Catching Up

It is safe to say that I have let this blog slip to the wayside recently (read: the past six months). In fact, it never has really taken off since its inception. Perusing Perugia chronicled every detail at length of my time in Italia, and after being back for the school year at Clemson, I decided to start this blog. I noticed times during those semesters where I would have a concept that I would have run away with sitting on a train back from Milan, spent three days straight writing, and trekking to school to upload it. I still get those epiphany moments, quite often actually, but the motivation has never been there to sit down and write. Topics sat on a list ignored, and instead of a documentation of my life I am left with a collection of random accounts where passion to write or the spur of the moment overcame the desire to do something else. After a period of time, it just seemed overwhelming to jump back into it. Perusing Perugia is such a detailed account of my trip, I can look back at it and relive almost any point of my study abroad experience - and on many nostalgia-filled occasions, I have done just that. So where do I pick up from, when I have never really left off from a point at all? I guess I just jump right into it. I hope to make a few different installments, to keep this from being a marathon post and ease myself back into the blogosphere.

To set the scene, my senior year forced me to deal with the confronting reality that in the highly competitive world of sports marketing, I was about to graduate with a Sports Marketing degree and no prospects of getting a job with it. This post will allude to my thought process that shaped my life plan for my senior year. After not being accepted to the summer program at UGA, I was staring down the prospects of what I would do for the time between graduation and starting a program in the fall or January. I ended up making a last ditch effort, applying to a load of internships through March and early April in whatever positions in sports I could feasibly meet the requirements for, mainly through the league websites of the NHL and MLS. Nothing I had really studied in school, but anywhere to try to get my foot in the door. I did not hear back from the majority of them, and the rest I got a generic "thanks for your interest" response. Now I was really up a creek, about to graduate and with no prospects of a full-time job, part-time job, or internship, and only a hope to be accepted into further studies within nine months.

Studying for my last undergraduate final in the library with Adair, I mindlessly checked my email around midnight to distract myself temporarily. I was completely unprepared for what was waiting in my often unchecked GMail account. It was an email from my childhood soccer team, D.C. United, looking to interview me for a sponsorship internship, the next day at 11:00 AM. Evidently, at the time I was applying for internships, this particular one was not posted - I had applied to the only D.C. United internship I could fine, a Community Relations position, but it was really not a position that I had any experience with or business being hired for. Luckily for me, the director of CR passed my application along for the sponsorship position - which falls directly into sports marketing and what I had studied at Clemson.

Sharing the news, I had a minor freak out and my mind started racing in all different directions. Adair had to assure me that it would absolutely be a phone interview, and I would not have to get myself to D.C. in less than 12 hours. I abandoned my studying for my Social Psych final and started preparing for my interview. It went unbelievably better than I expected it to, and less than a week later, I had been offered and accepted the position as a Sponsorship Intern with Corporate Partnerships at D.C. United. (I also handily got an A on my final, so no loss there.) Suddenly within a week, my 'what are you doing after graduation' answer shifted from an unsure "I'm looking at going to grad school at Michigan State or Texas at Arlington, but they don't start until January" to a confident "I will be interning at D.C. United, a team I have loved since I was 6 years old." It has been such a blessing to see the culmination of my college career culminate in an experience such as this, from the waning moments of a senior year filled with such self-doubt, realization, and alternate life plans. To go from uncertainty and near despair to pure joy and unadulterated hope...the same feeling that makes us love sports and keep coming back for more...the feeling of elation when your team scores the crucial goal in extra time. I leave you with this visual metaphor:

Landon Donovan Goal vs. Algeria
In an effort to not do this story a disservice, I have decided to slowly catch you up to speed on my adventures so far this summer. I hope to keep the updates coming more regularly from here on out, so look out for them!

