We didn't start the fire

Ok, so... I have an embarrassing story to tell.

Last month APO went to the gorgeous Saylorville Lake for our chapter retreat. We were going to have a bonfire and make s'mores and have fun and all that good stuff.

Personally, few things in the world make me happier than a bonfire. I love the smell. I love being outside. I love getting dirt on my shoes. I love eating melty marshmallows on sticks... I love it all.

So I was pretty jazzed about this. Before I left my apartment, I went to the wooded area near my parking lot to get twigs and stuff for kindling. It hadn't rained in a while so everything was pretty dry and I was all excited.

I brought matches, too, just so you know that's not where the story is going.

Anyway, we get to the fire pit and I'm going to start this fire.

First of all, it should be said that all fire starting experience I've had has been in Colorado where if you breathe warmly on a pine needle it will ignite. We have had lightly smoldering cigarette butts that have started the entire state on fire. That's how dry things are.

In Iowa, there's a little something-something called humidity that, even though you can't always cut it with a knife like you can in July and August, is kind of always there anyway which makes the supposedly dry wood not all that dry.

So imagine my shock when we lit match after match after match and our lovely twigs weren't catching hardly at all. And when they did, the burned out pretty much immediately.

That's not to mention the fact that in Colorado, it isn't hard to find firewood. I'm pretty sure I remember walking around and just picking up branches and bigger pieces of wood along those lines and using it in the fire.

They don't do things like that at Saylorville and we, in fact, had to buy firewood from a massive trailer-looking thing that turned out to be a vending machine.

45 minutes and most of our supply of paper plates later, with no lighter fluid (I was far too confident in my ability to start a fire to use lighter fluid), we had a small but growing fire started.

And hour later, almost everybody got bored and left. So there you have it. But I was still proud of myself. And embarrassed. :P

Some splanin' to do

Last week one of my English professors emailed me asking to give one of her first-year advisees some, well, advice. She was considering picking up a magazine major in addition to her English major and wasn't quite sure.

I emailed her and told her about the professors and the classes and why I decided to be a magazine major in the first place.

And the most amazing thing happened. I got excited again. I got excited because I was explaining to this student, a girl I have never met before, why she should be a magazine major. Why it's fun. Why it's worth it. What she'll get out of doing this.

It just reminded me of the time when I was excited about it, too. When hunting down sources for something was an exciting challenge, not an irritating chore. Interviews were cool. I loved saying I was with the media. I loved writing and reading and writing some more. It was all exactly what I wanted to do.

And I realized by talking to this stranger that it is still exactly what I want to do. I'm still having these weird problems with apathy, but I know now it's not because I don't WANT this. I do. I'm just trapped in this weird place where I'm tired of school but I'm terrified of it ending because I have NO IDEA what is on the other side. I know I'll be ok, but I still don't know what even that means.

But the good thing that came out of doubting myself this way was that it forced me to think about what else I want to do and I came up with some really cool options. I would love to do educational programming somewhere like the zoo. Or special event planning (like Race for the Cure or Night Eyes or other huge community fundraiser types of things like that). Or volunteer coordination for a non-profit.

I'm interested in all sorts of things and, yes, I absolutely would love to write for a magazine that's applicable to a topic I'm interested in, but there are so many other options. Maybe I wanted myself to not love journalism anymore because things are so grim right now in the industry. Maybe I wanted myself to move on to something else so I could be happy with what I'm doing after I graduate. It's really hard to say.

But at the end of the day I am in love with journalism, but with a lot of other things, too. And that's only good news because it means I have options. A lot of them. Because maybe I won't be journalism-ing soon after graduation, but I can still be doing something I love. I just have to find a job that qualifies.

I know it seems I'm terribly hot and cold these days about school, but I think that's nothing but realistic. Things are sometimes so great and so clear to us but then there are these obstacles and we get confused and lost but we have no choice but to forge ahead because we can either push through it ourselves or have time drag us through kicking and screaming. Some days I'm armed with boots and a machete and other days I have road rash on my butt.

The Bug

I've caught what's going around. Not H1N1 or the seasonal flu or the fall cold (as opposed to the winter cold and the summer cold and the spring cold) or pretty much anything else that comes with chesty coughs and stuffy noses.

My symptoms are as follows:

Sluggishness, loss of interest, finding constant distraction, day dreaming, severe procrastination and lack of sleep.

In high school we called it Senior-itis. Now I just call it apathy.

The closer I get to the end the less I care about pretty much everything. The good news is that I'm not alone... it seems to be a bit of a trend among seniors. Still, that doesn't make it better.

I just don't know why I don't care anymore. Do I not care because I'm just burned out after 15.5 years of school? Do I not care because I'm bored? Do I not care because magazine journalism isn't something I want anymore?

I suppose that last one doesn't matter so much because I'm not about to change my major or anything. Besides, I wouldn't know what to change it to. But it's such a horrible feeling and I don't know what to do about it. How do I motivate myself? I don't know the answer.

It's confusing and weird and I pretty much hate it. I'm not even enjoying my magazine capstone project all that much. I know it's a big deal and I know that this is my last journalism class at Drake and that most of my academic effort should probably be poured into this class, but...