New challenge

As an update from my last entry, I was offered the new position at the paper and I took it, mostly out of fear. I've just heard too many horror stories about folks who lose their job and are still unemployed a year later. It's tough out there.

So now I'm the high school sports beat writer. It's a tough job, one of the toughest in the building. I knew that going in. And I've never really thought of myself as a very good "reporter." Writing comes naturally to me, and I do enjoy it. It's the "reporting" part of the job, you know, going out in the world and *gulp* talking to people, trying to think of the right question to ask and trying not to make a fool of myself that I've never been comfortable with. That requires confidence and adequate social skills, things which I've never really had in abundance (if at all).

Which is the major reason I was perfectly content to sit behind my little desk designing my little pages. Even if the hours sucked. I was good at it and it required a minimum of interaction beyond the small circle of people in the newsroom.

So far I've done a few stories and they've all been pretty good, so I'm easing into it nicely. I may even be gaining a little more confidence in myself, something that's always been a problem. So I'm looking forward to a few new challenges. Things have changed a lot but I'm still here, still standing, maybe even thriving a little bit.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.