A New Beginning

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life” is such a cliché description of a new beginning, so I won’t claim it. I will, however, write that I have been feeling very optimistic about my future lately.In October of last year, I took a hiatus from The Red & Black for personal reasons; by December I had decided I did not want to return to daily newspaper reporting anytime soon. Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a national leadership and career development program I am a member of, opened my eyes to communications careers in the corporate arena. Working with my career coach, I chose to focus my energy on learning more about corporate communications as an industry, and then corporate media communications and positions within corporate media companies as potential employment fields. This left me little time to meet the demanding daily deadlines of a newspaper. So that’s the deal with that.Over Christmas break I struggled with my decision. How was I going to get published now? Didn’t I need to be actively reporting to prove myself worthy to myself? Why did I let go of my safety net?In the past month, however, I have let go of my self-doubt about my career ambitions (and other things too :o ) I am still searching for summer internship opportunities, but I am not panicking because I don’t have it all planned out like I did last year. I still do not have a significant other, but I am not actively searching for one because I realize some things must find me—not the other way around. And I still haven’t studied abroad, but I am looking for programs that will fit into my schedule over the next 6-8 months. I guess you could say I’m learning to enjoy life in the process of living it.And this website is a part of that step. For me, as a writer by nature, putting words on paper (even the electronic kind) is therapeutic. The idea for it was not my own, however. Davia Mosely, an awesome “media vixen” in her own right, inspired me with her “Destined for Success” blogspot. I hope through the process of managing my website I will become more self-fulfilled and inspire others to do the same. (It would also be nice if Oprah’s or Tyra’s people visited the site and offered me an internship after realizing how fabulously awesome I am :o ) Hey, a girl can dream can’t she?