graduation – Slanted Spines

A Year of Stillness

March 22, 2019March 22, 2019Posted in StoriesTagged Blog, buddhism, college, creative writing, encouragement, fiction, graduation, Mindful Living, mindful thinking, motivation, peace, Self-Help, short story, Story, writing2 Comments

Nobody really teaches you how to be still. They teach you how to crawl, how to walk, run, ride a bike, drive a car, but nobody really teaches you how to be still.

I graduated from college and nothing happened. The stillness felt like failure. They teach you how to run, and then you run. That’s what you do–you’re not supposed to stop. But then I stopped.

Stillness makes people uncomfortable; sometimes, it upsets them. The ant must carry the leaf; the bee must pass the pollen. It was a spring day in May I walked across the stage set up at my university’s football field, the fresh electric scent of bloom tickling my nose. Continue reading “A Year of Stillness” →

Return to Sender

April 27, 2018January 22, 2019Posted in StoriesTagged flash fiction, graduation, mail, memories, post college, remembering, short story, writer, writing1 Comment

Return to Sender by BCole

I don’t check my mail very often. In fact, the only reason I had even checked my mail that early spring day was because I was expecting a letter from the bank with my new debit card. I had lost mine a few weeks ago at a bar in Portland, along with the bracelet I was wearing and the chapstick I had in those pesky shallow romper pockets. The debit card and chapstick I could replace, inconvenient as it was, but the bracelet I was more upset about. It was a beaded one from my days in Athens; my old friend bought it for me at a flea market, from one of those vendors that doesn’t sell vintage materials but cheap accessories like flashy purses and plastic rings. She hadn’t spent more than seven dollars on it, and I watched her buy it and hand it to me, but it had sort of worn a comfortable patch of my wrist for a couple years and came to feel like a part of me.

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The Post-Grad Problem

November 17, 2017January 22, 2019Posted in BlogTagged anxiety, college, future, graduation, humor, post-gradLeave a comment

“So, what are you doing after graduation?”

I erupt in hives every time I hear this question. I almost don’t want to graduate so that I never have to face the realities that lurk on the other side of it—so that I don’t have to deal with the “What next?” and the “What now?”

I’ve taken to laughing in response to this question. “Ha-ha! Good one!” I feel like saying. “As if I have a plan! You’re a real jokester, eh?” Nobody’s ever satisfied by this, though. They don’t laugh. They want a hard copy of my 5-year plan, bullet point by bullet point, cross-referenced and leather-bound, with an index, a table of contents, and an acknowledgements page. I don’t have that, though.

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