What would you not miss?

Ya, and that gum wouldn't be there if the janitorial staff did its job.

 

Go lick Stan's balls.

 

Aren't you leaving something out of that sentence?

 

Idiot readers. Many of whom, as I've noticed lately, would rather attack the person than pose a constructive argument regarding the topic of which they are e-mailing/commenting/blogging about. Rarely do those readers ever call, though.

 

I think she meant go lick Stan's balls NOW.

 

Yet another example of how completely irrelevant Rush Limbaugh is to anything in my life.

 

You know what I wouldn't miss? Having my entire job revolve around things other people do.

 

This may be the most depressing thing I've read here in a while. But it's so fucking true, clever.

 

I don't look at it like that. I look at it that there's information that people want to know, and they look to me to give it to them. I pick out what's important and what's not, and that's makes me both valuable and powerful.

There are some days where feeling like I missed out on something eats me up, but I try to talk myself out of it. Usually it works.

 

Absolutely.

It can be impossible to make vacation plans because something might happen on your beat while you're on that cruise. And in today's world, you don't want to leave any openings for someone else to pick up that big story while you're gone, and thus established that they, too, can work your beat just fine.

And yeah . . . it gets real tiresome living a life of spotlighting the exploits of other people's children.

My vote remains with idiot readers above all else, though.

 

I've long lived by a rewrite of the classic adage, "Those who can't do, teach." For journalists, "Those who can't do, write about those who can." That's probably one of the few parts of the job I don't mind, watching people do truly amazing things.

I voted for "the hours," but I probably wouldn't miss anything in the poll. I've complained about all of 'em, except maybe all-local fronts... and I don't lay out pages, so that's generally not my (direct) problem.

I'm not quitting because entirely too much of my identity is wrapped up in being a sportswriter. For better or worse, what I do is who I am. Some days I'm more okay with that than others.

 

Wouldn't you rather be the one doing truly amazing things, whatever those things might be?