Another revolution around the sun

Journalism is one of those fields that regularly inspire a crisis of faith. Reporting is solitary work. You get people talk to you all day, but you don't really talk to them. Then you spend weeks processing their words, hoping to turn them into a story. Quiet and alone, you try to make a piece of writing that didn't exist before come out of your head. Once written, you give it to someone who tears it apart. The first draft is the worst. I've never worked on a first draft without a moment, usually in the middle of the night, when I ask myself, "Why did I become a writer? It's so hard! I can't do it and it's terrible." All of my friends go through this. We have a little support group. John McPhee, who's been writing for 40 YEARS, wrote a piece on writing called Draft No. 4 for The New Yorker last year. The first draft is terrible, no one thinks they can write when they're in the midst of it, etc., etc. I don't know if I was horrified or comforted. It isn't just me, but also, the horror never ends.

For the past two weeks, I've been in a holding pattern. No fewer than four editors were due to get back to me about something any minute. They kept not getting back to me. Editors are busy people. I feared they'd all respond on the same day and want a response ASAP. That is pretty much what happened. Luckily, it's all ended with an assignment about which I'm very excited. I remembered: Being a journalist is awesome.

Lots of people leave the work. It makes sense. It doesn't pay and isn't secure. And you always have these doubts. The people who become most successful in it are, not surprisingly, those who stick with it. Journalism is a war of attrition.

What I'm Writing:
Just this little piece in The Daily Beast on home care workers.

What I'm Reading:
The conservative case against the suburbs. The end of retirement. (You need a subscription for that one.) A teenager disappears. This excerpt from this new book about how terrible factory farms are, for which I went to this event. This piece about anti-abortion women, which I sort of wrote almost three years ago. I finished the latest book in the Kinsey Millhone series, and don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I finish Z. I'm also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, finally, part of my long-running series: "Books I should have already read but hadn't gotten around to before now."

What I'm Listening To:
Serial. Seriously, y'all, it is so good.

What I'm Watching:
More worries about farms.

Cute Animal Pic of the Week:
Sampson is so over it.

A Bleg:
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