Some of the best things in life happen by accident.
Being attentive wasn't your area of expertise. Yeah, there was a whole stereotype about how your generation had an 8-second attention span, but most figured that it was just the boomers talking.
Not you, though. You knew this statistic described you better than anything. Which was a real problem, being an artist and all.
Because maybe it was just you, or maybe it was some higher power, or maybe it was destiny, but somehow your brain refused to allow you to go down the traditional, simple, money-making path of a STEM career. You just had to be different, didn't you? But your inattentiveness would often get in the way, your half-completed artworks scattered across every corner of your small, suburban home. There was nothing to it, really—you'd start a piece, get distracted, and lose the inspiration for it. Tragic.
But with your choice of an art career came the judgement of others, especially parents. You constantly had to prove that the arts were the field you cared about the most, and though you loved the process of creating a masterpiece, others only saw the material benefits of awards and recognitions.Truly, tragic.
The one consistency you had in your life was your newspaper. Well it wasn't yours, technically, but you did so much of the editing that sometimes you forgot there were other people supposedly collaborating with you. And it wasn't much of a newspaper, either—just a small, library magazine that became your rock during the storms of life.
Editing was the one thing your inattentiveness didn't seem to affect. You couldn't sit through a 30-second math exercise but could lock yourself in your room for hours, surveying others' work and polishing up the weekly articles. You were absorbed in the world of dark ink, colorful graphics, and cartoon sketches all printed on thin, flimsy paper. It was the only thing that kept you going sometimes.
And it was this obsession with the work that led you to where you were now. Sitting in your room, waiting for submissions of your coworkers for the "Meet the Staff" page. You didn't care much for your own photo. Choosing a random selfie from your minimal supply, you figured that you didn't care how you looked or what people thought of you—you were doing this for yourself and not for the public. You'd had enough art and writing competitions to last you a lifetime.
Slowly but surely, the submissions started coming in. "Kaileigh Brinston, 17. Ever since I was little, I knew I was specia..." You didn't bother reading the rest of what looked like a four-page essay one of your coworkers had sent you as her "bio." Mindlessly copy-pasting the giant paragraph onto the page you were working on, you scrunched your eyebrows and began to trim down the prose, eventually giving up and cutting out the entire last half. It was representative of the work Kayleigh did, anyway.
You continued arranging the page, growing more and more irritated as your critical eye forbade you from settling on any one design.
Luckily, your short attention span came to your rescue.
A ding from your phone caught your attention, and you instantly glanced at it to see the notification, "A person not in your contacts wants to connect with you on Messenger."
Opening the message, you saw it was just another coworker of yours. Praying their message would be easier to work with than Kaileigh's, you tap on the name and accept their request to connect. Your breath catches in your throat.
Hey! Here's my photo and bio for the "Meet the Staff" page! I appreciate all the hard work you're putting into our magazine, Ms. editor!
You blinked a couple of times while reading the message over and over again before finally looking at the picture the boy had sent you.
