The One with My xoJane Post

Those of you who have known me for a long time know that my legit career aspiration was to work for the now-defunct Jane magazine.  I can actually credit my mom for how I discovered Jane magazine. . .she'd read an article in the newspaper about different types of girls, and how the more traditional girls read Cosmopolitan, but the more off-beat, quirky girls read Jane.  "Have you ever read Jane?" Mom asked.  I hadn't, but I immediately got a subscription, sight unseen.  Us quirky girls, you know, have got to stick together.

And then I fell in love.

The first thing I ever had published in a magazine was a little blurb in the beginning of the magazine.  They'd asked a question. . .something about money going toward sports in schools.  I can't even remember.  But I'd e-mailed in my response and they published it.

They also had these columns called It Happened To Me that paid somewhere between $50 and $100 to people to just tell stories about. . .crazy or weird or strange things that had happened to them.  My plan was, I was going to write one of those, Editor-In-Chief Jane Pratt was going to fall madly in love with my writing style and offer me a job as soon as I graduated college.  It was my plan.

Then Jane Pratt left Jane magazine and Brandon Holley took her place.  At some point, and I can't even remember why, I'd e-mailed the magazine, and Brandon Holley herself e-mailed me back.  Brandon was no Jane Pratt, but oh my God, the editor of the magazine of my dream job had e-mailed me back.

Then, in the summer of 2007, I was a newly-minted college graduate, working a temp job at a pharmaceutical company, waiting for my Big Break, when my friend Ashley e-mailed me with the news.  She was a graphics major in the journalism school at UNC, so she was on these journalism-related listservs. 

"Just saw that Jane magazine is folding," she said.  ":("

And just like that, Ashley ruined all my hopes and dreams and aspirations.

(Just kidding.  I'm just shooting the messanger.)

So I did some Yahoo!ing (you know, before Google was a way of life), and although it was very cloak-and-dagger and very mysterious, it was true: My beloved Jane, the goal of my life, was going under.

Admittedly, the quality had taken a drastic, drastic downturn in the previous few years.  I'd even let my subscription lapse for a while after Jane Pratt left.  But. . .it was Jane.

Fast forward some years, and Jane Pratt has started a new online venture, xoJane.com.  It had a rough start, I think, but then it caught on.  There are lots of different voices on the site (Personally, I'm madly in love with Emily and Daisy, even though the latter has caused some. . .uproars.)  There are some really bitchy voices within the commentors, but there are also some very lovely people.

And they still have It Happened To Me.

I think you know where this is going.

I wrote this.

It was terrifying and exciting and awesome.  So far, the comments have been supportive.

And I like to think it's my one step closer to having Jane Pratt discover me*.






*It should be noted that I applied for a job with xoJane, but I never heard anything from them.  It's just as well:  I'm not sure how D would have felt about moving to Manhattan.

The One With the Photo Challenge: Day 1

I know. I'm kind of notorious for starting projects on this blog and just kind of losing interest halfway through. It's kind of weird, actually, because in real life, I'm pretty good about seeing things through, but on my blog, I just. . .don't.

But I'm going to attempt this August Photo Challenge. Possibly, it will inspire me to post something every day. Possibly, it will be something else I will fail at and it will make me sad. We'll see!

The pictures will probably be taken with my cell phone camera, so I'll apologize for that in advance. Here's the list:

It's currently August 2, and as such, I'll post twice today. I know you're excited.

Day 1: Self-Portrait

The One Where I'm Feeling My Feelings

Before I get into the whole thing about the concert last night, I'd like to make a comment. I read on another blog (Oh, OK. . .it was Aunt Becky's. . .I'm just feeling like I'm referencing/name-dropping her a LOT as of late. . .) about Being Yourself when you're blogging. She talks about all the people who present their perfect-sounding lives on their blogs. People who refer to their children and significant others as "DD" or "DH," which, as I found out, stands for something like Dear Daughter or Darling Husband. I would like to clarify right now that when I refer to D, I'm not calling him Dear or Darling or anything else that makes me want to throw up like that. It's the first initial of his name, so that's why I call him that. It's because I'm lazy, not because I'm super-sentimental.

