the navel times and observer

There's been really just one memorable time that someone's told me I wasn't going to succeed and I proved them wrong (well, technically two, but then the first was said to my parents). Granted, nearly all the planet's faced more rejection than that and beat through it, so touting two times seems lame in comparison. But it's what I got, so I'm going to roll with it.

In any case in my journalism class with the "teacher" Pat Gathright in High School when she told me after spending most of the previous two years demeaning my performance at the newspaper which she hardly paid attention to that I wasn't going to make it at the University of Missouri journalism school. I mean she told me she had students go there before and tried to turn me off of the oldest journalism school in the country.

Crazy hag.

But in any case I took that on and honestly it wasn't nearly as hard as it was supposed to be to graduate from the journalism school.

And while that doesn't segue, I think that whole desire to better and motivate yourself, self-actualization and all that is just dead to me now. I have no goals, I'd like to get a date, which at 24 for as little intimacy as I've ever shared with anyone seems like I'm already screwed out of any opportunities to even have a relationship with someone.

And to that, I'm miserably out of shape. And while that is clearly from this weekend not the first thing on people's minds when they see me for the first time in several months it's definitely prominent on mine as to what a disgusting slob I've become.

Jobwise? Ha! I had one goal professionally from the 9th grade through last year: find a job in an at least medium-sized newspaper. Yeah, I had some good internships, than went to Toledo, where I found out I cave to nothing when I'm under the pressure of a big daily paper and its assignments. It was disgusting.

I went to Joplin convinced I was going to do a great job and build up a great clip package than managed to fail to meet my objectives in either my first assignment by finding anything to write about or in my second assignment in being able to put out copy that wasn't rife with errors.

Now I've got the job I took because I felt all other avenues were closed. The edge isn't in Lebanon, nobody really wants news in Lebanon. They seem to want what's lying around and put it on the front page, and that's just not like anything I've ever been taught. And I have nothing to show but long pointless stories void of any usefulness looking like the other drivel my fellow "reporters" shit out.

I just feel like I am a pathetic loser. Now granted for those three jobs I mentioned I got the first one with an interview and the second two I got with just one interview. In both cases it was the first and only job I applied for and in both cases I got them with a very well-respected reference.

Even on my other internships I got them from references for the most part in combination with a very good reference from someone with some major pull.

Yup, pretty damn low.