The end came while I was away on vacation, and long before I was really ready to acknowledge it.
In a big-picture sense, it was a relatively subtle set of circumstances, purely coincidental but, in retrospect, fateful.
I took off for my first Dave Matthews Band concert in Las Vegas and a trip to Tombstone, Arizona, in May of 2009, and shortly after that, my newspaper career veered off the tracks for good.
At the time, I didn’t even realize it had happened.
And looking back, it was an interesting coincidence that on our visit to Wyatt Earp’s old stomping grounds, we went from the office of the famous Tombstone newspaper, The Epitaph, straight to Boot Hill Cemetery.
Then, I accidentally left my copy of The Epitaph inside the souvenir shop at Boot Hill.
So much potential for symbolism, but it’d be overkill to declare that I carried my love of newspapers to that famous southern Arizona burial ground and left it there to die.
Besides, the more significant symbolic situation had already been set in motion, the day before we flew from Portland to Las Vegas, when I logged on to my newspaper website’s subscriber services and requested the paper be held while we were on vacation.
I’ve been working in newspapers, in a professional capacity, since my freshman year in college, and before that, in a wannabe capacity, since seventh grade. During the latter part of my career, it wasn’t uncommon for me to go a few days without ever opening up the newspaper that hit my doorstep. I’d kick it inside, leave it by the front door next to the others, gather ’em all up after a few days and dump ’em in the recycle bin.
I had literally read most everything that interested me the night before at work, so I didn’t figuratively read anything into this practice. Besides, I always read the paper on my days off, and I still read it many days despite having seen it the previous night.
Then came that desert trip, which was, by the way, a hell of a lot of fun. I’d always wanted to see my favorite band in concert, and floor seats at the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena were a sweet place to take in the DMB spectacle. Two days in Sin City preceded a week of hanging with friends and family in southern Arizona, which included journeying to historic Tombstone, a place I’d wanted to visit since I was a kid and in love with the Old West.
My wife and I came back to Oregon, went back to work, settled back into our routines, and, despite a little post-vacation high mixed with post-vacation depression (a rather conflicted emotional cocktail, I might add), everything went back to normal relatively quickly.
Except for one thing. The carrier never did resume our newspaper delivery.
A few days went by before my wife asked if I was going to call Circulation and let them know we were back, but I didn’t do it, and not for any particular reason. After about two weeks, I declared I was not going to call, that I was going to use the whole thing as an experiment, to see if I ever actually missed getting the paper.
I never did.
I’ve told many people that being a newspaper designer and copy editor could be a painfully difficult job if you didn’t really want to be doing it. Nights, weekends, holidays, all year round. Newspaper journalists, by and large, are a rare breed. Most of us went into the field knowing we’d never be rich, that the lifestyle would require sacrifices other jobs didn’t, that ours would never be a conventional gig.
It’s corny, and it’s a cliché, but it works — we do this for the love of the game.
But a few months into my unintended no-delivery experiment, it struck me that my entire outlook on the game had changed, and not for the better. I’d struggled for a while to maintain faith in the validity of our printed product, but worse yet was that, in my own world, I no longer even had a personal need or desire for it. Sure, I still read the paper online, and on my iPhone, and I continue to see a great need for the kind of content newspaper journalists generate. But my career had essentially devolved into being merely about the process and not about the product itself.
I just couldn’t live with that.
I felt like a pastor, addressing an ever-dwindling congregation on a religion I no longer believed in.
I know, the chef doesn’t have to eat every meal he prepares in order to be good at his job, but he ought to believe he’s doing something worthwhile, that the end result justifies the sacrifices he made just to be in the kitchen.
Still, for me, there’s much more to it than that. I’ve been asked dozens of times already why I’m leaving the newspaper business, but there is no one answer. It’s this and it’s that. It’s internal and external. It’s Henry David Thoreau, whose “Walden” started me thinking beyond the established norms of society. It’s layoffs, and paycuts, and added duties, and bleak outlooks, and an intense absence of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the evolution of the business and of my own character. It’s Donald Miller, whose statement “Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life” spoke to me on a profound level. It’s 10 consecutive Thanksgivings spent in the office and too many missed Christmases. It’s all those late nights leading to not enough daylight.
And it’s just time for a change.
Conventional wisdom says I should have lined up my next opportunity before I stepped away from my job. And maybe I should have. But I thought about my colleagues who’ve been laid off over the past two years and who are, for the most part, tackling different challenges, in fields they might not have otherwise considered, in new careers they most likely never would have sought out if the need to do so hadn’t been forced upon them.
It’s scary to lose your job and have your livelihood taken away, and, I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit terrifying to be stepping away voluntarily without a landing place lined up. I’ve had my career goals in place since high school, and it’s unsettling that, after all this time, I have no specific aspirations. I’ve got a lot of ideas, and have already encountered a few possibilities, but this is still a giant leap into the unknown, without a parachute or a safety net.
There’s a reason it’s called a “comfort zone,” and a reason most people don’t seek to leave it.
