Bird By Bird

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

E.L. Doctorow

I'm reading Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott and even though I'm not writing a novel, I'm not really writing anything specific at the moment, this quote rang true for me and I think for anyone who's ever spent any time writing.

You've Got Mail

A friend recommended You've Got Mail as a good movie to watch while I'm in this time of transition, grieving one job and starting to look for another. It's one of my favorites. I've been thinking about watching it all week and this afternoon was the perfect chance to curl up on the couch and enjoy some classic Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan chemistry.

Before I've always watched the movie as a romantic comedy, which it is, but it's also about losing something you love. A part of your life. One part, toward the end, really stuck out to me. Meg Ryan's character Kathleen has closed her children's bookstore and is home sick. Her nemesis Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), owner of Fox Books Superstore, that put her out of business, comes over to see how she's doing. He says something along the lines of "It wasn't personal, it was business" and she says, "but it was personal." And she talks about how anything worth doing becomes personal. Her store was about more than the books, it was about the people. As much as I hate to admit it, my job was personal. I found fulfillment in it. I loved the people that I worked with and the readers. I was proud of the product we produced. And while the world will survive without another pretty decorating magazine, there will be a void where Country Home used to live.

There's another scene in the movie, when Kathleen announces that she will be closing the store and one of her employees says "Closing the store is the brave thing to do. Daring to imagine that you could have a different life. You feel like a failure now, but you're not. You are marching into the unknown armed with nothing..." At the moment I have no idea what my brave unknown is. And I hate not knowing. But I'm trying to be patient. I know God has a plan for me, a vision for my life. Right now I want it to be something in magazines or publishing, or something that is creative and has to do with writing and editing. At least that's what I'm still holding onto at the moment. We'll see what this week brings.

I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday and couldn't resist looking at magazines. I may have brought boxes and boxes of magazines home, but I always have to see what's new, which includes the latest issue of Country Living, our one-time competitor. Adam was surprised to see me flipping through it, but some habits die hard. And I had to see what they were doing. I honestly don't think their product is any better than ours, for some reason they seem to be able to sell ads, but that's the way of life. And while there is a part of me that wants them to die too (there, I said it), another part of me hopes that one of us survives this economy.

what i'm thinking these days

Thanks to everyone for your kind words and prayers since my unfortunate news Thursday that Country Home magazine was closed and the entire staff was let go. I'm definitely still processing the whole thing, but here are some of my initial thoughts:

I honestly don’t know what the next step is. Working for home magazines was never my dream, but as I was going through the boxes of magazines I brought home from work I realize that it’s what I know. Not that I can’t learn something new, but they are so familiar to me. I know how to source product and write clever captions and tell readers what’s great about a washing machine. I read a press release and think of how it could fit in the magazine. Everything goes back to the reader, right? It’s how I’m programmed. Surely someone needs these skills. I don’t want to lose them. I live and breathe magazines (just look at the stacks in our second bedroom).

In the last year at Country Home I learned so much. I learned about fabric and furniture and how to pitch a story. We were all finally figuring out the system and now it’s over. There were things I loved like getting packages and in the mail and flipping through catalogs and magazines because it was research and reading design blogs and finding that unexpected product that made the story something special. I get sad when I think of the stories that I was working on for upcoming issues that won’t see the light of day. We were going to photograph Prairie Style on Tuesday and I even brought in my copies of Little House on the Prairie for inspiration. I always had something random sitting in my office whether it was fabric or wallpaper or a blender and I loved it when people would stop by to see what new treasure I had. My workspace was always a mess. Papers, folders, piles everywhere so that no work surface was visible, but I loved it. I had layers of inspiration pinned to the walls and post its and to-do lists usually found their way to the top of the pile.

When all is said and done I really liked getting ready every morning, making my lunch and my to-go mug of coffee and going to sit in a cubicle all day. It’s sad, but that was part of my identity. I found at least some of my worth in my job and now it’s over. I know a new adventure waits around the corner, that God has something planned that is far better than anything I could imagine, but I can't see it yet and I like to know what's coming up. I'll keep you posted...

ponderings

At 25 I feel like (hope) I'm past the worst of the twentysomething growing pains. I remember those first months after graduation feeling completely out of my league in this grown up world. I don't necessarily have things figured out yet, but I'm definitely more comfortable with who I am.

I was reading from Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts last night—it's one of those books that I keep by the bed and read in snippets before I fall asleep—and I liked this passage:

"It's interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal."

If you know me, you know I love to ask questions. But if you know me, you also know that I can be really good at avoiding the most obvious questions of myself. I guess this makes me wonder what in my life I should be questioning right now...

more books!

My mom got me a book embosser for Christmas so tonight I sat in front of my bookshelves and stamped my name (from the library of Andrea Marie Cooley) into all of my books. It made me realize all the books I have that I need to read and I also noticed that almost half the books on my shelves are my moms. Every time I go home she has another book waiting for me to read, so I dutifully bring it home and put it on the shelf to be read. I bring home books for her to read and ones that I've finished, but I always seem to bring home more than I return. I don't think she misses them though.

Today she let me bring home our Little House on the Prairie series with strict orders that they must be returned. The yellow covers with water-color pictures and inside the simple black-and-white illustrations bring back so many memories. My mom read Kyle and I each of those books aloud many nights. That's one thing I'm looking forward to doing with my kids some day. I'm taking them to work tomorrow because I'm working on a story about Prairie style and Laura Ingles Wilder has come up in several meetings. I don't know if we'll photograph some of them or not, but I thought they would be fun to bring in.

I finished reading Mrs. Mike tonight, on loan from my sister. It was a touching romance about a city girl moving to the wilderness of Northwest Canada and falling in love. Now I have decided that it's time to tackle Anna Karenina. All 817 pages of it. I'll let you know how it goes. But I figure we're heading into the depths of winter, what better time to start an epic novel?

I'm heading back to work tomorrow for one day after a 9 day break. I think I'm ready to go back, but it has been wonderful to be home and back in Cedar Rapids for so long. Adam and I were in CR for New Year's at Nate and Sarah's. Oh how we wish we lived closer to them. It was so great to see old friends, enjoy wine, and play games until toasting 2009 at midnight.