“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream”
Edgar Allan Poe
Hi! I’m Veronica, a graduated student who finished her degree after a long sabbatical at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and made this blog for her multimedia course. I majored in English literature with a communications minor! I originally attended SWOSU in 2015 as a pharmacy major after graduating high school. Dropping out after one semester, I joined the US Navy as a nuclear engineering recruit. During boot camp, my left shoulder became horribly injured and I sadly had to return home. I went on to earn a general associate’s degree from OSU-OKC because I had no idea what I wanted to do. At 20 years old, I married my best friend in 2017! He had joined the marines, so we lived in Pensacola, Florida for the first two years of marriage before his contract ended. Then, we decided to move closer to home and left for Fort Worth, Texas. After a year, we moved to Johnstown, Colorado for my husband to work in the oilfield. You guessed it, we weren’t there for very long amidst the pandemic and moving back home to Oklahoma was a no brainer.
We now have three adorable dogs and one chaotic orange cat who live their best life on the farm where we live. Returning to finish my degree was a hard decision, but the knowledge I’ve gained made it well worth it. My ultimate goal is to work in publication and write my own books some day. I’m currently working on a 5-book series that began when I took a long form fiction course at SWOSU. It’s an epic fantasy, so naturally it consumes all of my free time. I’ve learned about mapmaking recently in an effort to calculate accurate size and distance across the realm, but without my education, I probably wouldn’t care deeply enough to even try to scale a map. I also love to paint, read, draw, sketch, write poetry, and find new hobbies!
This blog was a primary source of my thoughts for my Writing for Multimedia course, but I’ll be sprinkling in a little bit more about me throughout the semester. I’ve chosen a theme close to the concept of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett because this blog is meant to be my own space within the secret garden of life. This book holds a special place in my heart because I’d watch the movie with my grandmother as a child and loved the visuals. I wanted a secret garden, too. Because I’ll be sharing bits of myself and information that I learn here (and normally wouldn’t), I’ll share the garden that is my mind with my readers.
“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Digital writing was popular when I was younger with Myspace, Facebook, and Tumblr. These websites were used as online diaries to document what my friends were doing, who they were hanging out with, and photos they’d take from any of their life experiences like going to the park or a concert. It was fun to share your thoughts and write silly statuses that only your closest friends understood. In comparing today’s digital writing to its start in my own life, I feel like expressing myself online has gone from fun and innocent to intimidating and monitored. The digital footprint that we leave behind is very real and very manipulated by large corporations who aim to collect statistics for their own gain. I no longer post statuses or photos on social media because I don’t want people to know what I’m doing nor do I require their validation anymore. I understand that some people love sharing their life with the people they love online – I’d just rather have real conversations with them. It’s hard for me to break the barrier and be vulnerable online, but growth isn’t comfortable and I’m in this course to do just that. Here’s to a challenging yet rewarding future!