Charlotte Stuart doing pain reduction procedure, Nelson, New Zealand/Photo by Wonderlane/Creative Commons

Recently,  I’ve started work on my third Spot.Us story, an exploration into how traditional and modern medicine intertwine to aid patients with a variety of ailments and chronic diseases.

This follows up two other stories I’ve done, one about the high number of unclaimed bodies piling up in Los Angeles County and the other about the city’s struggles with caring with and killing its growing rate of unwanted animals in shelters.

It’s a topic I am very much looking forward to exploring, mostly because I think it has the potential to uncover some amazing personal narratives that would otherwise have remained hidden. When people think about traditional and modern medicine, they are always pitted against each other, instead of alongside each other.  This is definitely a sort of “East meets West” intersection that I think will unearth cultural practices that are aiding people such as cancer patients, who are going to radiation treatments while employing things like Reiki and healers. It will also hopefully emphasize that when it comes to health, getting better is not just a physical manifestation – our mental and emotional health seems to be in need of therapy too.

Because of my interest and ties to certain cultural communities that span the sprawling landscapes of Los Angeles, I can already see that this is going to be quite a gratifying story to be working on.

Growing up as an Armenian-Iranian-American (how’s that for hyphenation) I’ve been exposed to my fair share of traditional medicinal practices and if I’m being honest, to someone on the outside looking in, it all probably seems crazy. Really crazy. From firecupping to using donkey fat to cure ailments and a witch-y like woman who shall remain anonymous for now, that can literally “blow out” pieces of food stuck in your throat (a scene I’ve seen and experienced first hand), I have seen it all.

And those experiences probably bring me to another reason why I’m so intrigued by this topic – people judge what they don’t understand and that certainly applies to deep rooted ethnic, cultural and religious practices that are rarely discussed in a serious matter where medicine is concerned anyway.  I hope my narrative on this intersection can provide understanding as well.

In the meantime, if you’re reading this and know of anyone in the Los Angeles area who is using traditional and modern medicine in tandem, or of any cultural communities (and individuals within those communities) in the L.A. area who practice traditional medicine, please do leave a comment or send me an email – lianaaghajanian@yahoo.com. You can also donate to the pitch if it’s a topic that interests you or take this survey to earn credits and then donate, free of cost.

Looking back, it is safe to say that 2010 was by far the most challenging, difficult, rewarding, beautiful, roller coaster ride of a year I have experienced thus far in my life. It was a year of hard work and really hard work, of change and risk and frustration and everything in between that encompasses what “living” life is all about.

In 2010, I…

Made my first batch of French Macarons

Traveled to Dublin, Paris and London

Published a piece on the growing number of unclaimed bodies in Los Angeles, which was linked in the Huffington Post

Related Love to Lemons

Spent several weekends at various swap meets

Found the Rooster Car of Los Angeles

Published three animal-related pieces, one of which ended up on the Los Angeles Times site

Was invited to sit on a journalism panel for high school students, which resulted in an on-air interview about ianyan, my news magazine

Published a piece on a taxi cab ordinance that left 300 drivers jobless for New America Media, which was subsequently  linked on FishbowlLA

Wrote, edited, redesigned and spent many sleepless nights on ianyan

Left an old job for a new life and the pursuit of happiness

Ended the year with an amazing trip to Armenia

In between all that’s linkable, I made a slew of incredible new friends, reconnected with old ones and experienced the culmination of a relationship many, many years in the making. Of course, there were long periods of self-doubt and stress, disappointment and anger, but I’m grateful for all of it.

With 2010 behind, I am finally feeling excited about what the next 12 months have to offer.

I have never felt more positive about a year before, and this is probably due to the fact that personally and professionally, the possibilities seem endless. I hope 2011 brings bylines in the publications I’ve long admired, more sleepless nights that produce gratifying end products, a plethora of baking and travel adventures and stories that I feel proud to explore and write. And also more blogging. Here’s to you, new year.

The road to Ararat and Khor Virap. Khor Virap is a monastery that has the St. Gevorg Chapel, constructed in AD 642. It is the site of the imprisonment of Saint Gregory the Illuminator. It is said that Gregory remained incarcerated in an underground pit (which I went down into, mostly by force) by the pagan king Tiridates III of Armenia. I took this when the van broke down and our next plan of action included getting out to eat sandwiches and homemade wine bought on the side of the road in Areni, naturally.

