Somebody Has to Care

Recently, I watched Hamilton for the first time, after putting it off for years. There's a popular Native American proverb about having two wolves inside you, locked in constant fighting. The one who wins is the one you feed. Why are these two things related? Because I have decided that the two in me are best represented by the characters Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. For a while, I have been feeding Burr by staying quiet and just trying to get through life. That stops now (or soon, depending on whether I can keep my anxiety about speaking up in check). I'm fed up with a lot of things and it's time I did something about it. I will be applying for law school at Boston University, to hopefully start in 2022 in one of their dual degree programs. It’s time to be more like Hamilton and not play it safe, even if it costs me.

You may be wondering why I'm taking the time to write all this down so the internet can read it. Firstly, I need to start writing more. I've always wanted to try to make some money by writing, but I kept failing at writing short stories until I gave up. Now that I've remembered that there is a market for these short or longform essays about thoughts on the world and hopes for the future, I'm ready to give it another shot. Plus, if I'm going to law school, I need to get back in the practice of writing essays.

Secondly, this page will serve as an archive for my thoughts. No longer will they take up space in my head that could be used for remembering therapy appointments and paying attention to the speedometer. I can simply shout at the void and hope the void finds it interesting enough to tell their friends. Maybe their friends will tell their own friends. Maybe thousands of people will read what I have to say, and I’ll be able to buy a tank of gas each month because of it. If not, that's ok. At least they're out of my head. At least I am doing something.

Finally, as I said in the intro, I'm fed up. I'm fed up with how reliant we have become on both the government and corporations. I'm fed up with having to fight to convince people that other people are also people. I can't do much right now to fix injustice. Even after getting my law degree I have a long road fighting the corporate tyrants like Microsoft, Apple, and Disney. That's not including the other hard fight of convincing the world that only the selfish hoard wealth and money's entire purpose is to be spent and reinvested into yourself and the community to make lives better; for ourselves, our neighbors, and our fellow human beings.

People feel the need to remind me of just how powerful and resistant to change the government and corporations are. That’s true. I am facing a long road of hard fighting to make even the slightest difference. But that doesn’t mean I get an excuse to not try. When McCarthy was destroying the lives of his opponents through his addresses, it was a risk for a journalist to fight him, but Murrow did. Rod Serling fought until he died to be able to expose the hard truths on television. I may be just a twenty-two-year-old nobody that lives in West Virginia; but I have thoughts, a computer, and an internet connection. To quote Dr. Seuss, "Unless someone like you cares an awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not." Somebody has to care enough to take an active stand and fight. I do.