Love & Location & A Dash of Angst

There are an infinite number of small inconsequential actions that lead to us falling in love with the significant other we have right now, but one huge factor (arguably the biggest) is where you live. Too numerous to count are the chances that we end up with the person we inevitably end up with. So, I guess my question for fate is, do we love this person more than we could really ever love someone else, or do we love them because they were accessible? It would be impossible to say really. I suppose to prove the theory, you’d have to have the capability to meet all 8 billion people on this earth to make it a fair judgement.

A lot of times, I see people grow up in a small town, fall in love in a small town, and then get married. It’s sort of archaic, to be entirely honest. Back before easy wide-spread travel and social media, you were solely at the mercy of location to find someone to love, but now that’s not actually the case. They took their pick out of the smallest pool of people and said okay, this one is good enough. Now, say that same person lived in NYC with 8.5 million people. Would those two still have fallen in love and settled down? Or would they have met someone who they preferred exponentially more? I am willing to bet that people who are entirely in love would be opponents of this idea. It’s not even realistic to say that you’d still find that same person and still fall in love and get married. I know people say it as a metaphor of sorts to exemplify their undeniable and infallible love, but that’s also a lie.

Love is always infallible, aggravated so by the fact that life gives you, at best, in a small town, roughly 200 people to choose to be recipients. In some ways, location mimics just a massive arranged marriage. You are given the illusion of a choice, but it’s not really. Now, I get that I sound bitter as fuck right now, but it is honestly so frustrating that there are so many people out there that could be better for you, but there is no way of knowing and no way of ever finding out. Life, man. It’s weird.

That being said, don’t get twisted up in knots over one human being in your small town. One human, who by chance, you happened to know only because your parents and their parents settled in the same place. There is no significance of that positioning, there is no grand divine plan or fate working its magic.

Humans change so much it’s a wonder that some root themselves so firmly where they were planted. Or, to continue the metaphor, allow the weeds that grow around them to ruin and stunt their growth. You weren’t planted in one spot. You were just born in a place and that place happens to be a town with people, who you are obligated to share nothing with, other than the fact that you were both born in the same vicinity.

Okay, enough of the deep shit. Basically, I suppose, whatever, dudes, I am preaching on the topic that’s been beaten to death time and time again, which is that everyone needs to leave their comfort zone, get out of the familiar, and just wander. Not too long ago, I had deluded myself into believing that where I am from was going to be an okay place to live. Sure, where you grew up is okay, but take full advantage of the age in which you live. You didn’t get the chance to be living in 2017, to stay perennially in your tiny bit of the world with the tiny bit of the human race that it contains. Your geographical confines really aren’t confines at all. They are a starting point. So go.

The Life and Times of Sucking at College

I considered writing something somewhat political today, but then I told that 5-second thought to fuck right off. I am so sick and tired of reading stuff that is partisan fueled and drenched in limited information and mediocre and vaugely understood facts. No, we don’t need anymore of that. I actually want to talk about college and what happens when you suck at it (in case you literally did not read the title). I graduated high school in June of 2015 with one goal in mind, to finish 6 years of school and become a Nurse Practitioner. Boyyyyy, did that not go as planned. First of all, I’m not entirely sure why they let 18-year olds try to map out the rest of their lives. It puts a figurative weight on your shoulders that seems more like a burden than the “freedom” they tend to label it as. I am now 20 and nothing that I planned two years ago still holds true. I was your typical high honor roll student who got accepted into an incredible and highly selective program. For me, college always seemed obligatory. There was no other option, but back then that was okay because I excelled at school. I never thought for one second that I would hate college or be terrible at it. Why should I? It wasn’t until I got there that I realized how awful it was. My first semester I worked my ass off and scraped together a 2.7 GPA. It was such a demeaning feeling. I had never done this bad at school and it was an utter fall from grace (or so it felt). I didn’t even have the “partied too hard” excuse to apportion the blame to, as I never attended a single party or made any friends that semester. Meanwhile, I saw my former classmates thrive at college and it made me want to scream “how are you doing this college thing so successfully??? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS”. I was about one caffiene-induced rage sesh away from selling my soul to the acadamia gods in return for even a morsel of passion for school.

I went home for winter break and started the transfer process to another school immediately. My parents were sceptical and claimed that I just had to give it some more time and I thought bullshit. I figured it was just the school and by January 15th, I was at my orientation day for my new university. Fast forward to the end of my second semester and I still had not made any friends or joined any clubs, BUT my GPA had increased to a 3.0 so I thought, Things must finally be going right.

Uhm, wrong.

I started my second year of school coming off of a massive break-up. As if I needed more of a reason to hate school, I got a beautiful depression mental mosaic to take back with me in my head. Not entirely conducive to the “loving college” mindset. I went home every single weekend for two semesters straight, I skipped class at least 2 times a week, and I turned in, maybe, every other assignement? It was the worst I had ever been at school EVER and it had me so pissed off at myself. My motivation was so astonishingly low and my imment failure so glaringly obvious. Did I have the drive to care? No, not really. Did I try to fix it? Absolutely not. It looked as if I went through the “Expectations” bin in my head and single-handedly tossed out every one of them. I finished off the 16-17 school year with a 2.6 average GPA and thought Nice, Morgan. Fucking brilliant you are. Well done.

