I’m not going to attempt to trace the tortured electronic path I followed to get to the following link, but while researching a moon conference, I thought to look for info on the next Lunar and Planetary Science Conference when I found the new LPI Summer Intern Alumni page at LPI’s website. Here I am, on the right, leaning against the tree in the back. ^^; I’m the Danielle from Oregon, obviously, not the one from Michigan. ^^;; The association is new, and I’ve written them to give my current contact info and offer to help, as I’m tickled that such a thing is in the works. I’d love to contact a few of my fellow interns, but also… for the first time in a long time, I actually felt like I still belonged somewhere. No amount of career changes, university affiliations and academic faux pas can take away the fact that I *was* selected for this internship and I *did* have my summer of research in Houston. I did this. This is what I did. It was one of the most life-changing moments in my college years.

This begs for the online confession I’ve been struggling with for a week now — there’s no time like the present.

In April, when I registered and opened Orbital-Maneuvers.com, the site was the result of a large self-realization on my part, of a way I could have my cake and eat it too. Since I left grad school in December 2003, I’ve been struggling to reconcile my desire to be involved in the space community in some sense, and the fact that, despite my internship and college degree, science wasn’t going to be an available route to get there. I couldn’t see my own talents for what they were, nor could I see how any talents I did acknowledge would help me. In April, what I realized was that my true talent was writing, and at the time I was unsure if any of my achievements (scholarships, acceptances, internships) had anything to do with my skills as a scientist. Every major achievement had involved a personal statement or an essay contest, and I knew I was very good at that sort of thing, but it never occurred to me….

I know now that I don’t give myself nearly enough credit, but at the time this really shattered me — the thought that maybe none of it had to do with science at all, and all the things I’d done were the result of my being a persuasive writer, not necessarily the result of my deserving or being qualified for said things. That same afternoon, I wondered if I could write about space and make a career out of that instead. I talked to Lenneth about it, and launched into a twenty-or-so minute rant about something… space-related — I don’t remember now what it was — and at the end I stopped, a little puzzled and embarrassed. Lenneth, ever cool and kind, told me, “Well, we’ve been talking for twenty minutes now about space and I wasn’t bored.” And that she understood what I was trying to say, despite this being so far from her fields of expertise and research. I decided to try and write, and see if I could make the space topics I cared about interesting to the general public. My posting has been spotty, but I’m getting better, I think.

Despite that breakthrough it took me a while to come to terms with the “true nature” of my talents. I still didn’t really know what I was doing or where to go from there; I was still working on my web design business and thinking about going back to school for a degree in architectural history. April shook me to the core, and all my art/architecture research, my on-my-own prepwork, came to a screeching halt. (Around the same time I had a major design burnout and maybe they went hand-in-hand, I have no idea.) I wrote now and again, I tried to make sense of it all. I watched the launch and landing of STS-114 and wrote about it. I read space books, I thought, I prayed.

While we were camping in August, I was reading Lost in Space most of the trip, as I’d never finished it. I don’t recall exactly when or how it happened, but the book rekindled a fire within me, and everything unexpectedly clicked in my head. I’m not the quickest study when it comes to myself, I guess. Passion: Space. Talent: Writing. Career: freelance journalism. This guy (Greg Klerkx) was doing it, why couldn’t I? Like I said, not the brightest crayon in the box, in this case, but I’d never considered writing as a career. Other people were doing it (Lenneth, of course) but I’d never thought about it myself. I love writing. I’ve been writing for decades. Since I could grasp a pencil and make letters in a logical succession, I have been writing. And writing. And writing.

They say “write what you know”, and as all of this was crashing onto my head, internally, it occurred to me what I knew. Science. Planetary geology. Spaceflight history. Some exposure to how NASA works, internally. How the scientific community works. How the academic community works. How the scientists compete and interact. I’ve been on a NASA base, in a private research facility, at a few universities, inside a government-run research lab. I’ve attended conferences and read official press kits. All the “dabbling” I’ve done over the years, the places I’ve been, classes I’ve taken and summer adventures I’ve had, all combining into a single, multi-faceted sphere of knowledge. I’ve seen a lot.

Lenneth pointed out the best part of it all to me, which is that, on top of all the above, I have a distinct advantage from a writing standpoint. I belong to no one. I have no affiliations, obligations or biases imposed upon me. I call it as I see it. I am a loose cannon. I can write anything I please. I’m completely outside the whole shebang.

So I’m taking this opportunity and running with it. I’ll still have my business, I’m still looking for part-time (or full-time) work to help with the bills. But I’m writing more, and when I have a few pieces I feel good about, I’m going to start submitting them to magazines, online publications, whatever I can find. When I go to LPSC next year, I want to be wearing a press pass. It’s seven months away. Surely I can manage with that much time. It’s a personal risk I’m taking, and I’m still shy about my writing, but I’m going to keep writing. I’ve finally found what I can do, so I owe it to myself to do it. I’ve loved space since I was five, and that interest has never waned. Been on the back burner a few times, sure, but never diminished. Now it burns brightly, and I’m itching to get started. (To infinity and beyond. *cough*)