I’m going to start by saying that this probably will not be my last story with The Daily Orange. Probably. Even though I am writing a story that serves as a goodbye to The D.O., I am coming back for a fifth year to pursue arts journalism.

God, this hack already sounds like the intro to a LinkedIn page. Let’s just say I’ll probably still be writing at The D.O. next year because quite frankly, I’ll need some stuff to do.

The biggest reason I am writing this hack is that I would rather have this story go out along with the hacks of my fellow seniors, with whom I have spent four years sharing great memories and pumping out some incredible stories. I love the group we have and I selfishly always want to be a part of it.

I guess this will serve as my goodbye to the sports section, a place where I feel like I have defined myself but conversely made me feel more confused about what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. It’s cliché and kind of bullsh*t to say, but I can’t imagine a life where I’m not doing something that I don’t enjoy or at least writing about something I don’t enjoy. Whether I like it or not, and I think I do like it, my passions and interests will define me no matter what.

My problem is that I bounce from passion to passion way too often in my mind that I end up picking something unsatisfactory. (I think this makes me sound pretentious but I’m just gonna go with it.) So to quote Martin Scorsese (Yes, I’m picking Scorsese. I like movies. Sue me.), “I have to find out who the hell I am.”

This isn’t going to be one of those hacks where I say I’m not going to do sports writing anymore. I still want to very much. But if I’m ever going to get closer to where I think I want to be in my life, then I must take this chance. I hope these words reflect that.

For all of the uncertainty and overthinking that afflict me daily to a mind-numbing and tiring degree, the only place I really knew I wanted to be a part of over the last five years was The D.O. sports section. I say five years because I remember reading The D.O. back in my senior year of high school. This place felt official to me. It felt like a place I wouldn’t be good enough to write for and much less join.

I didn’t do either of those things at first. Freshman year, during a time of Zoom classes, stale cinnamon apple gluten free waffles and a split double room that was only partially bigger than the D.O.’s archives room on the second floor, I didn’t have much to do or people to talk to. I wasn’t a partier and due to the environment around me, I wasn’t looking to be all that social. I had one friend, but when he went home or wasn’t around, I ended up walking aimlessly, usually at night throughout campus.

Usually, I like to walk without a set place to go, but the aimless nature of the walks felt different. As I listened to Mac Miller albums like “Swimming” and “Circles,” I genuinely thought I wouldn’t amount to much or find a purpose during my time at SU. It certainly felt like a mistake that I was here. I wanted to go back to boarding school.

Only when I got the D.O.’s contact from a fellow freshman who doesn’t even work at the paper anymore, I was on the way to finding a purpose. But as any sports staffer knows, your first story is always your worst and mine on a Cato-Meridian linebacker was a disgrace and it justly got eviscerated. It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for this place and I moved back into feeling aimless during an extended winter break where on most days I just interacted with my dog and binged “Game of Thrones.”

But then, I got a text back, asking if I wanted to be a part of the Breanna Stewart project. Then came the volleyball beat, then came copy editor and so on.

I felt like I finally found it: a place I could call my own. It turned out to be one hell of a place to pick.

Throughout my sophomore and junior years, I knew the DO was where I belonged and I would give myself entirely to it. I remember a conversation between me and Anish Vasudevan where we said that we may all say we hate this job, but we actually do love it and the amount of stress that it brings. Going to and listening to random SU Athletics press conferences? Sure. Writing feature stories for beats I wasn’t on? I guess that sounds fun. Covering multiple beats while pitching 20 or so tweets and a bunch of other stuff? Sure, why the f*ck not?

I was losing sleep and gaining more and more stress as I did it, isolating myself from friends and family to edit a women’s soccer staffer or something like that. I never seemed to mind it. I just kept working and kept accepting higher positions. I just wanted to be there as often as I could. Even as a copy editor, I would show up maybe an hour or so early to production nights because I felt like I had no other place to go. I was falling in love with this place but oddly losing sight of myself at the same time.

Of course, this dichotomy would fully come to a head while I was DME. Working on the newsletter at 2:30 a.m. on average? Every night? Uh, I guess so. Automatically waking up at 8 a.m. to check the morning tweets and Facebook posts? Oh no.

I averaged around five hours of sleep per night for a whole semester and I became more drowsy and became physically weak some days even though I wasn’t sick. I also only saw my roommate at 2 a.m. on most days. During those nights when I was up until 4 a.m., it’s not that I didn’t have a purpose, rather I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I felt stuck yet again, but this time I was a husk of a person who had buried his feelings and hadn’t been to therapy in too long.

Worse yet, I was even more unsure of what I wanted to do. I couldn’t write about sports or movies, so I felt really lost again. Whoopdeedoo.

But with the help of those closest to me (you know who you are), I came to realize that there was an end. I didn’t have to be caught in this soul-sucking cycle. I could set my own terms with the D.O. This year, for better or worse, I didn’t force myself to go out and interact with people relative to how I did the year before. More importantly, though, I settled on covering football and basketball, while writing a bunch of movie reviews.

And eventually, I realized I needed something more and that my time here wasn’t just done yet. I’m still not. I want to do sports writing and movie writing. I think I can do both and I want to do both.

Will I figure it out by the end of the next year? Probably not. Maybe I’m just kicking the can down the road. Maybe this whole experience will lead me to the rest of my life. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe this will be a bottle episode like in television. Maybe it will be something I come back to. But I know this: The Daily Orange will always be a part of me and my relationship with it will truly never end. Even if I want it to end. But for now, I don’t want it to end.

OK, if I keep writing, I’ll just keep overthinking. Though maybe that’s why I like writing … alright I’ll stop. I can examine that question in another hack in another life. Hopefully, this rambling made sense. But honestly, it’s OK if it didn’t.

I guess I will leave you two more things I at least know for sure. First, I may still always think about the long term and worry, but I am full of excitement for the short term. And second, I will ironically quote a video game instead of a movie. This comes from the 2013 video game, “The Stanley Parable,” and I think it rings true for me, The D.O. and everything else in the world.

“The end is never the end.”

Henry O’Brien is a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at henrywobrien1123@gmail.com and on X @realhenryobrien.

Published on May 2, 2024 at 10:26 am