thought vomit

I'm starting to get my creativity back, I think.

After being ass-numbingly bored out of my skull with all of the "journalism" I've been doing lately, it's been refreshing to work on some projects of my own. And remembering how much I love it.

I loved the work I did in Beeville, but I think it may have been a very unique situation. Now that I've gotten out of that bubble (of the booming South Texas economy), I'm back in the rest of the world. Where it's cutthroat and we're all a dime a dozen.

My strengths have been writing features and human interest pieces and also researching complex issues and writing about them for the general public. I'm not so great at breaking news or "keeping my finger on the pulse of the community" (God, I hate cliche journalism phrases... I've read to many job descriptions in the past couple of years; the other one I hate is "a nose for news," which I don't really have either).

What I think this means is that while I'm good at interviewing people and telling their stories, I'm not necessarily a hard-hitting journalist. I may be a damn good writer, but I think it may be time to find a better way to make a living and use my writing for my own, independent projects.

I'm glad I got the opportunity to work for a small town paper, though. It was one of the most fun times I've ever had. And I'm glad I'm figuring all of this out now.

In a way, it's like I'm coming full circle. I started out in the academic world and I'm on my way back. I've always done everything the hard way, and while that's been a big pain in the ass in a lot of ways, things just don't seem to work for me unless I do them in my own time. I guess I just need extra time to process and reflect. The world doesn't usually work that way, unfortunately, but I'm learning to function in it anyway.

I'm not sure if any of this post made any sense at all. These were all just thoughts I needed to expel from my head.