I imagined it would be a little hard getting back to work after twenty-one days of pure bliss, but there’s something to be said about what we do as writers. I slipped right back in as if I’d never missed a beat. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by ideas that need sending, editors that need responding to, queries that are in limbo, and invoices that are overdue.

Was I really gone for three weeks?

The semester at Berkeley doesn’t start until the 20th of this month, so I have about fifteen days to pretty much do whatever I want. Since I’ve already taken so much time off doing nothing but taking daily trips into San Francisco, eating great food, drinking fine wine, having great conversations, watching awesome TV shows (24), sometimes shitty movies (Seven Pounds), chatting with random strangers, and enjoying the holiday with the boyfriend who came to visit, I figure I’ll work my butt off and avoid future debt.

I’ve taken some time to sit back and look at my career from a distance. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, but I’m very near to what I wanted to be when I first started out. There’s a lot that I still aspire to do, but I’m getting there, and I’m quite happy with the distance I’ve covered in the last six years.

This year, I’m taking a new approach to my goals. I’m approaching journalism as if it were my first year in it. Lately, I’ve become too obsessed with what I would write and the work that I would absolutely not take on, that I completely ignored the for-money work that wasn’t sexy but would have paid the bills. I took on the sexy low-paying work though. And in the long-term, that strategy hasn’t really worked out.

So in 2009, I’m approaching my career from the viewpoint of a newbie who has nothing to lose. I still resist corporate and PR work, but for now, all magazine and newspaper assignments are a go. Strangely, I’m quite excited about it.

A few weeks ago, another Visiting Scholar at Berkeley was looking through my portfolio. There were some pieces in there that I had forgotten I had done. At the time, I had quite enjoyed doing them, but hadn’t put them in my portfolio because they were the “for money” work that to me read “sell out.”

“This is exactly the kind of portfolio I want to have when I grow up,” she said.

And it’s then that it sort of dawned on me. It was exactly the kind of portfolio I had once wanted– diversified. It was exactly the sort of portfolio I still wanted. In an obsession to specialize in one kind of writing, I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed doing that other work. Now I remembered.

And that’s what 2009 will be for me. A diversification of skills. An enjoyment of the ordinary. The technology article with the humor. The human interest piece with the twist. The extraordinary in the mundane.

It’s going to be an exciting year.