Impact

I want to be the interviewee and not the interviewer.

I think that is one of the biggest things that I have been pondering as I round out my last semester of freshman year and start to fully settle into the career path I am embarking on. Yes, I love to write and that is how I ended up with “journalist” now attached to my name, but maybe my love of writing isn't enough for me.

Everything I’m about to say is in no way, shape, or form discrediting journalism because I am a firm believer that it is one of the greatest forms of storytelling and bringing people together. I am mores focusing on my own insecurities in thinking that I am not good enough to execute that purpose. I have always wanted to leave a mark everywhere I go and leave everything I've done knowing something was improved. Hell, I was voted “most likely to change the world” which is a stupid thing to hyper fixate on, but for some reason all I can think about these last few weeks is that I have wasted potential.

I know what you’re thinking, “Morgan, what the hell? You’re literally 19 how are you washed up already?” And you would be completely rational in thinking this because it’s true and my own fears are grounded in nothing but my own delusions. But I digress, something about being in my so-called “prime” makes me feel inadequate.

I know that I don’t ever want to peak, I want to continuously rise as the years go on. So maybe my fear is grounded in the idea that I don’t want these to be the best years of my life and I don’t want to look back and think that I did waste my potential and that I threw away any talent or drive I had. I’m afraid that there are so many avenues that I am missing out on for whatever reason that may be. Maybe it’s not even that complicated and I am just putting too much pressure on someone who hasn’t even been alive for two decades.

Whatever the cause is, I am using every last bit of energy I have to cherish and enjoy these last few weeks of my freshman year. Because it doesn’t matter if I will never be able to experience this time again, there are so many more things to look forward too and regret is not one of them.

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.

Anhedonia

I haven’t cried in almost nine months.

If you’re my therapist, you see this as a good thing, cause it means there hasn’t been anything particularly stressing to cause me to cry. And this could be true and one hopes it could be true.

But, if you are me, you see it as a slight issue.

Almost a year ago I was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and since then a lot of puzzle pieces have fallen into place in how I operate and function. However, the puzzle has grown a lot as well so the amount of unfinished puzzle hasn’t really changed and in fact might have increased. And within the unfitted mess of my life puzzle is the answer to why I cannot bring myself to cry.

I used to cry at least a few times a week, which isn’t necessarily healthier than where I am now, but I felt enough emotion to cry. There were times when I was overwhelmed with emotions whether good or bad and crying was the only form of release that could aid in dealing with said emotions. My fear now, is that I am void of emotion.

Every time I’ve spoken with my therapist, all I can say is I feel diet happiness. I do things that should promote a feeling of joy but I’m not entirely sure if I actually feel the joy or if I have just convinced myself that it’d be weird if I wasn’t happy so I should just be happy. It’s like I’m forcing myself to experience emotions and I’m doing it well.

Imagine after every time you laughed at something, you immediately questioned if it was forced because you don’t know if you remember how to genuinely laugh. That's not the most comfortable feeling in the world to say the least.

I did a quick Google search the other day, which is never a good idea when you’re worried about something and I’m not a big proponent on self-diagnosing based on 10 minutes of internet research, BUT something called Anhedonia almost sums up what I’m feeling.

To simplify the definition, it’s a common symptom of psychotic disorders and some depressive disorders, where the person no longer feels pleasure in anything. It’s like an extreme form of apathy. I don’t think I’m fully at that point, but I can feel myself getting there and I don’t really know what’s up with that. As much as I enjoy being a little more mentally stable now than I was a year ago, I miss being able to experience feelings.

That’s putting it bluntly but I miss feeling something and not constantly questioning if it’s real. I think this also plays into the new over dramatization of my life. Nothing feels relevant to my living unless I make it overly important and that is something I feel like I should probably unpack but that is neither here nor there.

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.

New Shirts Make Good Friends

There are two pieces of college advice that I would recommend anyone listen to above everything else: don’t bring any t-shirts and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

For that first one, I can testify that I have gotten around 13 new t-shirts within the first two weeks of school. You really do not need to bring a single t-shirt as they will fill up one of the precious dressers drawers the university has given you to use. So save yourself the folding and just leave your soccer tournament t-shirt from 2019 at home.

