I have days where I feel down (like today) and I get a nudge from someplace reminding me that I haven’t been working on this project very much at all. It’s like the vacation photos that have piled up or dishes that need to be washed (though obviously, the dishes get taken care of first). And every once in a while I remember, Oh, yeah, I’m not really making much progress, am I?
I suppose I’ll have to go back to baby steps and take it one article at a time, one issue at a time. Which I’ll try to do. I’d also like to not think of this as a chore, something that I’ve put off doing for years, but as an opportunity to grow. Yeah. That sounds better!
I’m hoping to get back in the saddle soon, not because more issues keep piling up in my magazine basket, but because I have to renew my subscription soon. I’m really on the fence about that. The August issue has more editorial changes, and it looks less and less like the O I was excited about subscribing to, and more like any other women’s magazine. If it didn’t have Oprah on the cover, I might not be able to recognize it.
I’m presently in one of those funks where I feel that if I bring up anything, it not only gets shot down right away, but it’s probably also held against me at some point. This is very anti-Oprahish thinking, I know, because I don’t know what other people think, and I shouldn’t let my feelings and emotions be controlled by this imagined behavior. This is a roundabout way of saying that if I wrote in to the magazine to complain about the loss of the “Breathing Space” feature, they’d probably say that feature was stale, the magazine was stale and needed to be spruced up. Focus groups demanded the changes. You know, add more pat answers and instant solutions, don’t make us think too much. Heaven forbid we think and ponder and reflect at all. That apparently isn’t the way to live your best life.
I noticed a consultant listed on the masthead of the August issue. I’m not saying this is all her fault, but I wonder why she’s there. I wonder if my magazine is going down the tubes. I wonder if I need it anymore.
