Ridiculous, Crazy Faith

Artists Wanted.  © 2011 Maria Peterson Photography

create.

A reporter being given a new assignment says in Overheard in the Newsroom: “I’m kind of glad to get away from pot for a while and move on to perverts.” 

Sometimes you feel so stuck that even covering stories about sadists and rapists brings a needed change.  

I'm about ready to go back to covering perverts.

I thought freelancing would give me more time to pursue creative dreams.  Writing children's books. Studying photography. Acting. Baking. 

I was wrong. 

"Being a freelancer means being a hustler," my friend Patrice says.*  "If anyone tells you that being a freelancer is easy, they are on some serious 1985 cocaine."

I'm not good at hustling so on top of freelancing, I took a coporate job writing marketing materials and the work has exploded. But there's a cost to doing work you're not passionate about. In time, the artist inside revolts.  A sense of futility sets in.  A crisis of faith hits.
 
"Being a freelancer takes a person of ridiculous, crazy and often stupid-looking faith," says Patrice.  

So we cling to this ridiculous, crazy faith that God is working out His plan...and because the true artist will continue to create - must create - even when there is no paycheck.

*Read Patrice Patrick's post on freelancing here

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Most Wanted: Whitey Bulger

James "Whitey" Bulger as a young mobster

I've been mourning my losses.  Well, not exactly my losses but what could have been my gain if I'd been more observant of my neighbors.

The press is reporting that a former beauty queen named Anna will get the $2 million reward for the tip that led to the capture of mobster James "Whitey" Bulger.  Bulger, who ran the Boston Winter Hill Gang, had been on the FBI's "Most Wanted" for the murders of 19 people in the 1970's and '80's.

I walk by Bulger's apartment nearly every day on my way to the beach. The area is unremarkable except for it's proximity to the ocean; mostly 70's apartment buildings along a wide, palm tree-lined street.  

Posing as a retiree, the mob boss had been living "in plain sight," as cops put it, for more than a decade. 

Seems simple "girl talk" brought down the most wanted fugitive who'd been right up there with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.  

"Anna had befriended Bulger's girlfriend after the two women took an interest in a stray cat," says writer Randy Economy. 

Anna turned in the 81-year-old Bulger and his girlfriend after seeing them on a TV report. She's now $2 million richer and certainly the heroine of a future movie.  The TV crews are gone for now but I'm sure they'll be back when a deal is struck. 

During the raid on Bulger's place, the FBI found a tidy nest egg stashed in the walls of his apartment, along with an arsenal of weapons.  Forget Bingo - wonder what else those retirees across the street are up to? 

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