champion

Happy May, readers! Today marks a brand new month for www.just-like-a-woman.com! 

The past week has been a dizzying circus. The other evening, I received a phone call from one of my best friends. Truthfully, I received several phone calls followed by frantic texts that read something to the effect, "CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN! URGENT!"

He had always been championing me and my burgeoning writing career, and recently, his nudging had become more insistent. He introduced me to editors. He spoke with just about everyone he knew in the industry on my behalf. A few promising leads trickled in: I received emails, and phone numbers with instructions on the best time to call. I received guidance from people who had once been in my position, who now worked in the field of their dreams. On Monday evening, he called me with a proposed assignment.

Due to the inherent time constraints of a one-day deadline, I had no business taking it. I had worked late, and was prepping for another 13-hour workday on Tuesday. It left me with very little time to conduct interviews, secure photos, and write a first article that would impress an editor enough to want to work with me again. However, we do not have the luxury of choosing when an opportunity will arise. When it does, you take it. No matter what it takes, you take it.

I stayed up on the phone with him as a largely silent cheerleader, typing as I listened to him laugh at the television in the background. We'd been friends for more than half of our lives, and there was a certain comfort in just having him on the other end of the phone. I wrote the body of my 500-word article in just a few short minutes, and then spent hours second-guessing trivial differences in word choice and sentence structure. There came a point in the evening when I looked at what I had written on the screen, and decided that it was ready, even if I wasn't. I sent my article to the editor of the paper with a cross of my fingers.

Early the following morning, I received an email from the editor, applauding my story, and saying that she would definitely use me again in the future. It still was not a guarantee, I realized, that the story would run. Yesterday morning, while working my job in EMS, I happened upon a newsstand. Serendipity. I rifled through the paper to see if my article had made the cut. It was on page 10.

I rushed to send the photo of my byline to several people. He was first, of course, because it was chiefly his doing. He had made it happen.

"I wish there was a BIG way I could thank you for this," I said. "Maybe someday, when I make it."

"I prefer to be behind-the-scenes anyway. That's why I went into PR."

"That's so 'Wind Beneath My Wings' of you. Are we living the movie Beaches now? Don't be so Barbara Hershey!" We laughed.

They say opportunity knocks softly, but opportunity does not always knock. Sometimes, you have to chase it. Usually, you have to run after it like a fat kid chasing the distant song of the ice cream man. But, occasionally, you're fortunate enough to have someone in your corner who creates it for you-- who hunts it down, who places it neatly in your lap. He has been many things to me in our time together-- we've gone through many incarnations-- but more than anything, he has been my champion. If you're ever lucky enough to find a champion in life, never let them go.