Completing a trip you’ve been wanting to take for years to a place you’ve endlessly written and dreamed about in 5 days is no easy task, but that’s exactly what happened.

I wasn’t even sure I was going until about three days before I found myself at LAX, anxious about a journey to Armenia via Moscow, all 15 + hours of it, each way.

With my camera around my neck, Flip video and tape recorder in my pockets, pen in my hair and notebook in hand, I climbed up hundreds of steps to ancient church ruins, interviewed villagers, rode a donkey in a village, drank homemade wine on the side of a road and more.

The jam packed trip, accompanied by meetings with friends I was seeing for the first time left no room to sleep nor reflection. It’s been 10 days since I got back, and today is the first day I woke up at a normal, non-zombie hour. It also took me a week to finally extract the jumbled words in my mind to form coherent sentences. The result is this:

The Armenia Diaries: Foreigner in the Homeland

I have so much to write, photos to circulate and video to edit, but I find myself feeling extremely nostalgic about my short time there. I ate the food I brought back sparingly so I could savor what Armenia tastes like, I’ve watched the video I made below more times than I’d like to admit so I don’t forget what I saw and every time I sit down to write, it becomes clear that I’m reflecting on something that was, and not is. I know I will be back again, and be given the chance to absorb and reflect, but the present makes me miss this incredibly country infinitely.

After more than 24 hours of flying and layovers, I’m back from Armenia, an experience so intense and gratifying that a week later, I haven’t written much because my thoughts still feel like scrambled eggs that have left such deep impressions, extracting them into coherent sentences is proving to be challenging.

More on that soon.

I have had the most challenging, rewarding and liberating year of my life thus far and I as I make my way into the unknown that is 2011, I want to wish everyone a few days of rest, plenty of laughs, food, personal and professional peace and most importantly,  happiness.

I found this yesterday while browsing on the web in the early hours of the morning, a new found freedom I’ve discovered since my departure from the cubicle. It was made by General Electric during WWII and from what I understand, is considered a propaganda war poster.

The message for me, is about no regrets – a theme I’ve always try to keep constant in my life, but one that got away from me for a while. It’s what 2011 should be about though, for a lot of people and me.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d start adhering to the theme three weeks early by doing something that has been years in the making: in less than a week, I’ll by flying off to Armenia, a country that I’ve not only written endlessly about, but one that an incredible group of people that I’ve come to grow so fond of call home and one, that as an Armenian, I have called home, from thousands of miles away. When I get over the initial shock, I’ll write more about it all either here or there, but for now, the only thing I can say is that I finally feel like I’m living.

My last post sounded cryptic, I know, but recent revelations needed some time to soak in the crevices of my life before I could type them out.

The gist of it, in the most simplest of terms, is that I quit my job. In media. In a bad economy. Please cue the firing squad.

For three years, I worked as an editor for  a new media site, copy editing, fact-checking and manhandling a bevy of freelance writers. Some of my proudest work appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a few Hearst newspapers.

After hours, I freelanced for local and national publications, adding 20 hours to a 40 hour work week. Then, I decided that it wasn’t enough. Along came 20 more hours of sweat and tears put into my own publication.

And so I went along, with my days bleeding into each other, until that funny little thing that all journalists possess took over me: intrepidity.

The fear of no work and therefore no money in a bad market was gone. The need for stability disappeared. Everything I had known for years, from high school to college, to this job, became clear: I am a journalist. I live and breathe headlines and nut graphs and slideshows. Nothing excites me more than a good article. I am at my  happiest when I’m chasing a story. I am journalism and journalism is me, for better or for worse.

So, I handed my notice, left my salary and a truly amazing group of people to venture into the unknown, where the ratio of journalists to jobs is shocking. May the force be with me, I know.

Here I am, in a knitted bobble hat and sweats, sipping on Iranian tea (Sadaf, if you’re curious) in my KCRW mug, on my first official day without a salary. I turned in a story, starting work on another and gave my dog a bath, but mostly, I outlined on a piece of paper I stole from the printer my POA, or plan of action, if you will. Story ideas, trips abroad, grants, fellowships, you name it, I’ve written it down. Much of the page is taken up my outlets I want (need, must) write for, including the Guardian, Global Post, EurasiaNet, California Watch and the Los Angeles Times (hello, is it me you’re looking for? yes, yes it is.)

