90 degree turn: Part 1

I DID NOT DO THIS. lol

In a wild turn of events, I quit my job in August.

I had been designing, photo editing, copy editing, writing and basically nose-deep in newspapers for almost 20 years. It was my first job out of college and print journalism was all I knew.

I designed pages, sorted through photos, read stories and worked with other journalists (sometimes until 2 am) to produce pages featuring major historic events including

• 5 presidential elections
• Hurricane Katrina
• Virginia Tech shooting
• Stock market crash/housing market crisis of 2008
• Osama Bin Laden killed
• Hurricane Sandy
• Death of Pope John Paul
• Death of Ronald Reagan
• Sandy Hook shooting
• Boston Marathon Bombing
• Sam Sex Marriage legalized (one of my favorite nights as a journalist)
• Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to SCOTUS
• The COVID-19 pandemic
• Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington DC
• Couple of impeachments of Trump
• Overturn of Roe v. Wade
• Covid -19 vaccines
• Haiti earthquake
• Two Triple Crown winners
• Multiple Olympics
• Jerry Sandusky/Penn State
• Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics

When I was furloughed in 2009, I bought this thing.

... plus hundreds of local events, deaths, murders, you name it for newspapers including Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Louisville Courier Journal, Lansing State Journal, Muncie Star Press, Lafayette Journal & Courier and more.

It was not an insignificant career.

It was a career where I saw both the best and the worst of humanity.

A career where the president of the united states challenged the free press in ways it had not been challenged. I saw journalism change dramatically with the internet and social media. People no longer got their news and facts from trained, unbiased journalists. Instead they got it from Facebook or some website and then blamed the "liberal media" if they saw news they didn't agree with. I heard things like that even from my own family. 

I didn't do this either lol. FFS

I scarified a lot for a career I enjoyed. I worked nights and weekends for years. Sometimes we would not put the paper to bed until 2 am. I never made much money, but I made things work. I was good at my job.

But layoffs and furloughs started to wear on everyone. I barely worked part time the summer of 2020 because of furloughs thanks to Covid. I knew something had to change. 

So I started to sort of poke around for other jobs and careers I could possibly get into.

Nothing really went very far. Until the summer of 2022.