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When did you lose your “fire in the belly”?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by wicked, Oct 16, 2019.

  1. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    To the original question, I haven't lost any fire. I'm very lucky.

    If anything, I'm more ambitious and spend more time and effort and care trying to live up to my job now than I did 20 years ago.

    The worry at my age is not only that you lose ambition or passion but that you lose a step in craft. In practice. That somehow the voice goes flat or the reporting gets shallow.
     
    exmediahack and Tweener like this.
  2. CD Boogie

    CD Boogie Well-Known Member

    The fiction is freeing because I'm not writing toward a perceived audience, or trying to share a hot take. It's really me at my barest. Fewer things more satisfying than when a piece gets accepted for publication. The rejections have been so many that they roll off me like bathwater. But the acceptances are something else.
     
    OscarMadison likes this.
  3. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Exactly.

    Revel in it, my friend.
     
  4. JimmyHoward33

    JimmyHoward33 Well-Known Member

    Anybody that tells you that you’ve lost your fire because you’re making work life choices has no fire themselves and is an asshole.

    Work is transactional. I didn’t see that way as much 10-15 years ago, you grow up and family time becomes more important. The meager wage isn’t worth losing those moments at home. The 783rd football game that felt “can’t miss” in 2006 suddenly isn’t.

    Fuck anyone who says someone making that call “has no fire”
     
  5. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Plenty of folks have no fire until they have a family - and some other mouths to feed.
     
  6. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    A buyout offer came.
    I thought about slotting another high school football season while knowing that my three best desk guys were already gone.
    See ya.
    I was 62 and planned on working at least another three years. But the first five years of retirement have been wonderful.
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    I missed my oldest daughter's first "daddy-daughter" dance at her school for a work function that turned out to be useless, and four years later I'm still bothered by it. I had missed some other moments when my kids were younger but that was the one where I started to look at things differently.
     
  8. 3_Octave_Fart

    3_Octave_Fart Well-Known Member

    When the kids start asking where's Daddy it's time to take a hike.
    A man who works a shitty job to provide for family has all the fire in his belly he needs.
     
  9. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    I've had my "give a sh-tter" broken more than a few times, both in radio and print, but when we were told the day of the 2011 Turner Sports Christmas party that our jobs would be eliminated after the end of the 2012 NASCAR season, I pretty much looked at three things: the bank account and savings, my estimated retirement of 2020 and Gwen's ability to keep our health insurance to bridge until Medicare.

    I never mailed it in that season, but I refused to go to the NASCAR Cup banquet because I had no interest in celebrating my own demise. And I hurt for my co-workers who had to scramble for other opportunities.

    But the words from John Lennon's "Watching The Wheels" -- basically quitting the music business to play with his son -- really struck me at that point, and I realized I didn't "need" the adrenaline rush any more. A lot of folks in the industry wondered why it was so easy for me to walk away at that point, and were certain I'd miss writing about racing.

    But you sometimes lose the big picture when you're only focused on the day-to-day crap, and this song explains how I much I just love watching the wheels without caring whether I'm first or fastest or even filing.

    People say I'm crazy
    Doing what I'm doing
    Well, they give me all kinds of warnings
    To save me from ruin
    When I say that I'm OK, well they look at me kinda strange
    "Surely, you're not happy now, you no longer play the game"

    People say I'm lazy
    Dreaming my life away
    Well they give me all kinds of advice
    Designed to enlighten me
    When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall
    "Don't you miss the big time boy, you're no longer on the ball?"

    I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
    I really love to watch them roll
    No longer riding on the merry-go-round
    I just had to let it go

    Getting another three years with PGA.com was just icing. Throwing together Evans Scholar features for T.J. Auclair on my schedule? That's like an extra big slice of cake.

    Of course, the line "I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here, doing time" hits a little closer to home than it should.
     
  10. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    When I realized one of my parents was going down clinically.

    OK, he was my stepfather, but he was my father in every sense but the purest biological.

    I had hinted that I would consider walking away from my job a state away and come back and help if needed. About a year after an interview at my hometown paper resulted in nothing, my mother was working 40-45 weeks a year on the road and he was in no condition to be home by himself for days at a time. He didn't need 24-7-365 level care and oversight at the time, but when he called me in a dreadful panic and I was at least a 2.5-hour drive away up the interstate, that said plenty.

    Anyhow, he held it together for a few hours, I got the section out, went back to my place to pack up some stuff and trekked back at a semi-legal speed. He was fine, he felt bad that he pulled me away, but at the time, I was the easier ask. My mother - at the time - was not to be interrupted for much of any reason.

    I stayed overnight, slept in as I got back kinda late, backtracked to the newsroom around mid-evening - the SE was and still is a great guy ... told me that if I needed a few days to take them - and got back to it.

    A few months later, my mother asked if I would consider resigning and coming back home. I thought about for about a moment and put the wheels in motion. My SE completely understood ... and he hammered home that family is first.

    I've had other gigs since, including one that I thought was almost a perfect fit before the industry and idiocy intervened. But, at that point - while I don't want to say the fire in my belly was doused - I finally got it.

    Shame on me for taking so long to realize that there are always more important things in life. Better late than never.
     
  11. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    Layoffs are always a good way to kill survivors’ enthusiasm.
     
    maumann likes this.
  12. wicked

    wicked Well-Known Member

    Hey Moddy, thanks for that lecture. Sometimes us younger folk need to hear it.
     
    Moderator1 likes this.
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