It’s been slightly over a month since I have been home from my European adventure and still the feelings, the memories, the experience lives with me as if I was still there. I miss it every single day, which is probably why I have been holding off on sharing photos of my trip here - as soon as I post them I’ll know for sure that it’s over, that I’m back in Los Angeles, that cobble stone streets, lazy weekdays in quaint cafés and taking the metro have been replaced with traffic jams, absolutely no inspiration to write and a daily routine that is slowly going to amount in me having a nervous breakdown.
So I decided to make macarons.
Little did I know the amount of work I was getting myself into.
It’s funny how these little almond flour cookie contraptions took over my life. When we were in Paris, we stopped outside Ladurée, the famous French pastry shop known for inventing the macaron, but after looking at the slightly ridiculously expensive menu, we decided on another nearby café. At the time, we didn’t realize what we had missed, and I suppose the macaron challenge I presented myself with was an effort to make up for it.
It was an ambitious project, one that I didn’t over think too much, which was a good thing. After sifting and whipping and sifting and folding, my first batch, although a great effort, cracked.
That’s when I realized how incredibly important the consistency of the batter was. I had folded the batter exactly 50 times, but realized that it needed a few more turns.
Why must the French make everything so damn hard?
The second batch came out much better - any French chef would have been proud. I happened to use a Martha Stewart recipe, which in my experience, have delivered. However, if you are going to be making these, I recommend this recipe from Fabrice Bendano, pastry chef at Adour Restaurant in Washington D.C.
I’ve been ignoring this space, mostly because I’m afraid that if I sit down to write, and I mean seriously write, that my fingers will be bleeding out the ink directly from my heart, that is to say, it will be too emotional, too all over the place, too real. In journalism, you’re told to never put yourself in the story - this isn’t about you, they tell you. So you take yourself out. You never editorialize and even when you think you aren’t, your editor will make sure to let you know that you are. You take yourself out of the equation. Whereas fiction writers or even non-fiction writers perhaps feel nothing particularly odd or even wrong with putting their feelings on paper or on a blog post, journalists find it hard to express themselves.
Let me rephrase that.
I find it hard to express myself because writing about news and events and other people is something I’m confident about. Writing thoughts about myself? Not so much.
So I’ve been ignoring this space. I have photos to upload, stories from Europe to share, even recipes, but I keep putting it off. Something isn’t right.
It wasn’t meant to be this way. I know, I know. I said I would upload photos and insights in to my little trip abroad and I most certainly plan on still doing that, but something has been stirring inside ever since I got back. It was there before I left - a free falling feeling, like I’m aimlessly tumbling down the rabbit hole with Alice, afraid, paralyzed and anxious. Now with a 10-day hiatus in London, Dublin and Paris - the former which always has my heart and the latter which left me enchanted beyond repair, behind me, things are more intense, more magnified and as a result more bone crushingly painful.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened up a blank page on this blog with thoughts bubbling at my fingertips, only to close and delete it minutes later. Even though these thoughts are spilling over in my head, something stops me from writing them. I can’t shake this fear. I can’t shake this fear that has gripped me beyond writing a silly blog post on my own corner of the interwebs. It’s taken over my life really.
The reasons? Well there are many, but in the most simplest of terms, this isn’t where I wanted to be at this point in my life, and because of this simple statement, I feel the girl I knew, the one that slept, ate and breathed writing and journalism is frozen. Not slipping away, but frozen. It wasn’t meant to be this way for me, I tell myself, but when I graduated in 2007 with a B.A. in journalism, little did I know about the impending storm the publishing world had in store for me and everyone else who graduated with and after me.
Some days I’m ok, there are even days that I’m optimistic, but then there are the days when I feel so helpless and hopeless. I have these pent up ideas - articles and images and interviews flow through my head with nowhere to go. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear about a newspaper scaling back or a magazine shutting its doors, aimlessly throwing more writers in this gigantic cesspool of unemployment. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about going back to school for a Master’s degree to learn something while I wait for things in the world of journalism to brighten up or at the very least, level out.
