I was reflecting a few days ago and I came to the following conclusions. First, the stay at home dad thing has worked out well. My kid is still alive and she seems to like me, and I have been supporting my family reasonably well with my bar tending job. My days are leisurely at times, although still stressful, tiring and infuriating as they are for all parents.
Second, the blog has been a relative, regional success. I am not making any money off of it or publishing to thousands every morning, but the 8-15 of you who read it seem to really enjoy it and that is all I need.
So, I stopped and asked myself a question. Why on EARTH are you still a newspaper reporter, Dan? About three or four months ago I was offered a job as a regional editor at a local online news site. I turned it down but, for some reason, decided that I was going to agree to freelance for this same organization. Great. Now, not only was I going back to a job I hated, I was doing it for, like, $150 a week. Think of your least favorite job ever. You were probably a teenager working at McDonalds, or babysitting for some crappy family, or, in my case, stocking the salad bar at Bonanza Steakhouse, learning the ins and outs of sex, cigarettes and the general shadiness of the restaurant industry at a much too young age. Now picture waking up tomorrow with a job offer to return to that job for a quarter of the money. Now take that job. That is essentially what I have done. Idiot.
I started out by doing 4-5 stories a week, stashing away $4-$500 a month in my PayPal account and I was burnt out within three weeks. Now I am down to reluctantly writing 1-2 stories a week and coming up with every excuse in the book not to accept the others.
Before I continue let me describe to you the situation that I am dealing with. I was reluctant to do this before in the case that my editor discovered this blog, but it doesn't appear that he has time to surf the net (Ha) so here goes.
I work for a man named Bob. Bob is a stereotypical newspaper reporter. Lets examine newspaper reporters, editors, desk guys and the like for the moment. The second-best reporter I have ever worked with is a man by the name of Thor Jourgensen. Enterprising, dedicated, energetic, old school. Not the best writer in the world, but it doesn't matter. One day Thor uttered a bit of knowledge that described newspaper employees to a tee: "The newspaper industry," he said. " Is the last haven for the insane and the malcontent." I looked around the room and I realized he was 100 percent correct. There is something wrong with every newspaper reporter. Something embedded in our personalities that has led us down this path to destruction. To a dying industry that offers no reward for a hard day's work other than the opportunity to put our name on the story we just wrote so everyone in a 6-city region knows precisely who to bitch at. Every reporter thinks they are better than every other reporter. None of us like each other, even the ones we work with. But we tolerate each other and operate under, usually, some semblance of respect. I'm better at this job than you and I should be doing that story but, you know what, you're part of the club. We are essentially a clan of trolls living under the figurative bridge of society.
Bob is as trollish as a troll can get. Socially awkward, long winded to a fault, poorly dressed and ugly. One day he came in to the bar to watch a game and have a burger. I told my friend and eternal bartending colleague, Mike who he was. A few minutes later Mike came back from talking to him and asked 'Is he retarded?' "No,' I said. 'He's a newspaper reporter."
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bob. In his mid-40's with a wife and young son he found himself, like we all eventually do, unemployed. He picked up and moved himself from Maine to the North Shore to take this job as regional editor, leaving his family behind. He calls his wife every night and sneaks off to visit whenever he can. He doesn't want to. But he has to.
Bob is also a hard working so of a bitch. He is entirely Internet based so he has no office. His only employees are freelancers, most of whom do not have anywhere near the experience or writing ability that I do, and he is only allowed to spend so much money on us. He maintains all of the content on the site, some days working 16-18 hours just to keep it current. One Saturday he drove from Maine to Peabody to cover a trailer park fire at 11 p.m., sacrificing valuable time with his family.
I am an asshole. Bob routinely praises my ability as a reporter and my writing. He tells me how he wishes he could give me more work and he is constantly bouncing ideas off of me that he doesn't have time to get to. I don't care. I hate this job. I don't even want to do it anymore, but I don't have the heart to tell him. I just make up excuses, or avoid his phone calls. In reality, most of my excuses are legit. I do work 5 nights a week already and I have Av all day. My options are limited. I told him from the beginning that I needed to work from home on the phone, so I can't be dragging my 2-year-old to City Hall to interview the Mayor.
Still, there are some days where I wake up and say 'not today, Bob' and I turn down any and every story offered. My Pay Pal account is weak. Perhaps if it paid more than $30-$40 a story I would rethink. But, for now, that isn't happening.
One last thing on Bob. I mentioned earlier how infuriatingly long winded he is. Here is an example. He called me the other day and left me a voice mail. He wanted to check up on a story I was working on that involved me interviewing the fire chief. I hadn't heard back from the chief and Bob was angry. Not at me, but at the fact that, as always, he felt his tiny, unknown news site was getting disrespected in favor of the more well established print media. This, of course, is not the case. People hate us equally, the chief was simply busy, as one will find himself with such an important job as fire chief.
So Bob calls and I don't answer because I am tired, a little irritated at the baby and I know that if I answer and have to hear about how the chief was dodging me I was going to be short with him. So, I let it go to voice mail. It is never a good sign when more than three minutes goes by before your cell phone gives you a message notification. I listened to the voice mail and it was absurd. I got the story of his entire day. I got a speech about him getting no respect. He talked on my phone like he would if we were sitting across the table from one another at Starbucks. "Hey Dan, its Bob, wanted to talk to you about that fire budget story. I'm headed to a meeting, I'll be out around 2. Give me a call." That's a voice mail. To make it that much more annoying, he ends it with. "Ok, Dan. Call me back. Ok, bye now." WTF.
So I call him back and he proceeds to again recite the entire voice mail to me in person. I was on the phone for 20 minutes. I don't want to be on the phone with anyone for 20 minutes. Not Bob, not my mom, not Jesus, not Ken Griffey Jr. No one. Anyway, after that conversation mercifully ended I had to, unfortunately call him back. Knowing he was in the meeting I got a little bit of payback and left him an equally as long voice mail. About an hour later he calls me back. I don't answer. In his voice mail he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't know why I called. Seriously, dude? He never even listened to it. So, I now have to call him AGAIN and recite my whole story. It is at this point that I snapped. I was done. Right then and there. I decided immediately that I'm going back to school. Grad school. I am going to become a master of something. Right now I need to become a master of convincing the government to give me more student loans.
Let's face it. I hate being a reporter and, at 27, I am too old to bar tend much longer. Too many 22-year-old co-workers living the college life. Not my bag. Stay tuned for updates. My plan is to go back to school and write a book about the process. 'Stay at home dad journalist goes back to school, chooses new career, struggles, triumphs etc...' Coming to Amazon.com in, like, five years. Or not. Probably not. I'm really going to school though. I might even buy a back pack. I will not be Bob in 18 years. Three hours from my family and leaving long winded voice mails because I am a lonely, sad, broke journalist.
Being a reporter again is the easy way out. It is the easy way to go when Av goes to school and I have to go back to work. My mind tells me to just suck it up, do it. You're good at it. You have a degree. It will be easy to find a hob. Not this time, lazy brain. This time I'm taking over. I will not be insane. I will not be malcontent.
If journalism is my last haven, consider me beyond savior.
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