The second piece of advice is layered but has the same end meaning. The first week of college, hell, the first couple of weeks are a little painful. I felt extremely alone and isolated as I tried to form bonds with the other first year students that surrounded me. The worst part is that you know everyone feels the exact same way. Everyone has the sting of loneliness on their skin and hides it incredibly well. Paper thin walls remind you that you’re alone in your dorm as laughter rings between them. The sounds of people getting along and getting to know each other burn themselves into the back of your mind as you struggle to maintain connection with the person you met in the elevator two days ago. You do everything everyone tells you to do, you eat in public spaces and you ask everyone for their snap and you reach out, but it feels so forced and it feels so superficial. Like you are carving friendships into diamond and the pick just keeps snapping the second you feel like you’ve made any progress.

I met a group of people in my major and they all appeared to know each other for years as they talked and joked with one another. I felt so out of place and yet like I had found people. I haven’t spoken to most of them since that one day they invited me to play cards. Maybe I should’ve put in more effort, is it too late? I can’t tell anymore.

I have always been secure in doing things alone, but I was never really surrounded by people who were always with someone, doing something, to make me feel like I was actually missing out. I’ve never felt the pressure to socialize until now and it pains me a little more than I care to admit. But I digress. I am fighting the need to show off my good time when I get the chance to have one and I am learning to find peace in my solitude again. I never thought I’d have to do that but nothing is ever as simple as that.

At least I have 13 new t-shirts to fold to occupy my time.

Validation

I cling to every compliment like a baby koala clutches it’s mother. I carry them with me in every moment, riding the high each one gives me until I latch onto the next. My inability to shake this dependence upon validation has given me a self-esteem of zero, if you can even place esteem on a scale.

Most days are layered with an indescribable feeling of emptiness and longing. A craving for confirmation that I am not whatever lies at the bottom of the barrel overwhelms me and I go out of my way to gain that moment of euphoria that floods my ego in unhealthy ways. It’s probably not a healthy habit to rely on, doing anything to get a little bit of attention from anyone. Yet here I am, unscathed and safe. So it can't be that bad right?

Right?

Even I can’t convince myself of that. The rationale needed to justify my actions is nonexistent and I’m grasping again. Reaching for something that’s not there and trying to attain the unattainable. But it’s fine, I’m fine. Really. At the end of the day I am okay, content, neither good nor bad. Which is fine, I can live with that, for now at least.

But that high from an unexpected expression of validation is all I think about. I want to stay on that high horse of narcissism that makes me sound self absorbed and a little like a prick. Because in those moments I feel like my skin fits me, like I’m actually living my own life. I feel conscious and alive. I wonder how long I can ride the next wave of confidence because this last one barely carried me through one night.

One Month

Saturday marked four weeks since I moved into my dorm and entered the next chapter of my life. I can’t tell if it feels like it’s been a month or if it feels longer or even shorter. Either way I have yet to find my routine, my perfect balance.

I keep telling myself that I have found a good system and I haven’t burnt out yet or fallen behind so it’s not like it isn’t working. I just feel like I’m going through the motions and as each day goes by I lose a little bit of myself in the autonomy of it all.

I eat a sandwich and it feels like this is all my life has ever been, this one moment in time of eating this sandwich. And just as that moment began when I took my first bite, it’s over and I’m floating in a limbo between notable moments. Is that what life is? Just waiting for the next thing and hoping it brings you an ounce of feeling that reminds you that you’re conscious? Maybe, or maybe I feel this way cause I’ve only taken my meds twice while I’ve been here. That little pill bottle tucked away in the top drawer of my dresser is a reminder that I am battling two new life shifts at once. Maybe I’m just trying to ignore that part as I’ve done over and over again in hopes that this time I can successfully forget it out of existence. But I can’t and I won’t and I’ll just fall back into good habits only to fall out of them once more.

It’s strange. Knowing that I am on my own, living the life I have wanted for ages and yet I long for more. For something different. It’s almost as if I can’t allow myself to be content because then that means if I’m unsatisfied with how my life is, I am stuck there. I’m sure that makes no sense and I’ll read this back one day and cringe at the useless meaning I was trying to find while sitting in the smoothie shop I’ve grown too attached to. Either way I am floating in an abyss. Floating in a period of greatness and inferiority. A period of time that makes me feel like I’m thriving, unstoppable and yet weighed down by the discomfort of insecurity.

Four weeks and I can’t tell how far I’ve gone, if I even have. One month down and only eight more to go.