I feel myself drowning in doubt, wrestling with my thoughts, trying to figure out the right course of action, fighting the blues to carry on. I read an insightful article today about this very struggle - about the will to go on, despite the circumstances - how long do you care about being a writer? the article asked. How long (and from where) do you find the strength to keep pushing?
In many ways, I have no right to complain. I am not unemployed. I work in the publishing industry, albeit online and work so hard as a freelance journalist by night, all the while trying to run an online magazine, which I do voluntarily because a) I needed an outlet for writing and producing or else you would have found me sitting at Conrad’s diner at 3 p.m. in the afternoon with the old folk eating broccoli soup and counting sugar cubes before getting hauled off to an asylum and b) because I believe it’s something that that particular community needs and deserves. It’s a civil service if anything else. But I dream up ways every day of making money from my venture and living the journalism life I’ve always wanted. You know, the usual - writing for the Los Angeles Times, researching my novel, contributing to a plethora of smart magazines, perhaps even starting another blog, and before I realize, my daydream has reached the offices of the New York Times building, which might as well be literally in the clouds for me at this point.
Something has got to give.
In the time that I first began writing this entry and now, I’ve looked through all the photos from my trip, and each one carries such enormous weight with it, such amazing memories all tangled in each other in an almost two week adventure. Europe really changed me this time. It’s been two weeks since I got back, but my thoughts are still in London. I miss my boyfriend. I never talk about my relationship here, but I miss him terribly. The world seems calmer, easier to handle, when he’s by my side. I miss him. Who else would put some snow in a bowl with my name on it?
If there was a way to lay out the thoughts in my head in a straight line, they would circle the globe three times over. That was before I took my trip to Europe, and now that I’m back - it’s ten times worse. I hope to update with photos, observations, revelations and more, but suffice it to say that I had such an amazing time that I considered canceling my flight and now, three days later I still can’t get London, Paris and Dublin out of my head.
My idea of a perfect afternoon is a day spent at a swap meet. Since the really good ones only happen on specific days of the month - all of which I always happen to miss, my consolation prize always comes in the form of having tea, but not just the kind where you drop a sad, withered tea bag that has the remnants of what used to be called ‘tea,’ just like the crud you get when you poor the last of your cereal in a bowl, into your mug - the kind that comes with beautifully crafted China, high quality flavorful tea, melt-in-your-mouth tiny pastries and an aura of peace, calm and quiet.
I’d rather let the photos do the talking for themselves, but these were taken by me at “The T Room,” one of the most charming places I’ve ever been in Montrose. The occasion? Two cunning locas by the names of Alina and Nathalie kidnapped me for a birthday surprise last month. I could have spent forever there.
In three weeks I’ll be heading to London, a city I adore as much as Los Angeles. The cobblestone roads and old buildings along with the hustle and bustle of the tube among other things appeal to me in ways that I can’t accurately describe in words. The grey skies are beautiful, the people are polite and contrary to popular belief, British cuisine is not only diverse, but delicious. My love of London travels beyond the architecture and food however because my boyfriend happens to live there.
To cut a long story short, you have stumbled upon the blog of someone who is in a long distance relationship. If you have about six hours to devote to a conversation over a cup of tea ( and finger sandwiches of course) I can explain the mechanics to you, but for now I’d rather not go off on a tangent more than I have to.
Though we’ve traveled to other locales for some time to ourselves, London feels to me what I hope Los Angeles somewhat feels like for him: home.
Some of my fondest memories of us - eating a refreshing breakfast as cars whiz by at Le Pain Quotidien, discovering the amazing treasures that encompass Portobello Market and even watching some of my favorite British shows - “Come Dine with Me” and Heston Blumenthal’s fascinating gastronomical creations - have happened in the midst of this quaint, yet bustling city with a steady and soulful pulse.
In an effort to get myself in the habit of writing here more frequently and openly, I’m hoping to be taking a lot of photos, perhaps even some video and sending “Postcards from London” if you will. I haven’t really given too much thought about what I want to do and see, although there might be a trip to Dublin wedged in there somewhere which I’m very excited about.
