Hello.

Journalists (well, most of them anyway) tend to shy away from any type of self-exposure, including myself. It’s about the STORY, not about YOU – that’s what we’ve been told over and over again by journalism professors and editors and publishers, and rightfully so. It’s not about us, it’s about those we report on.

So you can understand the hesitation and anxiousness I felt when I decided to post the above photo of (gasp!) myself, but I’ve grown tired of feeling that way.

I have been wondering what to make of this blog ever since I started writing in it. I’ve written about baking bowling ball cakes and print newspaper consumption in Europe and my love of  kitsch, not fit for consumption movies like “Love is All There Is,” and why I hate and love Los Angeles all at the same time.

I’ve described how I must be the only person on the face of the Earth who can’t have a blood test because of impossible to find veins and how I wanted to crawl into a hole and die when I found my first white hair and documented Henry the Maltese’s entire knee surgery (the one section of my site I get the most emails about).

I’ve agonized over the very thing all young writers agonize about – having a career doing what they love and at the same time felt like all my journalism dreams were coming true.

I have complained, whined, explained how beautifully baking calms me down, highlighted some of the articles I’ve worked on over the last year and also probably talked a lot of crap.

I’ve done all this while wondering – what the hell am I writing about?

I always feel like I’m all over the place when I write here, which I guess is an accurate reflection of my life at the moment.

I want everything at once. And as such, I want to write about everything at once. And that’s why if you browse through the posts on these pages, you’ll find everything from pumpkin muffins to musings on the 2008 presidential election and recaps of Bollywood films.

For a very long time, I’ve wrestled with what to write here – the self-loathing and criticism that comes with being a writer is no exaggeration, believe me. I have stared at so many blank posts, only to write a few lines and delete the entire thing. I wasn’t wasting any paper, but it still felt like a waste.

And so, I was driving (more like standing still) on the traffic infested freeways of Los Angeles when it finally occurred to me what this blog was and should be about: The Human Journalist.

You might be thinking,  huh? what exactly is a journalist if not human? Well, according to this UK poll, being a journalist was recently regarded as the third most untrustworthy profession – so to some, I’m sure “journalist” is synonymous with Beelzebub.

Many people tend to think of journalists as soul-less leeching creatures who are always on the chase for their next story, no matter what the cost. And while I haven’t run across this too often in my career, there are times when I’ve felt the deep-seeded hate.

Today was one of those days.

I called a source to fact-check a few paragraphs of information and within the first few seconds of speaking to him, I knew he was going to lash out at me.

“Is that how you people operate?” he said to me in a condescending tone. “Is that how you work?”

Uncalled for kind sir, uncalled for.

A few months ago I was on a phone with a woman, trying to explain that I was in search of some information for a story and she cut me off and started explaining that the way I had approached her on the phone was all wrong.

“Don’t they teach you how to properly talk in journalism school?”

She went on and on, belittling me, refusing to answer questions, but I carried on and finally got what I needed out of her, while dreaming of ramming the phone all the way through the line and up  her nose and then going across the street to the bar to get a shot of tequila and cry. And I don’t even drink.

I guess what I’m trying to say, in the most roundabout way, is that my entire life I’ve been trying to find the central part of what ties all the other parts of me together. It would be easy and almost lazy,and not even  entirely true to say  that it’s my ethnicity that’s at the core of my being. Being Armenian is a huge part of who I am, but it would be unfair to say that it is the one thing that completely effects all other areas of my life.

But what does effect and infects its tentacles into all parts of my being, is journalism. It has always been my core, the one thing that I remained certain about above all others, throughout adolescence and high school and college and ‘the real world.’

It makes me feel alive.

