I feel like a success already!

So my dear friend (I'll name her "Franny" after my favorite book) invited me to an "Idea Party" the other night. It's sort of like a brainstorming session, but with strangers. I'll admit, it sounded a little Landmark Forum. (For those of you who were dragged there, I'm very, very sorry.) I immediately pictured a group of slightly depressed middle-management types sitting around muttering about "life choices" and eating Oreos. But writerly curiousity (and the promise of a pet hedgehog with a missing foot and a hysterectomy) peaked my interest.

First off, hedgehogs? REALLY FUCKING CUTE. Imagine the cutest thing you've ever seen, multiply it by a thousand and you have some idea how cute this thing is. It's covered in spiky fur which makes it slightly less adorable (in my fantasy it was covered in rabbit fur and never left my lap) but it has a little white belly and tiny little eyes and a tiny little nose and when it's scared it curls up into a ball (remember the croquet scene in Alice in Wonderland?) and oh man I just wanted to eat it up! It started licking my palm which... Do I even need to say it? (cute.) But then the owner mentioned that licking meant that it was about to bite (which apparently hurts like hell) or it might have been about to pee. I decided to hand it back before finding out which.

The group wasn't nearly as nerdy as I expected. An attorney, an editor, an assistant to a supermodel, a publicist, a second-year resident in internal medicine... It was sort of comforting that all these people with "ideal" jobs still wonder what the hell they're doing with their lives. Each person took a turn stating their goal, then the group had ten minutes to throw out ideas about how to reach it. It's surprising how many ideas a group can come up with in that short an amount of time. My goal was a little fuzzy: I want to get out of catering as quickly as possible and have a fulfilling, creative professional life. I want that life to involve writing, travel, and shopping, however I don't have much interest in adopting someone else's style in my writing. (Which rules out most travel writing.) In the long-term, I would like to showcase things/artisans I've discovered in a hip, funny catalog, eventually "branding" myself and becoming a trusted/sought after voice in the world of shopping/travel writing.

Might as well aim high, right?

The ideas were interesting:

- Contact catalogs whose style I want to emulate (J. Peterman, Lush, Vermont Country Store)
- Write to Bill Bryron (sp?) , author of "In A Sunburned Country" for advice.
- Link my blog to other sites to grow my readership/ get advertising.
- Contact hip travel books (Lonely Planet) and see about freelancing.
- Take a travel writing class.
- Find people who have fun stores on Ebay and emulate them.
- Write for hip, in-flight magazines (JetBlue, Song, Virgin)
- Go to small towns and collect stories of interesting people.
- Do my own version of the "Shopaholic" books.
- Write for the Weekly World News or Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
- Publish my blog hand out copies to friends/boutiques.

Nothing life-altering here but more than I'd started with. If anyone has any other ideas for my life (other than "get one"), I'd love to read 'em. (Anyone know where I can get a hedgehog?)