I saved a fun “places to visit” video of London quite a while ago, so perhaps I might visit some of sites mentioned here:
The old saying goes that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. I like to say that when life throws pomegranates at you, you make sure you know how to cut, peel, seed and eat that blood red fruit, because life isn’t as simple as lemonade. Life throws you heavy pomegranates more than it does puny lemons any day and 2009 was definitely a year of hard hitting fruit.
After a year of dilly dallying with the idea of finally launching myself as a bona fide journalist, I decided in the wee hours of 2009 that I was going to make it happen this year. Writing was my drug and I felt soulless and empty, not to mention deathly afraid that the journalism infused dreams I carried with me so long were going to wither away and disappear. I made up my mind - the economy wasn’t going to stop me, the tanking journalism industry wasn’t going to stop me and neither was a full-time job. After sitting through almost four hours of traffic before and after an eight hour day of editing, I would come home, research, pitch and email into the dead of the night. Something else took over me. I didn’t know what being tired was anymore because I had surpassed it. You know when you start to feel sleepy at 11 p.m. and if you somehow fight it and get to 12 a.m., you suddenly recharge and you feel like you have the entire world in your hands? That’s how I got through it.
The long hours paid off and I soon found myself writing and fact-checking for Edible Los Angeles, contributing frequent feature stories and reviews to the Glendale News Press and Burbank Leader, as well as having my pitches accepted by two publications that I love and adore oh so much - Bitch and Paste. I finally felt worthy of the “journalist” title. I finally felt like my soul was slowly creeping back into my body. And then, in the midst of it all, I got this crazy idea to start an online magazine that has been my pride and joy for more than half of the year. It has allowed me to explore my past, write about what I love and participate in the type of journalism I believe in, the type that I felt was stolen away from me when too many people made bad choices that ultimately ended up collapsing the entire industry, the type that moved people and made a difference .
A strange kind of happiness glazed over me and boy it was wonderful.
When I wasn’t enthralled in my writing, I got a chance to spend some time in London, take a trip to San Francisco and exploring Los Angeles more thoroughly than ever before.
I survived the Station Fire that engulfed Los Angeles earlier this year, watched as the country my parents and I were born in erupted in protests and bloodshed and made so many new friends on Twitter.
Of course, the year had to go out with a bang - earlier this month I got into my first accident which has still left me car-less - not something I particularly mind but this is L.A. after all and not having a car is the equivalent of saying you don’t have any oxygen.
I’m looking forward to 2010, my theme for the new year is “change.” This year was one of transition for me, one of getting my feet wet and finally having the courage to take a few steps in the direction that I wanted my professional and personal life to go in. For the next 365 days however, the plan is to double or even triple the rate that I was going at. This means more writing, more pitching, more creativity, more devotion and confidence and strength and guts, more love, respect, trust and peace. Watch out world, I’m coming for you.
I find it strange that every time it rains in Los Angeles, I feel compelled to write. Maybe it’s not so strange. Maybe I’m strange. Maybe I don’t belong in L.A., since the sun bugs me and the rain feels amazing, even if it means I’m stuck in traffic for longer than usual. Today it took me almost an hour and a half to get across the palm tree laden landscape. If you think that’s bad, the key word here is almost, as it usually takes more than almost.
The signal of rain in this city signifies the apocalypse in many ways. The vicious mudslides, egged on by the charred remains of fire season, start to wreak havoc, sending Angelenos in a spin. Unfamiliar with the danger of slick roads, they push on the pedals of their (mostly) fantastical, expensive cars, throwing caution and their livelihood to the wind. And so the pileups and minor accidents begin, slowing down traffic even more, if you can believe it.
Some don’t even go to work.
Some complain all day long.
Some have to make use of sandbags so their houses don’t get wiped away.
Whatever way you look at it, it’s a big event.
