marvelous luminosity

I hear about people all the time doing things by the time they are 18, 20, 24.

I'm 23. And no one is going to talk about the amazing things I've done.

I guess it's not fair of me to compare myself and feel like I need to accomplish a big spectacular amazing thing like become an editor in chief of a national magazine by the time I am 26.

But I really want to.

I forgot this blog existed.
My poor magazine.

Still giddy. Maybe more giddy?

I've been reading "how to start a magazine" by James Kobak. A lot of it doesn't really apply, since we're not really going with a big-scale, try-to-make-a-lot-of-money-doing-this magazine. But it's still interesting. I wish it were more like simple steps I'm supposed to take to start a magazine. Step 1: come up with an idea. Step 2: blah blah blah, etc. But I guess that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Oh well.

But my next steps are these: 1. crystallize the editorial concept; 2. make a year's issue plan (eeeep! this one is daunting); 3. develop a business plan (eeep! also daunting!).

I think I am excited for the challenge.

I'm loving this book.


and I bought three more like unto it.

I had to force myself to work today because I am so giddy about the idea of starting a magazine. So there are thousands of magazines started each year? So 90% of new magazines fail, usually right after the first issue? Still giddy. I made an agenda and a worksheet and I've been scanning through my magazine books and I'm about to burst.

Did you know that Atoosa Rubenstein became the founding editor of CosmoGirl at 26? New hero?

Atoosa's "five ways to be an editor-in-chief by age 26":

Step 1: Dream big.
Step 2: Get experience.
Step 3: Look for internships.
Step 4: When you get the assistant job, be an amazing assistant.
Step 5: Trust yourself.

I am desperate to do something with my life.

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead."

"The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living."