Field of Steve

Sometime after 2 p.m. today people in the office began congratulating me. A couple did it at about the same time. I immediately sensed what it might be about, and a peek at the e-mail confirmed it.

Each quarter Scripps, the parent company of the paper I work for, hands out awards for the best work of a quarter. In February I had a piece run about conversion. I posted a short comment about it earlier on this site. I also wrote that somewhere down the road I’d explain why I wrote it. Today I learned the story earned first place for Scripps’ small newspapers in the feature writing category. The judges wrote:

“FEATURE WRITING: Resolutions are broken as easily as they’re made. People vow to exercise, then don’t. They pledge to save, but spend. They promise to be more modest, yet boast. Writer Steven Gardner of the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Wash., examined the phenomenon of conversion, but did it through local residents who told their stories of transformation. Beyond recounting their fascinating individual experiences, he also included experts in theology, spirituality and mental health to help explain the key elements of conversion. Gardner’s feature was beautifully reported and written. It was touching, but also smart and informative. For all these reasons, he wins the Feature Writing award for small newspapers.”

This award is a first for me, because in 10 years of journalism the only time I’ve ever won an award that wasn’t part of a group effort was an honorable mention for The Bremerton Beat blog. That was cool. All the group efforts were great, too. I know I’ve done other work in the past that was worthy of winning awards, but I’ve concluded that a lot of good stories don’t win prizes. Bad stories don’t win them ever. Not winning doesn’t mean the story was bad. It just wasn’t the best, or at least one set of judges thought it wasn’t so much.

On this story, though, winning meant something more than it would have on all those others I’ve nominated. This story was a passion piece. It had been brewing for years. I first talked to an editor about the idea of addressing conversion a few years ago.

What sparked the idea was my own experience of religious conversion to the Mormon faith when I was 11 years old. All but one family member joined the church at the same time. The one hold-out joined about 15 years later. I recognized other moments in life where conversion to things other than religion took hold. I can think of sudden moments where I was in love, where I chose journalism as a career, where the decision to move to another state seemed like the only choice possible. And I watched as other people made conversions to other religions, told stories of life changes regarding work and others of health.

Finally, on Sept. 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked and flown into buildings or into the ground. As I recoiled at the carnage and the awfulness of the act, I also wondered about the forces that drove the 19 men to do the horrible things they did. At some point in their lives they became so devoted to something that they were willing to commit unspeakable acts with the faith that what they were doing would make them favored with God.

Somehow I had the hunch that what drove them to do what they did, what motivates people to lose weight, what influences others to switch careers and others to overcome addiction might all follow a similar pattern.

It took the commitment of an editor, Kim Rubenstein, to put on paper a date I was to aim for to get the idea into publication. We didn’t meet that first date or the second one. The timing, about the same time many people have given up on New Year’s resolutions, worked out well.

In the end I learned so much more than what appears in the story. Some of what I learned involved the process of creating a long story that interests people enough to make them read from beginning to end. Instead of my usual practice of writing everything down as I thought of it, I looked at what I had and created an outline. Kim gets the credit for that, because she knew my weaknesses well enough to request to see one. The process of writing an outline served a huge purpose in making the actual writing process easier. The one exception was the ending, which in this case really was one of the last things I came up with. It became the single element I was complimented most for.

The story took a lot of work. Every interview I did for it was fun, but it was toil. There were nighttime interviews and at least one trip to Seattle. There was the creation of a draft that Kim had to read and make suggestions. From what I recall, the final version wasn’t vastly different from the first one. We took some things out. Originally I had thought it would have to run over a few days, but Kim convinced me it could work, and would probably work better, as a single piece.

Beyond all that today’s news about the recognition from the company matters to me, because it says what I thought was a question worth asking really was to someone else. I love that the judges wrote that the story was written beautifully, and smart. That’s good for my ego. It matters just as much, though, that someone thought the subject matter was valuable enough to include in a daily newspaper and to offer it special recognition. This award is acknowledgment of the question as much as it is of me or the story itself. And it’s validation moving forward in my quest to write stories of equal importance, though I have yet to figure out what the next big question is.

