My name is Meghan O’Toole. Child of immigrants, lover of the sky, and wanna-be poet. Like most of the millennial variety, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m loving this free-wheeling chaos. I hold onto these: writing, nature, travel, and friends.
I’m a barista, and I am haunted by a deep desire to travel. But mostly, I write.
I have heard endless clichés about writing to survive, writing to promote change in the world, and writing because, well, what else am I good for? I have written them, too, because I agree with them. I write for the same reasons I travel and read. I write to feel alive. I even write because I believe with a Samwise Gamgee-esque fervor that there is something good in the world worth fighting for.
But what is it, exactly? We are surrounded by hatred and bigotry in a divided world. Wars, disease, and deforestation ravage the planet, and closer still to home, children starve and innocent people bleed in the streets.
What I hold on to is simple, maybe naïve: the world is good. The sun on the clouds at dusk. The perfumes of spring rushing through the house after a long winter. Music. Honey dripping off a spoon in long, silky cords that coil at the bottom of the teacup. Writing can glue us to the good in life.
The Honors Student's Guide to Life After College 