What Am I Doing Here?

Last night my best friend and I sat down for our usual movie & wine night. Our flick for the evening: "Definitely Maybe." I will never get sick of that movie. It's full of wit, charm, and kernels of truth found in unexpected moments. I can identify with Ryan Reynold's character, especially in the early stages of the film when he's the toilet paper gopher for his job. I'll admit I'm a notch up from that, but the moments when he becomes completely frustrated and shouts in the middle of the office: "WHAT AM I DOING HERE?" is something I have felt like doing on more than one occasion.

It got me thinking. This isn't my question alone; it's everyone's question. At this moment in time, I think it's something my peers are weighted down with especially. With our economy in the crap-hole and an enormous amount of debt to deal with after gaining that top-notch education that was supposed to catapult us into our ideal jobs, we're starting to look for our own "bootstraps" to pull ourselves out of the mess. We're realizing we have to get creative and we have to be relentless and we have to fight harder than we ever thought.

In my previous posts, I've been writing about how weighted down I feel with the desperate desire to make the right choices and avoid mistakes at all costs. And when I'm not writing here, I am wondering what I should be writing about and what I will do that will make a difference.

As Mario so aptly put it in his comment on "The Market of Decision-Making" post, we can't allow ourselves to be frozen, to be victims of "paralysis by analysis."

I have writer friends, designer friends, architecture friends, psychology friends, musician friends, photographer friends. I have friends that are in the fields of marketing, business, information technology. I have friends that are involved in ministry and social justice. And we're all searching for our purpose, our path to making our life and our work a positive influence in this world.

So I think that my goal with this blog, aside from building a compendium of my writing and personal experiences, is to share and contribute to the collective experience of learning what it takes to make it for my generation.

My new assignment: once each week I will post about someone else's blog, website, or business for you to follow and enjoy. I may write a short post with a link, or I will allow them to do a guest post.

One of our "bootstraps" is networking. Blogging and other social media are making it easier to cultivate good business connections, partnerships, and support systems. I want to support people who are trying to make it happen for themselves. We could all use a hand. So let's network. Let's support. Let's figure out what we're doing here.

[If you'd like to submit a guest post, please email me at : shewritesandrights@gmail.com]