Heading Home
Last week, Heading Home, a homeless shelter I applied to ages ago, told me they wanted to take me on as a Case Manager. Dolly, the woman who hired me, convinced me to apply by pandering to the English major in me. She told me that she was an English major in college as well, and felt right at home. "Yeah, I thought that the only way I could put my English major to good use was to go into publishing, writing or teaching. But there are plenty of places like this that need us."
I took a week to think about it, and I've decided I want to take it.
Ever since I first applied, I've been thinking about whether this would be "giving up" on my publishing career. I started to wonder if I was taking this job because I thought I couldn't get a publishing job. But, on the other hand, I couldn't bear the thought of stubbornly clawing my way into a job that wouldn't make me happy, just to prove that I could do it. This isn't like my video game of the week or running challenges - playing for pride alone in the job market would slowly kill me.
So, to answer my questions, I've been wracking my brain to remember why I wanted to work in publishing in the first place. For the most part, I wanted to be a part of the process of making a book a finished product because I liked the idea of helping someone achieve their dreams. I must've written on a hundred applications that my dreams were to make other people's dreams come true. That much still remains true, but I question whether that desire need be limited to the publishing world. If the end goal is achieving dreams, not publishing books, is there a reason I should use publishing as a venue?
And then I realized that not every instance of advancing my English major career in college was for myself. Originally, I wanted to be Chief Copy Editor my senior year, not Managing Editor. But I took the job because Jonah asked me to do it, saying he needed me there. And, at the same time, I didn't want to have to compete with Ashley, who really wanted the Chief Copy Editor job for her own resume at the time. This took me a while to remember, since I've been playing Managing Editor to my advantage in interviews for so long, but I really didn't want the job at first. I did it because I thought it would help people.
Tracing back my memory even further, I first started looking into publishing jobs to practice writing in college - I was also hoping that this kind of career would give me a foot in the door if I ever wanted to publish my own writing. In college, I sort of dropped the creative side of things and moved towards journalistic pieces and ACP-like musings. I don't think I ever truly wanted to be a famous author.
But I do remember when I first started writing. The first thing I ever wrote was an autobiographical account of when my sister first lost control with her drug abuse, and what it did to the family. I was going through a rough time; I idolized my sister and supported her in everything, even her experimenting with marijuana (When she was fourteen and I twelve, I did it so she didn't think the whole family was judging her). My sister and I fought a lot, but ultimately I looked up to her. So when she threw her life away, I felt like she shepherded me towards a cliff without me knowing. And the whole family was fighting, wondering who was to blame for Meegan's failures and how much we should help her. Opinions ranged from "She did this to herself" to "Bad parents make bad children," and things were tense. And I was just experiencing high school drama for the first time, as well. So, between a fighting family and the usual hell-on-Earth high school experience, I had a lot I needed to get out.
In an attempt to reach out, I shared what I wrote with friends. The work has long since disappeared, so I'll never know whether they truly liked it or just wanted me to be happier. But they encouraged me, and they told me that my work made them think. The compliment that hit home the hardest was that, in sharing my pain, I helped someone else endure theirs. And I started to think that maybe writing could be a way to help people going through rough times at home. This took a long time to remember, since I strayed from autobiographical writing after high school.
These days, I think I still identify as a writer after The Analytical Couch Potato (especially since that weekly blog was birthed from my I.S., and today is once again I.S. Monday). But as far as writing to help the world goes, I wonder if maybe it's just a middle step that I always thought was necessary. I never truly wanted to write to be famous or make money - it has always been a helping people thing. And, maybe if I am truly honest, writing was just really fun to do. But publishing and journalism, the more I think about it, were only pursued as means to an end.
If I take this job, I can help people with their home lives almost directly. Technically, I believe they're hiring me for my attention to detail and good writing that come from the English major (I did have to take a writing test), but I know there are other jobs in the company where I can work directly with homeless people and help them find housing - not just crash in a shelter. If I can help the homeless of Boston with a Qdoba job, the sky's the limit with a job within a homeless shelter. And that much excites me - especially after moving here and seeing just how many people have it worse than I do. I haven't forgotten the times where my family was barely scraping by, and I remember that the people that always helped us out were people who used to have money problems too. I sort of owe the world something.
It took me a long time to get to this point, but I don't think I need to identify as a publisher or a writer. I plan to write plenty of ACP posts and then some before I finish writing, however, so I probably will still call myself a casual writer at least a little while longer. At the core, though, my writing goals remain the same: to help people. I want The Analytical Couch Potato, an internet publication about analyzing video games and television and movies, to defend the media that are normally called gratuitous, while also challenging them to be more. I see a world bettered when free of a little more judgement and challenged for a little more culture. Plus, like I said, writing is just fun.
