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i came across this post on one of my favorite blogs, violent acres - it summed up exactly how i’ve been feeling and what i’ve been thinking lately. the basic gist of it is that while being able to “choose our destiny,” or “choose the path that makes us happy,” or “follow our bliss” or “find our true calling” sounds like a great opportunity, it can really be quite maddening.

the author talks about how, when she became self-employed, she felt completely overwhelmed with the possibility that she could literally do WHATEVER SHE WANTED. that’s the american dream, but it’s also a debilitating feeling.

this is probably part of the reason why i’m trying to get another “real” job, as opposed to continuing along the freelancing road. i could take my freelancing in any direction i wanted and that’s part of the problem. i feel like i haven’t been very successful at creating direction for myself and honing my “business” into something i truly enjoy doing. it has, however, helped me figure out what i DON’T enjoy doing.

and maybe that counts for more than i think.

so as i wrote a few posts back, lately i’ve been feeling the itch to do something new (i know, i know, as if traveling asia for nearly three months wasn’t good enough …). now, there’s a semi-opportunity arising and i’m finding it hard to remain neutral about it. a couple weeks ago i felt like yes, i wanted SOME sort of change but i wasn’t sure WHAT exactly - and i was kind of ambivilent about what it was, when it happened etc.

now, as this one opportunity has arisen and i continue to take steps toward it, i’m finding it hard to remain patient. this isn’t surprising to  me - it’s what i always do. i’m not a patient person, and when i “get a bee in my bonnet” (as my mom would say) about something, i want it to have happened YESTERDAY. i was - and still am - trying to ensure that doesn’t happen this time. that kind of mentality - while often motivational for me - has often led me to do things i’m less-than-thrilled about later on down the line. or things i realize i wasn’t that passionate about in the first place.

so for now, i want to remain happily dispassionate about the potential for a new opportunity (one i’ve actually looked forward to for much of my adult life, yet hadn’t seriously considered till now because i never felt the timing was right) until such a time when passion is justified and required. that doesn’t mean i want to be passive in pursuit of a dream, but rather that i don’t want to fall into the “over-eager” trap i’ve created for myself so many times before.

the good news is i’m at a time in my life where i truly would be happy either way. i’d be happy to go in this new direction, yet i’m also thrilled with the way i’m able to live my life now.

i need to remind myself of these things and stay in that “happy either way” spot until plans are cemented and decisions are made - which i know will be incredibly difficult for me!

I was doing a freelancing shift today at my local CBS affiliate (I get called in about once every week or two, which is perfect for me - not too much work, but keeps my foot in the door should I ever decide to return to TV) and I found out one of the producers is leaving to be an EP in South Carolina. No - I don’t want his job (that thought didn’t even cross my mind until now). Instead - I’m totally jealous of him. No again - I don’t want to live anywhere in South Carolina. What I mean is that I’m jealous of his life change - and I realized that I’m starting to feel like it’s time for a change of scenery for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still love where I am and what I do and what types of opportunities my lifestyle affords me, but I’m totally getting the itch.

 Ryan and I actually have been talking about what the next step in our lives will be and I’m getting excited for whatever is next. We don’t really have a specific plan, but it’s exciting for me to think that at this time next year I could be somewhere totally different, doing something totally different. While we’d love to go to another huge city, we’ve talked about going to a more medium-sized place (still hip and fun, of course - no colorado or kansas for us, natch!). Somewhere we could keep our standard of living - or upgrade! - and be able to save and invest a sh*t ton of money. (All part of our “financially free by 3o” plan!)

The beauty for us is that, since we’re self-employed and all our clients are virtual, our incomes won’t adjust to whatever area we move to. So if we move somewhere with a lower cost of living, we’ll be making the same we are now, and spending a LOT less! Not too bad, considering that I’d say we’re living pretty comfortably even with a super-high cost of living!

Like I said, I’d ideally want to live in another really big city, but I don’t want to downgrade my lifestyle at this point - and our dream places are all more expensive than where we are now.  We decided our dream cities are the places we’d like to end up one day, after we’ve established ourselves, maybe gone to grad school, have a larger investment empire, and are financially free.

