30 Wednesday Jan 2013
Posted in Life
I was walking through campus this morning and forgot to be sick of Appalachian State.
Not long ago, I thought I’d never be sick of life here. But five years is a long time. There are people in my classes who were just starting high school when I moved into my freshman dorm. It doesn’t feel like mine anymore; it feels old — and I am a restless person who likes new things. Continue reading
27 Sunday Jan 2013
Posted in Life
Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the ‘normal people’ as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say clever passwords like ‘Have a nice day’ and ‘Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like ‘Tell me something that makes you cry’ or ‘What do you think deja vu is for?’. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.
–Timothy O’Leary
25 Friday Jan 2013
Posted in Life
I just had a minor freakout. Okay, not a freakout, maybe, but a weird jittery feeling in my chest for sure.
Because (why else do these things ever happen), I got caught up on my Facebook-stalking-people-from-high-school duties, which I had been seriously neglecting for months.
Everyone who wasn’t married or engaged or pregnant is definitely married or engaged or pregnant now.
And it just filled me up (this is stupid and maudlin, get ready) it just filled me up with this sense of how much time has gone by since then. Since eighteen. And yes, there are so many possibilities still ahead, but some of them are gone. Continue reading
20 Sunday Jan 2013
It’s been a while since the Nieman foundation released its report on mastering the art of disruptive innovation in journalism. But it’s still intensely relevant today, largely because it offers an explanation (without meaning to) for the trouble news organizations are having with sponsored content and non-display advertising. Continue reading
19 Saturday Jan 2013
Posted in Work
This week, I accepted my first full-time journalism job at a daily newspaper in Lenoir, North Carolina. I’ll move forty minutes down the mountain when I graduate; til then I’m commuting.
I’ve been studying journalism for five years. This was the point. This is why I worked and gave up sleep and chased down interviews. I had one goal: A chance to find news and tell stories and string words together for a living. Continue reading
03 Thursday Jan 2013
“There are other writers who try for subtle and minimalist effects, but I don’t travel with that tribe. I like to make people look up and see me walking the high wire without a net.”
From “The Death of Santini,” by Pat Conroy, my favorite author, whose words are lush and dramatic and completely avoid the modern tendency toward spare, short sentences and stories light on emotion. This is the only type of writing I can understand wanting to do.
Posted by Meghan Frick | Filed under Work
02 Wednesday Jan 2013
I will be alone more. (Being on the internet is not being alone.)
I will work harder. The first step is just to do it, and it’s rarely as hard as it seems.
I will not diet, but I will drink more water and eat more vegetables and say no to more things that involve ranch dressing.
I will use my free time to actively further my career and build the life I want to live.
