFs of my college rejection letters I saved as a memento of my disappointments.

But I wouldn’t be wrong. I felt so ahead of the game prior to coming to ASU. I had a website and a LinkedIn and I was getting a solid 5 views a week on my content. Clearly I was just awaiting a contract for my big brand deal so I could forgo the whole college thing completely. But then I was tossed, a big fish in a little pond, into the freaking ocean. Suddenly I was Nemo’s mom and everyone around me was a barracuda on the prowl. People were doing things I thought I would eventually get to in a year or so. Overnight I went from established and determined to afraid and intimidated. Yes I pay attention to the news, I think you’re ignorant if you don’t, but I wasn’t prepared for how “news centered” everyone I met was. I felt lost as people name dropped broadcasters who I only knew as “guy on ABC that wears a tie.” My peers spoke as if they were on live television and they carried themselves like they actually knew who they were.

I used to be that and oh how I long for that self-certainty. As I finish up my midterms and head into the home stretch of my freshman year, I am coming to the terrifying realization that I actually have no idea who I am or what I want to do with my life. Everyday I find I am steering farther and farther away from what I thought I wanted and yet I'm not close to anything. I am drifting in a sea of opportunity with nothing but my own fragile mental state to keep me in check, and if you know me, then you know exactly how terrifying that actually is.

At my core I know I’ll find my footing eventually, find my spot, but until then I’ll just flail my arms around and pretend I know what I’m doing. To my peers who also feel like they are wasting their potential, I promise we will make it out the other side.