In the meantime, we’re going to Asia for three months, so I guess that will have to serve as diversion enough :-D 

ps- i found this adorable (dog friendly!) apartment in downtown Austin. I’m ready to upgrade!

ok, i wrote a post similar to this, not that long ago, but i’ve been doing a lot of digging into military culture, military brat culture, the way military childhood affected me and others in preparation for what I hope will one day be some sort of book. but that’s not what i want to talk about now.

in the course of poking around on the internet, i found a forum where brats were talking about what it meant to grow up military. one comment in particular totally nailed down how i’ve been feeling lately:

  “I think the experience of finally “settling down” sometimes feels like “settling”, a betrayal of that particular survival instinct that never accepts stasis as a reality … Time displacement lurks in the corners of our souls, and the present tense of our lives is really a rehersal for some mysterious future tense. We have to learn to relax and let our present be our present tense, if that is possible.”

The first line is especially profound for me - one of my greatest fears in life is to wake up one day, five or ten years down the road, and realize i’ve “settled” for a life i didn’t want for myself.  so to counteract this, i do crazy things like start planning another move after i’ve only been in a city for six months, or switch jobs every year or so, or try to travel one week out of every month, or go live in asia for 2 1/2 months.

I also have an impossible time letting the present be the present. for as long as i can remember, i’ve been planning the next stage of my life - which goes back to being afraid of “settling.”  When i was in high school, i planned for college (applied early and got accepted my junior year, actually), when i was in college i rushed through to get married (finished in 2 1/2 years), after i got married, i started racing through cities, jobs, endeavors, ideas. 

for example i’ve always enjoyed writing, but i’ve never felt like i’ve found a specific “passion” on which to hinge my propensity for words. At first it was TV reporting, then it was TV producing, then it was cable TV. Throw in a mix of newspaper writing, PR, even some social minded endeavours and you get a good snap shot of the past few years.

i’m not sure i know how exactly, but i’m pretty confident that my inability to settle has something to do with my propensity to always be searching - whether that be for my passion, a job, a new place to live.

one of the posts on this forum was written by a guy who’s compiling info for a book of his own on what he says is the “sad legacy” of brats. on this point, i have to disagree. It’s true that i can explain a lot of my flaws and shortcomings by looking to how i was raised. (but isn’t that true of any introspective 20-something?) But i also have my upbringing to thank for some of the things i’m most proud of about myself, for some of my greatest relationships - most importantly the one with my family, and some of the most amazing experiences a person could want.

I finally did it. I quit my job. I couldn’t be happier.  granted, i still have about three weeks left till i’m officially unemployed, but i’m so psyched, excited and optimistic about what this will mean for me.

i know, it might come as kind of a surprise after my previous fawning over my  job and declaring how i *did* want to be a corporate business woman. well, a lot has happened, and my attitude has changed a lot since those postings.  in part toward my company - although i still really do believe what in what it’s doing and think it will be a catalyst for change - but mainly toward my job, and the rest of my life.

i’ve been writing about this a lot, just not on my blog - lest somehow someone from my work accidentally stumble upon it before i had made my severance official. i’ll post those entries at some point in the future (probably after i’m actually gone), but the basic jist of it is that i am not a desk person.  this has been my first real desk job, and it has come to really grate on me in these past four months or so. i couldn’t imagine the rest of my life spent this way - even if i did climb the ladder, have more authority and more reign to do what i wanted. i couldn’t imagine that for the rest of my life, my “life” would be someone else’s property.   i realized that if a company as basically good as the one i’m at (although of *course* not with out its flaws - and i’ll post more on that later) couldn’t satisfy me, i would never be happy to work for someone else, and give them my time, my life. for what? in exchange for two weeks of PTO a year? i work weekends, nights, 12 hour days … blahblahblah … and i get TEN DAYS in exchange?!!  now i’m ranting - and it’s not a rant necesarily against my place of employment, but more against corporate America in general.  i may sound cliche - as i’m by no means the first to realize this - but it was stealing my soul.

i think that as more and more people in my generation come to the realization i have, the face of the corporate world will be forced to change to a certain extent. or at least i hope it does, for the sake of the people trapped inside.  we were brought up to know what we want and go for it, to demand nothing less than perfection from ourselves *and* our employers.

