Friday was supposed to be a great day. And in its own unique way, it was. But it was supposed to be a special day. Again, Friday found its own way to be special too, but it wasn’t anything like what I had in mind. I was supposed to wake up early, with no classes on the menu, and take care of the last of the homework I have for my final semester of freshman year. Then, I was supposed to take a car ride back to my home city of Cincinnati to rest for a couple days. My body had other ideas.
When I woke up, I could tell something wasn’t right, but I tried to go about my morning routine as routinely as I could. It took all of two minutes to figure out that wasn’t going to happen. A quick glance in the mirror showed that my uvula had swollen up at least three times its normal size and I was choking on it.
Awesome.
A 9-1-1 call, trip to the hospital, and shot of steroids later, and I began to feel better. But I had kissed my productivity goodbye. Homework wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do that day. No, I had planned on doing something much bigger. Something I had extremely high hopes for: my 100th blog post.
It was supposed to be one of the better things I had ever written. No one else would have cared (or even known) that it was my 100th post, but I would have, so I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be special.
But when I sat down to write number 100 on a cold, rainy Sunday night in Cincinnati, four hours away from the college campus that I now call my home, I realized that this was more fitting. It was supposed to be a long, flashy piece of writing that I would pridefully look at and declare as my own. I had dreams of people reading, reposting, and sharing—just like I do with all of my posts. Only better.
But that wasn’t very realistic, now was it? That’s not how it ever happens to me. That’s not how it happens in the real world.
I think even with all my efforts to be as much of a realist as possible, I have some sort of journalistic fantasy concocted in my head. One that doesn’t take the hard work and the years of paying my dues that I know it will to get to the top. In my head I think I have this delusion that someday, the right person will stumble upon my blog and send me straight to Sports Illustrated.
Who am I kidding? Who was I to expect some sort of… fanfare with this? When I found out I was hired as the news and sports director of my college’s radio station, there was no applause, no press conference, my name didn’t trend on Twitter, I just accepted it and got ready to work. When I received the email that I was the new sports editor of the school newspaper, I high-fived my best friend and then went back to work. I don’t deserve any recognition yet, why should I even dream about it?
So you know what? I’m glad that things didn’t go the way they were supposed to. Because they rarely ever do. So for this run-of-the-mill 18 year-old college sports writer, quietly hitting the post button on my 100th blog entry and not worrying about what happens later is exactly what I needed.
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