I have a day job right now — I’m the content strategist for a sprawling pharma website.  In case you wonder what “content strategist” means, know that sometimes, I wonder that too. I can tell you this: I look at the material that’s on the website and try to decide if it’s the right information for their audience. If it is, I help make sure it ends up in the right place, it’s it’s not, I make recommendations about what should be there instead. It’s a lot of intuitive work backed up by research. Ultimately what this means is that I sit in some meetings where a lot of blobs and boxes end up on white boards, and then, I write some reports that help people understand what they should do next.

Working. Making music. Writing, both travel and technical. We’ve talked some about travel for 2012, about finding a way to go see the extended Eurofamily again, but for now, we are grounded. This is not a bad thing. I feel great about staying home right now, about working with people I enjoy and respect (all around, in PwP, in the day job, in the band).  I love having a somewhat regular paycheck coming in and I love that it makes such mundane things like coffee and a movie with the husband an easy thing to do. All that 2011 travel was spectacular, and I continue to sell stories as a result of it, but it will be a while before I refill our somewhat depleted treasury chests. Time away traveling is not as lucrative, not by a long shot, as time staying home working on tangled up things like content strategy. I worried about money in November and December, I fretted over the cost of airfare to visit my Dad, to attend my uncle’s memorial, to pay our bills.

I fret when we’re in an economic slump. I’m not poor-mouthing by any means, I’m keenly aware of what a privileged life I lead. But doubt about my choices surfaces — I should have taken a real job, I should have taken J. up on his offer to support me if we lived in Austria full time, I should have… it’s all nonsense, of course, but it is easy to get wrapped in doubt as you watch your bank account numbers decline and your health insurance rates increase. It passes, always, I find more work, I sell a story, something shifts in our house to make everything slide into the chaotic stability that defines our unpredictable existence. It feels a little magical, though my intellect knows that you make your own luck, that when things come back together it is the conclusion of hard work completed in earlier times. Happy clients, showing up for practice, taking the time to observe and trying to write well and honestly.

This is the long way of telling you why there have been so few posts from me, why I opted to run guest posts for January, and why I’m going to continue to run them for a while longer. I’m focused on the work that pays and on getting more of it. In the interim, I love introducing you to the generous writers who share their work here. I appreciate their help in keeping the blog alive while I’m preoccupied elsewhere. If you wanted to send in a guest post and didn’t, please do — the guidelines are here. If you sent one and I haven’t responded, well, you can see why and know that it’s in my inbox, and I just haven’t got to it yet. I also want to tell you about a project I’m launching. It’s a book, a sort of best of the blogs compilation, and it’s to benefit Passports with Purpose. All the information on that is here.

We’re at home. I work and write and play music and I am very attached to the current state of things as they are lovely, indeed. For now, it is perfect and probably, it is temporary, as all things are.

It is easy, with a handful of years behind us, to say that on September 11, 2001, everything changed. It is easy to look back and see ourselves shifted into shadow and grief as though in that one horrible moment, something black crossed in front of the sun. And for some it is true, it was an instant between fine and not fine, between blissfully complacent and angry with fear, between the world being a boundless universe of wonder and the world collapsing into the space between our bodies and our television sets. It is easy to focus to that long awful moment when the planes reappeared, hit the towers or the ground, and everything fell.

But though my phone rang with concerns for my safety and well being — I was clear the other side of the country! — though my neighbor and I sat, stunned, and watched over and over as the smoke rose, as the text across the bottom of my TV stated that two other planes were “missing”, though I could not believe my eyes, it was not right then that I felt the change. It was not until I headed to the airport eight, or maybe twelve weeks later that the feeling of something lost crept up the back of my neck and settled on me, right there in the departures terminal. I have never enjoyed flying, but I have also never been afraid. And in December, 2001, for the first time in life, I was afraid to fly.

I do not wish to belittle the tremendous loss felt by the families who lost those they loved on September 11th. I can not express my sympathy, still, for their pain and my hope that some day, justice will be served. My loss, this minor shift in feeling, is insignificant, it’s nothing in the face of the gaping holes where fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and lovers and friends used to stand. The change for me is a small one, a falling out of love, the disappointment of a broken heart, the tarnishing of something that once seemed valuable. But it’s my loss, it’s the one I know, the one I can speak about.

