Month: June 2016

When I closed down the website I used previously for business purposes, I intended to create a new presence for my business here at hazelbecker.com. I had agreed to work again after a two-year hiatus, thinking I would take on a small publication development project for Bloomberg BNA and then decide how to spend my professional time – the hours each day when I don’t pretend to be retired.
You can see how well that worked! I continued with the BBNA publication until last month.  I’ve enjoyed being back in the hard-news game the BBNA way, particularly helping figure out the best way to cover an esoteric subject succinctly and with very quick turn-around. The gig also included a lot of editing and training, other parts of my BBNA career that I found most rewarding.
During the same period I was working as a volunteer developing a new website to pull together communications for a nonprofit I belong to. It took too much of my time and dragged on forever, but now I see that activity also winding down – website launched, other volunteers beginning to step in and take over content development and maintenance on the site. Whew!
That brings me back to where I thought I would be by late 2014 – creating a new presence for Hazel Becker, Editing & Publishing LLC, my freelance writing, editing, and publication consulting business. I want neither to jump back in with both feet nor to disappear completely from the journalism scene, so I’ll need some income to pay my expenses and keep up with my profession. Clearly, this blog isn’t going to do the trick.
At the Society of Professional Journalists D.C. Professional Chapter’s freelance luncheon earlier this week I enjoyed helping a new freelancer begin to think about how she wants to market herself. She’s unemployed after moving to the D.C. area and would like to try her hand at freelancing rather than take a salaried position that isn’t really what she wants to do. She wasn’t sure how to get started, so we spent some time talking about how she will create a presence for her budding freelance business on the web.
Since I shut down my previous business website two years ago and haven’t cared about visibility until now, I feel lucky to have opportunity to start over. A little overwhelmed, yes – but also perhaps a little wiser, and certainly more familiar with website publishing and freelancers’ websites. I hope it will be better this time.
So, I’m looking at the new web presence for my old freelance business with a fresh eye, hoping I’m up to the challenge of blending business with personal on the internet. I hope you’ll see some results here this summer. 

Robert had scans at Sibley yesterday and got the results today – no evidence of disease! Notably for me, I had no scanxiety this time. I guess we’ve both come a long way since his melanoma diagnosis in May 2012.

Although I haven’t written about scan anxiety in a couple of years, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been nagging at me somewhere in the background – until this time. But even with the length of time between scans getting longer, I didn’t lose any sleep this time and hardly seemed to notice. Instead, I caught myself wondering whether he really needed me to go to the hospital with him. It wasn’t any measure of anxiety that made me keep quiet and just go – instead, it was the feeling he deserved some payback for all the times he’s tended to me when I bled too much or precautions needed to be taken so I wouldn’t. And I was pleasantly surprised by the speed with which Robert sent me the results; I hadn’t even thought of looking online for them yet.

I’m not saying that I don’t think about melanoma any more. It’s still a nasty disease. Unless the experimental melanoma vaccine Robert had administered in 2012 is more of a wonder drug than the doctors have evidence for, his chance of metastasis isn’t reduced just because his disease hasn’t become active. Those little buggers could still be floating around in there, waiting for their chance.

Perhaps Robert’s demeanor has rubbed off on me, even if just a little. I’m better able now than I was in the past to keep possibilities in their place and not treat them like eventualities, planning in my mind now to deal with them. His ability to focus on what he needs to be doing and not be distracted by worries about things beyond his control is admirable. He controls what he can – forgoing beach vacations despite his love of the seashore, making sure he’s in the shade on the patio when we relax there at the end of the day, wearing his Blue Devils hat even when going into a crowd of Tar Heels or Terrapins fans to make sure his head is covered. He just hasn’t got time or patience for worrying.

I don’t worry a lot either – but that hasn’t always kept me from preparing contingencies in the back of my mind for things that trouble me. About melanoma, however, I feel as though I have built a protective shield inside me that will kick in and keep me from going crazy if the news isn’t as good after some future scans. I’m sure the progress in melanoma research has something to do with strengthening that shield. I’d like to think I’ve built some inner strength as well.

Let’s hope we don’t have to find out anytime soon.