I have trouble sometimes with having Too Many Feelings. My Feelings eff up a lot of things. Between My Feelings and my OCD and That Time of the Month, I'm an emotional wreck often. The thing is, though, I don't want to be. I hate that, and I try my damnedest not to let My Feelings spill over onto my blog. At least not too often.

I don't want to bitch and moan and cry about every little detail of my life that's bugging me at any given time. That's what my middle school/high school/college livejournal was for. Also, my old Blogger blog. I don't feel like that's what people read blogs to see. I don't think everything in the 'blogosphere' should be puppies and roses and mommy bloggers who think their Dear Offspring crap Skittles, but neither should it be daggers and skulls and. . .I was trying to think of an antithesis for Offspring Who Crap Skittles, but failed. You know what I mean.

I feel like people read my blog (or any blog) because they want to (a) Be Entertained; (b) Be Informed; (c) Be Stalkers; or (d) Some Combination Thereof. Therefore, when I write, I do it first and foremost because it's what I DO. I like telling stories, and I like people saying, hey, that was funny/sad/off the chain/etc. (I don't think anyone I've ever known has used the expression "off the chain." Maybe they should.)

I'm completely getting off whatever point I'd started out trying to make with this. The point is, I'm not happy with my current lot in life. But at the same time, I feel like I can't complain about ANYTHING, because I have a stack of 8 resumes I've received in 3 days, which tells me, "Hey, Sarah. Quit your bitching, because even if you don't 'feel satisfied' by it, at least you have a job."

Yeah, at least I have a job. A job that's contract, so I have no benefits and no vacation time, so if I want to, I don't know, get married and go on a week's honeymoon, guess what? That just means a week of no pay. No one gives a fuck if I'm getting married. They're not going to pay me so I can have time off to do it.

Or time off to do anything. I feel like I'm over here, drowning in my own self-loathing and self-pity, but I can't take any time off because guess what? I have bills to pay. Bills that aren't going to understand that I just need an em-effing BREAK.

But guess what? I can't complain about it. I can't complain about anything. Because you know what happens then? My friend, The Universe, decides to say, "Oh yeah? Let me REALLY give you something to complain about."

I just want to be doing something that means something right now. This job means nothing to me but a paycheck. I don't even get any benefits, so there's an extra $400 a month in health insurance. Just for me.

I'm going under, and there's not a thing I can do about it. But I can write about it, and risk turning my little Corner of the Interwebz into a Bitch Fest, alienating anyone who might have been otherwise interested and diminishing my chances that someone will happen across my blog and give me a book deal.*

So there it is, people. Take it or leave it.

*Yes, I know this is not a thing that really happens to most people.

The One Where My Brain is On Backwards and I Can't Stay On Topic

I swear, I'm going to finish some of the posts I've started, but for some reason, I'm just like. . .they aren't shiny and new to me anymore. They were awesome when I started them, but then I started to bore myself. And when you start to bore yourself, you're in trouble. Big Trouble.

Also of note, I went from 12 subscribers to 11. That made me. . .a lot more sad than it probably should have. I don't know who it was that dropped me, or what I did to offend them so. It was like (before I stopped caring) when I lost facebook "friends." I was like. . .wow. What have I done that is SO BAD that people don't want to be facebook friends with me anymore?

And then, of course, I started weeding out my facebook friends list, went from almost 600 friends to just under 335, and I continue to weed it occasionally. These people shouldn't necessarily take it personally. . .I just don't really care that much to keep up with them.

I'm a little all over the place today, and I actually wouldn't even be here (writing, I mean), had I not read a post by the lovely Aunt Becky about why she writes. Aunt Becky is one of those bloggers that I wish I knew in real life. She's awesome and crass and heartfelt (can one BE heartfelt, or do people just SAY heartfelt things?), and I'm not even exaggerating when I say that she sometimes may even make me feel better about myself. Call me lame, call me whatever. . .that's the way it is.

I have a book club meeting tonight. I can't remember if I mentioned the book I read, but it's "Still Alice," and it's about this 50-year-old woman with early-onset Alzheimer's. This book broke my heart, and I'm excited to talk to other people who read it, to see what they thought.

