Friday, December 22, 2023

Writing, Ephemeral and Other

Yesterday, I tracked back through my deposits into my checking account.  I finally figured out that my payment for writing for Gather magazine was made electronically, not made by way of a check mailed to me the way it had been in past years.

This morning, I thought about all the writing I've done for pay and all the writing, so much more writing, that I've done as part of a job:  newsletter writing, website writing, social media posts.  And that's not counting e-mails and documents that won't really matter much outside of the place of employment, like accreditation documents.

I never kept track of the social media posts that I created for the social media coordinator of the last school where I had a full-time job.  They seemed ephemeral to me and not really essential to my job or to my life goals as a writer.  This morning, I wondered if I could find them if someone in the future asked me to document that I had done writing for social media.

The ones that were published on Facebook still seem to be there.  I had a brief moment this morning of getting lost in past work, being amazed at all that my tiny school had managed to do with very little in the way of real resources.  And then there was the sense of sadness, that it wasn't fully appreciated and that it's all gone now.

Don't misunderstand--I'm very happy right now, much happier than I was as a school administrator, working 45-60 hours a week, often trying to make competing higher ups happy.  Still, it's a sobering reminder of how fleeting everything really is.

No comments: