Let go (Reverb10, Day 5)

December 5 – Let Go.

What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

(Author: Alice Bradley)

___________


This year, I let go of a job in my dream industry in order to live out a bigger dream- to write for a living. Along the way, I let go of feelings of inadequacy; my confidence sky-rocketed as I contributed to my team and received positive feedback.

I suppose I let go of my fear of taking risks. I learned that even if things aren't bad (I really did love job 1.0), it doesn't mean you should be afraid to look for something better. Something that is equally challenging and rewarding.

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Writing (Reverb10, Day Two)

Day Two: Writing
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

__

I do a lot of things, daily, that don’t directly contribute to my writing. I drink coffee, watch TV online, read other people’s blogs in my GoogleReader, stalk my favorite news sites, and I coach dance team. When I’m doing those things, I’m not writing.

Except, I am. I eavesdrop on a conversation in a restaurant and write a blog post in my head about how tragic-comic the couple in question is. I have composed in my head, but never posted, the many dramas that threaten to overtake my teenage dancers’ lives and in turn, all of our practices. Then I weed out the good ideas from the bad, and sit down to pound the good ones into blog entries.

Personally, I find inspiration in seemingly random happenings, stories, facts that can be strung together to make a bigger point. When I write, it's probably based on an idea I've been working out in my head for a few days or more (except my desperate posts on how much I love coffee. Those are always spontaneous). I’m not sure that cutting anything out would be beneficial to my writing, although I am working to cut out crap I don’t need in order to better serve my own well-being.

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8 Questions

Jamie tagged me in her 8 Questions post, and now it's my turn to answer her eight questions. This is good news for you, readers, because now that my job actually entails writing, I don't really feel like doing it after hours. It reminds me of the days when my roommate babysits after she works a 10-hour day at her preschool- she knows she loves kids but can't quite remember why.

1. What are your top 2 cities in the world?
Top city is London- the culture, navigating the Tube, shopping at Covent freaking Garden... love it all. I went when I was sixteen and am convinced that if I went as a legal adult that could enter the pubs I'd never come home.

Second... a tie, between Seattle and Nashville. Totally silly because those are the last two cities I've been to but I love the charm of Nashville (southern but not SOUTH) and the chill vibe/walkability of Seattle.

I'm 100% certain that if I ever go to Austin, TX, it would be my favorite city of all time. It's on the top of my to-visit list.


2. Are you doing what you love or doing what you have to?
How appropos! Just started a new job and even though it's early in, I really am doing what I love. After a year and a half in an entry level role at a small agency, I've landed a corporate gig, writing internal/external communications and executing social media channels. In this job market, it's hard to be picky... so I had stayed put and started to give up the ghost on writing as a career. My freelance fairy godmother and countless others reminded me that it's never okay to settle and through some old-school networking, I found a position that fits my skill-set and personality. Still pinching myself.


3. Coffee or tea?
Coffee. I went through a rough patch about a month ago, but I'm back and better than ever. Soy lattes, hot or iced, are the true loves of my life.


4. Describe the moment in your life when you felt the most loved.
I'm not not so good at the gush and I'm very poor at quantifying love... but I'm positive that the last month has collectively been the most loved-up month of my life. Parents are checking in constantly re: the new job, and congratulating me like a three year old in toilet training each time I check off a new accomplishment. BF, the easy going ying to my frazzled yang, has reminded me everyday that life is worth slowing down for. When I sometimes refuse this advice, he gamely joins me under the storm cloud without once mentioning that I need to learn to batten the hatches. Mare's homecoming has breathed new life into my previously stagnant social life, and time with my girlfriends has never been better. Roomie tap dances with me at 11 PM, until we collapse on the couch and chair wheezing from laughter. And I spent four glorious days with JSP in Nashville; I didn't (much to his chagrin) blog about this trip because in the end... every attempted post didn't do it justice. We're better now than we ever were in Wisco because we're confident in our decisions and life plans but at the same time, there was a wistfulness that threaded through our trip as we realized that we'll likely remain a plane ride away from one another for quite some time. And possibly forever.

Oh dear. I guess I am good at the gush, after all.