Slow To Start

I took the big step in creating this blog, but aside from the first entry, I have yet to really do anything with it. That's partly attributable to the fact that I lack direction - with Perugia, I always had something to write about: travel, field trips, interactions with new people, and just adventuring around during the week and seeing what I could get up to. Nothing ever seemed mundane, so I never overlooked it. Believe me, there has been plenty going on here recently, but I don't think that's the route I want to go with this - just describing my day to day activities. Anytime I've had the desire to keep record and start blogging again, it's because I had a concept I wanted to hash out or pour over more, and writing was a great way to put it down on some virtual paper. I draw a lot from Greg in that respect - I want to write more about ideas and thoughts rather than happenings. This won't be an everyday posting, though perhaps that would be a good goal for break: keep myself occupied by challenging myself to update everyday. I definitely don't want this to turn into my middle school Xanga page, though, where I just wrote about my ridiculously boring days (sometimes with up to three posts a day!) without ever coming to a real point or drawing readers' attention - but I must admit, it's amusing to me to go back and revisit my old page!

Ultimately, though, I think the major reason behind it all is much deeper: I have a problem starting things. This is a concept that struck me the other day, and the more situations I apply it to, the truer it seems to ring to me. Part of the reason I abandoned my go-to "what I want to be when I grow up" position of a small business owner, in addition to actually learning more details about what that would entail, is that I would do a terrible job starting something from scratch. I prefer to take an existing thing and strive to make it better; I'm not creative, I'm an "improver" or so I'd like to believe. This year, especially this semester with Orientation and Exec, I've learned a lot more about myself - rivaling the huge strides I made across my first semester at college, even. One of those things, which I've found to be completely true - is that I am an analyzer, and one of the biggest flaws of an analyzer is that they will take too much time examining problems from different angles instead of just making a decision. I don't like to make decisions - I never feel ready. There's always more research to do, more to discuss, more I'd like to speculate on; I need a hard deadline, and even then I sometimes push it a little further. I've "found my niche" as we so often like to throw around in OA class, as being that right-hand-man/adviser/confidant role, where I can take someone's problem, flip it to another perspective, and hand it right back. I offer advice or a new point of view, and maybe offer up a few options for courses of action, and it falls on them to execute it.

Reeling this back in to something more relevant to my current situation, I've reflected recently that so many of my "relationships" or rather pursuits thereof have been motivated right before breaks - mostly summer, but one winter break thrown in there freshmen year. In some cases, the thought of being away has made me realize I have feelings for someone, but most often I draw this imaginary line in the proverbial sand and say if I don't motivate myself to make something happen, I'll either A) regret it or B) lose the opportunity. Frankly, I'm not sure how much to expand on my current situation because honestly we haven't talked about this elephant in the room yet and also I really don't even know who my audience is yet (I've been meaning to send out invitations and links, so I'll get to that right after posting). To sum it up, I have been semi-seeing a girl recently (even that term I struggled to come up with and don't know if it really fits), but summer is rolling along in two weeks. Open heart on my sleeve: I think it's clear that we both like each other, and I'm purely speculating here, but I can picture this turning into something concrete - but, summer is a long time, and a lot can change...I think it would be foolish to worry about putting a label on anything or think too much about what comes next. However, I think we need to go into summer at the very least on the same page, even if that means having an awkward conversation way too soon. We shall see what happens with that.

Point being, my toughest battle is with starting. Whether that be with finding a job, getting my license, writing a paper/working on a project, making friends, or pursuing relationships - the first steps are always the most difficult for me. I don't know if I can account that to over-analyzing, lack of courage, fear of leaving my comfort zone, or any other of a multitude of reasons - I'll need to do more soul searching for the answer to that million dollar question. Right now, I just have to focus on overcoming it. Making decisions and owning them, maybe throwing caution to the wind every now and then, and just initiate more. Be aggressive. Assertive. Brave. Unafraid to be me. And with that being said, I'd like to officially welcome you to my blog. If you're reading this, I truly appreciate your time and want you to know that I'm making an effort to be more open and share myself with you.