Baby Steps

So it’s been quite awhile since I last posted, and a lot has happened in that time.

I have a passion for writing and I want to write. Since the beginning of last term, small opportunities started to come my way. It all started when I applied to be a journalist for the uni newspaper Die Matie. The editor liked what I sent in as an application, and next thing I knew I was being given a story to cover for the next issue. Excitement overwhelmed me! That morning when the paper was due out, I left my flat early so I could get to my building early to grab a copy of the paper... not only did I run to the BA building, when I got there I took 4 papers and where I was I started to look through it-“ where is my article”???I thought to myself. Because I was in such a hurry I actually skipped past it unintentionally. So now, shifting carefully through it page by page, there it was “Fine Dining in the Botanical Gardens" by Michelle Purchase. I don’t even have words to describe the adrenalin rush I felt at that moment- all I wanted to do was a happy dance, but seeing as I was in public I opted against it. I have had a few articles published since, and the feeling doesn’t go away.

However, that is not my only good news. Through contacts I was able to get through to the editor of The Month Magazine and my first article was published on their online blog a couple of weeks ago. At that moment I had taken my next step. Writing for Die Matie is great, it is a first step, but only people at the university read it. Writing for The Month, although it is a limited audience that are there target market, it is one step more.

I finish my time at uni in 8 weeks; it is exciting but daunting all the same. I don’t feel that my time in South Africa has come to end yet, there is still too much that I want to do here. But I now am faced with the problem of a work permit and a visa. I cannot stay here unless I have a job offer, and then who knows how long the process of applying for the visa is going to take... So next week I am going to see someone to try and get some professional advice.

I don’t plan on trying to apply for the most popular and well known magazines (not at the moment anyway!) because I know it’s going to be extremely difficult. Most jobs require a certain amount of experience, and I do not really have enough. I am rather going to try for the smaller ones where I have more of a chance of getting something, and where I can build my experience. 

It's going to be a tough and rocky road, but I won’t give up.