Wrote something. Posted it to Facebook. Will post it here, as well. It’s a Good Intention. We’ll see what comes of it.
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There are days when fully-formed thoughts are there. You can’t deny them. You can choose, or not, to share them.
Last night, I filled in behind the bar, went home, was asleep by 2:30 am and was back to take a first pass at cleaning the floors and backbar by 8:30 am this morning. The money in my pocket was earned by serving drinks to a nice group of customers last night and the stress of this morning is only due to my forgetting to order a case of rail gin, which’ll trigger a trip to a distributor. Combined, this all says that: I co-own and operate a bar. Today, that’s what I do and defines who I am.
In an another reality, I’ve lived a decent chunk of adult life thinking that I’m A Writer (Who happened to do other things for most-to-all of my income.) And, to degrees, I’ve been A Writer. A freelancer, specifically. Who’s mostly written about one topic: St. Louis. (Finding a niche is what all those Be a Writer stories tell you to do; well, I did it!)
At this second, I have one freelance piece assigned. One. Strangely, I’m not mad, sad, or glad about this.
Through various realities (some self-imposed, some brought on the largest of media/tech trends), my little life as a St. Louis-centric freelance journalist has become a really small, isolated sort of Hobbit Hole. It’s tiny in here! I can’t assume a life here, a living here, despite spending large chunks of the last year having coffees, sharing drinks, peeking at LinkedIn and sending endless emails to change the pace of assigned work.
As of today, I’m accepting the fact that I’m open to chasing a story, but I’m no longer open to chasing the assignment of that story.
(Re: the personal part of that, I recently had a story assigned, a large and good one. It was found by luck and, yes, some old-fashioned work, experience and institutional knowledge. I then was compromised on the piece due to some possible work implications. Though I recused myself from only this one piece, I think it symbolized a greater problem of conflicts of interest that’ve plagued me of late. This has happened a lot, actually. It’s time to step back from these conflicts, or to own them.)
There’s a web project that’s been on my mind for the past few months; it’s come into clarity at moments, gone into the fog at others. It’d be a self-assigned thing. Without major financial ramifications to my life. I could chase down ideas at my pace. I could write a bit more truly. (And without editorial support, I can publish more typos, but at my own special clip! Boo!) It’s time to buy a URL, type it up, take things back to the early-2000s. That’s the plan. And my personal blog’s like an old car, sitting on blocks in the front yard; I’ll try to clean up that “project” and make it a thing again, too. Or not! How freeing! Hopefully, some of this will make my happy, or happier.
So my Friday’s been useful. How about yours? Have you seen the trees today!?
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