O.K, stop.

Whoa, back. Settle down. Halt. As I floundered for ideas to pitch, I decided to talk a little bit more with the folks in the office down below. Which is when I found out that actually, what this office deals with is not the funny stuff at all, but the newsier local beat. Jason, the assistant editor who I spoke with last week, and who is also a really, really nice guy, let me know that he’d be happy to hear some of the funny pitches, but all that stuff comes out of New York, and unless you have an in with an editor there, it’s nearly impossible to break through [sound of me silently banging my fists against the wall and mouthing “noooooooooooooooooooooooo!”]

He was still really interested in getting some articles from me, but what they do here is the Arts and Entertainment section of the Onion (yawn), which is not mock journalism at all, but quasi-real journalism, like restaurant and movie reviews and all the stuff that I both know absolutely nothing about and find really, really boring.

I could have my pick of writing about television (hah!), video games (hah! hah!), movies (the last movie I went to was, let’s see… about four million years ago), restaurants (all the restaurants I’ve been to recently have ball pits and include a free cheapo plastic toy with your meal) or local music shows (Does Jay banging on his broken four string guitar while jumping on my bed count?). So, maybe I’ll come up with a piece that I’ll want to run by him, but I probably won’t be getting to crank out the really cool stuff any time soon.

Sigh…

At least I am feeling charged from my adventure into real writing and might channel that inertia to look into other ways to write professionally. And I bet Chris will still bring me coffee each morning when he comes in to wake me up, Jay will still give me an enormous hug when I walk in the door each day, Ella will still snuggle in to nurse. My parents will still call to see how things are going, and Rosie will still ask to borrow the car. Life goes on.