Getting out

Closest papers are an hour away and neither is a viable option. We're basically in the middle of nowhere.

I had hoped to find a job near Metropolis before my wife landed a gig, but it didn't happen.

And there is literally nothing between here and my wife new locale. A small (as in one or two blocks wide) township (if you want to call it that) about halfway between, but there probably aren't 10 houses there.

 

Ride it out for about a year, let her get some expeience, then both of you start looking.

 

I made it! Sweet corporate gig. Wierd not working in newspapers anymore, but better everything.

 

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I can last a year.

Thank God I have two beautiful kids to tuck in at night or I wouldn't even bother finishing this senten

 

I got out recently and began focusing on some internet gigs. I miss the writing -- long features and the like -- but am hoping to get my internet and freelancing work going strong enough where I can afford to do some long freelance pieces.

I was a traditional newspaper guy and my mindset was anything else just isn't legit. But with the job market stale and a lot of the hires being politically motivated, i just couldn't take it any more. Anyone who is able to move up in newspapers, at a decent rate, and get to where they feel they deserve to be, gets my utmost respect. It doesn't hurt to be damned good, lucky and connected.

 

I got out. After so many years.

Life is so much cooler now.

 

I'm torn between getting out and staying in, even though I'm not sure it's what I want to do.

It's all I know how to do, but I don't enjoy it and I don't have the drive that I believe you have to have to excel. But, if I walk away, it will be the second time I've done so, and the odds of me getting back in after that would be slim to none.

So I debate walking away from something that doesn't make me happy, with no guarantee a different job will change that.

 

Has anyone thought about going to the 'other' side and becoming an SID? There's a lot of bullshit you have to put up with and the hours are probably worse in a lot of cases, but there seems to be more job security.

 

I have, but I'd have to learn an awful lot of stat programs.

 

True, but they're not so bad. Like any good computer program, with a little time and a bit of yelling and screaming, you'll get it.

I used stat tracker when I had a sports information internship a few years back and it only took a month or so to get the hang of it.

 

I was offered an SID job about a year ago, and another former SID told me that the hours in that profession, especially at a smaller college (D II or D III), make a sports writer's hours look great.

That being said, that was the one and only time I considered it.