And so in an effort to finally unify this blog under one concept, put a soul behind the third most untrustworthy profession and use this truly as a comfortable space to not only express my ideas, and half-ideas, but to connect with others, I’m now The Human Journalist. I write, I bake, I dream about seeing my byline in the L.A. Times and NY Times, I love kitsch, awesomely bad movies that would make any film critic lose respect for me. I love Los Angeles, but I’m not afraid to say I hate it too. I want to write about the problems this sprawling landscape has, and meet some amazing people in the process. I want to craft words together for my stories as beautifully as my grandmother strings together the thinnest of yarns for the winter cardigans she makes.  I want journalists to be respected and acknowledged and not underpaid. I want to write feature stories that have the potential to make someone stop and think, “Huh. That was interesting.” I want to see all the hard work I put into an investigative story and say – I really made some kind of dent in the world.  I want to be able to make other people feel the way I feel when I read stories from my favorite writers.

I want to feel (virtually) alive. And I want to bake some amazing desserts to reward myself with.

So here I go. This is an experiment into the human side of a journalist – about her wants and dreams, about her likes and dislikes, some of which have nothing to do with journalism at all and about discovering herself on this torturous yet rewarding path that only a crazy person would purposefully choose.

This is place where I’ll probably do a lot of what I was doing before, but without any fear or anxiety – and for a writer, to write without either the former or the latter is complete and utter peace.

I am intrepid, see me write. And of course, welcome.

I like to bake. I guess that’s obvious if you’ve been reading for a while now, but it’s not necessarily because I love sweets (and don’t get me wrong, I do).

It is truly the best form of therapy, especially if you do late in the evening, watching The Nanny while trying to mix your batter and then subsequently fill the house with intoxicating baking smells at 2 a.m.

It’s glorious and I will tell you why.

Because you can go through the worst day in the world, a day that doesn’t make sense, a day that makes you cry, makes you wish you could dig your head in a hole because nothing is going right and people are annoying and you wish you could transport them all to a barren island so they can just revel in their annoying-ness and then hopefully die off and then you can come home, get together a few ingredients, mix them together and know at the end of the day, that if you follow the directions and put some love into it, you will have made something good, and that’s enough to make everything in the world seem better.

Honest.

That’s the same reason why I love to write, although I would compare journalism more to making macarons or boston cream pie than to your regular muffin.  It’s grueling, you’ll want to give up, but if you keep pushing on you realize that when it’s finished, you are beaming from ear to ear. And that’s the type of fire you need to have, whether you’re reporting or baking, or just even living really.

Creating new things to eat or read is all I need to melt away all the stress in my life. At least until it appears again, anyway.

“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” – William F. Buckley, Jr.

Before I graduated with a journalism degree almost two years ago, this little space of mine on the world wide web was just a place where I could share my thoughts, my likes and dislikes and the events which occurred on a daily basis. After I received my B.A, the thoughts I had about this blog began to change. I started to think more about what I was putting out there for the world to see. I began to worry about the topics I was discussing and the caliber of my writing. I thought up ways I could make this place better. I was rarely getting comments, so I might as well have just deleted everything I wrote and not look back. This was my thought process.

For a long time I didn’t write, or started to, but immediately erased my post, feeling self-conscious about everything I did here. I would look at websites like Dooce and try to figure out ways to achieve the same kind of popularity. Other times, I would consider converting my amalgam of posting topics into one niche idea that I would concentrate on, like journalism or food.

But the thing is, I’m not just about journalism or food, though they are perhaps my two biggest passions. I am about so many other things too. I slowly  began to realize that I could never fit into a niche. This is why this blog is called “writepudding.” Not only is it a play on “rice pudding,” but it allows me to write about whatever I like, just like a pudding allows you to put in so many different and versatile ingredients.

The same inner struggles I experience with this blog, are the same ones I have about my professional career as a writer. There are times when I am so overwhelmed. There are days when I dream about leaving the city and renting a log cabin in Wisconsin just so I can think and write and write and think – just so I can clear out my mind and come up with an amazing idea for a novel. Then, there’s every day of my life, when I drive by the Los Angeles Times building in downtown, on my way to Santa Monica, wishing and hoping that I will have the chance to work there some day and wishing and hoping that that day was already here.

One thing is for sure – to be in this profession, either a journalist or a writer, the only thing that keeps you going is passion – because it sure as hell isn’t the money, or the perks, or the praise or the hours, because they all suck. You have to constantly reinvent yourself, your ideas, your skills and underneath it all, if you don’t have a burning fiery passion for it, it will fizzle out sooner than you can say “I’ve had enough.”

