Taking Initiative

It's the first day of 2017, and it's a bright, quiet afternoon in Oakland. 2016 was a year of unexpected educations. My son was born, and I learned about myself that I can act only in his interests without feeling like I am gone or utterly changed. I took an ambitious job, and I did not succeed in it, closing down an avenue I thought was going to define my life.

December of 2013, December of 2015, December of 2016 -- all years in which I left positions, variously despondent and hopeful. Januaries are quiet winter mornings that open up possibilities.

What I would like for myself in 2017 is to move from possibilities to acting. From dreaming and ideas to purposeful action.

Taking initiative, not waiting for permission or approval. Being bold. I crave structure, but perhaps in the end that sense of making and completing checklists makes me complacent.

Moving from idea to action will be 2017. Whether in the political arena, or moving from to-do list to completing tasks, to pitching interviews and reviews and articles -- and then actually writing them.

To be a writer, you have to write.

And then, I am a mother -- and this year, with fewer barriers, a much more present and engaged mother. An engaged and active partner.

This will involve challenging myself to make plans, to look ahead, to strategize. To try to anticipate the unknowns, or at least build in buffers. More than just the "swallow the frog" of doing the hard thing first, this needs to be trusting myself to spearhead and develop ideas, to plan out and follow up.

This is more than informational interviews and gathering facts and knowing about things. It's synthesis and action and invention.

A Cautionary Tale? Or an Inspiration? Both?

I was asked to discuss my career path by the career center at my undergraduate institution.  Since I feel like a scrambler more than a planner at this point, I found that quite funny, but tried to answer their questions truthfully (if optimistically).

Here's the result! 

My goal for 2014: Write and Submit Weekly

In order to challenge myself to write, and set deadlines, and then abide by them, I am using stickk.com to hold me to my promises, as well as friends in charge of checking on me.

One of my goals is to write and submit SOMETHING every week. I need a fire lit under my butt, and I also need to get my confidence back. And the fun I used to have writing.

So I decided to give Medium a try (despite my reservations), to see what happens, after a fun writing prompt asked for flash fiction and I came up with a raging set of lies about journalist Joel Stein. 

See the 1500 word story (7 minute read, according to Medium) here! It was too long to submit to the contest, but I am going to try to go shorter and sweeter for the next one, due in three days.

[ETA: So yeah, only wrote the one, but it was chosen as an editor's pick! Got the taste of what 1.5K views feels like. "Exposure," they say these days, when you ask folks what they pay for material, but I can see the lure of that kind of attention. Almost feels like money.]

There's also a flash fiction writing contest at To The Best of Our Knowledge asking for "Three Minute Futures" -- short hard sci-fi. I'd like to try my hand at that!

Writing for Free, Reading for Free: The Economics of Academia and Publishing Today

Academics entering the media world tend to move from one exploitative arena (low-wage academic work) to another (unpaid freelance writing). But writing must never be an act of charity to a corporation. Ask for what you are worth—and do not accept that you are worth nothing. Insisting on payment for your labor is not a sign of entitlement. It is a right to which you are entitled.

-Sarah Kendzior, "Should Academics Write for Free?" 

Medium -- a new iteration of publishing/sharing writing/writing for free. Medium offers us all an audience because praise should be pay enough (though now, apparently, they are paying some writers decently). Medium was founded by Evan Williams (also, a liquor), who also founded Blogger (write for free -- for yourself and your friends), and has been in charge (possibly a founder? multiple stories abound) of Twitter (write for free, briefly, to the world, your friends, and clients). On Here and Now recently, Williams was asked about his new venture, and he described the year-old platform as providing journalism and stories to a wide audience who just can't find it elsewhere, apparently. He also emphasized the ability to share one's writing with the world, which writers just can't do elsewhere, apparently. Those darn editors and gate-keepers -- I thought that the internet was supposed to have knocked them down already? Williams evaded the interviewer's question of what void he was trying to fill, explaining that, really, this was a longer twitter. However, what he is actually replacing is the curated, edited magazine.