I always seem to have quite the disappearing act, don’t I?
I was in the process of writing a ‘welcome back from your editor in chief’ letter for the next issue, when I got stuck – which caused me to realize I needed to be listening to my Ben Howard Pandora Station in order to write anything, because I have written every article from the past two and a half years listening to that station.
Of course, Ben Howard and related music is sad and filled with longing and makes me think of writing articles in my dorm room at 3 a.m., feeling lost, grasping at words…you know, the things I always feel.
So, here I am. Feeling lost, grasping at words. Listening to Ben Howard.
My senior year hasn’t even started and already, I’m overloaded with work – this whole editor in chief thing is overwhelming and exciting. However, when I’m sitting on my bed with nothing to do (or just not doing anything), I’m thinking about traveling abroad. All I want is a break from responsibility (and the biggest responsibility is just beginning), a break of stress, a break from reality – a break into the unknown. I want to travel. I want to leave everything and spend two months backpacking.
But I can’t do that for another nine months.
And I know these nine months will literally fly by, and I want to hold on to this last year of college with everything I can. I don’t want to graduate. Listening to Ben Howard makes me feel like I’ve missed out on making the most of my college years. How many times have I stayed home listening to these songs instead of drinking too much and listening to gross EDM?
Being a boss is hard. It’s hard because at all hours of the day, I’m subjected to calls/texts/emails regarding work…even on Thursday nights when I’m drunk at a bar and have to send a screenshot to my managing editor accompanied by a misspelled text that says “deal with this”
It’s also hard because I have to keep a wall up between my staff and myself. My staff are my friends, people I want to hang out with when I’m not working, but also people who I’m responsible for.
I’m constantly afraid I’m fucking up. I came home from our first big production day after working 12 hours and was up until 2 a.m., wrought with anxiety. My managing editor and I had a weird disagreement and it’s a lot of pressure to run an entire business when you’re 21. It’s worse when no one else seems to understand exactly what your job is – no, I don’t sit around in my big office editing stories. I’m paid $10 an hour to apply for grants, manage employees, put together a newspaper once a week and make sure we don’t get sued – or worse, shut down.
I spend a lot of time alone. At the end of a long day, I want to be able to go to a bar with a few friends and unwind. I want to relax in the sun on the weekends and not be stressed inside. But there’s no one.
I stopped listening to sad music and stopped writing for a long time because I thought I could get over all these feelings. I thought if I worked enough, watched enough Netflix, was busy enough, nothing could touch me anymore.
Ha.
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