Ready, set. . .

Some of the reasons I'm currently where I am: To get some serious writing done and to relearn some media skills.

The day before I left New Mexico, there was a commercial about a school offering tech skills so that one might become an editor, production assistant, etc.

I was thinking I needed something short term like that and I waited for the location of the college. It was in the same city I was moving to! Even crazier, when my friend Carrie and her husband Dennis picked me up, I was telling them about the things I was hoping to accomplish while I'm here and I mentioned the college and Dennis teaches there! Next week I'm going to start the process of getting enrolled. Looking forward to it.

Part of it is a healing thing. In college I had to take some journalism prerequites and then I could move into my chosen division. The first professor I had in the production side said that journalism wasn't a field for women as well as some other unprofessional things. Teri, a student in the class, and I would bitch about him but neither of us ever thought to complain to the dept. Hell, we were paying to be taught not demeaned. Anyway, the class was divided up to do a televison project and I held a position that others had previously messed up when it was their turn. Lucky for me I grew up having learned to keep my cool and focus when everything's crazy around me. And in a tv studio, so many things have to happen simultaneously, that it can quickly get crazy. I kicked ass though -- so well that the prof commented me before the class when he was critiquing my group's work(begrudingly but what else could he say?). But still I never really felt comfortable in classes after that, felt like I didn't belong, so by enrolling in this media arts program, I will be reclaiming my right to be in the field and also building on the competence, smarts and creativity I already possess. Let's see what vision I can bring to the screen now.

I'm also trying to get some things finished. I'm the cover story for the December issue of a literary magazine back in Cruces and I had directed the editor to several previous interviews that I had done. Rereading them myself, I was dismayed to find that many of the things I'd said I was doing were still undone. So this week I'm pulling together two chapbooks and I'd have four of those six mentioned in an interview done. Some chapbook contests I might enter. I'm also looking at small presses. And Lulu.

I'm ready. And some things are now set.

I just have to shoot the starting gun. I just have to let myself go.