anyway, back to my original theme of it being a lot of work to be unemployed.  it’s probably obvious from my above tirade that i will not be proffering my soul to another company.  i’m going to be a freelance writer, and while i know that sounds ambitious (and also kind of cliche) i have high hopes for the future.  it’s been so much work to get to this point, because i wanted to be at a relatively good financial spot with freelance work, before i just jumped without a safety net. so i’ve been working my ass off, getting blogging jobs, article writing jobs, PR jobs, publicist jobs, researching jobs, and on and on.  i’ve been working on the weekends, at night, over my lunch break, and before i go to work in the morning to try and make this happen.  right now i’m not in love with all the jobs i’m doing, but for now they’ll pay the bills and i can refine as i go along, have more time, and become more experienced at the game.

back in the day, the reason i got into journalism was to write. and as the years have gone on, i’ve gotten further and further away from the writing aspects of my jobs until now i have absolutely no writing duties at my current job.  true, that gave me more ability to write in my spare time, but i’ve always wanted my passion to be my job, not my hobby. so that’s the road i’m going down.

i’ve enjoyed my day jobs for the most part - a few years ago i couldn’t imagine doing anything but producing news - but for now they’ve run their course.  i know myself well enough and am not naive enough to think this is it for me.  i won’t be surprised if in a year or two, i’m off to try something new, but at least i will have given this a try - which is what i’ve said about almost everything i’ve done.

ryan’s quit his job also and we have great plans for this next phase in our life.  we’re going to enjoy the sunny days instead of watching them go by from our desks.  we’re going to work from wherever the hell we want to, whenever the hell we want to - at 10 am or 3 am. we’re going to live in japan with my parents for a few months.  then maybe try house swapping (we still want to keep our home base) so we can live in some of our dream cities - new york, london.  who. frikkin. knows.  and if you know me, then you know that those three words make all these sense in the world to me.

i wrote this almost three years ago, as i was preparing to move from Italy back to the states. i came across it as i was cleaning out files on my computer and surprisingly found it somewhat good after all these years.  so i’m positing it with out any editing and re-writing. who knows, it may be a good place to use as a spring board for the stories that have followed …

If I’d known a year ago, that looking at my planner from my last year in college would make me cry, I probably would have laughed.  I’ve always been one to yes, carry my happy memories fondly with me, but to move on.  To accept what’s in front of me and work through it.  But in the last nine months there had been a lot to accept.  I came across my day timer from college as I was cleaning my new apartment out, getting ready to move again.  I had hardly used it since I graduated.  Brought it with me when I got married, but stashed it in a drawer.  Each date on every page was, to me, filled with who I used to be.  Meetings with professors, homework assignments, lunches with friends, outings with roommates.  Even meaningless things like “pay rent,” or , “do laundry,” or “meet kelli to work out” brought tears to my eyes.  They reminded me of the person I was, the person I felt like I still wanted to be, but had left behind.  I saw names I’d forgotten, events that had freeze-framed in my mind, outings that had all but faded from my memory.  Torrey conference, midnight madenss, pumpkin carving party, girls’ dinner.  They didn’t really mean anything to any one else, but to me they were footprints of myself.  I reached out to the pages of the stupid, thin notebook as if I reached back to my own personality.  It was a weird, surreal feeling.  Like I was looking through someone else’s life, but having the memories and experiences to back up what I was seeing. 

I don’t know if I would say I’d changed so much since that last year that I was a totally different person—I didn’t feel like a different person.  I felt like the same girl, but she had experienced, sometimes endured, a thousand circumstances to bring her so far from where she was that it was crazy to really look back on what had been.  Each day, pieces of the memories I now held in their tangible form had come back to me.  I thought frequently of my old roommates, fun parties we went to, crazy class schedules.  I had many fond, and probably an equal number of painful, memories.  But somehow, nine months later, standing there beside the kitchen table in my Italian apartment, flipping through a ten dollar calendar, I got a weird rush of emotion.  I was at a completely different stage in my life now, *and* I was getting ready to move on from*that* stage into something else!  I hadn’t even had a chance to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t the day-timer girl anymore.  Somehow, over the course of almost a year, I *had* become a different person—things going on around me had forced me into it.  Sure, I’d obviously chosen to get married, but I didn’t choose the events that came with it … I had no way of seeing those events from where I was standing when I said, “I do.”  So here I was all those months later, holding day-timer girl in my hands, waiting to be finally-has-a-job-and-lives-in-the-states-again girl.  But who was I now, who had I been up until now? 

