A decade in review - 2002
Dec. 22nd, 2009 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seabird78Again, I'm going to have to insert a placeholder entry until I can really give some thought to all of the things that happened throughout this year.
Here's a few tidbits that are especially important:
I left the tax law publisher job when the Chair of my academic department came to my rescue with an offer to work as a secretary in his office. I jumped on this because it allowed me to roll work and school into one convenient location, and also cut my teeth as a copyeditor/proofreader on the department's annual award-winning literary journal.
Mike and I made our first trip to Disneyworld together. It was while we were there that I got word about my friend Billy's death. I was checking my e-mail in our hotel room, and unexpectedly found a message from his mother in my inbox. She tracked me down through Classmates.com because she remembered how inseparable Billy and I used to be and thought his passing was something I should know about.
I got to meet Irvine Welsh (another of my favorite writers) as part of that year's Story Week festivities. I even stayed up all night in order to ensure I didn't miss an opportunity to drive him to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn.
I published my first feature article in a print publication that wasn't affiliated with my school (Venus Zine). It was a profile of Jenny Choi, who at the time was fronting Jenny Choi and the Third Shift. Now she leads a group called Sanawon. I even travelled all the way to Quimby's on a lunch break so that I could buy a bunch of copies the moment it hit the stands.
I visited some of my dad's relatives in Knoxville, Tennessee for the first time since I was about 11 years old. I brought them copies of the above-mentioned magazine and they were very excited to read them.
After the sucessful magazine publication, I was called upon by my former professor Sam Weller to assist with a bigger feature story for my school's alumni magazine. I got to gather information for the reporter who was doing the writing, something I had never done before. I got paid pretty handsomely for my effort. Sam also threw me some annual report writing work, and let me do a music review in the same alumni publication. The CD I covered? A comp disc put out by Coolgrrrls.com, which I loved not only because I was on the site's staff, and because the music was awesome, but because they listed my name in the liner note acknowledgments! The magazine was published during the spring semester of 2003, very early in the year.
All this side work meant I was kind of neglecting my bigger works of fiction. I still plugged away on the aborted novel, but this was the point when I started to lose interest and focus. Getting instant gratification by being published, even with only small pieces, started to take a larger priority.
My niece was born.
Here's a few tidbits that are especially important:
I left the tax law publisher job when the Chair of my academic department came to my rescue with an offer to work as a secretary in his office. I jumped on this because it allowed me to roll work and school into one convenient location, and also cut my teeth as a copyeditor/proofreader on the department's annual award-winning literary journal.
Mike and I made our first trip to Disneyworld together. It was while we were there that I got word about my friend Billy's death. I was checking my e-mail in our hotel room, and unexpectedly found a message from his mother in my inbox. She tracked me down through Classmates.com because she remembered how inseparable Billy and I used to be and thought his passing was something I should know about.
I got to meet Irvine Welsh (another of my favorite writers) as part of that year's Story Week festivities. I even stayed up all night in order to ensure I didn't miss an opportunity to drive him to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn.
I published my first feature article in a print publication that wasn't affiliated with my school (Venus Zine). It was a profile of Jenny Choi, who at the time was fronting Jenny Choi and the Third Shift. Now she leads a group called Sanawon. I even travelled all the way to Quimby's on a lunch break so that I could buy a bunch of copies the moment it hit the stands.
I visited some of my dad's relatives in Knoxville, Tennessee for the first time since I was about 11 years old. I brought them copies of the above-mentioned magazine and they were very excited to read them.
After the sucessful magazine publication, I was called upon by my former professor Sam Weller to assist with a bigger feature story for my school's alumni magazine. I got to gather information for the reporter who was doing the writing, something I had never done before. I got paid pretty handsomely for my effort. Sam also threw me some annual report writing work, and let me do a music review in the same alumni publication. The CD I covered? A comp disc put out by Coolgrrrls.com, which I loved not only because I was on the site's staff, and because the music was awesome, but because they listed my name in the liner note acknowledgments! The magazine was published during the spring semester of 2003, very early in the year.
All this side work meant I was kind of neglecting my bigger works of fiction. I still plugged away on the aborted novel, but this was the point when I started to lose interest and focus. Getting instant gratification by being published, even with only small pieces, started to take a larger priority.
My niece was born.
