I remember telling the nice barista lady my iced toddy was to go, but it looks so pretty in its glass, and these guys are smoking a delicious-smelling hookah beside me on the coffeeshop’s outside dock. Besides, I am perfectly capable of having a coffee alone, taking in this fall air and people watching, pretending I don’t kind of wish someone would sit out here with me in the dark. 

At home my notes and transcripts wait — an interview jotted on a newspaper when I was rushed by a call-back, a small notebook with the statistics I need and the six-and-a-half paged pile of someone’s very real, raw story.

I think everyone has a series of reasons they say they have “the best job in the world,” as well as what daunts them but makes them push harder just to do scarier things. And a week ago, it was the interview, the drive to show up and say “what’s your story?” While deciding what parts were pertinent and what was mere conversation.

And sometimes, what daunts you in your destined/chosen path are the things you’re trusted with, and what you’re expected to do with it. For five days I’ve walked around with a notebook full of this story. Now I’m to sit down and write it out. My reporting professor tells us we’re not here to merely transcribe notes into a list, but make it important enough that people read it. I need to say this could be me, could be you and this is how that process works. Not a list or a timeline, yet not a sob story. Something that compels and moves, but answers.

As I’ve said throughout, my hope is that someday I’m staring in the face of something much bigger and scarier. I hope I laugh at 21-year-old me for freaking out over iced coffee in the dark, chilly air about an enterprise like this. I hope this is a tiny thing I once got all stressed over, just to find there’s bigger things to report on in that scary world.

For now, making an inverted pyramid out of two week’s work has me pretty scared.

  1. dangitam posted this