Then and now: Peaks and valleys on a journalist's career roller coaster

Over the past 18 months or so, I have found that working through an extended season of un/underemployment can be a roller-coaster ride.

There are flat stretches when not little more happens than the passage of time. There are hills — solid job leads for which I must slow down and carefully consider my steps. Hopes rise with an initial email contact, then soar with a phone screening and the prospect of a face-to-face interview.

Until now, there has been a thundering, rapid descent into blackness — perhaps with the realization, a week or so later, that

Confessions from prison

Back when I did time in Rawlins

 

(Vinícius Sgarbe | stock.xchng vi)

It had been less than two years since I had graduated from college with a journalism degree, and already I was in trouble.

I was about to take a seat in the empty bleachers of the recreation building of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Nervously, I wondered about the road that had brought me to this.

Feeling squirrelly after attack

(Image by Stock.xchng vi)

I’d known from the start of the week that Wednesday was going to be a challenge. I was not particularly dreading it — in fact, I was looking forward to seeing how well I would handle it.

 

But some things you just don’t see coming.

Fessin’ up: Addressing mistakes

Mistakes are not acceptable when they are avoidable.

This was a lesson I had pounded in to me repeatedly when I was news editor in the early 1990s at one of Wyoming’s then two capital city newspapers.

I worked there in a pressure cooker environment – I enjoyed the work thoroughly, despite the intensity and workload. There was very little time to stop to think through the course of the 90 mph night. We rushed through everything. I starting using the term “spray-and-pray editing” to describe our work.

Who’s got your back?

One of the things I read over and over again about finding work is that most people who land jobs do so because they network – they target a job and maneuver through the cyberworld to make contact with someone in that company to get an inside line on the position.

That’s all and well, but in many ways it seems so manipulative: See something you want, find a person who can help you get it, introduce yourself (or find someone to introduce you) so you can cultivate that relationship and ultimately get what you want.

Time out for thanks: Back to (part-time) work

This journey into what for me has been the uncharted waters of unemployment has not been without its shares of heartache and disappointment, the most recent of which has been a case of the shingles I wrote about earlier this week.

But as I also pointed out earlier this week, there have been some very positive developments along the way as well, as well as one particularly amusing one (see the short sidebar at the end of this posting).

And of course one of the greatest blessings to come out of this has been the words of encouragement I have received from people of all walks of life and from all over the country. Some I have known in person, others I have come to know through their blogs or their tweets.

But today I am particularly reveling in the joys of friendships built over the years as a part of my career. Of the many phone calls I made or received after I was laid off by Sun-Times Media on Dec. 2, two stand out at the moment.