Now, it is almost August and I have decided not to return to school. People have a lot of opinions about the college drop-out and, believe me, I do too, but when I say “college isn’t for everyone”, I mean it. It is perfectly okay to not like college. It is perfectly okay for you to decide that it is not helping you move forward in life. If it’s not making you happy, then it is not ultimately helping you succeed. Dropping out of college; however, does not mean that you settle. Go out and find something new. Do something different. Do something that scares you. I am moving to Nashville by November (hopefully) and I am scared as hell, but it is the first time in a long time that my future has excited me and that’s the goal. Your future should excite you. You shouldn’t be indifferent towards it. So here is my advice now in hindsight of my rough realization, If you love college, PLEASE stick with it because you will go far. If you hate college, give it a little time, possibly transfer, but don’t give up on it immediately. If you have, however, given it the best you had and still hate, then leave. No one is making you stay. You are too damn young to hate what you’re doing in life. Choose something that makes you happy and your motivation and your passion and your drive will all come flocking back and it is on the wings of those birds that you’ll fly.

2012 Internet Culture?

If you ask me, 2012 does not seem as if it was half a decade ago. In my last post, I talked briefly about how different internet culture was in 2012 compared to now, or at least, in my experience it is. By 2012, everyone had been on Facebook for quite some time. Facebook was THE social media platform. It had long since replaced MySpace and was picking up speed very rapidly; however, the problem was becoming that literally everyone was using Facebook, including old people. Adults were one thing that millenials did not have to worry about on MySpace, but on Facebook? They collected and gathered by the millions, sharing recipes, posting pics of their middle child’s soccer game, a 10th wedding anniversary post, boundless obligatory “happy birthdays” on people’s walls. They sort of joined and made young people move over for their cringy attempts at social media. For me, 2012 was when I quit using Facebook and moved to Twitter and Tumblr. I never deleted my Facebook profile, I just quit checking it and posting, which was good because now I am back on it quite regularly. So there I am, 15-years old, ravenous for Harry Potter fandom content. Tumblr was a must. It was fit to burst with fandoms and memes. The site was hilarious to me. I would sit on there for hours and hours and laugh at this (what I thought then) high quality humor. I would sit during study hall in school and use up data on my very basic smart phone and show everyone my reblogs for the day. They would, in turn, show me a funny post on Facebook and I would internally chuckle because I had seen that months ago. I was at the top of the meme heirarchy in 2012. Besides Tumblr, I really got into Twitter. At that point, not many of my local friends had one, let alone used it frequently. I used it mainly to follow celebrities and I tweeted things that I’m glad are 5 years deep in my timeline. Good and buried under the tweet progression of my life. Twitter made you feel so close to famous people and today it still does (though sometimes I think we wish we had a little less of the POTUS on there). It was like the first social media to allow you to quickly and concisely communicate with anyone at any time. Those two sites were my escape from the “stuck life”. I felt a little bigger than myself and felt just a tiny bit more important. To my friend group, I felt revolutionary. Fast forward to today, I still use both Twitter and Tumblr daily, along with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The platforms have changed so much, but I will forever love the evolution. Social media gets such a bad rep nowadays, but I think it’s the best thing to happen to the “stuck kids”. Connection to something other than the same 100 kids you see every single day for 12 years is like liquid gold. As I think about my move to Nashville, I like to think about how social media is actually going to keep me connected TO my small town. I will get to watch, from afar, the drama, pettiness, and smallmindedness that still festers there, without actually having to dwell within it. Essentially, god save the social media!

hang in there, babe.

I am reviving an old aspiration with this post. I had no idea that downloading and sifting through WordPress would cause a resurrection of a 15-year old version of myself. When I first downloaded this app, I was pretty sure this was the first time I had ever signed on to something like this, however, when I entered my email address I was greeted with the “this email is unavailable” message. So, I’m like, WHOOOOOO is using this email address? (Spoiler alert: it was just past me confusing present me). At 20, literally no one wants to have a run in with their 15-year old self. I had uploaded an awful profile picture of me wearing a Harry Potter t-shirt and making sure that you focused on the shirt more than my horrendous looking face and hair. To be fair, 15 was the last “ugly” year before I had my first glow-up (I had a second glow-up at 20, but I’ll talk about that in another post). So, really if I could say anything to this WordPress ghost, it would be to hang in there because you’ll start loving profile pics instead of dreading them. My usernames were basically the same stuff I have been using forever and still continue to use, but my profile bio?? I won’t recite it word for word, but if you think about what a Tumblr-addicted, Harry Potter loving girl would post in 2012, then that’s roughly what we were working with. I read it, cringed and laughed, then quickly deleted it and typed in something simple and hasty, anything to replace that ancient fossil from 2012, tucked away in this website for 2017 me to unearth. It is so funny to think about how much internet culture has changed in five years. In some weird way I miss how fandomy it used to be, but in other ways it definitely belongs in the archives. Getting back to the fact that this is my first post, I had originally joined this website as a 15-year old, stuck in a small town in Pennsylvania, who was so constantly frustrated with how stuck she really was. It is very liberating to log on, now 20, having lived in 2 other places, and planning on moving in November to Nashville. I now have the freedom to support myself financially to do these things that 15-year old me wanted so badly. I had never posted anything back then because I simply did not have anything to write about. I hated where I lived, I hated going to school every day and having the same boring routine. I was hopelessly lost in fandoms and slowly developing an eating disorder that would last another year. All of this will only be the tip of the iceburg for me because the next 5 years get incredibly interesting. I wish there was a way I could open this up in the past, for this whole thing to work in reverse, so that 15-year old could read and be reassured that life is not going to be so stationary. She DREADED being stuck where she was, but hey, it didn’t take long for things to change and pick up speed. She’d be so excited to see that this life is our own now and I am finishing what she so clumsily and half-assedly started. YOU’RE WELCOME!!! Life comes at you so fast, yet so slow all at the same time. It isn’t till you’re standing still that you realize how far you’ve come.