You know, I don’t know.  I don’t know where “college me” became “married me;” I don’t know where or how “married me” will become “career me.”  I figure it’s quite possible that it’s not so much a thing of becoming one thing or another, but more a thing of being.  I was and I am and I will be me—a year ago that “me” hadn’t experienced marriage, and in a year I’ll have yet another set of accomplishments under my belt.  I didn’t leave day timer girl, or “college me” behind … I grew *from* them.  Not necessarily *away* from or even *out* of them.  They are still a part of me.  A part that makes me happy, and sad, and nostalgic.  But I’m learning not to regret growing from them, but seeing that growth as another stage in life.

It’s like one of my favorite bands says:

You left before I had a chance to say goodbye

But that’s the way life usually is, it just passes you by

But you can’t hold on to regrets and you can’t look back

So I’ll just be thankful for the times that I had with you

From Broadcasting to Boardroom

That title isn’t completely accurate since I’m technically still in the broadcasting industry, but it kind of describes the shift I’ve felt over the past year. I was reading about how women typically don’t make as much as men (no shocker there, really), and the author was contending sometimes women don’t put up a fight for that extra three or five grand because they think - that much money isn’t that big a deal, it’s not worth the hassle.  But in ten years, that can be the difference between an extra few years of work (I’m not being totally accurate, but that was the basic point).  I am TOTALLY guilty of thinking that way - so this article got me thinking about how I ended up there - it has a lot to do with the mentality that was cultivated through some of my past jobs.

I started out in small market news.  I was making less than 20 grand. I went to work for a station I’d interned at throughout college, and I figured (this is how they get ya!), some money was better than an unpaid internship, even if my hourly pay worked out to about minimum wage.  Plus I was doing what I loved, which made it a lot easier to swallow.  Then I accepted a similar job at a similar station, making a little more, and I was thrilled.  Again, I didn’t negotiate a salary, since I was happy to get over that 20-grand hump.  Of course, after working 12 hour days and overnights, doing two - sometimes three - people’s work, all for little or no reward, I began to think asking for more wasn’t such a bad idea.

At this point also, you have to understand, the money in TV is shit.  Unless you’re at a network level as an anchor, you’re scraping by.  On the lower levels, it really doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or girl, on-air or behind the scenes, 19 grand is 19 grand is 19 grand.  I felt gypped but hey, we ALL felt gypped. Plus, we were “doing what we loved,” so we all took it. If we didn’t, there were 20 thousand recent college grads that would. That’s the mentality I had.

It was also the same mentality that led me to believe (and rightfully so) that I could do the best at the job I was in, but that was pretty much it.  In that type of TV news, moving up in markets is pretty much all you have, unless you want to make the jump to news director - but I never did.  I had almost NO business mind-set (except for the little tidbits Ryan tried to teach me).  Sure, news is a business. DEFINITELY.  But all the business-type stuff takes place in corporate offices at the companies that own the affiliates, or at the network itself, if you’re owned by them.  At the very least, it goes on the in the sales offices of the affiliates - where the news people never venture.  I thought I’d produce news forever - hopefully in a bigger market, maybe at a talk show, maybe as an executive producer.  I ADORED my career, but for what I wanted to do, there really wasn’t a corporate ladder to climb.

Then I moved to the big city. After freelancing at the big networks, proving to myself that I could hack it, making more than twice what my pay had been before, then realizing I didn’t want to go into work at midnight or 3 am for the rest of my life, I ditched network news for a hip, green, cable company start up.

There are things I miss about network news, but I’ve never looked back. I’m still in the TV biz, and working at a relatively new start-up (albeit, with an already-huge staff, and amazing funding and sales) is at once exhausting and rewarding, frustrating and perfect.  I’ve been here for almost 8 months, and that initial new-job “glow” has worn off a little, but never been completely tarnished.