Why did I do this?

Because I still believe.

I believe in journalism. I believe in it maybe to a fault. When you believe, nothing else seems to matter.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, in a month or a year from now, but I do know this: I am going to give this industry everything I’ve got, because it can’t be removed from my core. And if you love something enough that it fills your core, pursue, pursue, pursue. The hard work has to pay off. It just has to. Fear and courage run on a thinly veiled line, so choose wisely.

2011 is going to be an adventure filled with pitches, bylines, self-discovery, love, highs, lows, travel and the pursuit of happiness. I leave you with this quote:

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive – Howard Thurman

Love, The Human Journalist, newly minted enterprise, investigative and international reporter.

There is so much to write about, so much to explain; about lessons I’ve learned and challenging experiences I thought I could never plow through. About regret and gratitude and love and hate and all those moments that don’t move fast enough and those that move too fast, like a train you cut through fog to run after but never catch up to.

There is so much to write about.

About still believing in journalism, about wanting it. About embracing its faults and challenges, about cradling it close to your heart like a child and wanting the best for it in this crazy, wild world. About New York Times’ bylines, BBC contributions  and Los Angeles Times’ beats, and good, chill-inducingreporting that you fight for and sweat for and go to extraordinary lengths for because you still believe. About seeing your name in the pages (and web pages!)  of the publications you grew up daydreaming about, and writing about communities, issues, undiscovered controversies and brewing trends that are worth discussing.

About  people you meet, the subcultures you discover, the connections you make. About beautiful, ancient countries and cultures engulfed in war and misunderstanding and politics, thousands and thousands of miles away, whose beauty and significance is often underrated and ignored. About your quest to make a difference, on one side of the world or the other. Or both.

About fear and anxiety and intrepidity. About making decisions in a life that you’ve never lived before, and hoping for the best. About wanting to be something more, something higher and looking back and maybe realizing that none of that really matters.

There is so much to write about.

About the projects I’ve been working on lately, the articles that have been written and the ones that will be written. About leads and adventures and emails with editors that make you want to cry happy tears and emails that never get returned even though you’ve made sure to follow up, and follow up and follow up.

About new directions that life will be taking me in, about uncertainty, about changes, about everything.

And I’ll do that, very soon.

For now, London is all I can think about.

I don’t even have a clear answer as to why. It just feels like my home away from home, a place with connections, a place to relax, clear my mind, figure out my plans and how to tackle them and breathe. A place where I can escape and take it all in and return home to let it all out. A place to ride the metro,  walk around Covent Garden, visit the Tate Modern, meet friends and because I can never  ever escape it even if I tried,  make some connections in something I still believe in and am hungry for (the Guardian and BBC, I’m coming for you).

Life is changing, but London is calling.

Two articles published in one week and another one completely funded make this girl a happy journalist.

It seems as though I’ve been on an animal beat for the last few months. I pitched a story on three dogs that were left at a foreclosed home which  ended up in the Los Angeles Times (!!!) blog section, and have been interviewing sources on the street dog situation in Armenia for a while. This week, another story I pitched, on a pet store that replaced its designer breeds with adoptable dogs from a nearby shelter was in the Business section of the Glendale News-Press. And of course, my Spot.us pitch is about L.A.’s struggles with its No-Kill goals.

It’s gratifying covering animal issues, especially because they are the members of our society who don’t really have a voice and when you write about their struggles, the abuses of their rights as part of this Earth or the human policies that decide their fate, you feel like you’re at the very least, giving them a place in the conversation.

It’s exactly the same way I feel about human rights (and international)  reporting and investigative journalism and it took me a long time to solidify my feelings on what moves me in the world of writing. Let me explain.  When you first get out of journalism school, you’re like a new-born calf. You don’t really know how to stand up, you’re hungry and all you can really say is, “I’M HERE, EVERYONE!” You’re thrust into a vicious world where you realize that many times, it’s not about what you know, but who you know. Your industry becomes volatile. Your emails that you spend hours on  don’t even get looked at, much less replied to. If you’re like me, where you graduated with old school values and taught yourself new school techniques, you still feel that the only thing that can validate you is seeing your name in print in the Los Angeles Times or New York Times, or [insert impenetrable time-tested publication here]. So you kind of start to try everything, to see what’s going to fit. In this industry, you have to be adaptable, willing to take risks, and above all in my opinion, have the passion and ambition to move forward no matter what.

