Archive: Blogcentric

About a month ago, the lovely L Sass e-mailed me to see if I’d be in town for the weekend of February 19. She was going to be in the area, so maybe we could meet up?

Yes! I am in town! I am available! I will drive wherever! Just tell me when you’re free! I e-mailed back, “Okay, I just SHRIEKED. Literally. (Not overused-incorrectly-literally!)” So, you know, I kept my cool.

We made plans to meet for an early lunch on Saturday, and I asked JG if he minded that I was doing this. Wasn’t it a little sketchy, just a bit?

“No,” he said, “I’m pretty sure she is not a huge, scary guy.”

And, people, L Sass is not any of those things. As I suspected from our past bloggy interactions, she is delightful. She navigated her way through the regional rail system and found me on the opposite platform despite circuitous under-construction pathways. I immediately gushed over her bright green winter coat; that girl knows her way into my heart! We walked down slushy streets to a local restaurant, where we both ordered mushroom dishes, and chatted for hours. We talked about jobs, plans for the future, blogging, and regional differences, and it was all very breezy and natural.

It’s funny, because I felt as though we were catching up, even though we had never actually spent time together in person. However, when you’re meeting somebody you already know, you don’t have to waste time on get-to-know-you small talk. I could ask questions about her business school experience, and what’s in store for the future, and she commiserated on my freelance quest and regretted not being able to meet Ted. Next time, we said. Yes, there will be a next time!

It all started when Janssen asked the internet what she should read. In the fourth edition, Shelly made her suggestion, and I quickly followed:

Shelly: Have you read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo yet? I will keep suggesting it until you do!

RA: Shelly, I’ll read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo! I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.

But for you, Janssen, I submit The King’s Flower, by Mitsumasa Anno. It’s a picture book from the 70s, but it’s my very favorite from my childhood. The illustrations are so wonderful.

Soon after, Shelly left a comment in this neck of the woods to reaffirm the awesomeness of the book, so I went straightaway to my library’s website to reserve it, only to find that it was in very high demand and I wasn’t going to get it any time soon. I sent a quick note to Shelly:

To: Shelly
From: RA

Okay, I thought you would appreciate this. I went to my library’s website to reserve this book, and there were FIFTY-SIX holds on it. Gah. I put my name on the list, but I will have to wait my turn. I assume this only bodes well for how good the book will be.

And then! She asked for my address  so that she could send it to me! Woo! After a week or so, I received this super cute care package.

I devoured the book at an alarming rate and immediately joined the very long waiting list at the library for the second book in the series. When I asked about sending the book back to her, Shelly said she wouldn’t mind if I passed it along to anyone who wanted to read it. How nice is that? OPH had mentioned that she added the book to her to-read list after seeing my review, so I already had my recipient. Last week, I put together two little packages with stationery and office supplies. Since OPH was getting the book, I packed a dozen double-chip brownies for Shelly. It was only fair.

I love how this whole scenario played out from the internet to the real world. How else could I get a book recommendation via a Boston-based blog from a North Carolina reader who would send me a book in Pennsylvania (along with cute stationery) that I would completely enjoy and then send to a Baltimore blogger with punny coffee thank-you cards and whimsical binder clips?

People, this is The Power of Nice People on the Internet.

The following post is my contribution to the third — Halloween-themed! — edition of Nancy Pearl Wannabe’s Choose Your Own Blogventure. Start at the beginning and then follow along, choosing as you go. Have fun!

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“Get out of there, Annelise!”

I clapped my hands over my mouth. Who really screams at a movie, anyway? Maybe no one heard. If I just sit very quietly —

“Kate!” Mom’s figure appeared in the stairway, and she peered down at me in the glow of the basement TV. I looked up sheepishly from hugging a throw pillow while the black-and-white scenes from Haunted Happenings gave me away. “Up here, right now. You always get spooked from those movies.”

“Ugh, Mom, I’m fine. People are supposed to watch scary movies on Halloween.” I clomped up to the kitchen and grabbed the duct tape to finish my costume.

“If you’re young enough to trick-or-treat, you’re too young for those movies. Do people even give high-schoolers candy?”

“Mother, please.” I shot her The Look. “Julie’s on her way over right now! Besides, we have such awesome costumes!”

