Friday started out disappointingly. I missed two of the writers going out to cover stories. One was a feature on local veggie patches which we had talked about earlier in the week and the other was a court case where a mother had let her twins starve to death. Both of these would have been interesting to cover but the latter I was extra disappointed about missing. I asked around to see if anyone else would be covering anything, with no luck, and instead trudged back to my desk to look for more eye-catching gadgets to write about. It’s funny how at first you’re inspired and enjoy writing quirky little witisisms about these inanimate objects but by the end of the week I was drowning in a pool of uncreative melancholy and with the prospect of not having been out in the field with any writers.

So here’s what I did, I went for a walk. I walked along (past I lady huffing paint out of a plastic bag and whistling construction workers) for 10 minutes until I reached a nice cafe where I had a bowl of basil pesto and chicken pasta and while I was eating a grew a set of balls.

When I got back into the office I asked Matt (the editor) if I could have 15 minutes of his time to interview him. The interview was great and I’ll be able to write a really nice piece from our conversation. I took a deep breath and asked him my last question, it went a little like this….”and so, my last question is, can I come back next week?” and then I giggled awkwardly. Matt replied with, “You are welcome to come back anytime you like.” And that was that. I had a whole other week of interning to look forward to.

At this point my confidence had sky-rocketed and I decided that I would pitch my story idea to him as well. Matt listened patiently to my rolling no-direction explanation (it had sounded so much better when I practiced inside my head) and when I came to the end he said he thought I had a potentially very powerful piece. BREAKTHROUGH!

Matt gave me some feedback and some really interesting suggestions on the the structure of my story and said he would love to read it when it’s finished. It felt good.

As soon as I got back to my desk I told Trent I would be back for another and tee-ed it up to go with him to Redcliffe on Monday to meet a couple who opened a school in Cambodia. I also spoke to Susan and made sure she knew that I was keen to go out with her on anything she was doing next week. I walked away from the day feeling amazing.