Ain't it punny.

I believe I love puns more than I ought to. There is quite the skill behind them and once it is mastered - by God (as my dad says, by the way I find that I talk more and more like him), they are pretty damn hysterical.

I received my edits back for my first draft of a story I'm working on about campus blood drives. My editor insisted on saying bloody fabulous and bloody brilliant the whole way through. I thought it was simply marvelous - mostly because the joke didn't occur to me at first because sometimes he's cheesy and foreign and says things like that. But when it hit me, I laughed and laughed and laughed...

Make fun of me all you want. I don't care.

You know what else I enjoy but hate a little bit at the same time? Irony.

Just as I've declared a different major, I finally deeply enjoy two whole weeks worth of Panther work. Amazing how the forces of the world find my incessant confusion absolutely hilarious. But no worries. Despite the fact that I have very much enjoyed the work I've done and the success I've had with actually impressing my editor, I still am confident with how I want my life to be.

Journalism is not a career, it is a lifestyle. And frankly, as much as I want to love my career and be dedicated to it, I am in no way planning on putting it before everything else in my life. Being a journalist requires just that. I actually very much enjoy leaving journalism on a happy note because I have proven to myself that I CAN do it - I am fully capable of being a successful journalist. I just don't love it enough to actually be one. I have the utmost respect for journalists and they are people who should be highly revered (only the honest and ethical ones of course). However, I have realized that I can no longer base my life's choices on the love of the IDEA of being a journalist. I have to base it on all the things that require me to actually be one. It's the difference between "I want to be that" and "I want to do that."

When I think of all the possibilities of my Art degree, I see the difference. I start thinking of all the jobs I could have and I get all sorts of excited about doing the work. With journalist career paths, I only ever got excited about being the journalist, the educator, the writer.

That was never clear to me before and I'm ecstatic beyond belief that I realized this.

And the feeling of it all? An uplifting freedom that I can only explain with one of my favorite Ryan McGinley photographs...