For me, merely being comfortable was not enough of a reason to stay. In fact, it became a reason to leave. When the best arguments I had for staying in newspapers centered on comfort — I know the job and the business, I’m (debatably) good at what I do and comfortable with it — I knew it was time to go.
I’ve worked with some great people in the past 14 years, some of the best, most interesting, talented and intelligent people I’ve ever met. One of them, after listening to my reasons for leaving and the unease I have over my uncertain future, said: “You’ll be fine, Adam, and I hope you get to do something … completely unexpected.”
I could live with that.
Well put. It’s a brave move and I’m sure you’ll be fine. Going out on your own terms, even without something else lined up, is the best way.
Very well written and somewhat emotional to read~ thanks for sharing! I know you will be fine…because I have faith and believe in YOU
That latest Dave Matthews album would make me want to quit my job, too. If one can get paid for turning out crap like that, none of us should really be doing what we’re doing 🙂
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I do wish you luck. But try not to overdo it on the jam-band listening during the down-time, or we may never see you again.
Good luck to you Adam. I hope you find something that excites you the way newspapers once did.
I left my reporting job three years ago. About a year ago, our subscription ran out, and my wife and I thought we’d try living without the printed paper, just to see how it went.
About a week into that experiment, however, our 10-year-old daughter asked what happened to the paper. We thought we’d try going without it for a while, we replied.
“You can’t do that! How will I read the comics?” she exclaimed. So the comics have saved one subscriber from leaving, for the time being.
You could be telling my personal story. I started hanging out in newsrooms at 15, had my first paid internship the summer before college, and interned for the AP before graduating from college. I spent almost 11 years after that as a reporter, copy editor, page designer, and section editor. I realized when I hit 30 that I had accomplished everything I wanted to do in newspapers and couldn't see a future in it for myself anymore. It took me three more years to figure out an exit strategy — unlike you, I didn't have the financial wherewithal to just leave — and there were so many personal and professional reasons for me to go that I could have written an alphabetized list.
I've been out of newspapers for four years now. I've worked in a bookstore, been the assistant to the CEO of an advertising agency, worked in HR for an international law firm, started my own resume-writing business, and finally moved into nonprofit PR and media relations (where I had hoped to end up all along). Each experience has taught me something about myself that I never would have learned had I stayed in the newsroom.
What I've learned along the way is that newsrooms are nothing like the “real world” of business. In the business world, it's about hierarchy and process and never raising your voice when speaking, even when you're being positive. It's about consensus, not about my opinion of the best course of action. It's pretty much the opposite of working in a newsroom. However, I have found lots of people who are willing to teach me how to be the best employee I can be without compromising myself. It was difficult to find mentors in the newsroom (at least at the papers where I worked), but I've found them everywhere in the places I've worked since then.
My advice to you is to try lots of different jobs before settling into another career path. Think of yourself as just having graduated from college and needing to check out the world before you make any decisions. It's OK these days to job hop — one to two years at a job is enough before moving on — and each experience will give you new skills to take to the next job. Since the workforce can't count on staying with one employer for years, all employees have to offer are the skills we've collected along the way.
Good luck, and enjoy the ride!
I can’t even begin to express how profoundly proud I am of you for taking this step Adam. There are a million reasons not to make the change, but, regardless you had the guts to confront the crippling fears of the unknown and jump anyway. I know that you have a great future, and hope that the projects we’re working on together will be able to provide you some security. If they don’t… just don’t kill me for encouraging you to jump. 🙂
good call–at least you didn’t get laid off!
You can only bail water out of a sinking ship for so long before it’s time to start swimming. Congratulations on taking the plunge, man.
Adam, you have aways had an aura of success around you. If I had to choose anyone I have come across in life that I would bet on to to be successful it would be you. (Jess has the same ” thing” I don't quite know what to call it) I am not talking about monetary accomplishment or physical acquisitions, it's something more powerful than that. ( lol… If you were a homeless person you would be a successful homeless person.) It's as if it's in the stars, the math's been done, the story's been written, you will dominate and thrive. I would say good luck but with you it's not necessary and it has nothing to do with luck, it's an innate quality you need only steer. Enjoy the next leg of this journey called life. You are blessed.
Kathy
Adam , you have been successful since you were born. Curious, intelligent, dedicated to what you believe in, true to yourself, your friends and your family. I am so very proud of you and what you have accomplished and I KNOW everything will turn out all right in a new direction. And, as a side line, it will be so nice to have you around the Thanksgiving and Christmas table while I am still able to host the family for these festive occasions.
Love you
A former colleague and I read your post and felt sadness, but one that resonated with us all too well.
As a designer and copy editor who just lost our newspaper jobs — careers — after decades of honing our skills in a dying medium, we must figure out Plan B. (Though like you, everyone tells us everything is going to turn out just fine.)
Congratulations for having the foresight and tenacity to go out on your own, and to take the journalistic skills you’ve cultivated and transfer them to the digital world. People still want news; journalists still want to write it, edit it and design it.
As my friend says: “So, in that sense, nothing has changed — except everything else.”
P.S. I still get the papers delivered. Two on Sundays.
Well, clearly, your writing career is on its way again. Whatever the format/media is, you will kick butt, Adam.