I don’t think I will ever have enough.

Photo by hamedmasoumi

I often blame my temporary inabilities to write on my surroundings. Sometimes I can’t think when it’s too quiet and other times, I can’t concentrate if I’m anywhere but a library. Other days it has to do with the day of the week. Although I have the time on weekends, all I want to do is stay in bed and watch bad television. On the weekdays, when I’m super charged with energy, I have to concentrate on other responsibilities. It’s a lose-lose situation. When I think about the fact that I have to compromise my writing for the time or the place, I feel sad. I wish I could think of a more eloquent synonym, but it really makes me sad that that’s what it’s come to.

I often think that the only way I’ll be able to write anything worthwhile is to go hide away in a cabin for months until I come up with something that I find fairly decent. I need the quiet, the change of atmosphere, the scenery to inspire me, to make me come up with ideas that the concrete jungles of Los Angeles are  stifling.

Writing habits are an interesting topic and I’m not entirely sure if I’ve discovered mine yet. I tend to write ideas down and dwell on them for a long time. I’ll write the title of a story I want to work on and save it, or I’ll see something on the news or hear someone having a conversation and realize how great it would be to include that in a story. Mostly, I think my inspiration comes from life, from relationships, from what people say and do, to what they don’t say and do. I try to draw from reality as much as possible because for me, reality is just as entertaining, if not more, than fantasy.

I write everywhere. I write on post-it notes, notebooks that I haven’t used for years, scraps of paper, the notepad I use at work, I even take down notes on my iPhone. I’ve tried to buy fancy notebooks so I can keep my thoughts in one place, but they always seem to escape me. These days, when I do write in somewhere other than a centralized place, I take my post-it notes and my scraps and everything else and tape them in my main notebook.

I tend to write bits of ideas on paper and then expand those ideas on my computer. I like writing while I’m sitting on my bed, with a cup of tea, especially when it’s raining. My dream would be to have one of those window-sill type ledges where you pile up pillows and read or write.

I stumbled across a blog, Rodcorp, that highlighted some of the work and writing habits of some of my favorite writers and people. I echo a lot of their sentiments.

Jonathan Safran Foer, who is best known for his 2002 novel, “Everything is Illuminated,” has habits that sound like mine:

I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch, and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially, I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

Stephen Fry seems to have encapsulated my fears:

As a young writer–I was then contemplating how to move forward after my first effort–I felt so enthusiastically and agonizingly aware of the blank pages in front of me. How could I fill them? Did I even want to fill them? Was I becoming a writer because I wanted to become a writer or because I was becoming a writer? I stared into the empty pages day after day, looking, like Narcissus, for myself.

Virginia Woolf does what I feel I must do:

I don’t take another job. I don’t do anything. I go up to my house in the country and pull out all the plugs, virtually. I just do it nonstop until I’m finished. I envy writers who can write on planes and take a break for a week and then get back to it. I have to get into a sort of zone. [...] With writing, I don’t know what it is. I just have to get into a complete world. It has something to do with an inability to concentrate, which is the absolute bottom line of writing.

I’m hoping to get a better sense of what I’m capable of in terms of writing and also my habits this year.

I feel very self-conscious when I write in this web space of mine – that might be why I’ve been avoiding it, that or because I’ve been having quite a great time posting shorter blurbs on the amazingness that is Twitter.

The truth is, is that I can’t define what this space is most useful for. Is it a personal blog with random entries about all aspects of my life? Is it about my journey into journalism? Is it something I should use for my professional career? Is it a mix of all these things? See, these are questions I don’t have answers for and perhaps it worries me when it really shouldn’t. Maybe it’s ok to not have the answers. Maybe it’s ok to write about whatever I wish, without following any specific guidelines, I’m not sure. I guess you could say what it has been for me mostly, is a place of reflection, a place where I can write about whatever I wish and look back at later, wondering what I must have been thinking or feeling. It’s a bit like a memory capsule.