September 11 changed travel. Not just for me, but for everyone, everywhere in the world. I saw it in 2008 when I handed over an unopened bottle of water that I’d purchased on the wrong side of the gate in Bangkok. I saw it last month when my sister in law, visiting from Europe, described the complicated visitor registration process she had to go through. I saw when, in 2006, rushing to make a connecting flight in London, the airlines staff raced me to the gate only to call me to a full stop to remove my shoes. I saw it in May when I dropped my husband off and was bullied on the airport drive for sitting too long in one place. My friend with the generic name who’s on the no-fly list sees it. My Indian friend who’s always pulled aside for special screening sees it. My house guests who arrived last weekend — via a domestic flight — without toothpaste see it. It is everywhere, this blanket of security wrapped around travel, designed to make us believe that there are those out to get us and those who are working hard to keep us safe.

I never minded the steely faced interrogators at the departures gate in Amsterdam or Munich because everyone got the same treatment but I hated — I still hate — taking off my shoes and pouring out my soda. In Molokai’s tiny airport, I handed my unopened drink to some loitering taxi drivers rather than throw it away before being liberated of my sunscreen ten minutes later by a security guard. I’ve watched frustrated mothers in London hand over items that they’d been given on their previous flight because they weren’t allowed into the arrivals terminal. I’ve watched young guys in desert garb singled out for special screening and I’ve been pulled into that line myself.

After 9/11, Americans everywhere put their international holidays on hold. I flew anyway, holding my breath, eying the other passengers, thinking of the words of our former county executive, Ron Sims, who spoke at a rally I attended shortly after 9/11. “No man can cause me to fear my neighbor,” he said, and I hoped that was the case but I knew it wasn’t true any more because there I was, afraid for the first time since I’d walked solo in the Himalayas, since I woke up completely off the grid in Pakistan, since I wandered the streets of Alexandria, lost. I had never been afraid and there I was, in the departures terminal in Seattle’s airport, afraid.

All the details in air travel conspire to remind us that we are afraid. The theater of security, the zip-lock bags, the piles of half empty water bottles. The bins of discarded items, too sharp to take on the plane, the passengers in their socks repacking their electronics. You, hipster guy next to me in line for that flight to Austin, you are an object of fear. You, 70-something guy clearing security in Tucson, unraveling your complicated back brace, because it contains metal stays, you are an object of fear. Girl in skinny jeans and Converse high tops, Russian family with complicated luggage, nursing mother, all of you, everyone in line is a suspect until security tells us otherwise. You are an object of fear.

There are, I’m sure, sophisticated reports that tell us exactly how much money was lost in travel since 9/11. We can probably find data that lists the number of canceled trips, of vacant hotel rooms, of airline seats left empty. There are numbers that will tell us how many security officers have been hired and how many Swiss Army knives have been confiscated. But there’s no measure for this tiny loss, this cumulative fear. Yes, everything changed in that instant, of course it did, how could anyone think otherwise? It didn’t stop there, though, with this catastrophic lurch in American society. It continued, a gradual erosion of optimism, a cliched loss of innocence.

It feels so long ago, I am older now. I will not see Afghanistan in this life, I will not see Baghdad. I doubt I will make that magical drive across the deserts of Persia, the Silk Road doesn’t seem to be in my future anymore. I have to wait for my next life as an Arabic nomad, as a different wanderer than I am today. For now, when I travel, I face my fear. I am afraid. I go anyway; I take my fear with me. This is what has changed. It is nothing, I know, but it is my loss. A slow shift, a minor weight, a broken heart.

I really hate the body scanner machines at the airport. My introduction to them this year was extremely uncomfortable — a large male officer used a rather sharp tone with me and instructed me, repeatedly, not to look at him. “Why not?” I wondered. “Why does it matter where my eyes are when the machine can look right through me?”

It’s patchy, the use of scanners is;  my first time through the body scanner was also my last. On all subsequent flights  — and there have been many, nearly a dozen, through US and international airports — I’ve been sent through the metal detector, leading me to wonder why, if the metal detector is sufficient, I need to go through the screening machine at all.

