Sunday, May 31, 2015

Journalism, I Love You Man But....or How I Will Master The Sub

Is she really moving away from use?
                                                

I have put off writing this because I wanted to say something really profound because I am embarking on a once-in-a-life-time opportunity.

I am going to Harvard to study for nine months. I hope to learn things I didn't know I yearn to learn, learn about healthcare and the massive social experiment underway. I also hope to learn something that can help in some small way to keep the newspaper industry upright. 

It is listing badly. I see it in my newsroom everyday. It is hard on everybody. it is hard on me. 

I have wanted to be a reporter since I wrote a story for my class newspaper in the fourth grade. I am a believer.

I recently got into my car on a Sunday morning in my pajamas to drive the newspaper from my driveway to a friend's house. She'd been trying to get her paper delivered for more than a month. Our circulation department said they couldn't find her house.

It is on Main Street in my little town.

It is pink.

That short drive broke my heart. 

That thing that has sustained and enamored me for decades seems to be drifting away. 

But everybody who has lived five decades has experienced something similar I would imagine. 

That's what life is about change. 

And I guess, for me, I see the slow fade happening to journalism mirrored in other parts of my life. I was so passionate and assertive in my 20s and 30s not just about my career but lots of things. 

I've seen people who seem to sustain that kind of enthusiasm for something they love. I didn't manage. 

Within the last year, I was sinking under the weight of all kinds of losses and struggles. Was it a mid-life crisis?

Something snapped me back into fighting mode enough to apply for this fellowship. There was a story involving mistreatment of kids that I just didn't have the time and space to conquer. Snatching a few hours on nights and weekends didn't work. 

I knew I had to do something to work smarter. I also knew I needed to dream without reservation for the first time in a long time.  I wanted to be able to do justice to those kids who suffered. I took a picture of the grave stone of one of them with me to the interview to remind me why some stories are so important they have to be told. 

I also wanted to do justice to the life I had still in front of me. 

Just the act of applying provided a kind of spiritual fuel to replace the thin fumes that I had become use to. 

I'd like to say I am now in a stage of perfect balance and harmony. I am not. I am trying to find an apartment in a city I really don't know. (A very expensive city.) 

I'm kind of terrified. I've been watching a show filmed in Boston on Netflix. Everytime they show those 20 story apartment buildings I think: There are more people in that block than in my entire county. 

I am not a native country mouse. I grew up in Louisville. I lived in downtown Orlando for a decade...not to be confused with Downtown Disney. It was a real city but not the dense urban center that I am traveling to. 

Did I mention I have ridden a subway one time in my life? 

So I am in for an adventure and I'm hoping I'll be able to make proud the people who picked me, encouraged me and those who still and always will love me. 

As for today? I'm pretty excited to have put in an application for an apartment in a turret. 

Menopausal Moms of Kentucky has readers in 35 countries. 

Shout out to Finland! Menopause is Universal. 



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