On this episode, A Leap Toward A New Year, Aaron’s story follows Rose, an influencer more concerned with clicks than personal safety. Her exploits lead into our discussion on New Year’s resolutions, do they really work? Deep conversation and several hijinks ensue on this episode of SMIRK.
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Want to read Aaron’s story “A Leap Toward A New Year” in full? Think you can identify the moral or theme for this episode? Read it below, and then take a listen to the podcast.
A Leap Toward a New Year
As Rose burst through the doors, her excitement was palpable.
Despite being a renowned influencer, she still had to essentially plan an elaborate heist to even get this far, but now that the view caught her eyes, she knew it would be worth it.
10 million followers were about to be inspired to live their best lives, she thought, and inhaled deeply before she proceeded to her next goal. And she needed to move fast, because security would be on top of her in minutes.
Knowing that she had made it to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building wouldn’t be enough, she still needed the picture. Not just any picture, mind you, she wanted THE picture. That one-of-a-kind, never duplicated kind of shot that could double her followers in a month. When she first crafted this idea of taking a photo in 5 interesting yet impossible locations this year, she mostly laughed it off as a ludicrous idea for a New Year’s resolution. Yet now, here she was, about to make history.
Rose grabbed the doorstop from her backpack and jammed it under the door, just besting the guards who were now slamming into the door in an attempt to open it from the other side.
“It’s now or never”, she screamed to herself as she ran to the edge of the roof.
Rose took out her phone as she leaned over the edge for the shot…damn, she just realized she forgot to flip the camera to selfie mode. She held her pose and moved her left hand to her phone, which was being held by her right. The sudden shift in weight completely threw off Rose’s balance and she began to lose her footing. As she stumbled in an attempt to catch herself, she heard the guards finally burst through the door.
Losing her footing even further, Rose began to topple over the edge. Just as she began to fall to her certain doom, a hand reached out to grab her right hand. Rose, in an instinctual move to protect her phone, instead raised her left hand to grab ahold of the guard, but the distance was inches too short.
As Rose watched the guard’s horrified face falling further and further away, she fully understood why so many people fail to make their own resolutions a reality.