A lot of what prevents me from writing in here about topics I’d like and as frequently as I’d like, is the sheer amount of energy loss I have when I actually have the time to write. An eight hour day, coupled with a three hour daily commute really makes you want to collapse by the time you get home. I hate it. It sucks. I wish traffic would die. But alas, no such thing will happen. This is Los Angeles, and traffic is the price we pay for the year round Mediterranean weather.

Still, there are other reasons I’ve been avoiding this place, like the fact that I currently don’t have a camera and hate that I can’t include photos with my posts or take pictures of the things I bake.

I’ve had quite a busy week, full of editing, writing, categorizing, movie screenings, dreams, goals and social media. I hope tomorrow and this weekend are better days for the writepudding.

It’s not 2009 yet, but I’d like to take a moment here and highlight the roller coaster of a year I’ve been through, so that in a future entry, I can highlight the steady ground I’m hoping to be on. I thought about the best way of writing all of it down, and although I’d love to write a long-winded and perhaps boring to some essay on my 2008 adventures, I think a list is in order.

This year I…

-Spent the early hours of New Year’s Day at Disneyland, despite tickets being sold out. We managed to get in to the park because of the good graces of a stranger with extra tickets. That day will never be forgotten.

- Was hired as a full-time editor for a social media company

-Began doing freelance work as a journalist, which led me to write about some incredible and some not so incredible films, interview Ben Kingsley and a bunch of others and meet a lot of other great writers.

-Accidentally deleted this blog, which caused me to lose almost two years worth of entries

- Went to Montreal with my boyfriend, had great food, did great shopping and met Charles Aznavour

-Co-hosted an edible gardening internet radio show

- Saw Adele perform at The Roxy

-Took sessions with a personal trainer and enrolled at a new gym

-Watched my sister graduate high school and enroll at my alma mater

-Went through a luxating patella surgery with Henry and nursed him back to health for about five months

-Witnessed the incredible and miraculous election of 2008 and cried when Obama won

- Became a member of the Society of Professional Journalists

-Revisited the Magic Castle after my initial outing there to interview a magician

-Dyed my full head a single color for the first time ever

-Started to regularly attend the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market

-Wasted so many hours of my life sitting in the horrendous traffic of Los Angeles

-Made some amazing online friends through this blog

-Broke my camera, fixed it only to have it break again

-Tried to resist the phenomenon that is “Twilight,” but fell victim to the dazzling story of Edward and Bella, which marked my regression into adolescence.

-Worked my first red carpet, where I met Stan Lee, Frank Miller, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Julie Benz

-Took my obsession with Bollywood to a whole other level by managing to watch at least one film almost every weekend for the better part of the year

-Went to work on developing a new online publication gear towards the Armenian community (still working)

-Found amazing online tools such as Twitter and StumbleUpon, which I now use daily

-Became progressively more obsessed with Anthropologie

-Prayed for snow that never came

-Didn’t spend enough time in bookstores

-Took the GRE, a rather painful experience that I will most likely repeat again sometime in the future

-Did a lot of baking and found some recipes I really loved

I should be sleeping, seeing as to I have to make it to work at a reasonable time tomorrow, but my mind is racing after finishing the first of four books in the Twilight series. Yes I am a dork. No, I do not care. I was thinking back to when I started this blog in 2006 and looking at how far I’ve come, not only in terms of my subject matter and topics, but in terms of myself. I can’t believe it’s been two years. Sometimes I ask myself why I have this space to myself. Why do I write here? What prompted me to create a website? It would be easy and also a lie if I said it was just a more convenient way to write down my thoughts, instead of transcribing them in a notebook by hand. In some ways, that’s true, but obviously I wanted more. And yet today, I really don’t know my goal for this little web space I have. Is it just to write down my thoughts? Is it a release for me, an experiment in writing, or am I writing for someone, whoever that may be? Do I have an audience? I don’t even know for sure if anyone really is reading what I write, or why they would want to. But I guess it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I wish my blog was well-known and visited, sometimes I wish I could write in private so no one would have to see. I can’t seem to figure this place out, or the direction I want to take it in, but I suppose that’s a running theme in my life at the moment: confusion.

