< oh boy >

   I write this as Marck, not Marocharim.

   To be honest, I kind of miss the old Outcrop newsroom.  Granted that I left because I let my backbone take the better of me, but I sometimes think I should not have grown a spine, and that I should have accepted the politics as they are.  But on the other hand, at least I found out that leaving Outcrop was good for me, in that it allowed me to grow.

   Outcrop was definitely not a room with a glass ceiling: it had made for so many great opportunities for other people.  But somehow, the "higher calling" never really reached my ears: it was, to me, a constant affirmation of my own unhappiness.  Somehow, I felt like whatever the "calling" was, it wasn't meant for me.  More and more, I felt the calling of doing what Outcrop wanted me to do, instead of the calling of doing what I can do for Outcrop.

   Somehow, I didn't belong in the newsroom.  My 11-year "career" in campus journalism only brought me to the realization that I wasn't being molded into the image of a journalist, but that of a writer, of being my own man.  Yet it was, for me, an almost Oedipal fixation of being a "journalist," something that only became a consequence of writing.  Good journalists all, the people in Outcrop, but not me.

   Then, and only then, did I realize how important Marocharim is to me.  Marocharim did what I've struggled to do for 11 years: to write because he felt like it.  For so long, I wrote because I was told to do so, or because I was paid to do so.  Marocharim, on the other hand, writes because he can.  He doesn't care about what other people think, as long as they think.  For all his arrogance, his self-centered egomaniacal bravado, his lapses in logic, his paranoia, and for every failing and shortcoming he has of being a lovable and likeable human being, he's perfectly OK with that.  I wish I am just like Marocharim in real life, but somehow, he will always be a part of me.  I think there's a little bit of Marocharim in all of us.

   Thank you, Marocharim.

*      *      *

   Five minutes later, Marocharim sends a message for Marck.  It reads:

   "That sounded... gay.  You keep your distance from me from now on."