On a recent flight to Salt Lake City, I arrived at Sea-Tac airport with plenty of time before my flight. I decided that if I had to go through the body scanner, I would opt out — after all, the signs say that going through the body scanner is optional, begging another question — if it’s optional, why are we using it at all? My hope was that by opting out of the scanner, I’d be put into a human interaction that required a bit more, oh, let’s say civility while my civil rights were being exploited.

The airport was quite busy, but I am a regular flier, I can deal with the ridiculousness of emptying my water bottle, having only three days worth of conditioner, and removing my shoes, thank you Shoe Bomber Richard Reed for giving the TSA one more way to be totally stupid. I sailed through the initial mess of undressing, stalled only by a woman with clear difficulties walking. She needed a cane, she didn’t want to use the body scanner… she eventually capitulated, only because it was more of a hassle for her to walk to the x-ray machine than it was to go through the scanner.

[An aside: A security agent in an airport in South American laughed and shook his head when my travel companion started removing her shoes. "We don't do that here," he said, patiently.

"You think we're crazy, don't you?" I asked him. He nodded and smiled.]

I reached the body scanner and informed the agent that I would like to opt out. He pulled me out of the line and had me stand next to him while my bags went through the x-ray machine.

“Female assist,” he shouted, several times. “FEMALE ASSIST.”

Nothing happened. My bags rolled out of site. “Excuse me,” I said, “I can’t see my bags. I don’t feel very good about that.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about that right now,” he responded.

I stared at him, flabbergasted. My camera, my laptop, my wallet, all my valuables were now unattended. I didn’t like this one bit. “FEMALE ASSIST,” the agent shouted, again.

I looked towards my luggage and back at the agent. “My luggage…” I started to say.

“Hey, take her over THERE,” he instructed another male agent, “and take her stuff too.”

The agent asked me where my things were. I was not allowed to touch my belongings even though they had cleared the x-ray machine. He collected my things and placed them on a metal table. I was instructed to take a seat in the middle of a holding area surrounded by TSA agents. There was a chair and a mat with footprints on it. I felt very much on display, like people were staring at me. “FEMALE ASSIST!”  About ten minutes had gone by. I was relieved that I was not running late. There were two women at the checkpoint, only, I counted 15 male agents while I stood there, trying to be patient.

After what seemed like a very long time, an agent appeared to conduct my screening. She was clearly having a bad day. She informed me of what the process would be and asked me some questions — did I have any medical devices, did I have any “sensitive areas”? She informed me that while she was patting down my “buttocks, the sides of the breasts, and between the legs” she would use the back of her hands. “Do you have any concerns?” she asked.

“I’d rather you not grab me,” I said.

“Did I say I was going to do that? Did I say anything about that?”

Well, not in so many words. Though she had described in great detail where and how she was going to touch me. I was offered a private screening, which I declined. “Oh, no,” I thought, “I’m not letting you put me in some closet where no one else can see how ridiculous this is.”

Part of my brain was making jokes about the pornographic nature of the whole thing, the rest was getting very, very angry. I had been separated from my belongings for enough time for them to be stolen. I had been placed on display in the middle of the checkpoint. I had been spoken to rather rudely by more than one agent at the checkpoint, including the agent conducting the screening. And because there was insufficient staff to conduct my screening, I was kept at the checkpoint considerably longer than necessary.

The remainder of the screening went without further incident. The pat-down? I was surprised at how thorough it was and at where the agent put her hands. After the process was complete, I was released into the airport. All told, my screening took about 20 minutes, much too long.

I opted out again, two weeks later, in Oakland. It went much better — there was an agent on hand and she was extremely pleasant. When she asked me that same odd question — “Do you have any sensitive areas?” I told her the truth.

“My entire body is sensitive when being felt up by a stranger.”

She laughed. I was not making a joke.

I told her about how, in Sea-Tac, I’d been forced to wait for what I felt was much too long. “Oh, that happens here, too,” she said. “You’re just lucky today.” My Oakland screening took about five minutes, total, only two or three minutes longer than using the body scanner.

Not okay, TSA. The process is bad enough without systemic sexism. I realize that this is purely anecdotal based on my experience, but here’s a Washington Post article from March, 2011 that states that Dulles airport has only 30% women screeners. A presentation I downloaded directly from the TSA includes a chart that shows that 33.8% of the TSA workforce is female; it does not specify what percentage work at the security checkpoints and are available for “female assist.”

