Millennium Park after a Chicago snowstorm and before a RedEye snowball fight. IMG00349.jpg
For those of you who don’t know, I moved from Washington, D.C. back to the Midwest last month. And after a couple long months of frenzied, fitful job searching, I landed an internship with RedEye, The Chicago Tribune’s tabloid paper. (I’ll be working on the social media end of things on RedEye’s site, and I’m psyched.)
It’s a paper I’ve followed for years. There are few people in Chicago between the ages of 18 – 35 who don’t follow the RedEye, familiarize themselves with RedEye’s columnists or at least doodle in the daily crossword margins. So it’s a chance to work for a highly read paper I respect and understand. (And it almost goes without mentioning that to work in the Tribune Tower has been a dream of mine since I was little. Just ask my parents.)
The decision to take the gig was a no-brainer.
Today was my first day. It was a whirlwind of meetings, tweets, blogs and … awkwardness. I’ve lived with myself for 25 years and know myself well enough to know that my real personality doesn’t emerge for roughly two to three weeks after meeting new people. I tend to think I leave kooky first impressions. Luckily, things usually get better. But this experience, so far, is a different type of awkward. Part of me is intimidated by people who managed to make it into either of the newsrooms in that building — I found myself wondering more than a few times today what monumental feats of journalism these people, some of them younger than me by now, have accomplished. Another part of me is panicked about whipping myself into the absolute highest gear possible, to work my ass off and just really rock it. And another part of me still is panicked about finding a way to earn enough to live here.
Everything is uncertain. I feel scared about life more often than I’d like to admit. I don’t know if this is what you’re supposed to be doing when you’re 25, but I’m just gonna go with it. In the meantime, despite those inner voices talking worry and gossip and competition, I am doing what I love; that I get to do it in the building I never thought I’d break into is just overkill. Some girls dream about marriage and pearls and ribbons. Me? More like bylines and office supplies and sarcasm.
However temporarily, I am living my dream. The rest, I just have to trust, will fall in line eventually.