5. Who do you think had the single biggest impact on your life so far?
My mom. I've never met anyone who is so gifted in the social sphere. Everyone, everyone, loves my mom. As a child I realized that if someone didn't think she was the greatest person alive, they weren't worth knowing. I still follow that rule; it's never failed me.


6. What song lyrics say exactly what you're feeling right now?
Ray LaMontagne's whole new album is speaking to me, especially the song Old Before Your Time:

It took so long to see
That truth was all around me
Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turning gold
And like the sky, my soul is also turnin
Turnin from the past at last and all I've left behind
Could it be that I am finally learnin?

Oh gorgeous, bearded man, I love you.


7. Pro sports or college ball?
Depends on the sport. Pro baseball, college basketball, pro football but I love Badger gamedays with my Wisco alums in town.


8. What book do you really, really want to see made into a movie?
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons. It's my favorite book of all time, and no you can't borrow it because I like to read it about 3x a year. My dream cast (assuming that because it's in a dream all these people don't have to be age-appropriate now, or even alive) is:

Katherine Hepburn as Charlie Kate
Ashley Judd as Sophia
Kyle Chandler (smokeshow!) as Mr. Baines
Rory Gilmore as Margaret
Ryan Gosling (double smokeshow!) as Tom Hawkings

I've been casting this movie for something like 8 years in my head, so unless they can bring back Kat from the dead, they'd better not make it and ruin my life.

____

I'm tagging my as-yet-untagged blogging BFFs- KC, ProntoPup, LH, Joel (ahem), Sara, and Teresa and anyone else for my 8 questions.

1. What's one obscure-ish website you visit?
2. What's your go-to catchphrase?
3. Worst job you ever had? (T- please share at length the summer of Come Back Inn. It's why I included this question. A thank you!)
4. One moment you'd like to relive- to change something
5. One moment you'd like to relive where you wouldn't change anything
6. Favorite alcoholic drink
7. I think the majority of you are, like me, born rule-followers. What's one time in your life you broke the rules, and how did it turn out?
8. At weddings, do you participate in the Electric Slide, Macarena, and Chicken Dance? Why/why not?

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Onward, upward...

All quiet on the blog front lately... For good reason. Life changes have been brewing, and now they’re at full strength (see what I did there? Eh?) and ready to be shared.

On Thursday, I resigned from my job. In 3 weeks, I will be working on the corporate side of marketing for the first time. Most importantly, I’ll be writing.

Writing. For work. As my job. I’ll be paid for it. Paid to write.

Making the decision to leave my first full-time job was unbelievably difficult. When I got this job, I cried for about 2 days straight- after months of applying for terrible jobs, I somehow got the one job that I wanted the most. One that required the use of my tack-on Women’s Studies major as well as my main major, Rhetoric. The fog of what I can now self-diagnose as mild depression was lifted as I read 401k agreements and signed my non-compete. Out I went into the workforce, dutifully Powerpointing, troubleshooting, and working under the gun for ever-pressing client needs.

Immediately I recognized that in agency life, there are 2 main tracks- account management, and creative execution. I also saw that I'm not good at being the middle-man, the account person who pedals a seemingly endless loop between client and creative until somehow, by the grace of the ad gods, an agreeable product is finalized. However, I'd been hired as an account coordinator so I tried my best to stay on the path that had been laid out for me.

Yet as I watched freelance writers flow in and out, I knew that I wanted to do their work and not my own. That I am much more equipped to create than to manage the creation. (This is the marketing equivalent of actors saying they want to direct, by the way.) In came, through a total twist of fate, a job that, among other things, requires me to troll the internet, and dissect what I read on the industry through the use of strategic blog posts on the company website. Yaht. Zee.

Without getting too mush-mush on you, thanks for reading. This blog has been my only writing outlet for the last two years. Often times the only thing that kept me coming back was a snarky email from a friend demanding new posts to pep up the workday. Other times, I wrote because I was afraid that without blogging, I'd never write anything more substantial than an e-mail. Now I can say that part of my job is choosing the right words, in the right order, on the right subject.

Onward, upward is my slogan for the year, since my blogging BFFs have such good ones. I think it's fitting because this is going to be an enormous change that I couldn't be more enthusiastic to explore.

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