It would be wrong to say I’d done nothing in January. We went to Vancouver and to Richmond for my birthday and to do research for a story. I have been jamming, hard, with the band, and doing my share of woodshedding, and learning how to say things like “jamming hard and woodshedding” without sounding like a total tool. I’ve been struggling to write two travel stories, one that finally snapped in to place and one that just refuses to show me the way to the end. I’ve been hammering out stuff for my regular contributor gigs, one short piece, one gear review, just about weekly. I’ve been meeting with the Passports with Purpose crew, we’re trying to create a better working process for 2012, getting that nonprofit paperwork back on the rails, and doing a lot of other planning.
I have a day job right now — I’m the content strategist for a sprawling pharma website. In case you wonder what “content strategist” means, know that sometimes, I wonder that too. I can tell you this: I look at the material that’s on the website and try to decide if it’s the right information for their audience. If it is, I help make sure it ends up in the right place, it’s it’s not, I make recommendations about what should be there instead. It’s a lot of intuitive work backed up by research. Ultimately what this means is that I sit in some meetings where a lot of blobs and boxes end up on white boards, and then, I write some reports that help people understand what they should do next.
Working. Making music. Writing, both travel and technical. We’ve talked some about travel for 2012, about finding a way to go see the extended Eurofamily again, but for now, we are grounded. This is not a bad thing. I feel great about staying home right now, about working with people I enjoy and respect (all around, in PwP, in the day job, in the band). I love having a somewhat regular paycheck coming in and I love that it makes such mundane things like coffee and a movie with the husband an easy thing to do. All that 2011 travel was spectacular, and I continue to sell stories as a result of it, but it will be a while before I refill our somewhat depleted treasury chests. Time away traveling is not as lucrative, not by a long shot, as time staying home working on tangled up things like content strategy. I worried about money in November and December, I fretted over the cost of airfare to visit my Dad, to attend my uncle’s memorial, to pay our bills.
I fret when we’re in an economic slump. I’m not poor-mouthing by any means, I’m keenly aware of what a privileged life I lead. But doubt about my choices surfaces — I should have taken a real job, I should have taken J. up on his offer to support me if we lived in Austria full time, I should have… it’s all nonsense, of course, but it is easy to get wrapped in doubt as you watch your bank account numbers decline and your health insurance rates increase. It passes, always, I find more work, I sell a story, something shifts in our house to make everything slide into the chaotic stability that defines our unpredictable existence. It feels a little magical, though my intellect knows that you make your own luck, that when things come back together it is the conclusion of hard work completed in earlier times. Happy clients, showing up for practice, taking the time to observe and trying to write well and honestly.
This is the long way of telling you why there have been so few posts from me, why I opted to run guest posts for January, and why I’m going to continue to run them for a while longer. I’m focused on the work that pays and on getting more of it. In the interim, I love introducing you to the generous writers who share their work here. I appreciate their help in keeping the blog alive while I’m preoccupied elsewhere. If you wanted to send in a guest post and didn’t, please do — the guidelines are here. If you sent one and I haven’t responded, well, you can see why and know that it’s in my inbox, and I just haven’t got to it yet. I also want to tell you about a project I’m launching. It’s a book, a sort of best of the blogs compilation, and it’s to benefit Passports with Purpose. All the information on that is here.
We’re at home. I work and write and play music and I am very attached to the current state of things as they are lovely, indeed. For now, it is perfect and probably, it is temporary, as all things are.
I hear you about the regular paychecks. It’s nice. It feels good. Also (as I tell myself about ten times a week), for the most part the world isn’t going anywhere.
this is a really lovely post, thank you. its full of promise and positives and thank you for that. nice reminder to still those sometimes nagging voices and just be still for a bit.
Take your time. Enjoy your paycheck. I, for one, will still be here when you come back.
Thanks for the update and explanation. The guest posts have been very enjoyable to read. Glad it is only a strategy to keep going and not a graceful bow out of continuing the blog.