Confidence Falls

Y'know, when I first set out to move back to Seattle, I was full of confidence about finding work back in high tech. I had a long history of high tech and I'd done a lot of extreme editing of scientific materials and I'd broadened the types of writing I've done with my various projects in Houston. Fantastic, right?

So now I am in Seattle and I've settled in and begun networking and looking for work. I've joined meetup groups in Content Strategy, Information Architecture/User Experience (IA/UX), general technology, and so on. I've gone to their meetup events. And my confidence has been pouring out of me like blood from an open arterial.

For example, last night I went to a Content Strategy meetup with my friend. The first presentation was fairly basic and I didn't really find it that informative or interesting, but the presenter was pretty excited about it so that made it okay. The second presentation was exciting, entertaining, and … confusing. I may have taken in about 10% of what the guy was talking about. The fellow to my right, an engineer and writer, had the opinion that the presentation was fairly content-free. I felt like I was too stupid to understand it, because everyone else seemed to really like the presentation. On the way home, I expressed my feeling and the other guy's opinion to my friend and he asked me what points I was confused about or what questions I had because maybe he could answer them. I only had one basic question because the rest of the presentation didn't make enough sense to me for me to even have questions I could articulate. I know I've been out of the high-tech biz for a while, and that things that used to be just what tech writers did are now their own professional niches with their own jargon, but I expected to be able to understand a hell of a lot more than what I did last night!

Secondly, I am not getting responses to job applications, other than the one where a friend submitted me via his company's employment referral system, probably because I've been out of high-tech for so long. There's a lot of jobs I'm not even applying for because of not having a few of their Required qualifications: specific programming languages, specific tools. I'm very happy to be here, but maybe I'm too out-of-date, too old. But if I'm not writing and editing, I don't know what else I can do. And honestly, I need to be working a professional job in high tech to be able to afford a decent apartment now and a decent house someday in this area. Besides all the other typical living expenses.

Yes, I have found a part-time freelance job, or rather, it found me. But it's taken me three weeks (okay, three part-time weeks, but still) to truly get up to speed on the information and how they want it presented for this first project and I've just been revising the existing stories written by someone else. I haven't even begun to write original text yet and I'm as nervous as my housemates' cat about doing so. What if I can't do this anymore? What if my work sucks?

The definition of family, part I

"Of all of these things, the greatest is love."

As everyone knows by now, my natal family is gone. I lost my dad in 1978, my little brother in 1983, and my mom last summer 2010. Yes, there are relatives, but none of them is as close to me as the most distant and lurk-ful of the Betties.

And therein lies the rub. My family believed in blood family but not in non-blood family (I think there were only two exceptions over the years). So I have no roadmap to follow. Simply learning to think "I still have a family" is no easy feat for me.

I have a friend I've known since I was 11, and we still communicate, but she has strong family bonds and her bonds to other friends are stronger than mine. Yet, when we are in contact it's like the intervening time — which might be years — didn't happen. Leah lives in Wisconsin.

My best friend is a man I've known since my junior year in college. We've been involved. We've been best friends. We've been furious with each other and said things that in most relationships would be unforgivable. And we've sat with each other thru death and grief. We've shared a house with another friend and an apartment between the two of us and for most of that time everyone thought we were an item, even tho' we had separate bedrooms. I didn't know that he was still in love with me until years later when he broke down after seeing me with the man I'd moved in with. (Stupidest decision ever, but that's another story.) Steve lives in Seattle.

Suddenly ... Community!

I unexpectedly find myself with friends and a supportive community of people I've never met, and never even talked with on the phone. We blog, we comment, we email, we tweet. I even watch TV with some of them!

In fact, I watched Castle in tandem tonight with two women I met on a blog. We each watched a recording (I was on hulu.com) and IMed as we watched. It was way fun! I even laughed out loud, several times, and I haven't done that in so long I can't remember.

I make friends slowly. I'm not doing anything where I'm meeting people, and I'm not in a space where I am comfortable going out and meeting strangers. Catch-22.

It will change. I'll be okay. It's been a difficult year. Hell, it's been a difficult couple of years, in different ways. It was great finding work, getting to know people. Then it all fell to hell. Intellectually, I know it's a lot to deal with. Intellectually, I know that I need to "move on" as they say (who the hell came up with that phase, and who the hell decides when?). Emotionally, it's another story entirely. I'm not in control of my heart. I'm still pretty lost.

But this community, floating out there in the digital aether, is somehow tethering me to earth. I'm beginning to feel less alone.

I didn't expect to feel like that again. I never, ever expected to feel like that due to people I've never seen.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Today I am following the lead of ... copying, perhaps ... an author named Lani Diane Rich. She began a blog series under her Lucy March name to document her life and personal changes over the next 516 days, which is when she hits her 40th birthday.

In 1 year and 2 weeks, I will be 50. That is 54 weeks. Three hundred seventy-eight days. Wow. There is a lot I want to do with myself and my life by then. Some very real changes I want to make. And I want to blog about what I do and the changes I make, to share with my friends and family, most of whom are far away, to give myself regular writing practice that stretches both my skills and my creativity, and to give myself a record of all these things. These are the goals I originally set for this blog.