It was with some trepidation that I contacted the TSA to complain. The response I received was woefully inadequate.  I was not surprised.

The TSA form letter response is posted verbatim, below the jump.

Thank you for your e-mail in regard to keeping a line-of-sight on your belongings at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security checkpoints.

TSA regrets that you was dissatisfied during the screening of your carry-on baggage.  TSA is required by law to screen all property that is brought onboard commercial passenger aircraft, including carry-on luggage.  To ensure the security of the traveling public, it is sometimes necessary for Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to conduct hand inspections of carry-on bags.  TSOs receive training in the procedures to properly inspect passenger bags and are required to exercise great care during the screening process so that when bags are opened a passenger’s belongings are returned to the same condition they were found.

TSA policy requires TSOs to reasonably ensure that carry-on items are kept within the passenger’s line-of-sight when a passenger is required to undergo additional screening.  When passengers cannot maintain line-of-sight with their property during a patdown or private screening, TSOs have been trained to maintain control and sight of their items for them and ensure that they are reunited with their property once they have cleared the screening process.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) regrets any inconvenience you experienced as a result of security screening processes.  One of TSA’s aims is to minimize passenger wait times at our Nation’s airports without adversely affecting the high level of security required in today’s aviation environment.  TSA works with aviation stakeholders to determine industry changes in schedules and service so that we can provide the workforce, processes, and procedures to ensure high levels of security and customer service.

TSA uses a Screening Allocation Model to ensure that an appropriate number of Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) are assigned to each airport based on operations and passenger loads.  This model, which incorporates part-time employees, ensures that TSA has sufficient staff to handle peak periods of passenger volume while downsizing for slower periods.  Studies conducted by TSA and by independent organizations such as the Government Accountability Office have found that the model has made scheduling of TSA screening officers much more effective and efficient.

There are preparations passengers can take before arriving at the airport to help them move more quickly and efficiently through the security checkpoints.  TSA encourages travelers to visit our Web site at www.tsa.gov for travel tips about the screening process and procedures, as well as guidance for special considerations that may assist in preparing for air travel in a timely manner.

Please keep in mind that passengers should allow the recommended standard 2-hour domestic and 3-hour international travel arrival times prior to flight departure to allow for parking and shuttle transportation, obtaining a boarding pass, going through passenger security screening, and having checked and carry-on baggage screened.  These times may vary depending on the airport and the day and date of travel.  We encourage you to contact your airline prior to travel.

We hope this information is helpful.

TSA Contact Center

Image: Library of Congress Image Archives, Suffragette being arrested, 1913, London. Photographer unknown.

In 2007, I bet it all on Book Passage.

I was an aspiring travel writer fresh off a British graduate degree and a European backpacking tour, with a student loan and credit card debt for souvenirs. During my time in England I’d gotten my first clip – a story in my hometown paper, the Ottawa Citizen, about a “Trainspotting” themed walking tour of Edinburgh – and now that I was back home in Canada I wanted to take a serious shot at writing full time.

I spent the winter reading and writing and pitching. I got the occasional rejection note from an editor as months passed and I upgraded my day job from snow-shoveler to deli counter wench to waitress to office worker. Mostly, I got no reply at all.

I’d read about the Book Passage Travel Writing and Photography Conference in Don George’s Lonely Planet Travel Writing (How to), a guide that had appeared under the Christmas tree when I first started talking openly about chasing the dream. The conference was spendy – around $600 – and it was held in San Francisco, a very long way from Ottawa. But it seemed like it could provide the jump start my writing career dream efforts needed. I cashed in my frequent flier miles, hoarded for the past six years, and blew all my meager savings on conference tuition and a Marin County hotel room. In August, I was off to Corte Madera.

If you know me, you know the story from here. By September I was blogging for World Hum and Vagablogging – I’d met both Jim Benning and Rolf Potts at Book Passage – and by April 2008 I’d given notice at my day job. My first features had appeared on World Hum, I was an editor at Matador, I had a semi-regular gig with the local paper, and I was landing my first magazine assignments. I was officially a full time, self-employed travel writer.

