Episode 1. How I know it is time to quit.

We are T-minus two weeks away from the inglorious end of the Dan Baer era at the Daily Item of Lynn, or the Lynn Item, or the Lynn Daily Evening Item, or whatever the hell this place is called. I have been here two and a half years and I still don't know.
Over the previous two weeks since I initially put in my notice I have been battling with the magnitude of what I am actually doing. At 25-years-old, in the worst economy I have ever been aware enough to experience, I am quitting a fairly secure, full-time day job that I had to spend four years in a college classroom to obtain. All so I can save $280 a week on day care and give my 6-month-old daughter the pleasure of spending the next nine months being raised by the parenting equivalent of a mediocre back up quarterback.

Trial by fire will not even begin to describe it.

I have run over the reasons in my head a million times. “It will be cheaper than paying for daycare.” “You don't want a stranger to watch your kid.” “This could be a life-changing experience.” All true. But when it really comes down to it, the one thing that always convinced me it was the right thing to do had nothing to do with my daughter at all. It all just simply comes back to the fact that I simply and very honestly hate this fucking job. I don't hate it in the way I would think a garbage man hates picking up trash or a 14-year-old bus boy hates being covered in dish water. No, it is more like a villainous house wife hatred. Like the kind that has been married to the same man for 27 years, but wants nothing more than to brutally murder him and fuck the pool boy silly. I hate every second I spend here and resent it for so many reasons, but I have never had the balls to kill it for the insurance money. And there is no pool boy.

Alright. I could have come up with something better than that. Give me a break. Its post number one, folks.

Anyway, as I realized this morning that I have little more than a few hundred dollars (probably already spent) to my name and the reality that I will have to actually support myself and my family on money I make bar tending and waiting tables at a family-oriented, tourist infested brewery set in, I sat in the parking lot of Nina's Market in Lynn, staring at my Mega Millions Quick Pick and asking whatever higher power has an open line for some sign that I am doing the right thing.
Thoroughly expecting nothing from the available deity who took my request I had been going about my un fulfilling day as usual when I came across the following sentence.

“This is life at the city's charter school, where discipline, character development and motivation take a front seat in the learning process.”

This sentence is part of a lede I wrote just over a year ago, when I was a slightly less cynical, somewhat enthusiastic reporter entering my second school year covering education for Lynn.
There is nothing special about this sentence on the surface, but if you look deeper you will see the sign.
I found this sentence while looking back through old articles I have written about the city charter school, in an effort to write this year's “the charter school is so much more disciplined than public schools because they start 3-weeks early” story without having to leave my desk.
I re-read the lede, specifically this sentence and my legitimate first reaction was to look at the byline and see who wrote it, because not only do I not remember writing that line, I couldn't even picture myself using the phrase “take a front seat to” in any circumstance.
I clicked over to the next tab and read my lede for this year's story- “The KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School welcomed its 310-student populous back to campus Tuesday, officially kicking off the school's sixth year..."- and I knew it was time to hang it up.

Over the next two weeks we will experience the end of my Daily Item era, and over the next nine months we can all watch as I hopefully don't screw up my child for the rest of her life. Enjoy kids.