A little less than two years ago, I could be found sitting in my bedroom frantically trying to figure out what to write about before midnight. No, I wasn’t experiencing a bizarre Cinderella in the cornfields of Ohio scenario; I just had to get something posted so I could keep my goal to “Publish a blog post once a week.” Ultimately, I wrote about books, and while it was nothing earth-shattering, it ranks as one of my favorite posts because it kept my goal going, which ended up producing some of my most cherished blog articles.
Author: danjcasejr
As of eight days ago, I officially became a twenty-five-year-old. Since it’s often viewed as a milestone year, I considered using this post to wax poetic about how I’m now a quarter of a century old. But after some thought, I realized that’s probably been done before, so I should instead just go ahead and share this year’s list of goals…
It’s been 144 days since I wrote Thank U, Next (the blog post, not the chart-topper sung by Ariana Grande). And while I wish I could come on here and write about how the past few months have been full of aha moments and unwavering positivity, I’d be lying if I gave that impression.
You may be here expecting to read salacious details of my recent resignation, or you may be here simply because you love a good Ariana Grande bop and are hoping for more of her in this post. I hate to disappoint you on both sides, but this won’t be a detailed hit piece explaining why I left my job, and there won’t be much more Ari in this post.
“…You have no sense of fashion…”
“I think that depends on…”
“No, no, that wasn’t a question.”
Last month found me relating to this iconic scene from The Devil Wears Prada on a personal level. I had flown to Tampa Bay, Florida for an interview to be the Executive Assistant to Amanda, the founder of a wildly successful fitness company. And even though there were no demeaning looks or Pellegrino bottles, the entire experience felt like something from a movie.
“Colombia? Like, the country?”
This was a question I received countless times in the months leading up to my trip to Bogotá, Colombia. While there were friends who were incredibly supportive of my trip, many people seemed absolutely baffled by my admission that my first experience abroad would be to a country few people associated with tourism. These offerings were disheartening, but regardless, I packed my bags and began the trip to the country that was such a mystery to me.
One of my favorite times of the year is when I sit down to come up with my next year’s list of goals. I love this exercise because it allows me to think about what I want to accomplish in the coming year while pushing me to think outside the box and to challenge myself.
I figured the best way to finish out this year of goals would be by sharing a few statistics/reflections on what I’ve written this year.
“Hey, Dan? Calm it with the sports references.” I know, this is my third sports-referenced blog post title in the past few months, so I guess you could say I’m one overtly-masculine grunt away from being a full-blown athlete. But let’s save the conversation about my transition into a sports icon for another day so we can get on to the actual matters at hand.
Having recently made my way back into the world of academia, I decided to take a stroll down memory lane by leafing through some of the papers I wrote during my time as an undergraduate student. One that stood out to me was a book summary I wrote about Susan Cahalan’s bestselling memoir Brain on Fire.