It took me a year out of college to realize it, but helping others is what I want to do with my life. I want to come home and know I tried. And I think, in Heading Home, I could do that. That much is good enough for now.
-Didroy
I took a week to think about it, and I've decided I want to take it.
Ever since I first applied, I've been thinking about whether this would be "giving up" on my publishing career. I started to wonder if I was taking this job because I thought I couldn't get a publishing job. But, on the other hand, I couldn't bear the thought of stubbornly clawing my way into a job that wouldn't make me happy, just to prove that I could do it. This isn't like my video game of the week or running challenges - playing for pride alone in the job market would slowly kill me.
So, to answer my questions, I've been wracking my brain to remember why I wanted to work in publishing in the first place. For the most part, I wanted to be a part of the process of making a book a finished product because I liked the idea of helping someone achieve their dreams. I must've written on a hundred applications that my dreams were to make other people's dreams come true. That much still remains true, but I question whether that desire need be limited to the publishing world. If the end goal is achieving dreams, not publishing books, is there a reason I should use publishing as a venue?
And then I realized that not every instance of advancing my English major career in college was for myself. Originally, I wanted to be Chief Copy Editor my senior year, not Managing Editor. But I took the job because Jonah asked me to do it, saying he needed me there. And, at the same time, I didn't want to have to compete with Ashley, who really wanted the Chief Copy Editor job for her own resume at the time. This took me a while to remember, since I've been playing Managing Editor to my advantage in interviews for so long, but I really didn't want the job at first. I did it because I thought it would help people.
Tracing back my memory even further, I first started looking into publishing jobs to practice writing in college - I was also hoping that this kind of career would give me a foot in the door if I ever wanted to publish my own writing. In college, I sort of dropped the creative side of things and moved towards journalistic pieces and ACP-like musings. I don't think I ever truly wanted to be a famous author.
But I do remember when I first started writing. The first thing I ever wrote was an autobiographical account of when my sister first lost control with her drug abuse, and what it did to the family. I was going through a rough time; I idolized my sister and supported her in everything, even her experimenting with marijuana (When she was fourteen and I twelve, I did it so she didn't think the whole family was judging her). My sister and I fought a lot, but ultimately I looked up to her. So when she threw her life away, I felt like she shepherded me towards a cliff without me knowing. And the whole family was fighting, wondering who was to blame for Meegan's failures and how much we should help her. Opinions ranged from "She did this to herself" to "Bad parents make bad children," and things were tense. And I was just experiencing high school drama for the first time, as well. So, between a fighting family and the usual hell-on-Earth high school experience, I had a lot I needed to get out.
In an attempt to reach out, I shared what I wrote with friends. The work has long since disappeared, so I'll never know whether they truly liked it or just wanted me to be happier. But they encouraged me, and they told me that my work made them think. The compliment that hit home the hardest was that, in sharing my pain, I helped someone else endure theirs. And I started to think that maybe writing could be a way to help people going through rough times at home. This took a long time to remember, since I strayed from autobiographical writing after high school.
These days, I think I still identify as a writer after The Analytical Couch Potato (especially since that weekly blog was birthed from my I.S., and today is once again I.S. Monday). But as far as writing to help the world goes, I wonder if maybe it's just a middle step that I always thought was necessary. I never truly wanted to write to be famous or make money - it has always been a helping people thing. And, maybe if I am truly honest, writing was just really fun to do. But publishing and journalism, the more I think about it, were only pursued as means to an end.
If I take this job, I can help people with their home lives almost directly. Technically, I believe they're hiring me for my attention to detail and good writing that come from the English major (I did have to take a writing test), but I know there are other jobs in the company where I can work directly with homeless people and help them find housing - not just crash in a shelter. If I can help the homeless of Boston with a Qdoba job, the sky's the limit with a job within a homeless shelter. And that much excites me - especially after moving here and seeing just how many people have it worse than I do. I haven't forgotten the times where my family was barely scraping by, and I remember that the people that always helped us out were people who used to have money problems too. I sort of owe the world something.
It took me a long time to get to this point, but I don't think I need to identify as a publisher or a writer. I plan to write plenty of ACP posts and then some before I finish writing, however, so I probably will still call myself a casual writer at least a little while longer. At the core, though, my writing goals remain the same: to help people. I want The Analytical Couch Potato, an internet publication about analyzing video games and television and movies, to defend the media that are normally called gratuitous, while also challenging them to be more. I see a world bettered when free of a little more judgement and challenged for a little more culture. Plus, like I said, writing is just fun.
It took me a year out of college to realize it, but helping others is what I want to do with my life. I want to come home and know I tried. And I think, in Heading Home, I could do that. That much is good enough for now.
-Didroy