The award also carries with it a $1,000 cash prize. The first question I asked after hearing the news was how much money I’d get. It was a joke. I’ll take the money and it’s going to come in handy. What made me giddy, though, was the e-mail itself. It showed me the question and the story was every bit as important as I thought it was.

Last week I got around to writing about a proposal to allow Bremerton residents to have chickens in their backyards. I say “got around” to it because it had been on my list for months. A reporter from another paper got to it first and I was ashamed, so I had see if I could do better. You can read the story here, and watch the video, which isn’t quite as funny as I wanted it to be, but it was good enough and I wanted to go home.

Wednesday night I went to a city council meeting where the councilman who is leading this effort shared some of the rules. One is you can only have up to four hens. They can’t be roosters. Another rule is that the four chickens don’t count against the city’s limit on four pets, which is great because our cat doesn’t lay eggs.

This story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun is one I had wanted to do for years. As it is with every story, once it was written I counted all the ways I could have made it better than it was. That’s what writers do. Despite that, it was probably one of the most rewarding writing projects I ever did for a newspaper. In a post down the road I’ll write about why I wanted to do the story. Here’s one of the videos that accompanied the story.

Please, think of the reporter’s children.

For a couple of years I thought about Friday.

More than a year ago following another round of layoffs I wondered whether it was time to get out of the journalism business. I thought at the time, rightly as it turns out, that as long as I didn’t pull off a major blunder I could probably make it to Friday. So I opted to put off any thoughts of making a career change, until I hit the 10-year mark in journalism.

A couple of months ago I learned of an opening in a position that seemed would be the next logical, and more stable, place to go. The only problem I saw was that it would likely begin before the 10-year anniversary I had committed myself to.

On July 31, 1999 the culmination of months of work resulted in an orientation at The Daily Herald in Provo. I wanted to be in the Northwest, but I guessed the newspaper there would be a step.

The irony now is that the same force that made it possible for me to get a job is the one that’s making it difficult for me and others to hang on now. In the late 1990s the Internet was creating new opportunities for writers, not reducing them. With venture capitalists unwisely throwing money at any start-up Internet venture, the online community was flush with opportunity, including online news sites. That meant many traditional journalists were leaving newspapers for online sites. The plus for me was newspapers had openings. The Daily Herald, after some unknowingly clever angling on my part, offered me a job as a religion reporter, which a few months later turned into a city government/higher education job.
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Years ago a friend had a sandwich shop and the idea sparked my thoughts about what I thought would be a great concept for one. The only problem was I had no interest in running that kind of business. So I offer the idea to anyone willing to give it a go. You have to have it in a politically conscious area. You’d name it something like “Capitol Sandwich,” or something far more clever. The real cleverness would be the names of the sandwiches. On the list would be the “pork barrell,” which would have all kinds of, you know, pork. Then you could have the “conservative,” which would be something simple like peanut butter and jelly. Filibuster style would be extra long. You get the idea. Run with it.

For my next business idea, though, this does have real relevance to me, since it involves the industry I work in. I received an e-mail at work today about former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters trying to start a publication using the donation route and they’re asking for contributions of $20 a month. They’re calling the new outfit the Seattle PostGlobe. By the time you read the site might actually be at the address http://seattlepostglobe.org.

Here’s why I don’t think the idea might not have long-term legs. Years ago I was used to the idea of getting one newspaper. I’d pay for it and hope that it had all the news I needed.

Now, though, I regularly read newspaper sites from all over the country, and I don’t want to give that up. I want the local content, such as the stuff seattlepostglobe might offer, but I also want the news written far away. So give me something that perhaps will make me pay, but will let me have both local and national content.

If this idea has been tried or there are obvious reasons why it would not work, I’m all ears. Let me have it, or them.

My idea is that since we’re getting much of our news from the Internet, we could pay for it from where we get our Internet service. U.S. newspapers would have to work cooperatively on a plan that would have customers pay for news content, but they would not pay for it like a subscription to the print product they do now. You wouldn’t go to www.kitsapsun.com to subscribe to the online version of the Kitsap Sun. Instead, you’d go to your Internet provider. When you subscribe to the Kitsap Sun, you also get access to the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times, the Washington Post and every Herald,Tribune and Gazette in the country.

