rethinking things

Thanks to anyone who slogged through that last, long post about The Devil Wears Prada and my own little reminiscence about my brief stint in publishing. I had a sort of unsettled feeling as I read over it yesterday, snagging especially on the last paragraph which winds up unexpectedly and doesn't quite say what I wanted because, I suppose, I didn't really know what I wanted to say, I just knew it wasn't that, exactly.

So, after letting it knock around in my head all day yesterday, I realize that I opened a kind of 'what-if' box while exploring my reactions to that movie and I've been forced to rethink some assumptions I've been making about my life. This isn't totally new, but it is a little surprising to come now, about this subject.

What if I'd actually had some ambition when I was working in publishing? What if I'd had some confidence and determination? What if I'd stuck with it? I have several stories I tell myself about my experience in publishing that all serve to protect a particular identity I cling to, but what if that identity is bullshit? I tell myself how working in publishing was like seeing the wizard behind the curtain: disgusting, disappointing, disillusioning. I tell myself I would never have made it into editorial, it would've taken too long, been too unlikely. I tell myself I was not cut out for the industry of books, that I should have stuck only to the magic of books. I tell myself my heart was really in social services.

But what if I could've gotten over my initial disillusionment? What if I could've made it to editorial through perseverance and hard work? What if I could've found the magic in books from within the industry, as an editor? What if social services was just a much, much easier route to a kind of immediate gratification? A small pond where I could shine easilly as a big fish, getting all the heart-filling compensation with none of the hard, personal challenges and struggle? What if I made a really foolish and shortsighted mistake?

Too late to worry over the mistake of leaving publishing, but important now just to take note of the defeatism that colored that decision and watch carefully how it might be coloring everything else happening in the now. Important for me to notice the places where I refuse to really work for something that doesn't come easilly and naturally. Important to notice where I am lazy, in *all* the sneaky little places I'm lazy, and they are profligate. Important not to keep making that same old mistake in new ways every day.