A Random Day In The Life

June 1, 2015 // Today was a good day. Last night, as I sat in bed, I was kicking myself for not publishing articles fast enough. Even though I’m working on a few interesting pieces, it’s been about 4 days since my last solid article.

So I took out a pen and paper and wrote a draft of my interview on Dipti Thapaliya. I met her through JRM Foundation about 10 days ago, when we dropped her off at Manekharka Village. While we were on the helipad at TIA, i found out that we both attended the same high school in Nepal. Neither of us believed it when we found out.

But I digress… so I spent the night scribbling a draft from my notes, and I was happy with the progress. At least, now I had an outline and about half of my article in decent shape. The other half needs serious rework, editing and I need to think about it a LOT more.

But yeah, the morning…

930am — I slept very well last night, and I woke up to the sounds of 400 or so students singing their school songs and prayers at 9am. Ugh, kids. But wait.. that’s right. The schools are opening throughout Nepal today. That’s good progress. I was sleepy, but not frustrated that these hundreds of kids woke me up. I sat up, and voila. There’s Mr. cockroach lying on the floor. It was upside down and not moving. I assumed it was dead. It wasn’t. I’m not fond on insects, especially cockroaches. Ugh.

Email. Twitter. Breakfast… nom nom nom…. the usual.

11am till 2pm -
I walked out the door around 11am, and visited my favorite coffee shop which is just a few blocks away. It was quieter than usual, maybe it’s because a lot of the relief organizations that were working out of that coffee shop have gone back to their home countries. Anyway, I sat down and ordered an Iced Cafe Latte. Just as I was taking my laptop out of my bad, the server came over and brought an extension chord, which allows my US-plug socket adapters to fit into the European/Asian plug sockets here. I was happy. And right then, another server turned the fan on in the room just for me. I was impressed. This is a wonderful start to the day. I fire up my laptop, the iced cafe latte arrived, and off I went..

The first order of business is to finally finish the ‘miracle story’ about the 2 week old child that doctors saved with emergency dialysis. I have been working, tweaking, and editing this thing for far too long. It’s been a grind. Ugh… sometimes it’s full of nerdy doctor lingo, and sometimes the paragraphs don’t flow well together, and other times, I’m just not “feeling it” about this article. But, about an hour of edits later and feedback from 461 later, I was happy. Boom. Good start.

Then, I typed something else. Oh right. EVEREST. It’s not secret that I love Twitter, and recently I connected with a France-based seismologist. I’ve been reading his articles and learning about the science between earthquakes and tectonic movements. It’s very interesting. But, even more so, I’m writing articles about earthquakes now (not just stories of the destruction, rubble, human-interest pieces), like the science. I’m very lost most of the time, but I like to ask questions, and Anthony Lomax has been happy to entertain/oblige/answer me? What’s the word I’m looking for? The article I’m working on is about the seismograms from the detectors (seismographs) placed on Mount Everest.

Anyhow… it’s 2pm and I head home for lunch. More carbs. Nom nom nom. Ugh!

It’s almost 2:45pm, so I set off for coffee shop number two of the day. It’s quite a walk away. It takes me 25 minutes or so to get there. It was a sunny day, but not too warm, and it was nice to walk for a bit after that hearty meal.

3pm to 5pm — Sit down. Open up laptop. It automatically connects to the Wifi. I order an Iced Latte, and off we go. I continue editing the Everest piece, and hit publish (unlisted). A flurry of emails with Anthony Lomax and Facebook messages with a dear friend. We make plans to catch up tomorrow afternoon.

430pm — Text message. tomorrow is your lucky day. maybe? possibly? could be? (It was the Nepal Army telling me to come to the airport to board a helicopter sortie.)

7pm — Watch Jurassic Park + type up the Nuse Dipti notes from last night onto Medium. I didn’t make any edits, but at least, now I have something typed up, and can continue making edits.

By the way, I’m feeling better about my writing today. It’s only been about 5 weeks of writing and dare I say, there are parts of writing that are “easy”. But it’s a lot more involved than I imagined. It’s not just “sit down and write.” I’ve had to improve my ability to process things and have a POINT/story to my article. Sometimes I feel my articles just flow chronologically, without much color or flair around it. But, it’s part of learning and growing. I’m really happy that I’m writing a lot more these days. I have written more blog posts and words in the past 5 weeks than I have in the rest of my life combined. That’s not hyperbole, that’s factually correct.

Oh yeah, so our WiFi crashed at home today. So I was mooching off the neighbors for the past hour until around 11pm, but then they turned it off (i think)? *fists towards the air* Oh well…

This wasn’t an especially unique day, but I felt like documenting my day in Nepal. Yup, it’s getting late. It’s 12:11am already, as I write this thing and I have to be up and out of the bed at 6am. It’s trip numero five to the airport for that something special thing. I’m so excited for it. I can’t wait to tell you about it. I’m hopeful, but fingers crossed.

It’s 12:33am now and I’m off to bed.

Next steps:
Hustle to pitch stories to publications.
Cold cold emails, with a touch of warm introductions.
Pitch everybody — Send one article to 20 editors and go with the one that bites, hopefully not literally!