Ch Ch Ch Changes

I think this Monday build-up is far more nerve-wracking than the first day of school. The feelings and anticipation surrounding my first day of work mirrors those late August days before school. The summer had ended, afternoons on the lake and big thunderstorms subsided to a regular schedule. I realize the summer has yet to begin; my season off work, however, is ending.

It's a significant change in my life. Working at the newspaper, I often felt that a full-time job never was part of my future. Of course it would be fun and "neat," I always thought, especially after my short, full-time stint at HGTV. I also clung to an ideal that I had to LOVE what I did to make money, and that work would become my main passion. I can even see it in the cynicism and negativity I harbored against my employers and the bureaucracy that enraged me. This seems like a pretty typical response for a fresh J-school grad though.

So I packed up my few belongings and skipped across the country, looking for that ideal job, that ideal city with those ideal bike lanes. Portland is "so cool," according to...everybody, apparently. It was cool, but it wasn't for me. Not yet at least. Living 3,500 miles away from my dearest family and best friends helped me realize the loves of my life. I like the challenges still apparent and on-going in the South, the ones that once enraged me and drove me so far away. Portland was full of passionate people. The environment there, the volcanoes and other seismic activity, and the culture attracted folks of all colors, backgrounds, and with different interests. Portland made me feel a little apathetic and a little more moderate than I had imagined. My passions lie elsewhere.

In the meantime, though, to complete my exploratory mission v. 2009, I road the rails across the country. I was still chasing some dream, which for two seconds was to teach little people. I met lots of young kids who were on a similar adventure, retired couples who were vacationing, folks who were laid off and taking time off, farmers, mothers, babies. I saw beautiful landscapes, incredible mountains and the great plains. I rolled into Chicago, and a few hours later landed in the homeland of New Orleans where two precious friends awaited my arrival.

Somewhere in the mix of all this talk, travel and living, I realized it is not what I do to keep the lights on that makes me passionate. I am fortunate enough to have landed a position that will help me be the best writer, another fear I've held since J-school. And I'm passionate about writing and publications, something I lose sight of at times. But it's the Chattanooga visionary efforts, the music scene, the great friends and conversations and renegade bike rides that make me feel complete. The main stuff. The celebrations, the reunions, the cycles and patterns and folks who swirl in and out of my life and mirror what is going on in my own. That is the change I look forward to and the change I embrace on this Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, the day before I re-enter the workforce as a copywriter in downtown Chattanooga, Tenn.

So break out the style book! Round up your favorite pens, and lay out your outfit for tomorrow, Laura Jane. It is a new day, and my Tuesday will be filled with new faces, lots of names, a new building with history, more early mornings, more battling wrist issues.

unstoppable

For some reason I see my newspaper job as the BARRIER that keeps me from voicing my opinions publicly and LOUDLY. Ironic that the media silences me like a blanket. Expect letters to the editor, from a distance, about the coal ash spill...why doesn't my paper ask for outside opinions on the spill? This is HUGE.

This excitement and enthusiasm is my essence; it is time for me to exert it, effectively and with force, where ever I go.

THAT IS MY DRIVE. That is who I am.

And now, a word from Simone de Beauvoir's "America Day by Day:"

"...I notice that all the intellectuals I know talk in an animated way and discuss things passionately whenever they're given the chance. American muteness is certainly not an innate choice, but the result of numerous complexes: it is reinforced in everyone by the silence of all the others. Many people are happy when they can escape from it, and then they willingly let themselves go. Another observation seems important: L.W.'s satiric truculence is exceptional, but this critical attitude is familiar to me -- it's common to all my American friends. Yet one shouldn't be misled: there is a tradition of self-criticism in America, as there was not long ago in France. And the people who speak most harshly of the country here are not those who are least attached to it. ... The Americans who attack a certain moral, political and economic position are showing that they insist on a destiny worthy of this great land where they are citizens; their demands and their lucidity are the highest forms of love. ... To label as anti-American books, films and statements that imbue Jefferson's ideal with a living reality -- that is to mutilate America. The day America is forbidden to question itself, America will be no different from the totalitarian regimes it claims to oppose."