Measuring the Wind

Well, it finally happened.

Last week actually, but it’s taken some time to get used to the idea. I’m still getting  used to it. After months of running about and applying for positions around town with my hat in my hand, I finally landed a job as a writer at a TV station.

It’s not the kind of job you can retire on, but it’s a step in the right direction, and I’m so inexpressibly grateful to the powers that be for this opportunity.

When I graduated university in 2009, I had no idea what I wanted to do. None at all! What is a job? What does one do for a living? How does that even work? So I went to China. And then Canada. Cause what else do you do?

There was so much about making a life and finding a successful career that I didn’t understand back then. I still don’t, this was just dumb luck and good timing. What even is a successful career? What is success?

I think success is just doing what you want to do and getting paid for it. Ultimate success for me would be to become a published author, able to support myself solely on my book earnings. That would be success.

I haven’t gotten there just yet. But being a writer at a TV station is one step closer: I’m getting paid to write, professionally.

When I first moved to San Diego, I applied to over 250 jobs around the city. Everything you can think of, from marketing and advertising positions to banking positions to insurance agencies and everything in between. Out of that, probably two dozen replied, and of those I got maybe eight interviews, if that. No call backs though, and I was left feeling like there was nothing I could do.

I didn’t even want any of those jobs, I was just applying for them because I needed work and something to pay the bills, and because people told me that’s what I should be doing.

But if I couldn’t even get a job doing something I didn’t want to do, what chance did I have at doing something I was really interested in? I felt tossed in the wind, lost in the noise, unsure of what I was meant to be doing or how.

All I knew is that I wanted to write. So I did. It took me another year and a half, but I finished my book. I’m still trying to get it published, but I’m not nearly as worried about that now because I feel like I have a path, a direction. I know where I’m moving, and I know, more or less, how to get there. It’s all in persistence. Don’t ever, ever give up. Ray Bradbury was right: if you’re doing what you love, you’ll find a way to make that into a living. It’ll just happen, naturally.

But you have to want it, you have to try, you can’t expect it to just come to you.

I feel like I’m painting this out to be something incredibly grandiose and awe inspiring. It isn’t, I know, but it’s something I want to do, and it’s important to me, and it’s something that two years ago I hadn’t ever even considered as being a possibility. So the fact that I’m getting paid to do something I enjoy is a pretty big deal for me. I get to work with like-minded people, in a creative environment, putting words on a page. Honestly, does it get any better than that?