Anyway, working at an actual “business” - with presidents, SVPs, directors and coordinators - that’s still trying to find its feet, presents amazing opportunities.  I’m not pegged in to one job, and it took me a while to realize that.  As our company grows, I can assume more responsibility.  I can pitch creative ideas that actually get accepted and encouraged.  I can dream as big as I want to, and as long as I back it up with a proposal, someone will at least give the pitch more than just a cursory glance.  I have bosses I love (shocking!), who I strive to learn from and emulate (even more shocking!).  I’ve started looking at this as more than just a job, and realize the opportunity I have to move up and on to things I didn’t even know I could or wanted to be.

So, to bring this back to getting paid … when I got this job, I did just accept what was offered me, while also telling my boss what I’d like to be making in the near future - which was a big step for me.  I guess, even though I’ve always been a career girl, now I’m taking more initiative with that career.  I’m becoming more of a business girl.  I meet with my boss to discuss my ideas and goals.  I write proposals (a year ago, I didn’t even know what a proposal was…).  I’m increasing my value, so when the time comes that I ask for more money (something I still hate to do); I’ll actually get it.

i hesitated writing this for a couple reasons. for one, i guess it’ll show i’m a little sentimental and not 100% cynical, and i’m not completely ok with showing that (small) side of me. it took hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars spent on therapy for me to even admit i *have* that side. also, i’m going to quote song lyrics, and i’m not a 14 year old highschool girl. plus those lyrics are by the dixie chicks. but what the hell, i am what i am.

i’ve listened to this song more than i care to admit because it really strikes something within me. oddly, several of the songs on the dixie chicks’ new album have had that affect on me, but i’ll save those for later.

this particular one made me think of my relationship with ryan:

Busses, cars, and airplanes leaving
Burning fumes of gasoline
And everyone is running
And I come to find a refuge in the

Easy silence that you make for me
It’s okay when there’s nothing more to say to me
And the peaceful quiet you create for me
And the way you keep the world at bay for me
The way you keep the world at bay

i kind of pride myself on being the a-typical girl, and in some ways i think i am. “feelings” make me uncomfortable, i hate valentine’s day and forced sentiment, i don’t like to cuddle, i need my own time - and for the most part ryan and i do our own thing during the week, and set aside specific time on the weekends to spend together. it’s taken us awhile to figure out what works for us - not what we WANT to work for us, but what REALLY works. and it’s an evolving work in process.

but on the flip-side, i’m kind of a walking girl-cliche. i want to be taken care of. for all my show of independence, career-oriented-mentality, and woman power, i still want someone i can fall back on. i thank my dad for that, since - although i’m married and in my 20’s - i still consider myself a daddy’s girl. he was always willing to go out of his way to make life a little easier for his girls - my mom included.

i probably sound crazy, spoiled, and naive. but in some ways, i’m ok with that. and that’s why the song brings me back to my sentimental side. ryan and i have an intense, and at times volitile, relationship. part of it is immaturity at times, and part of it is just who we are as people and as a couple. but he’s my haven because he always has my back. he understands that i’m i’m crazy, spoiled and naive. he knows that i’ll work a 12 hour day to get ahead (well, ok, because i have to), but still expect him to do our taxes and deal with the finances. i know he works hard - in part because he does enjoy it - to assure we can live the quality of life we want to live - now, AND in 20 years. and really, i don’t know the half of the time and effort he invests into investments, side projects, work and more. it’s part of how he keeps the world at bay for me. it’s hard for me to verbalize how i feel about that - which is why i’ll just let the dixie chicks do it for me.

(Jan. 30, 2007)

Do it now, clean up later.
That’s my new mantra. I know, it can sound a tad self-serving: yah, that guy you’re flirting with? Go ahead and just sleep with him. Deal with the fact that you’re married later.

That’s not what I mean.

Here’s the story. I recently started journaling again – something I haven’t done on a regular basis pretty much since I got married. Until then, it had been an almost religious thing for me, since my dad bought me my first journal when I was like, 8? Or was it 10? Either way, for a very, very long time.