Sometimes I give myself rigid restraints on what to write about and how – and then I remember that this is just a personal blog and there are no rules and I can write about whatever I want, however I want. Maybe that’s the beauty of this place though, I can swing whichever way I want, without even thinking. One day I could be talking about situations in my life and the next day, I could be declaring my love for all things Paula Deen and then talking about my enormous hate for Ugg boots after. It’s really refreshing, have a space I can fill up with anything I want.

Yes, I should be sleeping. It’s almost 1 a.m, but this is a perfect opportunity to write. The house is completely quiet and dark, with the only light coming from my laptop. Henry is fast asleep, instead of flinging around his toys and our shoes in the living room and because I’ve spent the majority of my day so listless in a cubicle, my mind is awake and racing and conjuring up topics to write about and ideas to get to. This is unfair really, almost torture. Why aren’t there more hours in the day, more days in the week? Most importantly, when will I finish the second book from the Twilight series. I am slowly being recruited into the League of Morons because of you, Stephenie Meyer.

I better get to bed before I pick up the book to read and never go to sleep.

What I’m about to say has no bearing on this lovely gentleman from Montreal we took a photo of

Without giving away too many details, I come into contact with writers on a daily basis as an editor. Some are really good, others self-righteous, many technicalogically-challenged and others horrible writers. Except they don’t know they’re horrible, because their aunt, sister, cousin, [insert random friend or relative here] has told them they are great, so they must be, right?

To put this into perspective, imagine this as the American Idol competition of writing. There are always the bunch that come to sing and are utterly horrible and laughable and when insulted by Simon Cowell, are so taken aback and surprised because they had been told how wonderful they sound. But everyone tells me I have the best voice, they cry. That was utterly horrid, Cowell says, as they go crying off into oblivion.

The problem with people these days, is that they believe that it takes no skill whatsoever to become a writer, painter, artist, etc. Then there are others that think that a 4-year degree is enough to make them excel in their field. I saw it when I was studying for my journalism degree, and my boyfriend has seen it too, when he was studying for his graphic design degree.

Newsflash people: it takes a lot to be a good writer. It takes passion and determination and innate talent. If you don’t have it in you already, I’m afraid school won’t do much good. If you think you can just pick up a pencil or a paintbrush and be the master of your art, I’m afraid you are very wrong.

There are times when I’ve had to explain to writers why their services were no longer needed. Sometimes they take it well and understand and ask for advice on what would make them better writers. Others are in complete and utter shock ( again, like the American Idol contestants) at the thought of me suggesting that they’re not particularly good. There are many that don’t take it so well and these people don’t have any self-awareness at all.

Not having self-awareness, is like a debilitating disease which leads people to be be arrogant, cocky, full of themselves and at times very ignorant. I come into contact on a daily basis with people who lack this basic human concept and the results are embarrassing and quite frankly sometimes hard to watch.

I felt the need to write this because I had a couple particularly bad days last week in dealing with writers and my frustrations got the better of me. That week is over and hopefully this week won’t be the same. In this past year, I have learned so much about why editors in the actual publishing industry don’t give the time of day to writers. I understand that now. Because the good ones (who actually have great attitudes as well) are few and far in between.

Contemplation in an NYC diner, pen in hand.

In the past few weeks, I have found myself contemplating my future more than ever. This is partly due to the fact that I’m looking to apply to about four graduate schools come December and January. My anxiety doesn’t stem from the fact that I doubt my abilities, it stems from the idea that others could possible doubt my abilities. Graduate school professors, perhaps? Or the team of people that review applications. Or even publications I might try to pitch ideas to. The problem is a couple of things. First, the world of print journalism has been dying a slow death for the past couple of years. Although I firmly do not believe that big institutions of news, like The New York Times or USA Today will go away, because broadcast and new media rely so heavily on them as the gatekeepers of news, it will be horribly impossible to be considered for any editorial type job there for the writers and editors of my generation.

