What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was a freshman in high school.

 

I am pretty sure I was smoking weed. Seeing how much I smoked back then I feel safe in saying this.

 

I would have recently just turned 18, was in the christmas break of my first year at community college which has since gone on to full university accreditation -- sadly my diploma didn't magically upgrade along with it -- and full of positive dreams about my future personally and in the business of journalism. What a fucking let down on all counts.

 

i was a pig in spit -- a relatively-healthy 43-year-old in my fifth season as the nfl columnist for a major metro, still getting annual raises and xmas bonuses, and still convinced we'd be one of the last papers left standing, since we 'print money,' as a bigwig told me when i was recruited from a competing paper.

oy. we went from 'printing money' to hemmoraging money in the blink of an eye.

now i'm out of the biz, too disabled to work and soon to be collecting disability. enjoy everything while it's happening, friends. ya never know when the roof might cave in.

but... MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!!! ;D ;D ;D

 

Your mom.

 

I was working at the paper that I've now been laid off from, and I was very tired from dealing with a new baby while working nights.

 

I was in the middle of my sophomore year in high school. Didn't give a shit about school, but did enough to earn a 3.0 in the fall semester that year.

 

Midway through my junior year of high school. Had just won the part of "Daddy Warbucks" in our school production of "Annie," and generally overachieving. Oh how things change.

 

What you said, except only dating one girl - my future wife.

Sadly, just found out yesterday that my favourite co-worker from that first job now has multiple sclerosis. Talk about perspective...

 

And way ahead of the curve as well.

I was finishing my post-graduation internship, packing to return home with an uncertain future.

Still waiting for the future to be somewhat certain.

 

I was about a month into my first big boy journalism gig.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a place like the Podunk Weekly. It was a company that published trade newsletters. People moved from big time dailies to this place. The kind of journalism I was being asked to do was perhaps out of my league at the time, or at least far out of the league of journalism I'd previously been asked to do.

I was also living in an apartment with two or three roommates at the time. Since I never lived away from home, that was an education.

 

I was about to start my last semester of college, determined to drink every drop of alcohol in town. This was a time when you could get "30 'Stones for 10 bones" if I recall. I was living with three roommates in an apartment where my share of the rent was $125 a month.