It's one thing to fuck with me. I can take shit that's been thrown at me. Granted I might get really down, depressed, and feel plagued by demons of doubt, but I always bounce out of it.
But when it comes to my family, you don't fuck with them. We might have our problems with each other, we might speak ill of one another, but when it comes to someone attacking from the outside, you'd best be sure to run the other way.
Thursday morning held a lot of promise for me. I had lined up my first interview and had the potential to make some really good contacts within the high school sports community.Wanting to look snazzy and semi-professional, I opted for khakis and a sweater instead of the usual yoga pants and sarcasm-laced t-shirt.
Dropped The Kiddo off at school at 8:25 and realized I had to be at my meeting at 8:30. Strike One. Crap. My first instinct was to call and reschedule the appointment, feigning car troubles. Then I realized .5 seconds later that launching a paper and being the Regional Manger meant that I had to pull on the big girl panties and do it, even at the cost of running a few minutes late and looking like a fool (at least in my eyes).
After all, I was meeting with the head of the athletic department and it wouldn't be fair to waste his time just because I was freaking myself out. Seriously, everyone runs late. The Kiddo's school is 4 minutes down the road from the high school. As I drove sped towards the school chanting 'calm the fuck down' to myself and mentally giving the bird to several drivers, I hopped out of the car and strode into the main building with false confidence and poise that impressed me.
The receptionist gave me a glance usually one reserves for trash in the gutter and told me to sign in. Fortunately the coach appeared and ushered me to a side room before I started shooting dirty looks back at Ms-Cranky-Mc-Answer-The-Damn-Phone-Pants.
So I sit down, pretending to be poised and calm, when I actually wanted to piss myself. I think I said "I appreciate your time" 5 times before I flipped open my notebook. The noise in the hallway was going to make conversation difficult so I leaned back in my chair to nonchalantly close the door. Except, I almost wrenched my arm of out my socket. The door was held in place by an industrial strength magnet. Strike Two.
No big deal. I mentally adjusted myself and flashed a broad smile as the director stood up to close the door while I rubbed my now strained shoulder. I reached into my brand new purse and fished around for my pen and my cell phone because I had planned on recording the interview. My memory isn't worth two licksat times, so I wanted to play it on the safe side, lest I forget a crucial piece of information.
I grabbed my phone and dropped it on the table. Oh, and I managed to flip a mini pad onto the table at the same time.
Strike Three.
Mini-Pad meet Table. Table meet Mini-Pad.
I glanced up quickly and our eyes met. Without missing a beat, I swiped the pad back into the purse, gave my most charming grin, and proceeded on without any additional hitches.
10 minutes later I was out the door and laughing all the way home. I might not have the grace and poise of Ann Curry, but I'm a scrappy little fighter. I might not know what the hell I am doing, but I sure will try.
Like the logo? If you don't that's okay, because I didn't design it. But it's the official logo of the on-line newspaper I'll be heading up. The site isn't live yet, but it should be by Wednesday. I'll be busting my ass big time over the next 8-10 weeks.
While I don't have an official title at this point, the owner said I might be called "The Regional Manager" which my immediate very un-adult response was to shriek, "I need an Assistant to the Regional Manager!"
When my boss told me to pull up YouTube so she could show me a video, I assumed it had something to do with marketing. I was wrong. And I couldn't stop laughing.
My boss? She's 50PlusSomething and is from England.
This new path in the journey of my life is going to be awesomely insane.
Once upon a time a little girl lived on a dead-end street down by a river, but she didn't live in a van down by the river. She had a great imagination and was so full of confidence that she believed that everyone on the street would enjoy reading a newspaper that she created. So throughout one summer she made up stories about neighbor's houses catching fire and lost dogs that never existed.
Having no access to a mimeograph machines (kids, that what we called copiers back in the day) she painstakingly re-wrote each article in perfect D'Nealian handwriting and illustrated each copy. Critics would later likened those surviving first editions to St. John's Illuminated Bible.
Days passed. The little gazettes were ignored by most neighbors. The papers, lovingly bound with rubber bands were mistaken for mass mailing flyers and were tossed in garbage cans without a second look.
The little girl saw all this. Her labor of love and creativity trashed. She pondered for a moment and thought, "Well, there goes two days of work for nothing. I'm gonna swim now." Because really? What kid wouldn't want to swim in the neighbor's pool?
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Twenty plus years later, on this particular day, this now older girl (because she maintains she will NEVER GROW UP) met up with two editors. Between these two editors their resumes spanned the globe: NY Times, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Tampa Tribune; they had worked in Germany, South American, Thailand, India. To say the least, it was an impressive meeting.
What began as an interview for a recurring column on health, fitness, and dog care (how those go together, she wasn't sure), turned into an offer to be a manager of a regional newspaper. The editors were impressed with her background, her skills, and her adventurous spirit. Her first business meeting will take place on Saturday and by Monday, she'll hit the ground running.
And she lived happily ever after. Until she couldn't fall asleep because she was so excited!
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(So these are the details of the story. I had answered an ad on Craigslist that advertized a position of a writer for the Dade City community for a on-line newspaper.After speaking briefly on the phone to one of the owner and playing telephone tag over the holidays, I wasn't too convinced that I wouldn't be meeting up with two retirees who decided to take up on-line news reporting as a hobby. However, I kept the appointment and the rest is as above. Long before we had giant news corporations, towns and communities put out their own papers. So my job is to launch the Dade City version of this newspaper. It'll feature local events and people. And seeing as we all have a natural propensity towards narcissism it shouldn't be too hard to have the highschool kids phone their sports scores to me, soccer moms to email pictures, and the garden club to wax poetic about their spring blooms. People love reading about themselves. Small businesses will get exposure on a level that they couldn't afford before.
I have to sell ad space in addition to managing articles that need to be published, editing documents for quality, and making contacts within the community. And I think I really can do it.
The wonderful thing about these editors is that they understand the meaning of community. 15% of each client's ad fee will go into a community slush fund. Once a month, 10 members from the community will decide where that money will go, whether to a needy family, replacing flower beds around city hall, or improving existing buildings. I'm going to be helping small businesses develop. I'm going to know that children will smile when they can point to an article and recognize their face from the action shots captured during a game. It'll be amazing to know that whatever ad revenue I can pull in will go to help those who might not be in a good spot, places that I've been in before.
It's going to be a lot of hard work, especially in the beginning. But I can still work from home, (yea for yoga pants!), set my own hours, and keep working with The Band. This is an amazing chance for growth for me.
I know I will still have my days where my demons want to drag me down into depressive, anxiety ridden pits of self-doubt. I know that I will freak out and get writers block. But I know that I can keep fighting through it. I know I can do it.)
And I know that I have you, dear readers, to thank. Your comments, your warm wishes keep me up. Thanks for believing in me thus far.
How can frozen shrimp be bad? My stomach is crying. So much for writing my post about being part of the Traveling Red Dress Project and having a great talk with a wonderful person.
Diet fail.
And I have a newspaper interview in the AM. Uhhhhhhhhhggggggggggggggggg.