As any recent grad in the journalism field knows, it is so difficult to find an entry-level job, let alone one that is willing to pay you a decent wage. Once I applied for an editorial assistant position that paid $14. Fourteen dollars. That’s one dollar more than I was making in the last year of the customer associate job I had during college. Only one dollar more. I see countless listings on Craig’s List for reporters and writers, but many of them are not only volunteer-based, but pay anywhere from $10 to $12. I mean, really?

But, let’s face it, no one becomes a journalist for the money, except for the delusional students who somehow think majoring in journalism is going to launch them into the helmet hair, salmon colored suit hell of broadcasting for a local network. I became a journalist because I’m passionate, and really, that is the number one thing that this field responds to: passion. If you don’t have it, you’re better of going to Business school or enrolling in another program. The trouble is, at first, you’re not going to make much money, in fact, if you’re not good, you won’t ever make good money at all. Second, you’re going to be possible met with criticism from the public. News flash: Journalists are not liked. I once read a poll conducted not too long ago that ranked journalists in the same league as user car salesmen on issues about honesty and trust.

I can’t believe I read this week that the Los Angeles Times is cutting another 75 editorial jobs. Who do they expect to run the paper? Advertisers? What is in the future for print-lovers like me who want to make our careers in journalism? When I toured the Los Angeles Times office when I was a sophomore in high school, I was so overcome by emotion. Yes, I was a big dork, but that’s besides the point. The point was, I knew that where I belonged, ultimately, was in a newsroom. Most of you are thinking, wow what a loony, of all places, why would anyone want to be there? Let me tell you, when news breaks, the best place you could be is in a newsroom. The thrill, the rush, the excitement, the messy desks, the editors and writers whizzing past one another, the televisions on, the radio on standby, web pages open on the army of computers. Transport me to a newsroom any day, and I’ll get right to work. You won’t even have to ask.

This is the stuff I live for. The stuff I’m passionate about, the stuff that has the power to induce compassion, incite anger, change minds and expose the truth. During the day, I plot ways that I can replace Erica Hill on Anderson Cooper 360, pitch a story to the New York Times and be taken seriously, even though I’m relatively young. Erica Hill is 32. Thirty two! That means I have about eight years plotting time to come up with a plan to be on air with the silver fox known as Anderson Cooper. On my way to work, I try to think up the questions the reporters on NPR might ask, before they actually ask them. If you’re not a fan of radio news, I suggest that you don’t step foot in my car, because that’s mostly all I listen to on my long drives from and to work.

My Saturday mornings are spent with my mother on the kitchen table trying to solve the crossword puzzles on the last page of every issue of New York Magazine. People, I have the Society of Professional Journalists “Code of Ethics” pinned on my wall at work and “Beyond the Inverted Pyramid” by The Missouri Group on my desk. I reference the Associated Press Stylebook almost daily.

In short, I love journalism. Someone get me a bumper sticker: I <3 Journalism. Yes, I love it. I hope to succeed in it. I hope to leave a mark on the world. I hope to be recognized for my craft. I hope that years from now, journalists can be looked at on the same level as doctors and artists and other prestigious professions. I hope that when  a high school students declares a desire to become a journalist or writer, his or her parents don’t try to persuade them in the pursuit of something reliable and realistic such as business, or something that will make bring in the money, but make you lose your soul in the process.

I hope that I can be among the Ida Tarbells and Christiane Amanpours and the Ernest Hemingways of the world.

Friday cannot come any sooner. I feel as if I have already done enough with my hours and now I want to allow the week some time off. Thursday and Friday, can you please disappear? Don’t bring me more work, more traffic and less sleep. Why don’t you join Saturday and Sunday and give me a a nice, long weekend to look forward to?

My day started at 5:30 a.m. yesterday and ended at 10:30 p.m. By the time I got home, I more or less collapsed in my bed. I was so tired. I was the kind of restless tired. The kind of tired when you can feel your eyeballs in their sockets, where if you stay up just a bit longer, the loopy, crazy, insane behavior might start and you wont be able to stop it.

