When you are as unmotivated as I am, anything that happens feels like God’s blessing.

I joined The Chronicle team as a second-semester senior. At that point, almost three years into college, I had betrayed my school’s narrative and paid for it. I did not network. I did not take opportunities. I did not write at my own behest. Instead, I slept, and because of that, I became somnolent. My body was a bag that I held at arm’s length. Thinking was tough, and the pressure of my ambitions, my mother’s and my grandmother’s became lodged into my sternum.

When General Manager Chris Richert first interviewed me, he said, “Man, I can’t believe we just found you.” I smiled because I knew why it had taken until then to find me, and I was shocked to recieve a second interview.

My follow-up interview was conducted on the toilet. I was coming off a fever that left me bedridden for a week. I would hallucinate for hours and sweat through my clothes. When the time came to call Chris and  members of the Management Team, my bowels had failed me. I remember opening the bathroom door to the rest of my apartment and leaning out as best I could, to try and counteract the echos. I still don’t know if they could tell.

Being at The Chronicle for only a semester is a sad piece of circumstance. I regret not coming here earlier, but I also reject that feeling. Much as my world didn’t exist before April 21, 1997, the world of possibilities didn’t either.

I’m not a man of faith.  I was baptized Catholic, but looking back, the only thing truly holy about that day was the itching sensation when I forgot to bring a second pair of underwear and had to do without for the rest of the service. Being lazy, I take comfort in the idea of faith, and of God’s plan, but I know better. Every day spent in this office has been special, slightly harrowing, but also calming. I feel comfortable here, and that comfort is a special gift.

To be honest, I haven’t left my home in just a T-shirt in four years. I’m that strange dude, still rocking hoodies in the summer heat; I’m the one with forehead sweat and canned lines like “I’m fine” when asked if I’m hot. I’m always hot, but the truly painful image of my own body, to me, is worse than heat stroke. It’s worse than death, and I know that. I’ve contemplated that alternative. 

If I even walk down the street in just a hoodie nowadays, it spins in my head like a top, over and over, this ticker tape telling me to go home, give up: “It’s not your day, Mr. Darbyshire. Try again.” Make a new character, get better body sliders. So to be in this office, where I can find friendship and feel normal is what it must feel like to be on steady ground.

I am so proud of my colleagues. I see the work they do and their hussle that’s hard as marble. I see a talent that is sure to infect the world, and I see a kindness, palpable as the sting from the static in the god-forsaken carpet. But it’s not just my pride for them that makes this place worth the travel, the plate spinning and all the Red Bull chugging; it’s that the Chronicle has made me, for once in my life, feel proud of myself.

 So as I leave this meme-spattered moment in my life, I can’t help but be thankful. To Chris Richert, Stephanie Goldberg, Len Strazewski, Zoë Eitel, Blaise Mesa and everyone else in the office, I say farewell. Thank you for being my jacket.