My Life as a Journalist - 10/27/21
It took me over a year after college graduation to find work in my field. I passed the time by working as a bookkeeper for a telephone book publishing company and externing at a San Antonio radio station, KTSA. When I wasn’t there, I was trying to write creatively again and I found a bit of success, winning a poetry award from a local library. I still have the bookbag, one of the prizes I won.
Then, I hit paydirt and finally found my first journalism job – a news reporter for a radio station in Seguin, a wee town about 30 miles from me. Every time I see that KWED mug in my cupboard, I smile wryly. That time in my life was challenging and downright exhausting. I couldn’t do that today, that’s for certain. Imagine working 12 to14-hour days then driving another 40 minutes or so back home very late at night only to get up early and do it again. It’s a wonder that I worked there for as long as I did.
I remember feeling so proud and excited to be using my degree and putting my name out there. I covered everything that moved during my nearly 3 years there – city council meetings, crime, school board meetings, hospital board meetings, local events, etc. etc. On the weekends, I was a DJ and hosted a weekly show. I handled the entire broadcasting process from coming up with content and researching it, finding and booking guests, doing interviews and then editing it all into a neat package for broadcast. That little radio station was my home really.
The highlight of my tenure was interviewing then presidential candidate Bill Clinton. The lowlight was working with bosses who were, well, let’s just say that they taught me how not to be a boss. I found out through the grapevine that they thought I wasn’t aggressive enough and I wasn’t a very good writer. I somewhat agreed with the first assessment but not with the latter. Given the job’s constraints, I believed I was a damn good writer. There’s not much leeway to write flowery prose when you only have a minute or so for each story. Plus my work helped the station win an award.
I was also bothered by the fact that no one ever had the guts to sit down and tell me how I could improve. I had no point of reference. KWED was a teeny employer so there were no employee evaluations. This was my first real job in my field right out of college, so of course, I was going to make mistakes. I busted my ass there, but I guess that wasn’t good enough.
Upon reflection, I now see that the experience was a huge red flag alerting me to the fact that journalism was not the path I should’ve been on. I had mentioned in a previous blog post that I had chosen journalism as my default writing option because I didn’t believe I could make a living as a creative writer. Also, my lack of aggression was tied to my sensitivity. I didn’t know I was a Highly Sensitive Person at the time (refer to Dr. Elaine Aron’s work on this personality trait). Aggressiveness is not a HSP trait. Add in the fact that I have an INFJ personality type AND a history of trauma, and you’ll find that, of course, aggressiveness was not going to be part of my approach.
But, I persevered anyway because I had student loans to pay. I was also not willing to face what was staring right at me, which was THIS WAS NOT THE FIELD FOR ME. How could I throw away a four-year degree? I thought it was too little, too late for me to discover this about myself, so I put my head down and continued in this job. Until I couldn’t.
I was abruptly let go in what could be argued as a case of sexual discrimination. I was told that the station owner wanted more male voices on the air. Who knows if that was the real reason, given management’s dissatisfaction with me, but I was hurt nonetheless. I remember feeling numb and spacing out. I nodded my head as the general manager spoke, but to this day, I have no idea what he said.
As the familiar saying goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. The time was short between my firing and the beginning of another journalism job. The general manager had a connection with an editor of a weekly newspaper close to where I lived and so, he called him. I’d like to believe he did this out of guilt as opposed to kindness, but it didn’t matter because I had another job with no effort made on my part. I started this next chapter as a beat reporter doing pretty much what I did at the radio station without the long-ass commute. That in itself was a huge blessing.
My time at The Herald Newspaper was enjoyable. I became good friends with someone who was technically my immediate supervisor although her kindness, kooky ways and clever sense of humor made her seem more like a peer than a boss. My editor, Gary, may he rest in peace, was a softie masquerading as a curmudgeon. Think Lou Grant of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” fame. He pretty much left me to my own devices and I thrived. When he did offer a criticism, it was offered in a gentle, somewhat humorous way. Gary allowed me to do a lot of feature stories, which I loved. The love I had lost for creative writing slowly returned. For that, I will be forever indebted to him.
After a few years of meeting and writing about some quite colorful characters, I began to feel homesick. I wasn’t happy about that feeling considering I was so hell bent upon leaving Pennsylvania. I tried to shake it off, but the feeling intensified as our friends began getting married and starting families. It was around this time that I felt the nudge to start a family as well.
A second reason for wanting to move was I just couldn’t take the Texas heat any longer. There are only two temperature settings in southern Texas – hot and hotter, with a brief dash of cold maybe in January and February. I remember spending quite a few Christmases in tank tops and shorts. That just rubbed this Pennsylvania girl the wrong way. I longed to be someplace where I could experience all four seasons, especially my favorite season of fall.
My desire became reality when an opportunity cropped up in northern Virginia, and we took it. Virginia wasn’t Pennsylvania, but it was close enough. We were only two hours from my hometown and about five hours from my partner’s. Several months after the move, I found work as a technical editor, which was the most boring job in all the world to me, but it paid the bills. I briefly entertained looking for another reporter job but realized I really didn’t want to do that. To be honest, I was burned out. Plus, we wanted to start a family and the demands and long hours of a journalism career wouldn’t be conducive to doing that. I was at a career crossroads.
Before I could decide which way to turn, life made the decision for me. I hopped on the rollercoaster known as parenthood.
In the next and last post in this introductory series, I will talk about my relationship with writing from my early years as a parent to the present.
Write & Rise, my friends.
