cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An Odd Sort of Success All right, I've got interest from a nearby Sl0w Food group in my doing a workshop for them. Now I want to do one in NYC as well. Their group seems to really have their shit together and I expect that it would be an excellent networking opportunity. I'd have food writers and such coming to that. I'm not sure whether to approach the NY people now, or if I should wait to see when the story on NPR about me airs and contact them the next day while that shiny coat of minor fame is still reflecting off of me. I have a good friend from my youth who has become a successful writer. We went to a summer writer's workshop together several years in a row, he would stay with me when he was in town and I went and visited him in Florida. A really smart guy is Randy. Anyway, he co-founded and writes for a very successful website that I will not name here and he also wrote a non-fiction book that turns out to be very timely. He was just interviewed on NPR a couple of weeks ago about it. I was thinking last night before I fell asleep about the conversation I would end up having if I bumped into him any time soon. Randy and I have both become successful as writers and thinkers, but of course he has been successful for being the witty and subtle guy that he is. While I am merely notorious for killing Bambi. Can this whole thing work? Am I out of my depth? Can I possibly make a real living doing this? When I first started out with this I had people I could talk to and seek advice from. But now I've moved beyond just pitching a book. This whole enterprise has become so complicated and there is nobody whom I can really talk to about it any more. I'm launching a personal brand, and trying to become a slightly successful author, and a boutique hunting instructor, and a slow/local food hero, and a lecturer for conferences and events around the world, and the host of a cable TV show, etc. etc. I just... There are so many things to juggle all at once and so many things to screw up and what I'm doing is so fucking weird that there aren't any websites or boards or whatever for people in my position. I am sleeping a little better at nights for the last few weeks. Often it takes me a long time to get to sleep, even though I'm not waking up and finding myself unable to fall back to sleep. I lay there and silently panic about everything that I'm not doing exactly perfectly and about the possibility of completely fucking any of these complicated things up. What a terrible embarrassment it will be if I don't manage to pull this weekend intensive course off smoothly. What if I don't have a deer for the field dressing demonstration? What if I do all of this shit and just never get enough traction and don't get much income out of it and by the end of the year my company (for my day job) goes belly up in the recession and I lose my house? 11:34 a.m. - 2010-01-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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