i'm beginning to see the light

it's true, i have been beating up on myself a lot lately, and that does need to come to an end. funny that i am the meanest to myself right about 21 days apart each month. hmmmmmm.... but i do need to stop comparing myself to other people and start giving myself credit for all of the wonderful things i am capable of. synge is right, i am not sans career right now because i am stupid or lazy or untalented, but just because i have not found the right thing yet. and so i have been looking....

i spent the whole day online on wednesday trying to be proactive with my non-career-gal blues. for those of you who don't know, i have been taking creative non-fiction (read: personal essay/travel essay/memoir) writing classes at northwestern since last fall, and i love them. i have always wanted to write, i have had ideas swirling in my head for a long time now, and finally doing it has felt great. and the cherry on top is that i really think i am good and so do my teachers and the people in my classes. that's certainly a start. so when i began my career search i thought to myself, 'how can i turn this writing thing into a situation that would be more steady and employable than constantly submitting essays to magazines and This American Life but would still allow me to do that?' (and no, teaching is not an option for me- i don't like children particularly, i am not patient with strangers and i am not good at explaining how i get from a to b). i have always known i would have to go back to school at some point, because i just don't want to work in theatre and i don't have the training to do anything else. so i began to scan some local colleges' grad school majors and that's when it hit me (bear with me; i am trying to walk to the fine line of being positive and not belittling myself while still acknowledging that some of you may be thinking you've heard it all before as far as me and my job ideas, but i really do think this is different): journalism.

in the fall of 2006, i am going to go to columbia college in chicago to get a masters in journalism. i can finish it in one to two years, and they are very big on getting their graduates internships and helping them get jobs in the city. i had always thought about journalism, but i thought it would involve many many more years of school or that as a theatre major i would have to start from scratch. but not so at columbia- they don't even require the GRE (yipee! i won't have to relearn math!). and though columbia college may not be columbia university, it is still a well known school locally and, like i said, they are good at making sure you leave with contacts and job possibilities. as i see it, a journalism degree is somewhat like a law degree for writers in that it can turn into a million different jobs, including many of the more creatively bent ones that i have always dreamed of (travel writer for Gourmet anyone??).

so, having that goal in mind, i feel much better. i am attending a workshop at the Iowa summer writer's workshop this july (taught by hope edelman, who wrote 'motherless daughters'- i'm so excited!), i hope to begin submitting pieces to local publications by the fall, i will finish up my creative non-fiction courses at Northwestern by next winter, that leaves the spring free to fully immerse myself in wedding planning, and then i go off to get my masters! so maybe my life is fuller and more exciting than i thought. i just need to keep my eye on the big picture and not get bogged down by my little jealousies or my hormones. that said, i am off to let a woman insert a cold metal device into my vagina and scrape my uterus with a stick. (as sarah jessica parker says, ' i love being a girl!)