Moving on: writing for me not for thee
I’ve been writing professionally since 2004 and the time has come to put down someone else’s pen and pick up my own.
Journalism was life changing, and freelancing was the sincere but flaky friend whom I loved dearly but could never really count on. But after nearly 20 years, I made the decision that I will no longer be freelancing as a means of primary income, at least not for a long while. I no longer have the personal infrastructure necessary to keep doing it without compromising my mental and physical health, as well as my upward mobility.
My circumstances and priorities have changed so significantly over the last few years that it would border on willful self-destruction to try to sustain something that is fundamentally broken and unsustainable, sort of like trying to run Windows 98 in 2023 and wondering why nothing works. I will seek other forms of primary income and continue to write simply for the joy of it on this blog, on select projects in areas of personal interest, including a book, which has always been my dream, or any other opportunity that may present itself and aligns with my vision for my life.
Maybe because I’ve done it so long but my brain is just fizzled out. Work that used to take me an hour now takes me six hours at least, and with a great deal of angst and expenditure. I used to be able to crank out seven stories a week regularly without missing a beat; I even produced 18 stories ahead of time before I went on vacation back in the day when I was at the paper.
Over the last few years I’ve also developed a number of physical issues as a result of sitting for extended periods of time, made worse by a pandemic. And to be totally honest, several ugly work related experiences throughout the years have also taken a significant toll on my spirit. And, as a friend pointed out, I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago when I first started. Just because something worked long time, doesn’t mean it will work forever, or that it was even meant to be forever. Why I did it as long as I did is a whole other post.
Looking back
First…
I didn’t choose writing as a career or passion, it chose me. If you know, you know. If you don’t, a lot of what I say won’t make any sense or may even seem counterintuitive. But yes, it chose me, not the other way around.
I began writing during my freshman year in college in the early 90s. During my first quarter, an English teacher was so impressed with an essay I wrote that she showed it to the chair of the English Department. Right then and there something inside me came to life. I wanted to switch my major to English. My joy was short-lived however when voices louder, and much stronger, than my own told me to get that silly dream out of my head and focus on something more practical. “English teachers don’t make any money”, I was told. “There are no job opportunities for English majors.”
And that was the end of that for many years. With no passion or thoughtful purpose, I pursued career paths I had no interest in and my academic performance bore testimony to how much I disliked school (there were other issues too). I became a square peg trying to fit myself into a round hole. This went on for many years. However, personal writing became my passion, my voice, my therapist and my best friend.
The summer after freshman year was almost a magical one, in retrospect. It was full of hope and unrestrained childlike imagination, idealism, and creativity. Those summer days consisted of hours in my room dreaming with my eyes wide open through my bedroom window as I brought characters to life mentally. Then I’d go for a jog in the evening, and write into the night under the covers with a flashlight until 1 a.m.
My creativity at night was so intense that it was almost a high. I did not concern myself with plot, structure or believability. I just wrote from the heart and the imagination of the optimistic 20 year old I was. I wrote what I thought was fun and idealistic. I started creating a story that was very Sex in the City before there was Sex in the City (but rated G), about a group of five girlfriends who shared a house.
The main character became so real to me that I felt like she was a real person that I wanted to get to know. I still do. When the summer was over the very thick wad of handwritten sheets (yes, HAND-WRITTEN) were put away in order to get back to real life which included going to school for a major (a life?) I had no interest in but felt powerless to change.
I picked up the manuscript again five or six years later only to toss it because I felt it just wasn’t good enough which didn’t take me long to realize was nothing short of a felony. Fast forward a few more years. Life took a very abrupt twist which sent me spiraling downward into one of the first (of many) rounds of survival mode. I had long since stopped going to school, yet my only escape was to go back to school again but this time I decided to pursue writing even though I wasn’t sure where it would take me. (Sidenote: I realized not long ago that being led into journalism was actually an act of grace and redemption for so many wrongs that came before and after it. “God bless the broken road that led me straight to you.”)
And that was the beginning of the beginning. A journalism class at community college led to a brief internship at a local magazine which led to the newspaper job where I thrived for 10 years. And even though professional writing took up most of my time, this was when I started personal blogging on Blogger, Google’s blogging platform. I wrote with so much passion and abandon.
