Youth are becoming more and more aware of current events and our thoughts and feelings about them. We recognize the great injustices, and learn to fight for the things in which we believe. It is so rare to find people in their teens who are not opinionated on current events, even if all our opinions don’t match up. We all seem to crave some capacity for speaking our minds; we all want to be heard. I have been presented with the unique opportunity to be on this platform and discuss the things that matter most to me. Strangely enough, it as appears though, that now that I have voice, I have almost nothing to say.

I do not lack an opinion or suffer from an empty head. Actually it is quite the opposite. I have an opinion on practically everything. Though somehow every week I find myself in the same place of having no idea what to write about. Often I find that once I start writing I can ease into a thought and an idea, but it will take a few tries to find one that I feel comfortable enough writing about. Sometimes, it ends with a nine hundred word rant on the fallacies taught to us in youth or judgements people make based on stigmas and stereotypes. Other times it ends with me writing something short and sweet about family that earns me lots of “awwws” in the comments. No matter how it ends, I always press submit dangerously close to the deadline and pray that I have been as inoffensive as possible.

I have yet to be able to determine the exact reason for what feels like perpetual writer’s block. I have always believed that adding unnecessary structure to an otherwise enjoyable activity takes away from the pleasure of doing it. However, the freedom I possess with The Odyssey in what I write, and how I write it, prevents this from being the cause of this problem. The problem inevitably stems deeper than the fact that my having to write an article weekly inhibits my rebellious teen aesthetic. The structure not coinciding with my otherwise terribly messy life.

Teens desperately wish to be able to voice their opinions and so many go online and put them there through social media, to have some chance of saying what’s on their mind in a place where people can hear them. And while all these thoughts exist, so often we are told that we’re too young to really understand what’s going on in the world. The one we’re supposed to inherit. Posts against injustice are dismissed as angsty ranting, and while they usually are, they are also signs of wanting to understand and contribute to the world around us, and what is happening in it. The Odyssey has given me a voice, but I have a hard time knowing how to use it. Probably because I don’t think anyone is listening.