The day that I began to write this post, I received an email. It was from a professor of mine sending me well wishes and I’m reminded once again that after December 21, I will be done with academia for good.

I was still unsure how to feel with this six-year phase of my life finally coming to a close but after receiving that message from that particular individual everything is finally hitting me. There is a part of me that mourns the sunrise of my adult prime as I move on to focus on creative aspirations, career moves, and continue to go down my current path of life to see where it may take me. A part of me is relieved that I don’t have to deal with grades and being a broke college student anymore. And a part of me simply feels numb, reeling from an indescribable phantom pain emanating from somewhere within me that I can’t locate—what that means, I’m uncertain but I don’t fear it. At the very least, if anything within my mental goes south, I still have this place to vent in various forms (in addition to wildly tweeting across social media).

As my semester and subsequently the year comes to a close, I can confidently say that I’m glad that I started this little experiment with The Morning Owl. What initially started as something to simply keep myself active with writing regularly has been a success in my book. I’m aware that my presence online has been virtually nonexistent but I’m glad that I got out of my comfort zone and made myself play the role of an annoying social media manager. So, going into 2022, Substack analytics be damned, I look forward to continuing to write about anything as I deal with the rest of my fucking life from here on out.

However, I’m not out of the woods yet until this coming Tuesday. So, allow me to talk a little bit about final project chaos specifically from my poetry class and to maybe address my poetry posts here for the past few months.

First of all, sorry for subjecting everyone to my word stews. Some of you might be happy to know that, yes, I have made substantial edits to most, if not all, of the works posted here. I mean, I sorta had to since all but one of the poems are being compiled into a portfolio for my dreaded poetry course. And whether or not the writing medium has finally clicked in my brain or I’ve just been spending too much time revising those 20 or so poems, I’d like to say that they are not bad. A bit archaic with how they read, sure, but none of them really stand out in terms of cringe or plain mediocrity. I’m eager to declare though that I do intend to submit a couple of them despite having no aspirations of being a poet simply to spite my professor for that course (they were not the one who sent me the congratulatory email mentioned earlier). So, keep your fingers crossed out for me when I finally come around to sending those out and I’ll keep everyone updated if anything actually does come back positive.

In the meantime, I want to let resident readers know that I will be taking a two-week hiatus to enjoy the holidays, plan out new ideas for posts here, and to give myself a bit of a breather. I hope everyone enjoys themselves these next few weeks and whatnot.

Thank you for reading this edition of The Morning Owl. If you liked what you saw here, please leave a like, subscribe, leave a comment, and share this newsletter. Until we meet again, do take care.