As I write this, my last published article on Odyssey was November 13th. I haven't put my fingers to my keyboard to write something creative for almost 8 months. Something that was on my weekly to-do list became something at the back of my mind. I used to crave getting online and checking my page views or other articles written by my community. I used Odyssey as my vent system and my pop culture news source. Now, I barely log on or see posts. I never put my articles on my highlights or in my bio anymore, simply because there isn't articles to promote. The saddest part about this all is that it isn't just me struggling, its my community.
Michigan State Odyssey use to be a powerhouse. We used to have top 10 articles every week and these were people whose work I looked up to and looked forward to. Our Instagram use to be popping with posts every week and now there hasn't been any new activity. It's sad. I'm not digging to anyone specific and to be honest, I think we as a community have strayed away from what Odyssey means to use all.
To me, Odyssey is a connection to a great group of mainly females and pop culture. In some aspects, its like Buzzfeed. We all take our collective creativity and put that to words on a screen. We take the craziness that's happening in the world and try and make sense of it. We get ideas off of each other and support one another. The best part is its all voluntarily! We choose to write every week and we choose to become apart of this great community. We don't have the incentive of payment driving our writing force.
This year has been crazy and I know it has all impacted us. But let's take the craziness and put our thoughts somewhere. Put them on Odyssey! A creative spark fired me up this weekend and I hope it sparks for my readers too.