Of course, reading this book gave me yet another thing to worry that I have. I'm a hypochondriac of the worst kind, and I'm also horribly, horribly absentminded. So, in my mind, of course, Absentmindedness = Alzheimer's.

Some time, I'll have to tell you about the time I thought I had simultaneous cancer and liver failure, thanks to the blue ice cream.

I'll share this with you here: I've decided that my OCD is taking over my brain to such a large extent that I am actually therapist shopping right now. I'm not. . .terribly ashamed about it, but the problem that I have is actually, I know how drugs to tone down the problem can mess with you, and I've taken those, and I do not like them. I don't like how they make me feel, and I don't like how they make me think.

That may sound kind of weird, me not liking the way brain drugs alter my brain, but what I mean is, if I'm on something like that, I'm. . .less interesting. It's kind of like putting an artist on Ritalin. They just can't do the same things when they're not a little crazy. This concerns me. I battle enough with thinking I'm boring. But then again, during a screaming match I may or may not have had yesterday, I was accused of being "paranoid and delusional," so if that is, in fact, true, maybe my brain NEEDS to be altered.

I don't really know. I don't know why I feel the need to share this either, but there it is. So if I get really boring and my subscribers list drops from 11 to 8, and then from 8 to 3, and then, one day, I only have 1 left. . .that's probably why.

Since I can't seem to keep a straight train of thought, I'll leave you with a conversation I had with D after lunch. His car is in the shop currently, so he comes to get me for lunch.

Another thing you need to understand is that my parents (my mom and SDad) are gross. Like. . .in a nauseating kind of way. In the kind of way that my mother always has flowers at her desk that he bought her, and that there are little notes around their house that say things like, "I dove my Tschugah!" or "I miss my Tschugah!" (Um. . .Tschugah is kind of a bastardization of "Sugar," and that is what my parents call each other. They do not refer to each other by name. Ever.) (Also, dove = love. This is important later.)

So, we're pulling into the parking lot, and I don't even know what prompted this (it could have been the fact that my SDad was in the parking lot, waiting for my mother), but this is what happened:

D: I dove wu!

Me: Oh my God. OH MY GOD. Never again. Never. Again. We are not longer talking. OK, you can come and pick me up at 5, but I'm not speaking to you on the ride home.

D: But. . .I DOVE wu!

Me: AAARRRGGGHHHH!!! NO!

Probably, it was funnier in person. But it made D laugh.

The One Where I Shake It Up a Little

List.

OK, you guys. I have a confession to make.

This list is getting to me.

It seemed like a good idea at first. Something to keep me on track, give me things to write about, and provide a cohesive. . .something or other. (I just wanted to use the word "cohesive.")

But now? Now it's pissing me off. It's pissing me off because I'm so far behind (Today is supposed to be Day 21. I am currently on Day 13. I've missed a week.) It's pissing me off because today's prompt is supposed to be about a fictional book, and I've already DONE a post on fictional books.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to ask for suggestions. I'm going to do the prompt for Day 22 today, and I'm going to ask, first of all, for a prompt to take the place of fictional books, and, secondly, I'm going to ask for people to help me put these in random order. If you go check out the list (the link's at the top of the page), leave me a note saying which one you think I should do next. When I do postings regarding The List, I'll ask for suggestions of what to do next. It's fun! It's interactive! It's going to make The List stop pissing me off!

So, in short, today I'm doing Day 21. I'm asking for a replacement for fictional book, and I'm asking for ordering suggestions.

I'd much appreciate it.

So, without further adieu. . .

Day 13 (Day 22) -- a Web Site

I read a lot of blogs. A lot. I've mentioned this. But there's one or two that I get really excited about when they pop up on Google Reader. Jenny's blog is one of these. She has, like, a kabillion followers, and she's so freaking hilarious. I laugh at almost every post. Sometimes, I laugh at posts out loud, and then people look at me funny.

Her conversations with her husband are always hysterical. She posts random thoughts. She buys ugly dead boar heads and names them after dead presidents. Basically, she's amazing, and I love her in a not-too-creepy way.

Also, she's. . .profane. But in a lovely way. Point here is that if you're easily offended, you should avoid her site at all costs.

I swear, I'm going to write all about Carol's wedding at some point. Because I want to catalogue its awesomeness.