An Update, Of Sorts

So what am I up to, exactly? I’ve been at a temporary assignment for a little over two months now, and that is about a week from ending. I’m sure the agency will have another place for me to work after that, but I’m going to take about a week off because that is a week of valuable “daytime” time that I haven’t been getting. It’s time that I will be able to spend applying for internships and the occasional job. It’s time that I will be able to spend writing.

Which is not to say that I am doing neither in the meantime. I’ve gotten into the habit of finding and applying for roughly one internship a night. It’s probably still not as much as I should be doing, but time is murder, isn’t it? Still, it’s better than where I was a month ago. My focus has shifted from internships and work with publishing houses toward ones with magazines. The reason, pretty simply, is that there are more. The work is pretty similar and magazines also tend to give you a higher chance to contribute with your own writing, which I see as a benefit.

Still, I look forward to this week when I will have the daytime to 1) sleep in, 2) perhaps triple my application rate, and 3) do some writing. Almost all of the writing that I have been doing recently (aside from blogworld) has been casual. It’s good because it is writing, but it’s bad because it’s not exactly serious.

Following the week off, I want that agency to focus on placing me in assignments where I can build new skills. Too often they want to place me at an assignment that simply takes advantage of the skills that I do have, and even though it gets a paycheck the work isn’t particularly useful for me. If possible, I need to work with Filemaker Pro. It would be advantageous to be forced to make phone calls rather than just answering phones. Those kinds of things.

And hopefully something comes of these internships. I’d like an interview. Somebody? Just one, you know, maybe two, or all of them would be nice.

On the writing front, I am getting into a mutual agreement with one of my closest writing friends by which we will share and critique each other’s writing on a weekly basis. This is going to be great for both of us, because it is an environment that neither of us have been in since we graduated. An environment with deadlines and constructive, timely feedback. And I think that both of us have been severely missing that environment. Craving it, even. I know I have.

So there you have it. I haven’t talked a lot about what I’m doing because it’s a little embarrassing that I seem to be in the same place I was five months ago. But that’s my update for you. Of a sort.