a slip of the brain

there was an exhausting period of several weeks early in the summer when i was churning through every major doubt and insecurity i have. it felt involuntary, like i had no control over where my mind was going as it yanked me into every deep corner in my psyche and forced me to look at every ugliness in my being. i was questioning my job and my future, wondering about my sexuality and doubting my relationship with kevin and my basic self-worth. i hijacked dinners with girlfriends and turned them into therapy sessions about my job, which i was unable to bring myself to care about. i wrote kevin pages-long emails, desperate missives, while he was trying to move his mom out of their old home and certainly dealing with plenty on his own. i remember that day crying in the shower as i tried to accept what felt inevitable–he and i wouldn’t work out and i had to break up with him. the panic certainly felt real at the time, and i’d spent so much time in my last relationship lying to myself and to my ex that i was willing to do whatever i needed to to shake off those doubts. i remember begging becca to make my brain just stay still for a minute, i wanted to give myself a break so badly. when my brain wasn’t working in overdrive i felt immobilized by something i wanted to call depression.

“chugga chugga chugga chugga. do you know what that’s the sound of?” kevin asked me a few weeks later when i interrupted a quiet moment with another stream of worries. i shook my head. “it’s your brain moving…”

i’m still not sure what was going on then. most of those big psychological battles have retreated–i am not beating myself up so much anymore. i am not breaking up with kevin. he’d never replied to an email so fast. his response that morning was long and thoughtful and measured and calm. i read portions of it to becca out loud over lunch and she told me to save that email and refer to it anytime i felt similar doubts creeping in again.

it turns out that the analytical skills that serve me so well in my work are a detriment to my well-being and personal peace of mind elsewhere. it turns out that the command to “chill out” is actually the quickest way to make me freak out; i’m super sensitive to being told that i’m on edge, for one. and clearing my mind and keeping my brain still are things that takes a great deal of discipline.

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it’s still a little odd to me to be so in love, to call a new person the pet names i used to call another. really vivid memories from my old relationship will occasionally pop up in the middle of a conversation or while i’m passing by a store–somehow it’s only the happy that remains. i take that as a good thing. but occasionally jack’s name will be on the tip of my tongue when i mean to say kevin’s and that is a little disconcerting. sometimes i feel like i live in the past and the future and the present simultaneously.

Filed under: figuring it out, friends, love, work

a real post, some actual thoughts, a proper bit of writing:

i’ve got two primary pursuits these days. i’m learning to be a reporter, which is to say i am learning to research, and to probe into issues beyond the surface, and to ask the right questions, and to find the story, and to write well and concisely. which is also to say i am learning to be brave. i am learning that most of the time there is no way around picking up the phone to get someone to talk to me, i am learning that if i pick up the phone and start dialing before i’ve enough time to let my fear hold me back, i automatically commit myself to having a conversation with whoever picks up on the other end. i’ve learned that for every 4 calls i make, i usually can get 2 people who are by their desks, ready to speak to a stranger about their work, about their life experiences, about the issues they confront every day. but that doesn’t mean that for every two calls i make i’ll always get one person to pick up. the odds don’t work like that, for some reason. i usually have to call around four people before i hit two.

i’ve had bad interviews. really shitty interviews. i’ve had 6am interviews. i’ve had end of the day “is that enough for you?” interviews. i’ve had “you have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?” interviews. i’ve also had great conversations that open up a lot for me. there are so many generous people out there who, even though they’re at the top of the field, will start at square one with me. or people who are tucked away in corners of the country who have never done press calls who have incredible stories to tell. so i’m learning to be brave, and to trust the odds. i have more decent interviews than i do dead-end and awful interviews.

two weeks ago i spoke with a man in louisiana whose brother was shot to death by the police. five times in the back. he’s an organizer now. he speaks calmly and slowly, with a sometimes indecipherabale southern accent, calm words and stretched vowels that lulled me into saying “y’all” at least twice during our conversation. if i were not a reporter, i am fairly certain i’d never be able to have the guts to ever ask him what went through his mind when he found out his brother was killed. none of that made it into the piece, but we still got to talk about it for a bit. what a privilege.

i am learning to write fast and let it go, to start from scratch every morning, to pound out copy (and am intimately acquainted with dawdling, which makes me feel like a worthless good for nothing speck of a human being), to send it away and then to think later what went wrong, what needs polishing again. a flat headline? shitty lead? i hate writing headlines. but every day there is no choice. i write copy, i read a lot of the internet, i digest it, i try to make what i’m producing better.

i guess the other thing i realize is that i have a responsibility to attack life with all i’ve got. my great grandparents and grandparents and parents worked really hard all their lives, ostensibly to provide opportunities for their kids. maybe my long dead grandparents wouldn’t really approve of me becoming a writer–just today an auntie of mine bragged about how she put her foot down to her college student daughter who wants to be an english major–but they worked so that i’d have the ability to even have options. and so now i must decide for myself what i want to do with my life and talents. i think for those of us young people who have the privilege of being able to choose what we want to do with our lives, the real question is whether or not we have the courage to really go after what we want. do we? do i? i’m trying to find out.

and now it’s the end of the night and i’ve still more work to do, and i didn’t even get to writing about the other big thing in my life! all i did was write about writing! typical. i think it calls for some sylvia plath, a quote that tumblr at least gives her credit for:

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Filed under: reporting, work, writing, sylvia plath

notes from my messy desk

• a reporter is only as good as her sources. put another way, a reporter’s life is about staying connected to the world she’s covering. put another way, a reporter’s life is all about the relationships she has with the people who keep her connected to what’s happening on the ground, what’s happening behind closed doors, what’s being whispered and ranted about.