I don’t want to sound like a late-night weight loss infomercial. (“If I can do it, you can do it too!”) But I’ve become a bit of a writing conference addict/evangelist.

I’ve been back to Book Passage twice, in 2008 and 2010, both times as a lurker and schmoozer at the public evening events. This summer I made it to TBEX for the first time, and – one of the highlights of my year – I also attended the inaugural Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers. I won’t make it to Book Passage this weekend, unfortunately, but I’ll be following along on the Twitter, hopefully soaking up some virtual benefits.

Here – because one of the things I learned at that first Book Passage conference is that people like lists – are four reasons why writing conferences work for me.

1)  I make invaluable contacts at writing conferences.

“It’s who you know” sounds cynical, but in a world with zillions of writers and terabytes of online submissions it’s only natural that an editor’s eye will be caught by a familiar name in the inbox. It’s not about nepotism or playing favorites or anything at all sinister – it’s just a reality of the sheer volume at play.

And meeting an editor can sometimes mean even more than gaining a slight edge in the slush pile: This summer I met an editor at a conference and she specifically invited me to pitch her on a topic we’d chatted about, offering me her personal email address. I landed the story, and if all goes well (I never count my freelance chickens until they’re actually in the bank) the pay from it will cover my hefty conference fee. That, in the coldest mercenary terms, is return on investment.

2) I learn things at writing conferences.

This one should be pretty self-explanatory. There’s a whole discussion to be had on the “Can writing be taught?” question, but surely pitch writing can be taught, as can other aspects of the freelance life – from mastering blogging platforms to filing tax forms.

And whether or not non-writers can become writers, writers can improve their writing. I absorb everything I can at conference panels, seminars, workshops, casual discussions – anything that helps me gain a fresh perspective on my own writing helps me change it for the better.

3) Writing conferences help people my solitary, online world with colleagues and friends.

Freelance writing can be a lonely pursuit. My “real life” friends don’t really understand my job, and it’s nice to have people with whom I can vent, joke, gossip, compare notes. Of course I can – and have – met peers and friends on Twitter and elsewhere – but there’s still something essential about the face-to-face sit-down over beers, coffee or a meal.

4) I work harder (and better) after writing conferences.

I don’t mean to get all mystical, but I honestly believe I come home from writing conferences imbued with some intangible energy: I get off the plane or out of the car, and I sit down and crank out pitches, emails, words by the hundreds. I come home full of determination to read more, research harder, pitch smarter and write better. Sometimes my newfound motivation stays with me for a few days, sometimes a few weeks, but either way it’s invaluable, invigorating. That post-conference high is what I’m always chasing as a freelance writer: the feeling that I’m doing exactly what I want to do with my life, and for the moment – for that one hour, maybe, or that day or that week – I’m doing it really well.

Eva Holland is the senior editor of World Hum, the site that’s probably the finest place for travel narrative on the web. (That’s my description, not hers.) I’ll be at Book Passage co-teaching a session on travel writing for the web with Jim Benning, one of World Hum’s founders.

Photo, by Eva Holland, used with her permission.

I’ve read a significant number of posts by bloggers saying, essentially, here’s a bunch of stuff I need if you’re going to invite me on your trip. Or, alternatively, here are a bunch of tactics you, blogger, can follow to get a free trip. And often, that stuff irritates the daylights out of me. No, truthfully, every time that stuff irritates the daylights out of me. Rarely, do I see anything saying “Do good, honest work. Strive to write well and love your readers. Everything else will follow.”

Honestly, when I get an invitation to travel somewhere I think:

ARE YOU SURE?! YOU WANT TO SPEND MONEY FOR ME TO DO WHAT, NOW? BECAUSE YOU WANT ME TO WRITE ABOUT IT ON MY BLOG? WHAT? ARE YOU SURE?

Yes, I do I think these thoughts in all caps.

I am stunned to get invites for swanning about Austrian spa towns, or going to freaking Antarctica, or jetting about the back country of Alaska in tiny planes that look like they came out of cereal boxes in 1953.

Recently, I received two utterly amazing invitations. One to attend a week of ukulele classes in a tiny plantation town on Hawaii’s Big Island. The other, a trip of my choice with a tour company. On the options, the trans-Siberian from Beijing to St. Petersburg or, the one that makes me all crazy, a trip through Kenya and Tanzania that includes a stop in Zanzibar.

