Very cool things have been afoot in the past week or so. Take a look:

I wrote for The New Republic for the first time. And I also had a first-time byline at Fusion.

It was a big week, in that way. I also had some emotional debris burble up to my surface when I was least expecting it. Sometimes, depending on your vantage and how much tears cloud your vision, it’s hard to see things like new freelance publications as the marvels that they are. Every time I get to place an essay anywhere, any time my brain functions from the first paragraph to the last, each time an editor is patient enough to press — What does this mean? Can you make this clearer? This needs a stronger conclusion. — I’m blessed. I’m fortunate. I’m spared.

I’ve been having a difficult time with trying to make a career of the work I believe I do best. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I also thought that once I got close to The Doors, I wouldn’t have to jiggle the knobs quite so hard. I thought I’d have the right ring of keys, that one of them would work. And one will. I have not exhausted them. One will.

If it seems that when I write about writing strides and the pursuit of a full-time writing career, I am in my most angst-ridden state, it’s because I am. It’s very easy to feel like an outsider looking in here, to feel isolated or confined to the outer court, when your friends are at the table of honor. And after a certain level of hope-shoring and deflation, you start to believe that it’s as likely to happen for me as it is not to — and if it doesn’t, I need yet another backup plan, yet another field of ability to pull from my hat or my ass. But it doesn’t take long to be reminded that this isn’t a feeling unique to me. The air is thin enough to make me think I’ve reached my top — the highest peak I’ll be able to climb. And I’ll start declaring what I’ve learned as though this is it; this is where I’ll plant my flag; this is the height from which I’ll begin a descent, from which I’ll have to prospect my next mountain, my next climb.

But this is never the height. Whenever I start to rappel, to scale my way down the side of a mountain, convincing myself that I need to be more practical, I need to earn more, I need to be able to offer my daughter greater creature comfort than piecemeal checks and short-term contracts will ever afford her or that I’m getting older, that I’m aging out of the new media market, that I don’t think I can stand to hear another “We went another way,” or “You’re great but not quite what we’re looking for,” a person’s word of encouragement, a new email from a new publication or an old friend, or just my own softer, more confident inner voice tightens my slack.

*Scandal is really off-the-rails this season, right? Meanwhile, How to Get Away with Murder is greatly improving, now that the students are relegated to just quietly freaking out while Viola Davis stunts on every actor who dares share screen time with her. I would not have predicted this four episodes ago.