....Hi?

I put off a lot of things. These include:

·      Finally signing up for the gym membership I keep talking about.

·      Buying a new piece of clothing until I’m convinced that I actually truly want it.

·      Going to the Laundromat because you can wear the same pair of jeans three times in a row before washing them (and don’t clothing companies recommend it anyway?).

·      Sending that email to another employer because I’m not sure I really want to find out that I didn’t get the job.

·      Putting off writing for my blog….

The last point is obviously the one I’m going to write about. I should be absolutely clear on one thing: I have had the time to write these posts. I’ve been far from “busy.”  In fact, if anything, I have way too much time on my hands. I managed to finish all six seasons of Shameless in September, which is too much television to calculate. (Okay I’ll be honest this confession sparked my curiosity and it’s roughly 68 hours of television which is disgusting, but also not abnormal for my generation, right?).

The real reason I haven’t written this blog post is because I kept waiting around for something exciting to happen in my life. I really, really wanted my next blog post to feature a title declaring I was finally employed. After a month of interviewing and brutal edit tests, I kept getting my hopes up that something would finally work out for me. Yet, here I am over a month later still scouring Monster.com as Media Bistro continues to inform me that I should change my job search requirements to something less specific. And in case you were wondering, the only requirements are that it be an entry-level journalism job in New York City.

In my desperation to hold off until I could finally provide some goods news, I completely neglected to utilize this blog for it’s true purpose. While I love journalism, there is a difference between writing in general and the type that follows the strict guidelines taught in j-school.  This blog is my opportunity to write about whatever I want, whenever I want. This blog does not require the oversight of an editor. This blog does not need to cover a topic picked by third parties solely to increase traffic. This blog does not need to only include positive reiterations of my life in an effort to make every person who reads it feel good. This blog does not need to fabricate some false image of my life. This blog does not need to be a burden.

I have wanted to establish and run a blog for as long as I can remember. Yet, I find myself purposefully moving away from it because I’m scared to be honest about what’s really going on in my life. Which is insane, because I’m literally publishing my thoughts on the Internet. If I was worried about people’s impressions, I probably picked the wrong career path.

So here comes the overdue honesty: It can be incredibly difficult to stay optimistic about my situation right now. Graduation was approximately four months ago, and I’m still jobless despite graduating from a “top” university with “one of the best” journalism schools. Even though I have completed three different internships on both a local and national level, covering both print and web media, I still do not have enough experience for the job postings I scour daily. Although I’ve had multiple interviews and edit tests, I’m still spending days at the local coffee shop instead of an office.

And I’m not quite sure it’s the rejection from various positions that really upsets me. Since day one of college, my work has been torn apart and appropriately graded. In discussion courses, my thoughts were questioned. In journalism classes, my potential story ideas were nixed in favor of a better topic. So, when an edit test doesn’t materialize into a job, I’m not upset at the revelry that I might not be good enough for a company. After all, there are so many talented people in New York, and I don’t expect to be the best or even close.

Rather, I just feel incredibly unsuccessful. It wears me down to explain for the fiftieth time that “what I do” in New York City is job search, babysit and take edit tests. I start to feel defensive. I want to explain that prior to graduation, I had some sort a paying job from the time I turned sixteen. I want to show them a track record of all the times I had things figured out. In a way, I feel like the retired jock pulling out his high school Varsity jacket in an attempt to prove to people what he used to be.

Instead of admitting that I’m still in the same boat I was two months ago when I started this blog, I decided to keep quiet about it all.  In retrospect, that was probably the worst decision I could’ve made. I stopped using an outlet that could’ve been simultaneously productive and comforting.

So I’m taking the chance now to apologize for my lack of posts and updates. I wasn’t ready to share all the ups and downs in my life quite yet. But, I’m trying to now. Unfortunately for my Facebook friends, that means more status updates with links to my writing. Alternatively, it’s a plus for the human beings who happen to venture to my site on the daily in hopes of reading something new. You can decide which one of those you are.