P
Pulitzer Wannabe
Guest
Reading another thread where someone offered the time-tested aphorism: Your job is what you do. It's not what you are.
As I begin to seriously ponder for the first time in my life leaving newspapering, and at the very least daily sports journalism, I'm having a lot of trouble applying that philosophy.
I guess I HAVE let this define me for the past two decades, and now I feel kind of trapped. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old, I was the one watching the football game with the men on Thanksgiving while the other kids ran around playing with toys. I was the one who spent hours and hours sorting my baseball cards, and then writing cute little picture stories about the men on them. I seemed to be born to be a sports writer, and then that's what I became, and a relatively successful one at that.
Which almost makes it worse, because sometimes - quite often - I feel ungrateful for even thinking about leaving this. But I want to try new things. Spend an entire year writing a book. Go back to school - law perhaps. Maybe circle back to this eventually if it truly is what I'm made to do. But here I sit in a hotel room in a great city on a road trip. Later this weekend, I'll spend three hours or so watching a game with a view and a seat and access that most people would only dream of. So even thinking about getting out feels like a betrayal of something. It would be easier if I really wasn't making it, particularly in others' eyes.
This sounds dumb, but in a way I'm afraid that I'll lose friends and family if I stop doing this. Or at least baffle them. This summer, I told a friend what I said here - that I'm pondering other paths, at least temporarily. He lectured me at length about how, "You're a writer and a tremendous one. That's what you are." It feels like my identity is so tied into being "the sports writer" that there is no justification I can make for leaving that will make any sense to people. But life is short, and I am interested in a break from the route I've been on since I was a little kid.
Anyone else deal with this when it comes to this profession? I assume so, as I recall, for example, the "There's the door" thread. And if you did leave, or else moved to news or found another way to practice this craft besides writing for a newspaper, how did you come out on the other end?
As I begin to seriously ponder for the first time in my life leaving newspapering, and at the very least daily sports journalism, I'm having a lot of trouble applying that philosophy.
I guess I HAVE let this define me for the past two decades, and now I feel kind of trapped. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old, I was the one watching the football game with the men on Thanksgiving while the other kids ran around playing with toys. I was the one who spent hours and hours sorting my baseball cards, and then writing cute little picture stories about the men on them. I seemed to be born to be a sports writer, and then that's what I became, and a relatively successful one at that.
Which almost makes it worse, because sometimes - quite often - I feel ungrateful for even thinking about leaving this. But I want to try new things. Spend an entire year writing a book. Go back to school - law perhaps. Maybe circle back to this eventually if it truly is what I'm made to do. But here I sit in a hotel room in a great city on a road trip. Later this weekend, I'll spend three hours or so watching a game with a view and a seat and access that most people would only dream of. So even thinking about getting out feels like a betrayal of something. It would be easier if I really wasn't making it, particularly in others' eyes.
This sounds dumb, but in a way I'm afraid that I'll lose friends and family if I stop doing this. Or at least baffle them. This summer, I told a friend what I said here - that I'm pondering other paths, at least temporarily. He lectured me at length about how, "You're a writer and a tremendous one. That's what you are." It feels like my identity is so tied into being "the sports writer" that there is no justification I can make for leaving that will make any sense to people. But life is short, and I am interested in a break from the route I've been on since I was a little kid.
Anyone else deal with this when it comes to this profession? I assume so, as I recall, for example, the "There's the door" thread. And if you did leave, or else moved to news or found another way to practice this craft besides writing for a newspaper, how did you come out on the other end?
