At Least They're Committed

True to his (its) word, there was the answer; an amazing epiphany.

My boss saw I was hurting. She asked, I told her what freakish, ridiculous behavior I’d succumbed to as of late and she shook her head and sat. What she said literally took my breath away.

“Like me, your personality type brought you to journalism, to the news, the fast pace, the chaos, the engagement and the ability to educate and engage others,” she said. “I’m not there anymore, but that hasn’t changed who I am. And it’s the same for you.”

We wrestle with ourselves instead of the issues.

It’s like the dead-baby-in-the-water dream I had when I was 19. I had been working at K-Mart as a checker. I wasn’t going to school. My mind wasn’t challenged and all that creative angst, that wild-strewn imagination came bubbling out like seminal emissions in my sleep. I’m doing it again only now I’m not dreaming, I’m creating a real life nightmare and it’s killing me but I can’t die.

I was at my very best as a person and a professional at the Daily Times. As a new reporter I was smart, sassy; my writing was descriptive, clear and accurate. I helped bring change to the society by exposing corruption, explaining circumstance, advancing the need for education and simply listening to the lost. The school board president once said that, while he worried he might have said too much to me, he never worried about whether it would be presented fairly or accurately when it came out in print. The greatest career compliment ever.

At the Valley Courier, a woman I worked with told me I was so very much like Our Savior. The greatest life compliment ever.

My boss is right. You move up and on and over these things and I’ve been feeling like I was fortunate to escape the ship of a dying industry, but now I’ve slipped — along with its mission — into the murky chasm.

I’m not doing anything. I’m no good to anything or anyone and I haven’t changed a God damn thing in years. Not even the last years at the Rocky . . . well, just barely when I got to write for the adventure and high country section. Still, that was simply remission. The cancerous spiral had already begun.

I spend my days in swordplay with this weak-ass technology; editing, photographing and making due with the scraps of information I’m thrown. And I do an excellent job of it. Just like I knew all the ins and outs of the cash register at K-Mart.

But I’m not doing what I’m supposed to and my boss saw that in me better than I’ve been able to. What a revelation! I’m not writing copy for anyone to read; I don’t get to explain why Carolyn Blanton ate her boyfriend’s legs or why Laura Thorpe cut out her breast implants with a disposable razor or to give the police the scoop on what I’d heard about who stabbed Shayanne Heaver 127 times in her upper body, or take photos at the crime scene  — including shots I didn’t need — to help the cops see if any suspects were hanging around.

“Life has a way of cirling ’round on a man,” Ewin McGregor says in Big Fish. How true. My usefulness is over, but my life isn’t. Don’t know if it’ll come back around again. Probably  not.