Me? I rejoice. I love the rain. I love the sadness and contemplation it brings, how it makes you want to hold on to the ones you love just a little bit tighter. I love that it forces you to slow down and think and how it reminds you that the world isn’t just about the next hot party or ridiculously expensive clothing store, at least in Los Angeles. It reminds you that the world is bigger than you, and I wish more people felt that feeling - that the world is bigger than them, than their cars, their belongings, their feelings. It’s nice.
On the first day of the last month of the year, organizations, families, ordinary citizens and even social networks take a few moments out to commemorate World AIDS Day. The United Nations and World Health Organization estimate that 33.4 million people are living with HIV. In Los Angeles 56,000 to 62,000 people are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS.
I’d like to think of this day only as World AIDS Day, but I can’t because it’s also my birthday. I feel honored to have been born on a day where one of the world’s most serious diseases gets a day in the spotlight, but this year’s birthday feels so different for me.
In short, it’s the first time that I’m not even a little bit jovial about it.
Internet, I am down right depressed.
In the bigger scope of things I am not even that old (25) but I feel like I should have had more to show for being alive for a quarter of a century. I don’t want to bore anyone with the dreams and goals I’ve had since middle school, but I have known what I have wanted out of life for a very long time, that is, to be a successful journalist whose articles allow someone to learn something new, uncover abuse, bring about justice or elicit change. And though I feel like I have made significant strides, I am still after that journalism dream that has been on a ship to no where for a lot of people.
Of course, there are other things I crave in life, but I feel like I have been so lucky to have a supportive family, amazing friends, a boyfriend who I want to spend the rest of my life with - all those elements in my life feel more or less complete and I feel like I should have had more of a grasp on that pesky thing I love the most: writing.
I know that there are so many young journalists my age who do not have jobs or are struggling in many of the same ways I am - I see it all the time with those who I speak to or those I follow on Twitter. I see the passion that people have for this industry that has failed them and it upsets me. Of the 10 emails to editors that are unanswered, at least 50 are ignored. You can forget about a staff writing position at the moment, because frankly they don’t exist.
When I started following “Ed2010″ probably more than 5 years ago, the idea of achieving my dream journalism career in 2010 seemed so far away, so out there in the cosmos, but now, in 30 days, 2010 will arrive and I am afraid of what it will bring. Last night, I drew out a simple diagram of what I’d like to achieve in 2010, which I am crowning right now as “the year of journalism.” That piece of paper holds my dreams and goals for the next year and beyond in the form of the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Real Simple and GOOD. Here’s to hoping that on Dec. 1, 2010 I feel a little less somber and a little more hopeful than I do now.
On a whim one day, while I was searching on Twitter, I found an incredible lead for a story that I immediately pitched to my editor. It was about a Los Angeles area skating rink that had been having an LGBT skate night for the last 23 years, mostly kept under wraps to give that particularly community their privacy.
When the story was given the green light, I made my way to the skating rink after an 8 hour day at work and a one hour drive across the L.A. landscape on a breezy Wednesday night. The next three hours at this rink, where I spent time interviewing around 10 gay skaters, as well as management and watching this fairly large group of people hammer out the most amazing moves on the rink floor can only be described as euphoric.
As if I needed any more confirmation that I had the word “journalist” imprinted in the strands of my DNA, this was it. I still have not managed to describe the high of talking to people about important issues in such a grand atmosphere and then going home and having the power to string all the words together to make it sound coherent.
When I left around 10:30 p.m., I was incredibly tired, wishing I could just blink myself home like Barbara Eden from “I Dream of Jeannie” but beaming from ear to ear. I loved every single minute of my time in that rink, I loved the interviews, the transcribing, the follow up calls, the writing, editing and of course the skating.
The finished result can be found here. I can’t wait to feel this rush again, which I’m hoping will carry me over to bigger and better things within the amazing realm of journalism.
The musings of a journalist from Los Angeles who loves tea, vintage typewriters and cold weather and would perpetually like to be in a newsroom. This space is a mishmash of thoughts I have on everything from pop culture, to journalism, fashion, politics, food, news and more, peppered with commentary and laced with personal experiences
