Showing promise?

As many of my friends offline know, I made the decision to leave school librarianship about five months ago. I also wanted to see if I would do better for myself working on a freelance basis (topic for another post). Before moving on, however, I had to find a new profession that suited me - and the answer was indexing. It fit me to a T, but it requires extensive training and mentorship.

I taught myself basic use of Cindex, the most popular indexing software out there, and did my first index in the past couple of days. I wouldn't have done it without the straightforward feedback and encouragement of a well-known indexer, someone whose articles I read in grad school, someone I have never met. Now I understand, truly, what it means to want to pay it back, do this for someone else some day. That she even takes time out of her day to help a stranger (even one who, as she said, "shows promise") means a lot to me. I don't know if she thinks of herself as mentoring me (and really, I will need a mentor who lives closer to me), but in just a few days she has given me enough sound advice to make me realize that she is, at least for a few days, my first mentor. Let's call her M1. I'm going keep this post short now, because after three days of getting my feet wet, I have to spend today doing the dreaded mundane things--phone calls about my bad Internet service, doctor callbacks, appointments, packing books and bringing them to the post office (after stupidly reopening online bookstore when I said I would not), etc.