Three years ago, I was approached to contribute for compensation to a magazine based in the Pacific northwest on Dutch oven cooking. I chuckled when I read the invite because it was based on my previous posts on a lazy dutch oven pudding cake and some other open fire pit cooking with cast iron. You would chuckle too, if you read the posts that elicited the invite.
"Someone is wiling to pay me for this stuff that I call a coping mechanism?!?! SWEET!! "
(envision my head tipped back in the kind of deep-belly laughter that makes your face hurt)
I would have loved to do it, but they had a problem that I would be a regular contributer to a magazine that championed Pacific Northwest things and I lived in rural Vermont. Also, the photo specs required a camera more sophisticated than my iPhone to conform into their online and hard copy publication. Although a tempting invitation for extra cash to do something really fun - dutch oven open fire pit cooking!! - I didn't want to make the investment in a camera for this purpose at that time. And would they ultimately require me to move to Oregon?
Shortly after this, I was invited to contribute to a popular homeschooling blog. The owner gave me a few parameters and a deadline. I was so excited. I really let my creativity fly. The topic was - what led me to homeschool - something I have a lot of passion about. I may or may not have weaved into it an important religious conversion story that is ultimately connected to my decision to home school. Ironically yet predictably, the article was rejected and she wanted me to take another go at it but with "less of me" revealed. After I emerged from the fetal position under the bed sheets, I expressed to my imaginary friend:
"Wait a cotton-picking second!! She INVITED ME! ~And then rejected me...(sniffle)"
I took a couple days to ponder her offer to rewrite to conform to her reader culture and politely declined. I had spent a career with banks and Wall Street firms using business writing in boiler-plate form to cover my heiny, the firms' heinies I worked for - always running it by legal before sending. Having just orchestrated for myself a major career change from WallStreet to midwife to allow more of my natural nurturing self to be expressed than the days when I wore Ann Taylor power suits and heels - I was not about to conform to anything. It was almost like the universe was testing my resolve to stay the course on finding myself.
This is a time in my life to exercise more of ME.... in every single thing I do. There is no budget for a legal department right now.
Okay, maybe there is a guy in a back office somewhere in the recesses of my brain who looks at things after they're already submitted and makes irrelevant suggestions. He knows he'll be fired if he asserts too much rigidity. In my imagination, I hired him from Apple, where the culture to innovate and create is based in never letting shame or fear be allowed floor time.
Okay, maybe there is a guy in a back office somewhere in the recesses of my brain who looks at things after they're already submitted and makes irrelevant suggestions. He knows he'll be fired if he asserts too much rigidity. In my imagination, I hired him from Apple, where the culture to innovate and create is based in never letting shame or fear be allowed floor time.
Somewhere out there exists a publication who is willing to pay money for me to write just as I do because it's a perfect fit for their mission and audience.
...I just realized that all of this is a metaphor for dating and marriage...
I can read your mind. WHAT THE BLEEP does any of this have to do with barbecue sauce mozzarella cheese. Absolutely nothing (laughing...) or I'll let you find the irony and your own deeper meaning in it all. Hint: always add sugar to your recipes
Enjoy my iPhone photo of my latest kitchen and taste bud obsession: Finding as many ways to pair mozzarella cheese and barbecue sauce as I can. It started as a derivative to pizza bagels.
Big hit with the little people I cohabitate with. Things I would add to this are sautéed purple onions and chicken pieces soaked in the barbecue sauce.
Ciao.
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