girlslikewords.: One phone call can change everything...

Today was a pretty blah Wednesday.

While I got my to-do list at work under control, I still had a lot to accomplish - esp. after website updates necessitated three hours of painstaking editing because the formatting was all shot to hell. (I HATE the interface we use and cannot wait until we move that site to WordPress - sorry Blogger...)

Just about the only thing I was looking forward to was Happy Hour. My clock hit five o'clock and I was ready to go.

Then the phone rang. And it was for me.

It was a woman who had written our issue's "My Story," an inspirational story about overcoming some obstacle in the reader's life. Her article was about overcoming domestic abuse and how she had started a woman's shelter in northwest Houston, a hugely under-served area in the city. Until her, the closest shelter was downtown. It was a great find, but she was fairly chatty in our previous conversations, so I sighed and mumbled, "Did she have to wait until five to call?" and picked up the phone.

She greeted me with so much warmth and thanked me profusely for publishing the article. She was very excited about it and said her phone had been ringing off the hook, practically, from all kinds of people who had seen it.

Compared to previous jobs, one of the nice things about the magazine is the amount of response we get off an issue. I've never experienced genuine feedback like this before, and I am enjoying every moment of it - the good and the bad. It's so nice to know what you work so hard to produce is actually read and appreciated - even when you get the snarky e-mails saying "Why didn't you include this? What a HUGE oversight!" because hey - at least you know people are reading it!

So I was happy to talk with her. But just when I thought the conversation was done, she dropped something huge.

One of the phone calls she received yesterday was from the Houston Police Department. Someone in the area had read her article in the magazine, taken it to work and they were contacting her about how they could partner with the shelter to better serve women in this area.

And not only that - they also want to help her find grants so she can continue building and expanding her services.

It took everything in me for my eyes not to well up as I realized this was the moment I have been waiting for since I graduated nearly four years ago.

Sure, I'd written nice articles about people and businesses, and they were appreciative. I'd received thank you notes, praise and hell - even a job because of my writing.

But I had never truly felt like I had made a difference by publishing something until today.

And yeah, maybe I didn't write the article, but I listened when someone gave me the idea, I sought the woman out and I pushed for the piece to go in the magazine. And because I got it in the pages of a magazine, someone in a position to help her reached out, and this woman is now getting a huge amount of support from a very valuable resource.

So the next time I complain about my job, I'm going to try to remember to this moment. Because this is what makes my job worth it.