Will Write for Food

I had lunch yesterday with my friend, KK. Thai food. It was delicious.

Her oldest kid is the same age as The Child. We met at church, bonding during our months of pregnancy. She and her family used to live in our 'hood, then her husband got a job that took them to Rochester, New York. They all still consider Seattle home.

KK works part-time for a law firm in town and is brought in a couple of times a year to work on cases or whatever. This was a pretty quick visit but we made time yesterday. It was one of those really perfect lunches. Not so much because of the food (although the peanut sauce was divine) but because we are both in very similar places in our lives. We talked about our need for work that really connects to our values, the change that we're both going through in terms of having our kids getting older and the consequent shift in how we want to be using our time. When your kid is in school all day and your an at-home mom it starts becoming very easy to waste time. Lots of time. We are both superfantasically good at that, it turns out. We get sidetracked from the meaningful and come to the end of the day going "Oh, right. I should have done x, y or z". But by then it's bedtime.

So we talked about stuff like that and our quest for new purpose. And the best thing about it was those moments when one of us would say to the other, "I know exactly what you are talking about". It was part confession, part strategy session, part booster club.

I walked away from lunch thinking about the last month. I have been so focused on finding The Job that I've neglected the one thing I know I love: writing. Besides the blog, I've written nothing. I've completely neglected my two book projects. And I realized something else. Before I discovered this cool gig opportunity, I wasn't all that jiggy with the idea of going back to work. Now I am. I realize that I'm ready for something else. And that's a good thing, because some extra money would be good. But more than that, I realized that the search for a Job shouldn't get in the way of my writing. And it especially shouldn't in these days/weeks/months before I find something.

Plus, I had some email conversations with Absent Amy a few months ago about next steps in my writing career and the main thing she told me was to figure out what I was passionate about and write about that. At the time I wasn't sure what that might be. 'Cause I'm passionate about a couple of things. What the last month has done is sharpen my focus. I want to write about food. Articles. Books. Maybe a cookbook. And I want to get those things published. A month ago I didn't have a clue, now I do. That is really superfantastic.

So I made a pledge to myself to use the time while I have it to focus on those projects, to treat them as my work and to do that every day. Starting today.

This is all the more important because on Tuesday I got a stardard boiler plate email from the cool gig that said "thanks but no thanks". Was I shocked? Yep. I thought sure I'd get an interview. And when I read that they were going to "pursue candidates whose qualifications more closely match" what they are looking for I admit my first thought was a rather bitchy, "Golly, I thought Nigella Lawson already had a job". Between you and me, I cried a little. It doesn't feel that great to be told that you aren't qualified for something that you know you are completely qualified to do. And yeah, yesterday I walked around feeling like I'd been kicked in the gut.

But I'm getting over it. Because until this came along, there were a lot of things I hadn't figured out. This served, if nothing else, to help me become more clear about that. So that's a good thing. I said all along that just because it sounded perfect didn't mean it would actually be perfect for me. I still believe that. The right thing is going to come along in the fullness of time. But between now and then, I'm going to write some superfantastic stuff. I promise. Watch out, world.

Nothing like a good dose of rejection to put a little fire in one's belly.