Well, it's more than a week after the GL summer conference and I'm sitting on my son's screen porch in Winston Salem, NC, enjoying the perfect summer day and reading the PW blog, occasionally looking up at the sun shining off a hugo-gigantic magnolia whose blooms are ready to pop open. What a great way to spend a summer vacation! And while the week between the conference and now has been crazy, my mind keeps going over the memories, the conversations, the stories from Read Around and the small groups I was in. What blessings to have these thoughts running as an undercurrent to all I do.
I returned to what Chris H calls "writing for food" to find that my editor--the only editor I've ever had and a person who has care-fully nurtured my journalism, my interview ideas, my vision for the reporting I do--is leaving for another job (a fab opp for him and that makes me happy). But, selfishly, my first thought was "Oh my gosh! He's leaving me!," the second was about his happiness and wonderful future, and the third was "Oh my gosh! He's leaving me!" Talk about transitions, Sarah!
I've been through job losses, boss losses, reorgs, corporate changes in vision, and such before, and it's always turned out fine, sometimes it's even an improvement in my life, but that unknown (Who's going to be my boss now? What will he/she expect of me? Will I be able to perform? Will I keep my job?) can paralyze my writing. I can spend so much time trying to live up to what I think they think they expect of me that my brain just keeps looping over the same sentence/phrase/opening line and I spend hours on an article that should have taken 30 minutes to write, and then I'm pushing a very heavy deadline in front of me. Stress!
So, at the end of this month the new editor, as yet not hired, will probably be on board and I'll be transitioning to new ways of working. And while I know the solution is simple--just tell the story of the person I interviewed--it will, at least some days, be hard to remember that.
It's comforting to have the PW stories as undercurrent. But most of all, it gives me some peace knowing that all of you, the writers who can relate to this work, are rooting for me.
AND...how's this for a transition?...here's a sight Tom and I saw on the trip down here, just outside Nelsonville, OH.
