So I finished my first draft of a book outline — and not surprisingly, it’s not quite good yet. No, truly. That’s my agent talking, not just me. And it’s been enough weeks since I finished it, that I can see its rawness more clearly.
Turns out, writing about one’s whole life, writing about mental illness, writing about love and family and identity is hard stuff. I feel almost guilty that Falling Apart In One Piece was so easy to write.
So I’m going to step away and let the outline marinate and settle in my mind. And so I am once again looking for work, in a media world that is vastly unsettled and still changing very fast. I’m grateful for all my time in social media and digital media and working with native advertising, as it makes me fluent in the driving forces of change — but my love for the great story, the beautiful photograph, the perfectly conceived strategy to create a successful magazine is still the bedrock.
I don’t know if that work is out there for me anymore! A very humbling thought.
So I’m back to trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. And here are some ideas: a poet, still (though I expect I’ll do that when I’m old and grey, because: money); a business, marketing and social content consultant for small, independent startups (already doing some of that); founder of a lush, provocative Hudson Valley art and literary magazine; a therapist; a life coach, though I just loathe that term….
So once again I am in the In Between, that space that is neither here nor there. My last six years has been all about that drift, and it is not at all what I expected midlife to be. But I’m grateful for my past successes, which gave me such a steady foundation and afforded me this time to try to get the book out that Must Be Written. (As my agent said: “There’s no way you’re not writing this book. Blessedly, she also said, “But these kinds of projects take time.”)
I’m a dandelion seed, blowing around on the winds of change, waiting to come up with and birth my next great idea.
