Five years ago today I started an internship at a yet-to-be-named Jewish parenting website. Mostly I took the gig because I was in grad school and it paid (and I did really like the vibe of the woman who interviewed me). My first assignment was to write an article titled “How to Care for Your Newly Circumcised Baby” and I guess I thought it was going to be a very weird summer doing work I didn’t care about for a website that couldn’t possibly speak to me as a (mostly) non-religious (completely) non-parent.
And yet. I quickly fell in love with my co-workers, who were all incredibly talented and creative and genuinely good people. I fell in love with the writers whom I got to work with every day, women who were brave enough to write about their deepest fears and insecurities and funny enough to make me snort coffee into my nose while doing so. I learned about breastfeeding and postpartum depression and how to eat your own placenta. I learned about Jewish holidays I didn’t know existed and confronted my own personal beliefs more thoroughly than I’d ever done before. I learned how to most effectively email with Blossom.
Five years later and I’m the editor of Kveller. There are days when it still really sucks to have a job and I desperately want to run away into the mountains and write books about tiny squirrels. There are days when I read too many comments on the Internet and I want to throw my computer out the Midtown window. But most days I feel incredibly lucky to have a job where I get to do what I love among people I admire. And every day I feel good about the work that we do. And I definitely feel very happy I took that internship and not just because it paid. Thank you to all who I’ve gotten to work with and get to know through Kveller–there are truly so many–and thanks especially to Deborah Kolben for hiring me and mentoring me and keeping me around for all these years.
And by the way, your baby’s penis should be totally fine in 7-10 days.
