Doggie Paddling

Hmm. I'm moving up in the world.

At least now I have a solid writing plan -- thank you, D -- I can put in action (inaction?!).

And I'm finding some comfort in one of the best's resilience as she searches for a job this summer. By her own estimation, she has gone from Plan A through Plan H and had to come all the way back to Plan A again through no fault of her own. Through it all, she keeps praying and plugging away....

I can relate, but in my role as a would-be freelancer, my own procrastination and timidity are to blame every bit as much as interviewees who won't return calls or reply to e-mails. Actually reaching out to magazine editors who don't know my name, and sending them nothing but newspaper clips, is terrifying.

(Magazine editors, I've heard, aren't overly fond of getting their fingers ink stained.)

But they'll never learn to recognize -- and, of course, love -- my name and I'll never get any magazine pubs unless I make some sort of first contact.

So it's time. Queries, fillers, and short features will be my new best friends as I fight to jam my toes into numerous glossies' doors, and although I expect them to get pinched a few times, I am going to get some of these doors opened. Eventually.

With some concrete short-term goals mapped out, I'm taking tentative strokes toward the career I've always wanted, and for the first time I think I really am moving forward instead of merely staying afloat.

Treading Water

Tomorrow marks the three-month anniversary of my college graduation.

Since then, I've traveled farther north (just south of Iceland), south (Miami), east (Paris, France), and west (California) that I'd ever been in my life. I visited the oldest National Park in the country, Yosemite; climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower; spent a week building houses with Habitat for Humanity on the Katrina-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast.

And yet I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere.

I've taken up yoga. I've nearly finished a screenplay. I'm developing an idea for a book.

But I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.

For some reason, I guess I thought as soon as I graduated college I'd miraculously have writing gigs galore. Never in my life have I wanted a "regular" job, but now I know I'm not going to feel, or be able to live, like "regular" adult until I have a "regular" source of income.

And I still plan to make that happen through writing -- freelancing for magazines, newspapers, and any other options I scrounge up -- but in the mean time, I don't feel like I am making any progress in life. Sure, I've traveled across the country and across one ocean since I finished college, but I wonder -- cynically? practically? -- where has that really gotten me?

The experiences and memories of these trips are wonderful assets as I try to start swimming into the rest of life, but for now, while I'm treading water, they just seem like fun but useless experiences and pleasant but unhelpful memories.

Hmm. If I just put them to work in my writing....