I was very sad to hear that Julie Powell is no longer with us. Back in the mid-aughts as I was sailing very close to my thirties, I was working in a job I was trying desperately to leave. The job provided me with gobs of time with nothing to do—a setup that isn’t good for my mental health. Aside from spending several hours a day looking for a better job, I also occupied my time by reading blogs. There was the Weight Watchers triathlon woman, the lose the buddha lady, there was Poundy and her hilarious Weight Watchers cards, there was the advice lady who was also a freelance editor,* and there was also Julie Powell.
*You will note by the lack of links in that above list how those things that kept me entertained for hours are no longer findable at least not with a quick 5-second search.
Julie Powell was also not having a great start at a career, and to distract herself she decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s original edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And she blogged about it.
I clued into this project after it was over but before the book and movie came out, and I found the original blog and started at the beginning. She was a solid writer—blogging really showed the world how many good writers were out there not being paid to write—and her humor and exasperation at this thing she had assigned to herself resonated with me, a person who often assigned (and still assigns) to myself projects that can become overwhelming.
It was fun to watch the blog entries start with a small smattering of comments that then became a torrent once the press caught wind of her work. Aside from reading every post, I read every comment too, at least until the comments got to be too many and, as goes with the internet, weren’t always supportive. I got to know some of the regular commenters too.
After reading the blog, I read the book. It was good, but did not, of course, include the encyclopedic details the blog did. I saw the movie and enjoyed it because Nora Ephron does good work, as do Amy Adams (Julie Powell) and Meryl Streep (Julia Child.)
I know she published a second memoir, but I did not read it, and after that, I lost track of her. I’m sorry another Julie Powell project in the future won’t bring us back together. But I’m thankful she helped me pass the time in my own boring job.