Surprise…failure loading

This past week has been a learning experience. 

I’ve been busy recipe testing for my cookbook judging duties. It has made me realize that all those years ago when I was planning what I wanted to do and share on my Substack, was indeed the right path forward.  

I had put my Substack plans on hold because, to be honest, I didn’t see it working for me. (I will share those at a later date when I’m ready.)

The idea of putting total faith in not only myself but my writing and connecting to people with it seemed far-fetched. Maybe because I never committed myself to writing and posting weekly. I kept telling myself that the time was going to pass anyway, so I might as well focus on what I wanted to do: writing on my terms. 

Last week, I went against the thought of writing on my terms and applied to write for an online food publication. The one I applied for wasn’t a great fit they told me but one of their other food sites was a better fit for me. They were wrong, lol. 

I had my trial and the topics presented to me were things I did not care about or want to write about. I chose a topic I thought would be easy; I was wrong. As I wrote the outline and focused on writing the draft, I became overwhelmed with how I was going to write so many words on a topic I don’t care about nor would I read. Mind you, I was going to write features for this publication, with a word count between 2600-3000 words. My trial was about half of that. 

I’m no stranger to writing that many words; Some of my writing here has been that long, not to mention, I’m writing a novel. 

However, I struggled. My trial article was repetitive and terrible. Did I do it on purpose? No. 

As expected, they did not move forward with my freelance writing trial. 

I was slightly bummed but also thankful. I hate journalism with a passion. Okay, that may be excessive but I really, really don’t like it. I was a journalist briefly in my 20s. I  hated the process and how people perceived and treated me as a journalist. It just wasn't my bag. Anyone who is a journalist deserves all the praise. Their job is hard and society does not appreciate them enough. 

Sometimes, some moments are adjacent to our goals we are sure are meant for us. This is where we can get thrown off our path. Remember when in doubt, wait it out. Don’t be in haste with your decisions. I tend to get overwhelmed and want it to be over with. I make fast decisions that I often end up regretting. 

I’ve known I’ve loved food and creative writing since my junior year of college. I had decided then that I wanted to write for a living. I didn’t know how I would make that happen but my life took me on a journey, working through the food industry in various positions to give me the necessary knowledge to reach said goal. 

As for creative fiction writing, that’s still a work in progress. Maybe finally going on a writing retreat where that is my focus might help.

In the meantime, in between times, I will focus on sharing anything food related with a few non-food-related things. This is my world, I’m just sharing it with y’all. ;) 

One of my goals is to sell my perspective of the world and with each growing week, I accomplish that. 

Xoxo~Christilisa