It’s been a year. Not the best, and probably not the worst. 2017’s looking to be more or less a sequel, and I hope to God I’m wrong. But hey, that’s a week away. For now, I’d like to take the time to address my time here writing for Odyssey.

It went as well as I would’ve expected, with a few surprise articles hitting triple-digit page views. Most of my stuff, of course, went under the radar and unnoticed. I’ve gotten used to that. My writing will never have mainstream appeal or, God forbid, lasting popularity. I’d love to be a popular author, but that’s just the case with me. I’m too weird and too esoteric for that. I’d love to be Stephen King, as I imagine very writer would, but I’m stuck, for now at least, being a still-living H.P. Lovecraft (who died with like, 45 bucks to his name).

After I die, my writing won’t skyrocket to the same level of importance as Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe’s did, but that’s the curse every author must bear. Most of us struggle in between obscurity and virtual nonrecognition. I will never be a famous writer, but I hope I get to like, I don’t know, literary relevance status. Maybe not Toni Morrison, or Jonathan Franzen, or Don DeLillo. But maybe, I don’t know, Jonathan Lethem? William Stafford? Stafford is a hero of mine, if only because he only got published in his forties. Gives a man hope, in any case.

There are some Odyssey writers who get a lot of attention and hundreds of page views every week. Maybe I don’t because I’m shy and introverted. Or bad with people. Or even worse at networking and making connections. But I got writing in my bones. I got ink instead of blood, blah blah blah. I’m a writer, even though I desperately don’t want to be one. My nature, my temperament, my everything, kind of sucks. I got a load of problems that make life way harder than it has to be, and they’re all mental. But am I messed up because I’m a writer, or am I a writer because I’m messed up? Hard to say.

I took this position to help further my writing career and now, in the midst of painfully opaque obscurity, I’ve learned simply getting published online is not a sure way to gain attention. Writing here has, if anything, helped flex my creative nonfiction muscles. Which, you know, will be mighty helpful when I write my first memoir and smash everybody who hated my stuff or didn’t give it the proper attention it truly deserved or whatever. Half of that memoir is going to be bitching about girls who rejected me too, so take it with a grain of salt.

This chronicle of my life is now at its end as I move past Hamline University towards uncertainty and that dark, unknown abyss I’ve willingly jumped into. It’s so goddamn black down here, but there’s lights everywhere. I just gotta get to one before the darkness gets too comfortable.