Alone and content in a blizzard

I'm not sure how I'm so content here in Lafayette to stay home all day instead of venture into town. It's so different from who I used to be when I actually lived here in high school. I never wanted to be left alone. I was desperate to have a social life.

Now, in the blustery late winter that has settled over these two cities, I am fine to sit at home and watch the flakes fall all day long. My days are peppered with snacking and sleeping and the occasional flip through the channels, but mostly I just write. My complacency would make sense if the writing fulfilled me, but it doesn't.




It's bad writing. It's public relations, it's fluff; meaningless words meant to make someone look good who's really not. And yet, it's all the work I can get right now. Before I graduated, I had never written a press release or worked in public relations. I graduated with a degree in journalism and a relatively strong portfolio of news clips. I even have an award for one of my stories.

I've applied for hundreds of journalism jobs. I'd estimate I've sent resumes, cover letters and clips to more than 125 publications, both online and print. I've been called back for two interviews, which would make my success rate below 1%. But consider the fact that the only two jobs I've been interviewed for are in copy writing and PR, fields I have no interest and even less experience in. So if you feel like being a huge pessimist, you could say that my success rate in almost landing a writing or reporting job is at 0.

Moreover, I applied for fewer than 10 copy writing jobs and maybe five public relations jobs. That means my success rate at landing interviews in careers I have no experience in is 13% higher than in the field I studied and excelled at.

How's that for a picture of the economy? It doesn't help that my field is slowly losing momentum.

Maybe my complacency stems from knowing my unemployment is not for lack of trying. Maybe it's because I've given up. But I don't think so.

At night, I eat dinner and I sit and watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune with my dad and his wife, Lori. Maybe I've just slipped in to an easy routine that has been handed to me on a silver platter, one that requires little effort. The company is good. The wine is cheap. The room is free and the house is warm. And responsibility evades me, whether I like it or not. Maybe I'm just trying to enjoy my free time.

But I miss my friends and adventure and challenge. I feel like I'm retired, or something.

Just waiting for the next step. But I'm starting to wonder how long I'll wait.

Movement

So, I've moved back home to my dad's house, and this is the room I'm sleeping in. It used to be my sister's room, and it's since been turned into a guest room. So, I'm a guest. But I've added my own touches, like the hanging lamp and the dozens of pillows that tend to follow me into whatever bed I'm on.

It's strange being here; coming back to the place you spent most of your childhood can make you feel like you are that child again. I spend a lot of time at the house, which is okay for now, because I don't yet have a job. If I go out, I wind up spending money I shouldn't spend, and so I'm better off here. I'm doing a lot of writing. It's much less artistic than it sounds. I'm doing freelance work for AuthorHouse out of Bloomington. So, I read the books they're publishing and write press releases to accompany them. It pays well, and it makes me feel productive. For my first assignment they gave me three weeks to finish three press releases. I've already finished two in five days, so I'll probably have a new assignment by next week. I make $75.00 a release, which, after taking out taxes (since they don't, I have to), it amounts to roughly $50.00 a release.

I'm actually not doing much personal writing, but I'm trying to fix that. I think it's really hard, once you've been away from a pen and paper for long enough, to pen things out again. It's like working out; once you stop, it's hard to get yourself back into the routine of lifting and running (which I'm also trying to do).

I have an interview at a local restaurant on Monday. I hadn't wanted to work in the food industry again, but I will if I have to. I've also applied at a bead/music/book store on campus, and it would be nice to have two jobs for a bit.

So, I'm making progress. Despite all my doubts and worries about coming home, I am starting to think it's the right place to be at this time. Since being here I've gotten two writing opportunities (the other is with HELEN Magazine here in Lafayette). Let me repeat that: I've been home less than a week, and I've gotten more writing "jobs" in that week than I've had in the last year. I don't know if this is because of my not being in Bloomington or, more cosmically, my decision leave Bloomington, where I was emotionally and creatively (and monetarily) stifled. I'll keep you posted.

My hope is I'll be out of here by the summer and on to my next adventure elsewhere.

