So, yeah, I'm a writer!

Today was a big day for me. Huge in fact.

And the funny thing is - there may be no one in my real life who gets this.

But I should take it back a couple of steps. This blog has been pretty light for over a year. I have been looking back at the archives and not seeing all that much. Both trips to Washington that we took this year have gone largely unwritten, and while I've had a few good posts around going to BlogHer I haven't really done much to follow up on my experience there.

I've been working. Working really hard, and enduring a beastly commute that has pretty much sucked the life out of me. I loved my work, the company I worked for, and the people I worked with, but I couldn't keep up. All the while I was reading about all the other bloggers who have been doing things online, travelling, and having really good experiences to write about. I was hard not to be depressed and resentful about it.

Meanwhile, I turned 45 a couple of months ago. I had thought that I would be back in graduate school by then, or maybe even done, but no. I was working. My job, much as I loved it, was not going to allow for me to take on anything extra - don't get me wrong, they would have totally covered tuition for anything I work related, but I was having trouble matching my real interests to anything that would benefit the company, and really, I didn't have time for anything extra.  Meanwhile, my vision for what the job could be wasn't exactly bearing fruit. Admittedly, it was a bit of a fuzzy vision, and I'm sure that was part of the problem.

I left that job a couple of weeks ago. It's a big step for me, because I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do next, I have flooded the market with resumes, and have gotten a few bites, but they are all largely the same kind of job. I'm finding that the things I'm drawn to these days have more to do with social media or educational technology than instructional design.

Around the same time I left the company, I got a message from my friend PunditMom inviting me to post for her new project. I told her I'd be going to a volunteer event for Elizabeth Warren, and offered to write about it. Then she asked for a bio.

Now normally that wouldn't be such a big deal, but I'm at a crossroads here. How to describe myself at this point in transition? And, possibly, more importantly, do I use my real name? 

I hemmed and hawed about it for over a week. I'm sure my husband is tired of hearing about it, because although he's not really pushed me in one direction or another, when I was about to hit the send button, I announced, "Okay, here goes, I'm going to go with my real name..." he said "It's about time."

All right then.

This morning, I put the Warren post up thinking that it might go live tomorrow, but before I could even send her the photo from the event, she tweeted about the post. It was up! I had an inkling that the Warren campaign might catch it, and this afternoon, they did. It got retweeted to 30K followers. As if that weren't enough, a few hours later EMILY's list picked it up and tweeted it.

And that's not even thinking about having had it tagged on Facebook.

I've just got laugh. I've been writing online under one nom de plume or another for over a decade. This was my very first post using my real name, and a nationwide outfit like EMILY's list has picked it up.

If that isn't a sign from the Universe, I don't know what is.

 

Comments

[Aunt Snow]

Congratulations. And what a wonderful post it is, too!

I'm feeling much the same as you, only I'm not able to articulate it so well. You're an inspiration.

[sparkly jules]

Oh hell yeah!! Congratulations!!!!

Having the same thoughts (real name / not real name...ugh).

Go girl.