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I Certainly Hope So! |
After a few very intense installments, I freed myself from the issues of immanent social advocacy and political ponder in order to explain why I coined my regular column "Just Sayin" in The Dispatch (a local publication in Lexington, North Carolina.) My column appears every other Friday.
Just Sayin' is a slang term adapted from the popular phrase "I am just saying" also known as "j/s" to the more textually inclined. I should have outlined this in my very first appearance as a regular columnist, but I felt suddenly empowered by my new platform and compelled to write about more pressing issues.
My first challenge was actually naming this column. I treated it like any major decision in my life and immediately polled my Facebook friends with my ideas. Thanks to those creative friends, I narrowed down the choices to "Breath of Fresh Air" and my favorite phrase, "Just Sayin."
My friends and family guessed appropriately that I would need a disclaimer so why not "Just Sayin" since I hide behind it with them. "Just Sayin" is my official response to some of life's awkward pauses, such as after an inappropriate dinner rant. "Just Sayin" is my go-to phrase, when I forget to keep the conversation light-hearted and cordial and open up dialogue about hot-button topics like school merger and annexation.
"Just Sayin" covers my faux pas when I realize that I have taken myself too seriously. The phrase is a shield at the point in dinner where I want to disappear into the plate full of peas because I put my big fat opinion out there, and it's too late to take it back. Can sharing too much be eased with the simple disclaimer, "I'm just saying?"
I looked for the definition in the Urban Dictionary (a handy tool for translating youth speak). The Urban Dictionary has quite a few definitions and given my last two columns, I have to own up to the one voted the most popular. It defined the phrase "Just Sayin" as, "This often rage-inducing saying is typically preceded by a blatantly honest statement that's likely to insult at least one person with its cold, bitter truth. Frequent usage of this saying can spread its use like a highly aggressive plague, eventually saturating almost all conversations, particularly on the Internet where anonymity encourages impolite truths."
"Just Sayin" seems appropriate as I write about thought provoking and at times uncomfortably personal stories. Every columnist essentially agrees to bare her soul to the reader in a way that challenges private boundaries. My journals are literally an open book, but I did apologize to my family and friends in advance.
My dear family members are very accustomed to accidentally showing up in print, considering I've been writing for publications since I was 16 years old. Having tried a modern career as a journalist, I know that nothing in the worldwide web of gossip ever really goes "off the record." In fact, I think that I have become too accustomed to living life "for the record." I love how one of my newspaper buddies calls the media stream "feeding the hungry beast."
An opinionated writer can run, but she can't hide from hot-button topics.
You have my mentors to thank for my taking this week off from writing a brutally honest and unsolicited opinion on everything from politics, civil rights and must-see movies. My mentor from The Dispatch gave me some friendly suggestions about topics for these columns. She reminded me that I can "keep it light-hearted" and to remember that "people enjoy reading about fond memories."
I knew I was in trouble when I sat down to write a light-hearted piece about the sheer joy of rescuing my beautiful puppy, Mia. Twelve hundred words later and the entire column had turned into a piece about the horrors of the county's animal gas chamber (not publishing that piece anytime soon).
This "living column" style of writing is going to be a challenge for this former editor of The Black Ink, UNC's official newspaper of The Black Student Movement. I helped to revive the publication and our 1960s tagline, "Dedicated to Revolutionary Media." Keeping this column light could be my most challenging writing assignment yet.
Perhaps my columns have a long way to go before being considered a breath of fresh air, but consider this indicative of a generation of Twitter-crazed bloggers who are delusional enough to think that people want to read about their daily chores or their blunt opinions about life, love and business.
For those who are kind enough to read on, I can assure some future columns will be like those awkward moments at the dinner table where I put my foot in my mouth, smile sheepishly, put my hands behind my head, lean back in my chair and declare with all sincerity that "I'm Just Sayin."
Here are a few links to my favorite Just Sayin' Columns published in The Dispatch