I am never not amazed. I never think, “Goddamit, I deserve this, or you ought give me this trip because X, Y, and furthermore, Z.” I never think, “Good lord, I can’t believe you expect me to pay for my own hookers” or “If you don’t give me wifi, how do you think I can get anything done, after all, I’m a blogger!”

Hat tip to my pal Mike Barish for the story about the writer asking for hookers on a press trip. That’s some serious nerve. Also, I think it’s idiotic that hotels charge for wifi, but that’s not the fault of my hosts.

I’m not so naive to think that I’m not a marketing investment or a commodity. I understand that on the scale of things, I’m cheap advertising, and that there’s a certain unwritten expectation that I’ll deliver shiny copy extolling the already over-documented virtues of the hotel or hosted meal or destination. I can point you to any number of independent bloggers who do exactly that, and to another handful who expect to be compensated by their hosts for the honor of having them partake in their all expenses paid adventure. I can copy and paste from an online brochure without leaving the house. And while celebrity endorsement fees are a grand dream, I’m not so egotistical as to think I have that kind of reach to warrant compensation for saying “I went to Prague. It was awesome.”

Sometimes things go terribly wrong, like that time I missed a flight to Mexico, something I’m still embarrassed about. And oh, there was a damaged motor home, and also on this trip to Austria, focused on outdoor activities, I got  an absolutely vicious sinus infection and was unable to participate in anything beyond the first day’s leisurely stroll to the lakeside restaurant. I had to cancel a commissioned story because I’ve been unable to do the homework for it, and while I did get to revisit a major site on the itinerary, I’m quite sure my take on it won’t be what the PR people wish I’d written.

At the most basic level, I write about  my experiences on a vanity web site. That’s what most independent bloggers do — we go and on about our opinions, our trip, me me me, and how weird or smelly or trying or any number of adjectives was it when we did some epic thing that many people will never get to do, and certainly never get to do on someone else’s nickel.

I don’t think, “I deserve this.” Or “look at all this exposure I’m giving you.” I know what my statistics are, I can see them, my traffic is negligible. If I had any shame, I’d be utterly sheepish about admitting this to you. While I might say, “Yeah, I probably won’t recommend this hotel,” I’d never say “I can’t believe you put me in such a second rate place.” I’ve actually gone so far as to tell the hosts that the place was not that great, but never in a personalized way. “I can’t  send my readers there” is a completely different remark than “that place is not good enough for me.”

I’m not sure how we got from “Hey, here’s a little story about a trip I took!” to “Do you know who I am?” I’m not sure where we lost the wonder around the simple fact that telling stories can get us from Antarctica to Zanzibar and started to complain that we should have been flown there first class.

There are travel writers who work very hard to make a good living at their work, scribbling out query after query, squeezing every single story out of a trip so they can make it pay, chasing markets in all corners of the globe, working, working, working. I’m not those people; I’m an independent blogger. The most anyone can expect from me when they invite me on a trip is a post or two, a photo or two, and the contents of that post or photo? Totally up for grabs.

When I receive an invitation to do something unbelievable, I go from disbelief (ARE YOU SURE?) to absolute undiluted wonder. When it happens that I sit on the snow with penguins or look at the mustard and cranberry tundra of Denali National Park from the rattling window of a four seater propeller plane or stand on a completely empty beach on the island of Maui while the sun comes up, I think this: Thank you.

I hope I’ll get to go to Zanzibar. But even if I don’t, I’ll remain grateful to have even been asked.

Press trip posts

In interest of getting a little more 3D perspective, I’ve  added a few links to posts I’ve written while on a press trip or sponsored travel. The sponsor is included (in parentheses).

• Waiting for the Apocalypse in Paradise: Religion, politics, and an evil dictator. (Hawaii Tourism)
• The Shipping Blues: Seasickness and lethargy in the Drake Passage. (TravelWild)
• You Have the Right to Experience Silence: Bad neighbors and the weirdness of camping. (BC Tourism)
• Sweethearts of the Rodeo: 4H funding and dead rock stars (Westport by the Sea)