An Ode to New Beginnings

I’m baaaaack! Did you miss me? I sure as hell missed you. Some of you may have noticed that this blog hasn’t been much more than a barren wasteland for the past year and a half. The particularly eagle-eyed among you may have also realised that endofapaige was actually just another ‘server not found’ floating around the ether of the internet for nearly a year. There’s good reason for that… I’ve just been busy man.

I started endofapaige when I was 17. It started, first and foremost, as a way to entertain myself outside of college, but it also quickly became a memory bank and an online journal. Writing about my time through A Levels, about going to and dropping out of university, about starting work, has genuinely helped me cope with all of these big feelings and new experiences. The blog became my safe haven.

When I started university for the second time, I got so invested and involved in the student newspaper that I no longer needed endofapaige. I still had that place to put my thoughts and feelings and while they were heavily moderated and given a professional edge, people were actually reading it. As writers, I think we are constantly on the hunt for validation, so having my work  gain reach all the way to the likes of Simon fucking Cowell meant that I didn’t need anything else anymore.

There’s nothing quite like having people resonate with your writing. In the dark times of endofapaige, I moved everything temporarily to Tumblr. I didn’t want to get rid of the brand. But I managed to reach people who would have never stumbled across my domain here, I had one user comment under my ‘Letter to my Twenties’ sharing that they found the post just hours before their 20th birthday and that my words really resonated with their situation. All I ever wanted out of this was to make someone feel a bit better about growing up, I hope I could do that for them.

Now, I have stepped foot on the University of Birmingham campus for the last time as a not-quite-graduate and I no longer have that safe place to snuggle into anymore. So! Welcome back to endofapaige, bigger, better and more regular (maybe).

A shit ton has gone on. With finishing my degree, that means that my dissertation is written and submitted. I’d been dreading the dissertation since I enrolled at university the first time around. 10,000 words is a lot! It was stressful, I never doubted it wouldn’t be, but 3,000 words in I found I was actually enjoying myself. My dissertation focused on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where I researched into the divide between the Infinity Saga and Multiverse Saga and the audience’s perception of them. I, like much of the Marvel fandom, have started to lose hope with the direction of the franchise where films seem underwhelming, messy and a little bit shit. I was interested in seeing if this decline in engagement was thanks to a drop in content quality and at the fault of the production team, or if the franchise just peaked so high with Avengers: Endgame that expectations had shot up to an unreachable level. Spoilers, like all good research, it was a mix of the two but I will admit it was mostly the latter.

I’d gotten nostalgic one day and read back over my ‘School Saga’ posts, in which I complain very heavily about my Media exams and how little content concerned fan culture. Looking back now, having written a 10,000-word essay on the subject, certain I could probably explore the topic into PhD level and not even scrape the surface, it’s insane to think: 1. How naïve I was about the scope of academic research, and 2. How much I have actually learnt at university.

If you ask me in conversation if I think university was worth it, I’d probably tell you no. I’d tell you that most of my learning and development has come from the extra-curricular activities I’ve done. And that is true, I think a lot of my future success will be down to the journalism work I’ve done while I’ve been studying. However, I forget to recognise how much knowledge I have absorbed, and how much of the confidence and creativity can be put down to the support I’ve had from the faculty in the university. I don’t think I’d be anywhere near where I am now developmental-wise had I stayed at Lancaster.

I moved out again; did I tell you guys this in the last post? For my final year I moved in with my boyfriend and 3 of our friends. I had hoped that being close to the university might have sparked some sort of social life, or maybe I’d finally learn how to function on my own.

I moved back home again after 6 months. Ha! Now there’s not really a traumatic story to this one, just that boys are disgusting, vile creatures and sometimes it’s okay to not want to live in the same apartment as 4-month-old mouldy tomatoes that have started a fly infestation. Prioritise your own health and not contracting a deadly disease, I’d say.

With the end of my degree, that means that the world is now my oyster. I would much like to give the oyster back to its original owner. The job market sucks! You don’t get adequate warning when you begin a media degree how impossible it is to get into the industry. You get hints of progress and then all of a sudden Syco Entertainment is ghosting you. I’ve gotten so desperate that I’ve resulted to emailing my old Film Studies teacher in hopes he can shoot some contacts my way. He’s not even heard my name in 6 years. Sorry Mr Cooper!

Not all hope is lost, though. The company I’ve worked for over the past 3 years is currently merging with a bigger organisation that has a marketing department, so there may be some hope there! Also, my university put on a networking event yesterday where we were able to showcase some of our work throughout the course with a few of the leading names in media. I’m hoping that I was able to prove myself and my genuine interest in the work I have done. I had some great conversations, so I’m really hoping something comes from that. If I’m honest, I’d much rather move into the industry I’ve dedicated thousands and thousands of pounds to studying than stay where I am (Sorry Complesso).

One of the employers yesterday asked me which publication I’d most like to write for. At the time, I thought that it was a trick question. You know how in interviews they analyse your responses to questions like that to see how your values fit with theirs. I stuttered, stumbled and blanked but I’ve had time to think about it since. I think my absolute dream job would be working for Variety. It’s a hugely renowned outlet, focused on all the pop culture things I love. It's not gossip in the same way that The Sun or The Daily Mirror is, it doesn’t pray on the downfall and embarrassment of celebrities. It is just a professional space for fans. It’s a place I’d be able to bring my adoration for film, TV and music and write the reviews, exclusives, interviews and features I have grown up reading and admiring. Obviously, that is very far out of my just-about-graduated reach, so right now I’d settle for anything where I can immerse myself in the world I find so fascinating and continue to make an impact on the lonely kids like me who rely on the entertainment industry to get them through.

In the meantime, my focus is here, on this blog, keeping the ol’ cogs lubed up so I don’t forget how to form sentences or lose my sense of self. I will continue to watch shitty old rom-com movies and read crappy fantasy novels, I will continue to spend all my money on theatre tickets (speaking of, I am double-billing Hercules and Beetlejuice in June and I am THRILLED!) and I will make sure to tell you lot all about it. Catch you soon ;)