I am going to do that horrible, horrible thing of making myself write a blog today. I have run out of every idea for killing time at work, my boss is gone for the day. What's a gal (with a fake job) to do?!
I'm bored at work, not challenged, not stimulated, and so I often sit myself down and ask myself: self, what do you really want to do? Where do you really want to be? Until very recently, I had my answer down pat. I want to start out entry level at a book publishing firm and work my way up in the editorial team. It's general, but yet specific. I know I want to be FORCED to read with my red pen all day. I want to be inundated with 500-page novels that carry on and on, without a likable character. While I know that that's still what I want to do, I'm left to wonder if that will ever happen (unless I'm willing to pick up and move to NYC). Reality plays a big role in all of this. Dream all you want, dream beautiful, magical dreams and work to make them a reality. But these dreams must fit into the scheme of your life, the capacity of your career, your mind. (Unless of course you're someone annoying who wins the lottery, or gets picked up to be Ronnie's new love interest on Season 2 of The Jersey Shore... I could go on, but I won't.)
You need passion to make it, they say. Along with hard-work, dedication. But aside from all of that, I still ask, what do you really want to do, self? Is it books? I can dive into the books that I WANT to everyday after work, everyday on the weekends. I can print out manuscripts and comb through them on my lunch break. What really matters to me? People.
My love for writing is undeniable, but I can't help but wonder, is it the people I get to (and have gotten to) write about what I love about it? Do I love writing oh-so-much when I'm writing a review of an Outdoor Shooting game for work, or a short piece on the 5 Best Purses for Your iPhone? I don't love it then. I run from it then. I avoid emails from my editor then. I love it when I'm learning who Maggie is as I create her. As I learn she is a recently-deceased but eternally beloved mother of two little girls, an amazingly captivating and passionate wife to a man who is struggling with her death, with the concept of moving on to raise his two little girls without her. That's when I'm enamored with the craft, with the placement of the words, the movement of the language, the image of a daughter's small fingers tracing the veins on her father's wrists. I love the people, the characters, and I don't even need to create them. They're all around: quirky and awkward and loveable yet disgusting and intriguing: John, the director of the Indoor Tanning Association of America; Henrietta Lacks whose "immortal cell line" has served as the foundation of most medical research done over the last 50 years; Hugo, the man arrested in Dupont Circle for jogging naked one Spring morning.
So whether I get where I "want" to be or not, I will make it with people around me to learn about and laugh with. There's no limit to what I can be and where I can go if my biggest expectation is that they'll be people there with interesting stories who need someone to listen and to love them.
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