Mom eyed my all-black ensemble with stuffed cats duct-taped to my limbs. “What are you supposed to be, again?”

“A cat burglar!”

“Right.”

Just then, Julie barreled through the front door in her matching burglar get-up, and we grabbed our pillow-case candy sacks and ran off into the night.  I asked her right away if she’d ever seen Haunted Happenings.

“Yes! The trunk, ohmygod. And that creepy old professor! He is totally the scariest part of the movie, the way he always — wait, have you seen it? It is so good! But way scary.”

Rats! I began crafting a scheme to watch the movie somehow when Julie turned to me and whispered, “But maybe you shouldn’t watch it. Every time I see a big old chest now, I get freaked out. There’s one at my grandma’s house, and I can’t sleep in that room any more.”

“Scaredy cat burglar!” I made a twisted face and lunged at her, but I stopped when I saw that she was transfixed by the scene in front of us.

Every neighborhood has it: The Halloween House. There are elaborate decorations, recorded ghost sounds, someone who’s going to jump out of a dark corner, and best of all, killer candy as a reward for surviving the front lawn.

“Look, they did an old library,” Julie said softly. “They even made an outside fireplace and stuff.”

It was pretty impressive. There were two shabby armchairs grouped around the fire and stacks of books piled next to candles and cobwebby vases. They had even set up an old-looking map, a chess set, and a gramophone playing tinny music. Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of hiding spots for whoever was waiting to scare us.

The shortest route to the candy was through the library, but Julie grabbed my arm. “I can’t. Look over there.”

I followed her pointed finger and saw a giant, dark trunk right next to the front door of the house. It was easily large enough to fit a person.

“It’s okay. Let’s just go really fast.”

That’s when I noticed a book propped up straight ahead: Haunted Happenings in New England.

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If you think Kate and Julie should brave the library, click here.

If you think Kate and Julie should devise some other way of scoring the candy, click here.

As part of my strategy to beef up my fledgling freelance career, I spoke with a friend-of-a-friend headhunter about my goals and skills to get a better idea of next steps I should take. I took rapid notes throughout the call, and at the end, I asked, “Do you think I should make any changes to my resume?”

“No,” he said, “I like that it’s brief. A lot of people try to cram everything on there, but yours is nice and short.”

“Okay, great.”

“But you know … is your blog address on here?”

“Um…”

“That would be a good addition. It’s a good way for people to see how you write, like a whole portfolio.”

“Uh. Uh. Okay, I am writing that down.”

What I didn’t mention was that I was semi-hyperventilating at the idea. What, does the job search have no respect for boundaries?

Still, he had a point. It would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t leverage the site for samples of my tone and style. Maybe the exposure would give me a foothold into digital publishing, so the risk would be worth it, despite my misgivings about blurred lines between my personal, professional, and online personas. If I have my way and become an independent writer and editor, they should be fairly seamless. It was for the greater good, really. This site has been three years of investing in my future.

Okay, I decided. I’m going to do it. First, I have to check in with JG about how he felt about this course of action. If he didn’t feel secure about anything school-related, it was off the table. Second, I should add it to my LinkedIn profile and update my resume. Third —

Wait a minute.

I have to tell my parents. I have to. I don’t want them hearing about it from some random person who heard about it from someone else down the line. They should hear it from me, and then I can make everything public and disperse it to the professional universe.

Hoo boy.

JG had no qualms with my plan, so on Sunday, I called my parents and spilled the beans. I was trying to make it as a freelancer, I said, and I’d been maintaining this site as a writing exercise for a few years. I was nervous about the conversations, but they went even better than I expected. It wasn’t that I expected a blowout, but it would have been reasonable for them to be taken aback, at the very least, because I had kept this from them for so long.

My dad was immediately interested: “What’s the address?” he asked. “All one word?” My mom asked about safety right away, and I assured her that I had not encountered the skeezy internet element as of yet. Overall, I got the sense that they were intrigued and excited for me to work toward this freelancing goal, and I came away from the calls feeling buoyed and bolstered.

Phew.

My next action items are:

1. Go through the site and censor any outrageously negative posts about work.
2. Update my resume and send to the headhunter.
3. Add a link to my LinkedIn profile.
4. Try not to think about how vulnerable I am in opening up the world to view this little corner of the web.
5. Take deep breaths.