A couple of pals lost their jobs this week. Both were reporters at a place I used to work at and considered seriously returning to last year. In other words, I could have been one of them. Fortunately, as low as my ego is with regards to my personal life right now, professionally I figure I would've survived if I'd gone back. I'm just that good.
This is not what this post is about. I have other friends now out of work or very worried about losing their jobs. And I sit here battling what I've dubbed "retired firefighter syndrome." I have this overwhelming urge to rush back into this burning building known as print journalism and go down with my buddies.
That's not going to happen, obviously. And I have to remember that I have a job and for now, some security. Even if I don't like my job or am unchallenged by it, it pays me better than any other job I've ever had. Yes, I have the velvet coffin syndrome. I feel like I'm on the sidelines of life here but that has more to do with my ego and my mood than anything with reality. My buddies who have lost their jobs or about to would kill to be in my spot. Yet everyday I try to find the gratitude of my situation and I can't.
I know I probably sound like a spoiled brat. Let me have it. I deserve it. Maybe it'll wake me up, but I doubt it.
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I miss the newsroom, and the idiosyncratic wackos who populated it. There was no other place so full of intelligent people that somehow never fit into the rest of the world.
Once I bet the NCAA tournament with the gay reporter next to me. We picked the teams from places we liked or their uniforms or whatever. We were determined to show up the Sports department by proving that absurdity reigns in life. Unfortunately, some guy in Sports actually won.
For awhile, we had a reporter who would constantly insult and berate his sources. I'm not sure that this he could be considered a great reporter,yet sometimes he intimidated people enough to be quoted on record, whereas I would use the easy unnamed source route.
In the end, it comes back to the question. What do slightly eccentric but smart people do now that no one reads?
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