It is truly an uphill battle. The fear and self-doubt alone can crush you. Believe me, I’ve been on this roller coaster. But when you find what you truly want to write about, how you want to spend your time on Earth, what contributions you’d like to make to society, everything else seems clear – not any easier, just clear.

A resident of East Valley Animal Shelter peers out of its kennel/Liana Aghajanian

I just got back a few hours ago from spending another Sunday at the East Valley Animal Shelter in Van Nuys, Calif.  for my Spot.us story. So much went on in the three or four hours I was there, that it’s hard to separate one event from the other. A timid American Bull Dog, hit by a car, unable to move its hind legs and found in Sunland was brought in. A German Shepherd, an Akita and several cats were adopted. Those unfortunate enough to remain in their cages got one day closer to a new home or a death sentence.

The psychological impacts on both humans and animals in a shelter is worth examining. As an animal technician, there’s a point where you have to put your emotions on the bottom of your priority list. After all, you’ve got a job to do, a job that, along with feeding, cleaning and caring for an animal, includes killing an animal. As a dog or cat, cooped up in a cage, with the details of your life hanging on a kennel card and the incessant sound of barking at every hour of the day, all you have to go by are your emotions. It’s a hard life, for both caretaker and resident.

Less than a week away from my deadline, there’s so much to think about and still a few people left to talk to. What has become clear from my research, from interviews, from visits to the shelter and trying to examine the situation that is animal euthanasia in Los Angeles, is that it takes a village working together to protect animals, much like it takes a village to raise a child. All components of the equation must work harmoniously, or else the entire operation will fall apart fantastically.

In January, I saw a Francis Bacon exhibition in Dublin. Everything about that day was perfect, at least now when I look back it was, from the mushroom soup in the museum’s cafe, to the damp weather that was just the right amount of cold and the visual feast of Bacon’s life work that was in front of me to savor.

The day I had in Dublin is exactly what Lou Reed is referring to when he sings “Perfect Day.”

I hadn’t experienced euphoria like that for a while. The last time it happened before Dublin, I had been in Barcelona. It was humid. We took a walk in the afternoon to Las Rambla, the Sunset Blvd. equivalent to this Spanish city. La Boqueria, a large public market was our first stop. When you first walk in, there are so many colors, so many edible, beautiful things that you don’t know what to do with yourself. It is impossible to come out of there without buying something, anything, just so you can take a piece of the beauty along with you. We bought a bag of by-the-pound candy, full of strawberry belts and raspberry hearts and headed to the dock. It was humid and the smell of salt was floating in the air. We sat on concrete steps, a bag full of edible joy next to us and watched the waves and seagulls dance together.

It was a moment frozen in time, just like Dublin. It was a perfect day, not because I was traveling, or even because I was feeding my sweet tooth, but because above all things, that day symbolized contentment. I wanted no more, or no less. I was ok just being.

And unexpectedly, it happened again today, even though I wasn’t soaking up life in a European city thousands of miles away from home.

We drove through Echo Park and ended up in Silver Lake. It was too late to get any work done for my story and after  a stressful week,  all I wanted to do was have dinner and a cup of tea and only worry about the next two or three hours instead o the next two or three years.

A vegan pizza and chai soy latte later, we climbed up the windy streets to find the car. And then it happened. Everything was beautiful. The streets were quiet, the sky had almost sucked the sun dry and there was just enough light to see the murals on the wall. The air was flowered by the smell of fresh laundry. I couldn’t stop sniffing. It felt ok to breathe again, even though this particular moment’s euphoria only lasted a few minutes.

It was ok.

I needed that moment more than I ever have before. At a time when I’m faced with uncertainty, with decision-making that will impact my life, I needed a few minutes of bliss. I can’t stop thinking about the novel that changed my views on life, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” I wish I could know the impact of the decisions I’m about to make. I wish I knew what I will be faced with. But I don’t.

“We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”

We can never know says Milan Kundera. This idea rings truer today than it ever has before. So much so, that I really feel its unbearable quality under my skin. I need more beautiful moments, one every few years just isn’t enough. I need happiness and contentment. I need to make a few life-altering decisions, I just wish I knew what they would lead to.