My entries kind of morphed as I grew up. First they were the childish – here’s what happened today, down to the very conversation I had with my best friend. I could afford to be detailed as I wrote almost every single day. Then I wrote a lot (a lot, lot, lot) about boys – a litany of my crushes, my friends crushes, who said what to whom.

When I got into high school I got more philosophical. I started to examine my life more. I looked at my friendships and relationships and asked questions. I tried to figure out why I did what I did, why I interacted with people a certain way, why I was friends with the people I was friends with. Of course I documented occurrences, too. My three serious guy relationships – and a bunch that weren’t so serious … - are there in detail (sorry guys). Drama with my best friend is spelled out.

From these different ways of writing and interacting with myself, I learned a lot about, well, myself. So I made a pact with myself to start writing again on a regular basis. Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy. Although let’s face it, I still need therapy too. Well, my therapist will have something to read anyway.

So today, I was writing about writing. Yes, you read that right. Writing ABOUT writing. See, also back when I journaled more, I wrote in other types of medium, too. Wrote a lot of poetry, even made some decent headway into some “novels” (short stories?) I started working on. This kind of tapered off, and by college it completely stopped. I attribute that to a lot of things – busy-ness for one. Also, a lot of my writing was to work out those crazy feelings I had bottled up inside when I was a teenager and life was WAY more dramatic. Things got a little less (a LITTLE, I say) confusing as I got older, and maybe I didn’t need a way to work things out as much. (Although that’s not entirely true. Just ask my husband – or me – about the first two years of our marriage. Maybe I still NEEDED a way, I just didn’t take it).

So for whatever reason, I haven’t really written anything non-journal related in years and years. I haven’t really had a desire to. And today, as I was pouring this out to my journal, I came to the realization that I think fear is holding me back from being passionate. Maybe. Although I would automatically say the opposite: Psh – I’m way to mature to let my insecurities keep me from going after something I might love. How juvenile.

So the thought process started. As I was getting to know myself through writing this all out, it dawned on me that every time I think about getting back into non-journal writing, I automatically think of how much work it’ll be – all the research I’ll have to do (depending on the subject), the organizing (kind of like writing a REALLY long term paper – ick), the agonizing. And god forbid I try to find a publisher. Work, work, WORK!!! It’s like I’d somehow subconsciously associated something that was once my complete passion (I’d write a chapter of my “book” before I’d do my homework!) with doing a lot of work.

Then I thought about people I know who have complete passion – my friends who are documentary filmmakers, my husband who loves (and has tied up hundreds of thousands of dollars in) real estate, my dad who is in the air force and is consumed (in a good way) with space and secret spy-type stuff (how glam). All those passions require lots of work. So it shouldn’t be a deterrent that a passion would require work.

(of course I’m not saying you should force it – if it’s a lot of work and you don’t absolutely love it, it doesn’t matter. You won’t stick with it. I should know. I have a problem with this, but that’s really another subject.)

so maybe, I thought, it’s not the work requirement so much as I don’t really know how I’ll handle all the work, I don’t know that it’s worth all those things I’ve mentioned, which I associated with my passion (still with me?). maybe, I’m afraid of the work. Not in the way a lazy person is “afraid” of work, but in a way that I’ve translated the work to fear, then associated THAT with writing. Fear in some form is kind of a theme in my life, so it really makes perfect sense.

I enjoy writing, and I think I have a talent for it. I don’t want it to be something that just falls by the wayside in my life. I always thought your passion should just be something you did by default. But maybe sometimes it’s work. Maybe, when you know deep down you love something, but have fallen out of love with it for a season, maybe you have to make a conscious effort to resurrect that love into your life. And be committed to just see what happens.

So that’s my mantra. Do it now. I’m just going to start writing. Maybe little (and by little, I mean epic) blogs like this. maybe I’ll revisit a story I started in high school. And I’ll answer the questions about “how” as they come – I’ll re-learn how to put my words down on paper. I’ll do the research I need if it comes to that point. That’s the “clean up later” part.

Bottom line – I’m going to give it a try. Maybe it’ll end up a casualty of my short attention span, like PR, or social work. I think I’m ok with that though.