Whoosh, as heard from the spiral's midst.

There's some things that give me trouble every day.


1. Whether I'll be good or not:

there's so much concern to be had about one's own image, that it's logistically hard to completely look out for oneself and be confident in what one is doing throughout each and every day to successfully reach out positively to all the people that one would want to reach out to and avoid flirting with those who would not necessarily want to talk to. In short, it's a tough business, putting oneself out there. And thus, I appreciate those who do that daily without giving any shits. It's a really hard thing, because no matter who it comes from, the words "not that good" will stick with any writer until the day he puts the pen down (Tony Kornheiser) for good.


2. Whether I'm qualified —

It's been tough, being a collegiate prospective journalist. There's a lot of me, and all of us went through high school in roughly the same time frame, seeing and reacting to the same things, and grasping the same concepts year in and year out as me. In short, each one of these mofes has had the same experience as me, wants the same job as me and so: it's up to me, literally, to be better at experiencing life than all of my peers. Fuck that responsibility, it's just, frankly, too much. I can't be expected to be better at living than anyone, and I fully expect any of my peers to be able to come to the same conclusions as I am, to be able to make the same rational judgments, and to be able to think the same way about sports as I am. There's a lot of pressure about the competition of being a prospective sports journalist, and having to maintain yourself to David Aldridge-like standards. There's so much to every game that we don't know, and yet, here we are, responsible for putting together a paper.

A newspaper.

Every single day. And, among those of my peers who plan to do this with their life, it seems as though I may be the one to have to lead this boy brigade of sportsjournalistic fools who wanna be righteous and sports journalists in their own lives. It's really hard to commit yourself to the prophecy of interpreting and successfully analyzing sports. And, yo, and.....

I hope you saw my sports column today. I wrote about the consumption of sports, and how it's SO much different than being a sports fan in any other era. It's really hard to be able to accept whatever ESPN tells us, and even harder to — what? — question that and be able to compile counterevidence against that. And be able to prove ESPN wrong. Though, multiple times, it's able to be done, with the slightest bit of fortitude.

It is on us; the new'ns. The ones who can be in college anymore. ;;; to question the media emporiums of today, and say 'hey, maybe you're wrong, media' and prove them so.




I'm just a little bitter. that's all. Sometimes sports minds are restricted by the current standards, and that only leads to consecutivity and continuous bullcrap. ...

3. Whether it's worth it

Oh my. This is the big one. You see, my life is headed down a road of sadness and poorness unless I become rich, which seems obvious, but isn't as much as you'd think it would be. I'm in college, which runs about 27 G a year, most of which is straight up debt waiting to happen, and so I have to be willing to commit myself to missing out on money. Which is fine, so long as I'm able to make good on this college degree business and be able to churn out a job that'll pay for that hefty bag'a debt n crap.

Debt sucks. But it's, at a certain point, the only way to get ahead, as if it's a loan of experience. May society grant you this expensive endeavor, sure, as long as you can learn from it and make it worth their while for the future. And that's the responsibility.

The responsibility. The pitch, the idea behind it all.

The whole notion of investment. And it's so interesting that peers of mine had been invested in.

It's so interesting, the journey to pay it all off. And so, yeah, what it ends up being about, yeah, is the process of becoming enough of a worthwhile person so as to make it worth society's while for throwing money to you to spend to improve yourself; giving you the opportunity to improve.

You better make it worth it: to yourself, to your surrounding folks, to society. To every thing.

You better take yourself, put it to the grindstone, and turn yourself into something fucking cool.

That's it. Are  you worth it? Or are you a waste of time?

Being somewhere in the middle of this equation is, possibly, the most exhilarating part.

Oh, yeah.
--Eliot Sill