One cop out after the next

It's so easy.
It's so easy to lose hope when you have been trying so hard to reach just one of your goals.
And keeping faith is so hard.
I've compromised so much lately just to ensure a better chance for myself.
Or maybe I've compromised because I'm scared of making a decision for myself instead of having it made for me.
If I had been offered a job somewhere, anywhere, I'd go there.
But I haven't, and so it's hard to go anywhere.
And so I've come home.
And it's not that I don't like it here.
But this is not where I want to be.
Of all my choices, I've chosen the one that is the safest and the least fulfilling.

This is not who I wanted to be.
I want to be brave, fearless, adventuresome.
No more of this playing it safe.

If I don't have a job by the summertime, I'm doing one or more of the following things (I'm telling you now because I have to write it down somewhere or it will never be real, it will never happen. It will be as though I never thought it, at all):
1. Making a huge road trip to the west
2. Moving to New York City
3. Moving to Chicago
4. Making plans to go back to school

So, in the mean time, my plan is to make as much money as possible. I'm stuck here until I save money, anyway. But while I'm here I need to make a point to do things that make me feel happy. Coming back home has a way of making me dull, smothering me. It's like I'm 15 again, looking for myself and completely unaware of my wants, likes, abilities, passions.
I don't want to just survive. I don't want to stay afloat. I don't want any of that barely living but still living bullshit. I want to live so hard that I could die tomorrow.

So, I'm welcoming change in to my life. And tomorrow I'm going looking for an adventure. My mother would ask me, "What is it that scares you the most? Find it and do it." I'll have to think on that one.

I hope I wake up before noon tomorrow.

Do we ever really become who we want(ed) to be?

Shambles

I am trying desperately to find comfort and content in my mess of an apartment. Usually it is tidy, warm, welcoming and just cozy enough to wrap its arms around me while I settle in with a book and a tea.

But now. Now I'm packing, and everything is in shambles. The pictures are off the walls, the bed is unmade and covered in all the things I can't find an empty space for, and there are boxes everywhere. I can't so much as change my shirt without banging my elbows on things, leaving little bruises everywhere. I hate this phase of the moving effort. Nothing has a place and so it is all over. Aesthetics are so important to me. I feel almost incomplete and unhappy if I cannot sit down at the end of the night and be calmed by my environment.

Oh well. It's all part of the process of moving, I guess. So I'll deal with it and light a few candles to take the edge off. Maybe a bottle of wine will help, too.

Taking Back the River

Excerpts from Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Respond; that is how to clear the river. Wolves lead immensely creative lives. They make dozens of choices every day, decide this way or that, estimate how far, concentrate on their prey, calculate the chances, seize opportunity, react powerfully to accomplish their goals. Their ability to find the hidden, to coalesce intention, to focus on the desired outcome and to act in their own behalves to gain it, are the exact characteristics required for creative follow-through in humans.

To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion, and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being.

Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create on must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one's mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down. We can put out our skirts and shirts to catch as much as we can carry.

Begin; this is how to clear the polluted river. If you're scared, scared to fail, I say begin already, fail if you must, pick yourself up, start again. If you fail again, you fail. So what? Begin again. It is not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. If you're scared, so what? If you're afraid something's going to leap out and bite you, then for heaven's sake, get it over with already. Let your fear leap out and bite you so you can get it over with and go on. You'll get over it. The fear will pass. In this case, it is better if you meet it head-on, feel it, and get it over with, than keep using it to avoid cleaning up the river.

Waiting for it.

I've been so lazy in my time off. My life has been simple lately, defined only by work during the day and watching television from my bed in the evening. I just worked five days in a row to help the Deli get through Welcome Week. School starts tomorrow and it just hit me that for the first time in almost two decades, I will not be going. However, I feel good about that, because I feel I've reached a new stage in my life and I have no desire to cling desperately to the one that has passed. But I do feel somewhat depressed at my stagnation. I've graduated but I haven't moved much since then. Everything mounted to culminate on that one day when I wore the cap and gown and now, my momentum has simmered, I remain in the same city, the same apartment I was in before, and I'm working the same uninspiring job I worked as a student, only now I'm working more than the weekends.

Ok, enough complaining. Let's look at some prospects. I've applied for an internship with AuthorHouse, a publishing company that helps self-published authors get publicity, etc. I had an interview and they said I was a candidate. A friend who works there told me I had the thing in the bag, from what she could tell. However, they haven't called or emailed, so I'll be calling Monday. The internship is paid, and would improve my resume, as I have no PR experience.

