Today was all about anticipation. The Sundial staff writers, photographers, and editors met and outlined our vision for the spring semester. My mind went back to some nine months ago when I first attended my Sundial orientation meeting and felt all so very overwhelmed. The overwhelming feeling about today wasn't the unexpected. Not the kind of unexpected where you don't know what is going to come up during the year, but rather the expectations caused a general anticipation and uneasiness.
It isn't often that I am charged with having dominion over something that reaches a larger audience. I have managed projects for classes, taken care of youth groups, summer camps, and other peer groups. The majority of those events did not involve a creative process... aside from the high school band. My new job is different. I do not even see it as much of a job as much of an opportunity to show others around the school and community what a well-thought-out and planned section can be for the readers. I won't get away without writing various pieces myself this semester.
It's different writing for myself as an editor. I write for myself all the time. I write email messages and poems in lonely bedrooms and place them online for my future benefit, and the possibility of entertaining someone for a short period of time. The average visit time to my site is up to about one minute, which is an eternity in the fast-clicking world of the internet.
Tangent aside, I will now write not only for myself, but for a circulation of almost 30,000 students alumni and faculty for the physical paper, and even more with the paper's web site. I'm not writing for the other editors anymore. I have full creative control. This is new, fun, and terrifying.
Our six-hour meeting went very well, and I was pleased to see three students volunteer to write pieces for the arts and entertainment section. Someone said they'd never seen anyone volunteer for anything other than normal news writing during the first week of school. "Is it your hair?" they asked. If it was my hair, I don't care. I'm happy to have people who want to write these pieces on board.
I'm revamping chrisdaines.net to version 3.0. The most difficult part (online photo portfolio presentation) remains for me to design. My ideas are swirling, but I need something down before the end of the weekend, and most assuredly before school begins again.
Monday was a beautiful day, though I didn't get a chance to do everything I had planned, I did get a chance to meander around Venice. Pictures here at staticantics, just click on next to see the others. I'll have about four or five more photos by the end of the week.
