Chasing stories

What happens we decide to tell different ones about ourselves

Jan 10, 2024

Moments before I launched this newsletter in Lamu, Kenya, just one step closer to officially defening myself as a writer.

In 1995, at 17 years old, I left my childhood home in Chandler, Arizona, for college at Northern Arizona University. It never occurred to me to apply to out-of-state schools. I knew I had a full ride at one of the three universities in Arizona, and Flagstaff was an obvious choice given that the campus was a 30-minute drive from Arizona Snowbowl, the local ski resort.

Practicality dictated my decision on a major; I was interested in attending class only two days a week so I could manifest a ski bum life where I’d work at the resort and ski as much as possible. I had written for the school newspaper in high school, and all of the classes for a print journalism major fell on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so just like that…

I decided I’d become a writer.

This profession looked very different back then than it does today, so much so that the building that housed the School of Communication no longer exists, and neither does a degree in print journalism. I studied ethics and balanced reporting. I shot black and white photos on a film camera. I took a staff position at The Lumberjack, NAU’s student newspaper, spending many a late night running my printed-out stories through the waxing machine, cutting them carefully with an Exacto knife, and smoothing them out on the spreads that would be sent to the printer the next day. All relics of the past.

I fell in love with William Safire’s column in The New York Times, On Language. I could have fallen in love with a fellow student had I understood the meaning behind him cutting out that column from the Sunday Magazine every week and bringing it to class for me. He was so handsome I couldn’t imagine a world where he liked me, so nothing happened.

C’est la vie.

When I graduated, I interned at the Arizona Daily Sun and discovered that I loathed small-town reporting. The crime blogs, traffic reports, and attending city council meetings were all a hard stop. I hated it so much that I paused my pursuit of becoming a writer who earns a paycheck and went in a completely different direction, focusing on outdoor education. Nearly ten years later, when I was in graduate school at Prescott College working on a PhD in sustainability (think how resilience theory meets feminist economics), I quit that too because I couldn’t stand writing for and within the constraints of academia.

What do student loans from unfished graduate work plus an undergraduate degree in something I didn’t use professionally equal? Failure. I felt foolish and wondered what could have been had I picked a degree I “stuck” with or what would have happened if I “stuck” with that PhD. I have attempted to provide solace my bruised ego by reminding myself that my life unfolded in ways I never had imagined.

I did not follow the path I was told to; I followed the path I felt that was right at the time. I started my nonprofit Zawadisha , took a job at UC Berkeley and direct 40-day wilderness courses in Lake Tahoe and Yosemite, taught at Lake Tahoe Community College, and founded Coalition, the only woman-owned and operated ski and snowboard brand. The entire time I writing curriculum and writing grants and weekly newsletters, but because I couldn’t necessarily trace the practice of writing to a paycheck, I didn’t consider myself a writer.

But now I do.

A decade after dropping out of school and 20 years after leaving that journalism internship, I’m writing again daily, but this time just for me. While I still embrace an Oxford comma and relish in a properly placed em dash, it’s quite different than it used to be. I finally found my voice.

It’s interesting how we go through life setting the traps that we know will catch us. We associate money with legitimacy and joy with leisure. We commit most of our waking hours to the former, feeling guilty when we partake in the latter. I’m learning to undo that through my writing.

Marlee Grace

says that if you write things, then you’re a writer. Redefining Radical has been a big part of me calling myself a writer. I show up here every week and so do you. And I hope we are both are doing it for ourselves; we enjoy it, it adds value to our lives, and it encourages us to think about our place in the world. Every week I get to tell a different story, and I am so grateful that you are a part of that.

xxoo,

Jen

How are you learning to get out of the traps that you set? What do you actually do that you don’t think you do? What doesn’t fill your bank account but fills your heart and soul? I’d love it if you share your thoughts with me in the comments.