• i will always, now, on a weekday, strive to return a phone call within an hour of getting it. i know what it’s like to be on deadline. i get it now! i know what it’s like to call people and leave a dozen messages, and wait and wait while i try to get someone on the phone. i know what it’s like to have my work depend on other people’s getting back to me. stress is what it feels like. the article doesn’t move till i get someone on the phone to explain things to me, or it doesn’t move till i get a quote from someone. i get it, i get it.

• today i had an entire morning where it felt like i was being punished for all the times i put off returning people’s calls. and lord, did it hurt. it threw me into an awful nasty cranky funk, stomping around the office, questioning my job security, considering another career. and then lo! someone returned my call, we had a hasty but SO NECESSARY conversation–there is so much knowledge in the world, and every day i get glimpses of how much there is to learn–and then ah. the world, ever so slowly, righted itself.

• i am no good without: a keyboard, attached to a computer, to type while people talk. my notebook. my land line at work and my head set, so i do not have to give myself a kink in my neck while i jabber on the phone with people. my cell phone, which i am glued to these days. a pen. a pen. always. always carry a pen.

more, soon.

Filed under: journalism, work

i would call myself a reluctant reporter.

i’ve been with my employer for almost three years now and had several job titles and many responsibilities. in my latest incarnation–we’re talking about constant change and upheaval at this job–i have become a staff reporter at the magazine, which is becoming more policy oriented and DC-focused.

i thought i would hate it. i was very resistant at first. i said: oh, that DC stuff, that is very far away from me. that is another world, that is not of any interest to me, it is so insular, it is so inaccessible.

i think i still instinctively pull back whenever i see multisyllabic policy-related words hanging around in the headlines of the day while i skim newspaper websites. it all seems so soulless, standards and regulation and administrations and institutions and allocations.

but there’s not much time for questioning my duties or the editorial focus, it is time to learn to become a daily reporter now! it means teaching myself the do’s and dont’s and falling flat on my face in front of a couple thousand readers every day, mimicking the organization and structure of the news that’s already out there. faking it.

my day starts when i receive my morning assignments from my editor. he gives me little direction about who to pursue, he will maybe include a link, but no more, and send me on my way to go chase after the story as it’s developing. my practice now is to do as much background research as i can before i pick up the phone and call folks to schedule interviews.

there are inevitably moments in the day when i panic, there is the very nasty internal tug as i try to figure out out when i’ve got enough of a lay of a land that i can call up a source and engage in an informed conversation so i can get reasonable quotes from them. most days i just need to pick up the damn phone and schedule something NOW NOW NOW because the piece needs to go online before 4pm EST, even though i arrive in the office at 12pm EST, and who knows how long it will take for a source to respond to my call. sometimes i speak with people the moment they pick up the phone, sometimes i don’t hear back for hours, so i try to err on making my calls early in the day, even if that means risking that the interview is not useful enough because i don’t know enough about the topic to fully exploit my source’s knowledge and expertise and political agenda.

sometimes it means that i call a person and ask a very very basic question that reveals to them how little i know about the topic, thereby giving snobby jerks the right to say to respond to my question with: “are you serious?” and to which i respond with stunned silence, and to which the source might, as one did today, continue by repeating: “are you serious? i thought you knew what you were talking about when i started speaking ten minutes ago.” being new (and easily intimidated) means that i let this man slap me around on the phone while i do my best to maintain a professional manner and end the interview with my dignity intact. and it means i don’t think fast enough to ask the man if he’s really that much of an asshole to the people who must deal with him more regularly than i.

i’ve been covering a different topic every day, and even within one fairly specific beat, like education, a hundred topics spring from that. in the last two weeks alone i’ve covered national education standards, charter schools, public university admissions processes and affirmative action, federal funding of public schools, student loan reform, every topic under the sun. and that is just one of my beats.

i guess most surprisingly, i’ve found that when i’ve been tossed into new pools, i have actually become very passionate about whatever it is i’m tasked with covering. reform of many kinds, regulatory bodies of all sizes, it ends up being very fascinating to me. so much of it, at the end of the day, is about power and exploitation, resistance and change and holding those in power accountable. and that part i really love.

and i realized that if i’m doing my job right, i can make my readers care just as much as i’m starting to about these sorts of things.

Filed under: journalism, work, writing