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

I don't know if, in my case, it was lost fire...but I was definitely discouraged at my shop about fifteen years ago with the first set of layoffs and my SE being treated like pure shit to the point of nearly driving him to suicide. For the next couple of years I was thinking about ways to get out of there and still enjoy this career. I got lucky, found a publishing company that wanted to publish stuff that I had a legitimate passion for. 13 years later it's been a fun ride with a lot of bumps.

Truth be told I would've probably gotten laid out in the round of layoffs in the summer of 2007 and I would have 100 percent resigned once the paper was sold to another publishing group and now, unfortunately, it's part of the fucking Gannett/Gatehouse group having been squeezed to damn near nothing.

Since leaving money has been tight at times and pretty damn good at others so I'm thankful for the many opportunities that have come my way and the leads that turned out to provide consistent work and paychecks.

All that being said I absolutely miss my old shop when it was good and thriving. I can't think of any place else I would've wanted to be from 1999-2003 then at that place and around those people. They were my co-workers and my friends.

 

My fire for being an assistant sports editor didn't burn out; it was pissed on and put out.
I had a hundred conversations during my career: "Do you like your job?" "I don't make much, but I watch ball games for a living. I like it."
Then came 2008. My pay got cut, but I still had a job when others didn't, and I still got to go watch ball games for a living.
Then came 2011-12. The abuse started. We always worked 50-55 hours a week, but now add other people's work on top of your own. We don't need to cover sports; do news layout because we don't want to make a news reporter learn inDesign. Shoot video for the website. Come out of the press box and shoot pictures from the sideline. You don't need stats or actually see the whole game to write a story.
-30-
My last day was epic. The publisher had to present me with an award for first place in the state for sports writing. I walked out the door while holding the certificate in one hand and an American flag over my head with the other. "Ladies and Gentleman: Elvis has left the building." I got a standing ovation from the staff.

See my post in Getting Out of the Business for details.

The fire in my belly for being a high school teacher gets stoked with burning embers every day. For example, just this morning, I had a 17-year-old come to me the first thing to tell me she has gotten more hours and work. Does that affect me in any way? No. But you know what? It's important to her, and she thinks enough of me to share it, so that makes it important to me.

By the way, the state first place award hangs in my classroom; the little flag and a note that says Elvis Has Left the Building hangs in my home office.

 

We're talking work?
About a year ago, when I lost my job.
I now work a menial job, good pay and benefits, but I am a replaceable cog in an ever-turning wheel.
I still try to do my best and help out the folks around me, and pick OT, but fuck this is a grind I can not do until I retire. Not physically, anyway.
I'm plugging my energies into other things. But how long with that last? maybe another couple of years, until the mid-life crisis kicks in.
I'm resigned to the fact this now my working life/career. I'm fucked and stuck. Lucky, i guess, it pays ok with good benefits. But at 46 with the likelihood of hernia, knee and back issues cropping up in the next 5 years, I am not happy.

 

Fuck that guy!

I tell my kids to swing away. Always. I look to Babe Ruth ... greatest HR hitter of all time. Also MLB's strike out king. Folks remember the dingers. Swing away.
Never be the guy/kid/person, who thinks regrets NOT going for it.
Failure is lesson.

Fuck your long-time acquaintance.

 

I think I still have pretty good fire. The job certainly isn't as good/fun as it once was, but I still get excited when we produce quality work. It's tougher to do these days, but we still get it done.

There's no doubt, however, that the last 10 years of constant drumbeat of layoffs and doom gets to me. As much as I try not to think about it, it's always there.

I've been looking for new jobs inside and outside the biz for awhile. Interviews have started to come here and there, but nothing I've gotten or wanted to take.

As for now, I'll keep doing the work to the best of my ability until they tell me to stop coming in or I get a new job.

If anyone questions my work ethic or "fire," I'll give them a quick and stern rebuke. Hasn't happened to me, thankfully.

 

I worked so hard for so long to get that dream job in sports writing and before it came my wife and I started having kids. I couldn’t wait forever.

About a year after our second was born, I was approached about an opportunity some might call a dream. After some thought and discussion, I turned it down because the money wasn’t what it should’ve been and I didn’t want to destroy the work/life balance I valued.

I wondered for a minute if it meant, because I stopped chasing the big job, that I had lost the fire. Turns out I didn’t; I still have it, even if my ambition to be the next Jim Murray has been replaced with a content home life.

 

Another thing about fire.

It'll burn you down if you're not careful.

Too much ambition unrealized can be a very bad thing. You'll spend a lot of time angry and disappointed.

Especially for people of a certain mindset, for whom the ambition is everything. If they don't get where they want to go, that anger and that disappointment stokes red-hot self-loathing.

Thus embittered, they makes themselves and everyone around them miserable.

 

This is where I was for a long time. I’ve moved past it. I think.

 

My ex-wife would read this and nod in agreement.

 

I generally have two ambitions in life: a cooler full of beer and a tight line with a fish on the other end.

 

As far as journalism is concerned, it happened the day my son was born. Late nights, weekends, holidays and unpredictable hours no longer held any appeal. A small part of me would love to get back into it, but as much as my wife travels on business, it won't realistically be possible until my son gets his driver's license.