While I was very insecure about sharing my personal writing publicly and much of what I wrote went unpublished, it still flowed from the heart without much overthinking. I was in such a good place personally and professionally for those few years. I had the headspace and youthful vitality to give both work and personal writing my all. That period of creating with unencumbered joy and authenticity lasted several years. Those were also my heyday days in journalism. I even won an award or two for my work. I was loving life and work.
Then, life changed… again.
I went through a period of severe hardship, including two hit and runs. Then shortly after that, it was time to leave journalism. As much as I loved what I did, the community I served, and the good people I worked for, I was severely burned out. It’d been close to 10 years. It was time to move on. The period that followed immediately after was cringey and odd, to say the least.
Enter: The Awkward Years. Then there was the “dream” job that turned out to be a nightmare. Then a pandemic. While the pandemic had some redeeming outcomes for me, which I mention briefly in the linked post, it also created new issues associated with writing professionally that burnt me out once and for all. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Simply put, it’s time to move on, especially if writing professionally is not funding an upwardly mobile lifestyle that doesn’t require sacrificing myself to Moloch, which seems to be the going rate these days for much of anything.
But I digress.
The official press announcement regarding the demise of my professional writing endeavors might read something like this (borrowed in parts from the big press conference scene in Notting Hill):
Ms. Mendoza will be abiding by all her present commitments, she just won’t be making any new ones in the foreseeable future.
That means that I still have some projects I need to work on to get off my desk but after that, I will not be taking on any new ones. I feel like I’m coming out from under a dark cloud over the last few years, and that letting go of what doesn’t serve me any longer is an important first step in moving towards the sunshine.
LOOKING FORWARD
I look forward to just being ME again. To writing for the joy of it. To not be so stuck in my ways or so defined by what I do that it drives me to accept work that doesn’t work for me. I’m done with deadlines. I want to stop consuming certain types of content or trying to stay up to speed on business and industry trends in a weak stab at staying “relevant.”
I look forward to delving more into personal interests and passions such as photography, beauty, wellness, travel, home, and music. I also have a passion for learning as much as possible about brain health. I want to fully dedicate my energy and time into getting fit and healthy. I want to just be and live without one deadline, and the stress and drama that comes with them, looming overhead.
Just as The Awkward Years were defining in how awful they were, their happy counterpart is what I simply refer to as Good Times which was essentially the nearly 10 year span I was at the paper. Life was by no means perfect and I had many struggles during that time, but I was genuinely happy and in a really authentic place. I want to rediscover everything that was right about that time by reconnecting with the interests and mindsets that were meaningful to me.
And I want to write about all of it here just for the joy of it.
I want to write on my own platform, on my own terms how and when I want to, imperfect syntax, typos, and deadlines be damned.
I am reminded that I also want to build my own work on my own platform by taking my own advice about owning my voice here and now.
Reflecting
I didn’t choose writing. It chose me. On this hill I will die. No matter what I do for primary income moving forward, I am first and always a writer, regardless of where my paycheck comes from, and that’s all that matters.
I need to be writing. Writing is the gift God gave me to make this world a better place and the tool He is using to take me from where I am today to living the dreams He has placed in my heart…I just need to be writing no matter what.
That was from an unpublished blog post from 2008. The words poured out of me like water, because they came from a place deep inside and I was in fact living them at the time, professionally and personally. I stand by it: I need to be writing, even if it’s “just” here, and let the chips fall where they may. And write here I will.
I’m so thankful for what writing professionally has given me in terms of media, communication, and people skills, and rich life experience. It taught me a lot about how the world works behind the scenes. It gave me access to people, knowledge, insights, and experiences I never would have had otherwise, and I don’t take a second of it for granted. I used to say that journalists are society’s moms. We see. We hear. We know. Everything. Even the stuff you don’t think we know. And then we write about (most of) it.
All these experiences in professional writing gave me the ingredients to craft my own secret sauce for doing life in a way nothing else has or even could. I would not trade that for anything. Professional writing has given me so much but unfortunately I have nothing left to give it. And if I don’t step away now, it will start taking from me more than it gives. So with all that said:
