Julie & Julia; Julie and that Bobby Guy

Today I went to the movies to celebrate a financially profitable month (thank you, air bed and breakfast) and to escape the hottest day of the summer. Taking the suggestion of a couple friends of mine, I went to see Julie & Julia.

I can't recommend this movie enough: Nora Ephron did a marvelous job interweaving the stories of the two principal characters: Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul; and Julie Powell and her editor husband, Eric. I suspect that Meryl Streep will get the lion's share of attention in her portrayal of Julia, but to my mind, Stanley Tucci did just as brilliant a job. The two of them had genuine chemistry and became Julia and Paul quite convincingly onscreen.

Kudos also to Amy Adams and Chris Messina, who also did a great job as Julie and Eric. They gave what I thought were not-over-the-top performances (I mean this as a compliment) and also had a nice on-screen rapport. And of course the fifth star of the movie was the food, and my God, if you don't leave the theatre ravenous, then there's something wrong with you.

Going into the movie I knew more about Julia than I did Julie and of course knew that Julie had written a blog (before everyone and their brother wrote one, myself included). But I knew nothing about what prompted her to start writing. Turns out she had a job in lower Manhattan post-9/11 in a part customer service rep, part ombudsman, part whipping boy as she helped families of the victims. It also turns out that she was also a writer with a half-finished novel and a circle of friends who were uber successful.

On the eve of her 30th birthday, her husband suggests writing a blog, and once she got the idea of working her way through the entire Child cookbook, she took to it like a house afire. As a blogger myself, I shared in her blogger-related joy in parts of the movie ("I got my first comment!" she excitedly shared with a co-worker, then quickly deflates when the identify of the commenter is revealed; then, later "I got 53 comments and they're all from no one I know!").

The movie got me to thinking about this blog, and I thought I'd tell you all why I started mine. Because I guess it never occurred to me to tell you. Duh.

When I was a little girl I loved two things: reading and writing. Growing up in a small town in a fairly remote area, reading gave me an opportunity to be, as Isak Dinesen said, "a mental traveler." And writing gave me the chance to create worlds of my own.

I never thought I was smart enough or good enough to write for a living, so I went to school and took business classes and got a job at a bank. Then fate intervened and I found myself out of a job a few years later. After some "what do I want to do with my life" moments, I decided to go back to school. I got a job at CMU, and took two writing classes there, which I loved. It didn't hurt that I had the good fortune of having some of the smartest English majors in the classes and very supportive professors.

So I graduated and I did a bunch of stuff: consulting, marketing at an engineering firm, working for a bunch of trade associations, and finally starting a charity. When the time came to look for a job last year, I knew I wanted to get back to doing more writing as part of my job.

There's a company in Pittsburgh that is the go-to place for writing, strategic planning, branding, etc. I'd been applying for every available job, when finally I got an interview. As interviews go, it was a weird one, with a guy I'll call Bobby and a girl I'll call Betty (which may or may not be their real names). They made a bunch of snarky, inside-y type of jokes, and I got the sense that sitting at the table interviewing me on the pleasure scale was somewhere between a root canal and having your motherboard crash.

Post-interview, Bobby tells me I have to take a writing test, and emails it to me. It's a draft of a magazine article. It's dreadful. I've been allocated no more than 2 1/2 hours to either re-write or write one from scratch. I research the topic, write the article, checking punctuation, etc., and email it back. Then I get an email back. Apparently it is so bad that Bobby not only doesn't want to hire me, but won't even consider having me work freelance.

Talk about deflated. Then angry--I have a writing degree, dammit. From CMU--known for its writing programs, yes, plural, programs! Then--oopsie--I realize I'm forgetting one trifling detail: I hadn't written anything of any length in over three years! Three years! Of course I sucked!

So just like a marathoner has to stretch muscles and go for a run each day, I decided I had to exercise my brain--or at least the part of the brain that allows me to string words together, anyway. So I had to find a way to write: on a regular basis, doing research, finding topics, coming up with something interesting to say.

So this blog was born. This isn't Tolstoy, but it's my little mental stretching of those writing brain cells. And saying I designed and write a blog looks not bad on my resume. So thanks, Bobby, for giving me a figurative kick in the pants when I was getting too big for my britches. I owe you one. And your weird little friend, too.