I have spent the last 20 years of my life working my way into a career in journalism and then building upon it. In my late teens and early 20’s, I really wasn’t in the kind of head space that would have allowed me to sit in a classroom and learn.
Depressed, traumatized as hell, without confidence or identity, struggling with an eating disorder and trying to cover it all up by being a party girl ( which only made me more miserable) I wound up bar tending and then as a receptionist at a local alternative weekly- back when they existed.
I learned newspapers from the inside out and just ran with it, eventually working for a handful of different publications until I found a niche where I had steady work and just stayed there because I had little confidence and selling myself to another Editor without a degree was always such a fucking bitch.
And now I am entering new territory. I am a much different woman than I was in my late 20s and found myself in this same situation. While I may be oppressed economically, I am no longer in a place where I am having multiple anxiety related dissociate moments where I just can’t handle the situation and feel the need to pound back a drink or get the fuck out of the room. I no longer feel like I should belong to anybody, I no longer feel like I am unworthy of the love I so deeply crave and the friendships and family that I have missed out on. I now understand what went wrong.
Unfortunately, it is hard to explain all of the things you learned in therapy to your new potential employers. And my boundary setting skills are brand new and learning how to develop their first sea legs.
I feel like I have been stuck in a rut for a long, long time, doing the same work because it is there before me when I have so, so, so much more that I can offer to the world. I just need to be given the chance.
But, given that chance, watch me run with it. Especially after spending a whole March Break cooped up with my kids in the apartment. I am ready to take flight
The Persistent Pinup 