As per usual, Los Angeles traffic was relentless. It still boggles my mind on how people can come to this city and survive its strange behavior and customs. If the Iranian Revolution hadn’t taken place and I had lived my life in Tehran, was forced to wear a head scarf and then one day my parents decided to take a trip to Los Angeles, I think I would have lost my mind. How does one come here from Minnesota and manage to drive to and from work and home on a gridlocked 405 freeway. I am from here and I barely survive it. I’ve learned to tune it out a bit I guess and I am sure that this is what most people do, newcomers and locals alike and that’s how we all survive together, but I can imagine how shocking the idea of spending that long of a time in your car before you get to work can seem.

After work, I had to run over across town to see a press screening of “Ghost Town,” the new film starring Ricky Gervais, or as I like to perpetually call him David Brent. No matter how good you think it is, the American version of the The Office has absolutely NOTHING on the U.K. Office. David Brent rules the world and me and you just live in it. Stapler in jelly, redundancies, Keith, Sergio Georgini, can it get any better than this? I think not.

But I digress. The movie was quite funny, just your typical comedy, with a few twists and turns, but nothing absolutely spectacular, except for Ricky Gervais’ shark tooth. I couldn’t help but think about David Brent throughout the whole film, albeit a grouchy, loner David Brent. I hate when I go to press screenings, and they’ve combined the press with a gazillion other normal movie-goers who just happened to get invited to an early screening. I can’t stand it. It takes away from the professionalism of it all. I guess it’s a good way to judge how the film is perceived by others as you watch it, but I still get annoyed.

Earlier this year, when I attended the press screening for “The Wackness” at Sony Studios, it was so…professional. I hate to use that word again, but it’s the way it felt. I was going where normal people didn’t get to go, to a private movie studio lot, where I was handed an identification card to put on my car and had to maneuver my way through the buildings, check in with the publicist from the public relations firm, and sit in the theater, with other journalists. It was so fulfilling. I felt like a real writer, with other writers, in a special place just for us, so that we can watch this film, and either love it or hate it. I don’t mean to romanticize the whole thing, but I love being a member of the press.

I love it. It’s what I live for. The power we have just overwhelms me at times. Granted, it’s not something many would think of as ‘power’ but it is influence nonetheless.

After the screening, I got on the road with a bladder so full that if I had some how made a sharp turn, I would have burst. As you can imagine, I went straight for the toilet when I arrived home. And then after that, I went straight to my bed, and the lines of vision between the real world and sleep world became blurry and I eventually and quickly dozed off.

I dreamt about writing and typewriters and Jack Kerouac and Anderson Cooper and the New York Times. I saw myself talking to the homeless of Los Angeles, trying to tell their stories. I thought about my byline appearing in a national magazine. My visits to the Educational Testing Service website the day before to find out more about the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) danced around in my head and made me just as nervous thinking about exams and scores and no.2 pencils as I had been in high school.

Today, I got up the nerve to register for the test. I will face my doom in a month’s time. Needless to say, I am frightened. Very frightened. Standardized tests don’t sit well with me, but then again, who do they sit well with? This is the first step I must take to continue my education. A first, very scary step. A step that will lead me to a Master of Arts in Journalism or English. It’s now or never. I am ready to take the plunge. I am not, however, ready to take a rigid test that has no bearing on my skills as a writer, reporter, editor or decision maker at all. That’s the harsh reality of it, I hope it isn’t taken too much into consideration by my prospective institutions of higher learning. On the other hand, there are a couple of Universities I’m looking into at the moment in London. Fortunately, these schools do not require silly tests like the GRE. Thank God for the British. There are many decisions to be made in the coming months, many late nights, many stressful situations, many doubts and hopes and fears and dreams all rolled into one, about education, life and love. I’m ready to face it. I’m quite ready. Being a journalist, making a difference somehow, someway in someone’s life means more to me now, than it ever did before. I’m hungry for it and I don’t think I will ever get full.

Rose Bowl Flea Market, Pasadena, April 2007, by Keeg