Bury my head in sand

It seems so sophomoric, like I'm reading the notes and scribbles of a first-year j-school student's account of summer vacation. But it's not that. It's online, it's been published, and it's mine. The writing in question is a piece I wrote a few years ago for the Christian Science Monitor. The essay is a reflection on my trip to Egypt, with attention paid to Cairo and the multitudionous call to prayer. I wrote it, as I said, years ago, but it got lost in the editor's inbox or files or something, and she didn't run it until last February, even though she had promised its publication almost immediately after receiving it.

It was a heady acceptance for me. My first international publication of a work, and coming as it did, right after my stroke, I was elated. I've seen my byline before, but seeing it, finally, almost a year ago, in the Monitor, was a great feeling.

Now, back from Thailand with a notebook full of essays and notes and such, I'm eager to follow it up with something else, something better. And that's what I was working on when the message arrived in my inbox. The writer I most want to work with in the Creative Non-Fiction Master's program emailed me today, asking if he could help me out with anything. So I sent him my questions, concerns, humor via a few lines of typed out text. I had pulled up the old Monitor article to send to him, but as I read through it, I though, "Jeez. Did I really write this? Who's going to admit me to an advanced writing program when I write like this, and use it as an example of my best stuff? "

As I said, Jeez. I 'spose, if anything, he and the admittance board would read it and nod in agreement that I needed all the help I could get, signing me up on the spot and hell, even paying my tuition so as to eliminate one more butcher of the English language and its harmony as prose. Then again, maybe they'd just pack me off on the next flight to Egypt and write me off as a lost cause.
I'm not sure what direction to take my writing now, but I do know that I feel completely renewed in my quest to be paid for my words. I've shied away from journalism for so long now that I've seen a lot of other positions and jobs, and none are as good. So it's back to the drawing board. onotepad, I guess, as I ready myself to head back into the world of hacks.