Also, I'm applying for a spring internship with This American Life. It sounds like I'm aiming low, with all these internships. But I've applied for so many jobs and I haven't gotten a bite. Until the economy picks up, it may be better to build, build, build and be ready when the jobs come back.

The internship application for This American Life requires I come up with a documentary story idea. I'm struggling. Bad sign, right? Spencer reminds me that I'm trying to hard, and he's right. I feel like one of those cartoon characters who sits down at her type writer, puts down a few words before ripping the page out and tossing it in the trash can across the room. Over time the can fills to the top and she is still there, bags under her eyes, frustrated, burnt out, blocked.
But I know inspiration will come. Doubt is a destroyer. "Rivers know this. There is no hurry. We shall get there someday."

My best friend Stacy's wedding is this Friday. I am the maid of honor, something I've never been before. I can't believe she is getting married. I can't believe I've been in Bloomington for four years - long enough to meet someone (many people, actually) and watch them exit and enter a number of phases of their life. Reflecting on those phases and anticipating the next ones is so much fun.

What else have I been doing lately? Lighting candles, visualizing big cities and planning. I've been trying to get in shape but I haven't been executing it very well. I've also got plans to go camping but will wait until Spencer is in town. He and I have been apart for a while - he is in Chicago and I remain here. Four hours is much closer than thousands of miles and an ocean apart, so it's not so bad. We got through my study abroad program just fine, and we're surviving long distance just fine, as well. We've become accustomed to talking on the phone a few times a day. My new computer makes video chatting easy.

As for the season, fall seems to be wrapping its crispy orange fingers around the summer heat and cooling it. It's been a mild summer, overall, but tonight it's like 40 degrees and today I was sporting a sweatshirt. Overkill. Late August and summer is already kissing our freckled faces goodbye. It never was really here, not in full. We had maybe a week of 90 degree weather. Weird. But I'm ready for fall, as I always am. That time of year tugs at my heart strings and makes me love everything. I feel more alive then than any other time of the year, which is strange because everything around me is dying.

I guess the best way to sum up my existence right now is to say that I'm ready for the next thing. I'm ready for something new and I'm ready for a big leap forward. I feel like a dog who just watched a tennis ball be tossed across the yard but is waiting for permission to chase it down. My ears are up, my eyes are wide and I'm on my toes, anxious to get started. But nobody's giving me the go. So I'm still waiting. And I'm trying to maintain my interest in the target.

Platforms

Life knocked me off my platform
so I pulled out my first pair of boots
bought on the street at Astor Place
before New York was run by suits

And I suited up for the long walk
back to myself
closer to the ground now
with sorrow
and stealth.

-Ani DiFranco.

Roots and bobcats.

We went Bobcatting tonight. Bobcatting is tradition. We've been doing it since my freshman year, at least. It's when we drive to Brown County to watch the sunset, run around in the woods and have a blast. Sometimes we get yelled at by passerbys. Tonight, the chosen phrase was, "White power!" They yelled it twice. That's all it took to remind me that Bloomington is still part of southern Indiana, and if you leave the city, you're in unfamiliar waters. Dangerous waters.

Today I also started my volunteer work at the community garden. I spent two hours turning soil, raking and planting grass. It was nice to be somewhere new, doing new things, meeting new people. The weather was fantastic for digging in the dirt.
My plants here at home are surviving quite nicely. I'm growing basil, tomatoes, aloe, sage, chamomile and a number of other things. I love watching them poke their little green heads out of the dark, damp dirt. All I can do is encourage them to keep growing (and I do so, audibly). People must think I'm a little nuts, with all the time I spend on my back porch, peering into the pots, obsessing over temperature and sunlight. It started pouring a few days ago while I was at work and all I could think about was how my plants were surely drowning. Silly.

Also, I cut a few pieces of spearmint out of the giant batch that grows in Spencer's yard. I brought them home and put them in water and a few weeks later, they've begun to grow roots. They're reaching out, adapting, making it work. Soon I'll plant them and they will have survived.

If you wait long enough, you'll grow roots anywhere.