photo credit Shiv Majmudar
This is my last ever column, and before you cue up Green Day’s “Time of Your Life,” just remember the bright side, which is that it also means that school is ending, permanently (sort of) for me at least; and that’s something worth celebrating, because no one likes waking up before sunrise and learning things we’d much rather not, but at the same time, leaving high school is sentimental (barely) because, like it or not, it’s the end of something—your old friendships, old classes, this little back page in the paper—and that’s worth thinking about,
and to be honest, as much as I want to pack up and run, but no matter how much I want this to be over, I keep thinking about the good times I had writing this column about books and movies and music and whatever else I wanted to ramble on about for 700-ish words (always more because I don’t self-edit), and the more I think about those good times the less I want to leave, sling some rucksack over my shoulder and ride on out into the sunset, like the end of the perfect Indiana Jones movie or a spaghetti western, because while life isn’t at all like the movies, it also kind of is, if you really squint and look upside-down,
but now, it’s time to roll the credits, do the sad recap of what I wrote and why I liked what I liked and why it’s important, but at the same time, that’s just really boring, so let’s not do that, and instead, let’s entertain ourselves by writing a never-ending sentence, and filling up all the blank space we have left, reminiscing against our will, thankful that high school won’t ramble on any longer than it needs to,
and maybe I’ll also think about what I learned over the past four years, or at least the two of my tenure of scribbling here, and if I learned anything from being the columnist of The Courier, it’s that you have to put movie titles in “Quotations” and not Italics, don’t ask me why, but more importantly, I learned that sometimes you can say the same thing in 600 words instead of 1000, that more isn’t always better, that cutting words is healthy and necessary and makes everything much better, and you should always make your deadlines—both of which are important lessons, of course, but not as important as the realization that most people don’t have cash on them to buy stuff you put time and effort into, and that’s okay because you don’t write or make art or do anything for $2 in your pocket, but because it’s fun, because it fulfills you, because this stuff deserves to exist regardless of whether someone wants it or not,
but at the same time, if you’re reading this, that means a lot to me, and I’m not ashamed to say that, because if you chose to listen to me yap about Stephen King novels and 80s movies and why AI sucks instead of doing anything else, that makes all of this worth it in the end, I think, because writing needs at least two people to make it matter,
and in keeping with getting the sentimental stuff out of the way, I just want to say thank you to you if you’re reading this, whoever you are, and before I get out of here for good, there’s one (or two) last thing(s) I learned, which is that everything you want to say doesn’t really fit in one sentence, but you try anyway, and that there aren’t any clean or happy or sad endings, just endings, and they all have one thing in common, which is that they always come faster than you expect, always catch you by surprise, but don’t worry, because no matter how fast time seems, or how much you feel like you can’t keep up, you just have to look back once and realize that you didn’t miss anything at all.
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