Lately my story idea inspirations have been of the “you know what I’d really like to do . . . ” variety. A year or so ago I was in a Wegman’s basement wine superstore with absolutely no idea how to tell one of the three thousand bottles of wine from any other one and I thought, “You know what I’d really like to do? Bring a master sommelier with me and have, like, $300 to spend on her recommendations.”
More recently I was listening to the Nats on the radio thinking, “You know what I’d really like to do? Spend some time hanging with Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler to see how they manage to do what they do.”
Both those lovely thoughts turned into magazine stories for the Post magazine. And they were very cool and fun to report. The part I forgot though, was that even dream assignments like the above still have to get written, and the writing, as always, was eye-gougingly painful to do, with long hours down in the funky hollows of the worst self doubt when I cursed myself for ever committing to the dang thing.
You know what I’d really like to do? Get to report on something fabulously cool and NOT have to ever write about it. But still get paid.
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