Unless a miracle happens, I just realized that I will soon celebrate a birthday without a job for the first time in my adult life. I turn 52 on Sunday.I began a real career at age 21, right after graduating from Lynchburg College. For nearly three decades, working at newspapers helped put food on my table. My only prior work experience was in a smelly summer job as a teenager at the highway department, picking up trash and watching the older guys (the drivers of the trucks) figuring out new ways to do less work. Now I am an older guy trying to figure out a way back into a career.
I've been waiting for this post, as I knew it was coming, but I thought it'd be on Sunday & longer. The 1st unemployed birthday is the hardest. Your "problem" is you waited until 52 to experience it. If it had happened to you a few times in your 30s or 40s, it would seem less momentous. Still not fun or easy, but not so traumatic.
ReplyDeleteWhat you REALLY don't want is to be writing this same posting in 2010, 2011, and later. Now that would be rotten.
I pray NY doesn't die on Sunday or you're likely to jump off a cliff.
Just wanted to wish you a very Happy Birthday on Sunday...
ReplyDeleteHappy early birthday. Hopefully, in spite of everything you can have a day to relax and focus on yourself and your family.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for the b'day wishes!
ReplyDeleteIs the Pelkey case turnaround amazing? It blew my mind when I heard about it. God, I wonder what Billy Butka thinks of that one.
ReplyDeleteYou said something in one of your blogs, Mick -- wish I could find the precise one -- that hit home with me. It was a comment to the effect that some of the journalism done at the R-J (presumably under your direction) was among the best you had ever seen. I was glad to read that. I don't know if it's because it's true or because it was my first paper after college (and you, gasp, my first boss), but I have always felt that way myself -- that at the R-J, I saw (and did) some of best work of my life. They say you usually think of your first job first in this business, but I had a nagging sense that I was feeling more than sentimentality. Thanks for confirming that.
And Happy Birthday! God, you don't look a day over 50 ...
ReplyDeleteIf the sun's still shining...
ReplyDeleteyou should be smiling :)
happy birthday from florida!
janice
Nick, sometimes the right group of people come together at the right point in time and there's a kind of magic that is created. I think there was a run like that at the R-J. I appreciate all the work you, Ralph, David Rocha and others did during that time. You made me look better than I probably was. Unfortunately, that magic is hard to recreate, as I have discovered in work and non-work related matters in my life.
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