When your best ain't good enough

Sometimes, your best just ain't good enough.

It's not that it isn't good. But somehow, somewhere, someone makes a decision that what you've been working on, the career you've made a life of, or perhaps, just perhaps, the revolution you've started is just too risky.

The latter is what appears to have happened this week to TBD.com, a revolutionary website launched in August in the Washington, D.C., area that was to present "hyperlocal" news on a variety of Web-based platforms using television, the Internet and increasingly ubiquitous social media.

Newer media raise old questions on ethics

Social media is having a broad impact in so many ways, not the least of which is journalism, my specialty for many years.

What started with such Web innovations as Myspace and grew to include Facebook, Twitter and many more, essentially allow people to interact, often in real team, using Internet-based and frequently mobile technology.

There are many great things about social media. People can post messages to each other or for common consumption. The can promote their blogs or the stories they have written or the photos they have taken. They can market products and ideas. But social media also can be a goldmine of real-time reactions to breaking news.

Time flies, job search's urgency grows

It's hard to believe that it's been 2½ months since I was laid off. I was too busy with the blizzard during the first week of February to really notice Feb. 2, and by the 7th, my middle son's 19th birthday, my mind was again on other things. But starting about Tuesday, the 8th, I noticed the passage of time as I filled out my certification online for unemployment benefits.

It's been more than two months, and the realization dawned on me that that time has flown by so swiftly -- too swiftly. Roughly, I have about four months of unemployment left. And then what?

Snowed under in so many ways

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not complaining. Well, perhaps I am, actually, but as always, I realize that it could be far worse.

It's just that seeing 18 inches of snow on the ground here this week reminds me that I am feeling a little snowed under myself of late. It's kind of hard for me to understand -- I'd thought that once I'd been laid off, I was going to have far more time on my hands than I'd had since I was a kid in school.

I suppose part of it is the loss of a routine that normally helps keep one organized. That may or may not change in the coming weeks as I continue my search for a new job. And of course that search takes time, as well -- a lot more time than someone who's never been unemployed before would think.

In the meantime, I am enamored of a part-time job as a digital journalist. Still, the hours vary from day to day and it is far too easy to become distracted by the absence of routine.