Such an arrangement might only solve part of the problem, the money papers have lost from shrinking circulation. However, smarter business minds than mine might be able to start with this idea and find a price point that works, perhaps even enough to pick up some of the lost classified and display advertising revenue.

This idea presents a lot of obstacles, more than I can imagine in one sitting. But I can’t imagine that they couldn’t be overcome. The big one would be getting readers to pay for it, even if you’re making it as painless as possible. I think, however, people would, or enough would to make it worth it to cut off those who wouldn’t.

In some cases it might create markets we don’t have now. Colleges could make the subscription part of the regular fees it charges. Businesses, those that wouldn’t have a policy against employees looking up news sites from work, could have the news at every computer.

The biggest challenge is that it would take virtually every print news organization cooperating to make it work. It would take agreeing on how revenues would be distributed. Would subscribers in Multnomah County in Oregon automatically see their fees go to the Oregonian? What about areas with two or more publications? What if a new publication wanted to start up and buy in? Would that suck revenue away from the established dailies?

These are all questions I again leave to those with bigger business brains than mine.

Run with it.

When I read that I was about to enter the mother of all anti-MSM rants I got a bit excited, expecting to laugh and then ultimately quit halfway through, tired of illogic and profanity. That’s what rants, especially written on the Internet by the anonymous, usually are. I was somewhat disappointed.

For starters, the writer made some sense. For enders, I leave the column feeling like it was written by someone who is little but bitter. So it’s hard for me to mingle the lot that made sense with the fact that the sense was put forth by someone who has been sucking on sour grapes for some time.

The parts that make sense to me, generally, are that much of the whining about the state of the newspaper business relies on some good-natured philanthropist or a large number of unwitting taxpayers coming in to save us. The philanthropy part could work, I suppose, but the idea that we need to be saved out of some sort of sympathy is appalling to me. I think people, despite all the bile they spew about us, appreciate what we do, especially when we do it well. To have a consistent operation that keeps government and others in check there needs to be a financial incentive, because while reporters accept low pay, they won’t do it for free. Somehow, someone’s going to find an economic model that works. Or maybe one model will work in one market and another will work in another. I don’t know that I’ll be involved in that news gathering when the new model arises, but I trust someone will be. Some entrepreneur, or a few of them, will hit on something.

I also liked the part about the idea that journalism schools are kind of a waste. I went to a good school and through a good journalism program. In the end, though, I think I would have been better off minoring in journalism and majoring in something else like political science or history. I also appreciated the thought that journalists kind of accept the low pay without much argument. I don’t do my job for the money, but I couldn’t afford to do it if it didn’t pay enough to meet our basic needs. The reason we’re in the Pacific Northwest, aside from the breathtaking landscape, is the news business pays better here than elsewhere. It does for now, anyway, because of the businesslike negotiating unions did up here.

What made me dislike the anonymous piece was pretty much at the end, when the writer revealed the self to be a former reporter. I got the sense this was someone whose genius wasn’t recognized, as one commenter wrote, and left bitter because of it. Frankly, that was me for a while, for the while that I was out of the business. So that person can rejoice at the news of newspapers dying for some legitimate reasons, but ultimately I believe the anonymous writer will never return, because that writer’s genius will never be recognized as much as the writer believes it should be.

The whole point of this blog was to have something with a history once I released another book.

About a decade ago I had a novel published, though that sounds haughtier than it really is. I had to pay a little bit, though not the typical vanity press fees. I had worked for a small publisher before and the fees seemed reasonable, because I was going to have the book edited and designed, or so I believed. In the end I was the editor and I wish I had been the cover designer. I lost all enthusiasm for the book once I got my copies and didn’t do a thing to market it. Friends and family who read it liked it, but what friend or family would say otherwise? Overall it was a nice learning experience and the book is a good reflection of where I was in my life before I got married. I thought there was valuable stuff for anyone in the story. The book sold a few dozen copies and you can still see it, or buy it, on Amazon. If the link doesn’t work, search for “Going Too Far” under “Steven Gardner.”

The desire to write books has never gone away. After 10 years of reporting I believed I’ve learned a lot about telling stories and plan to use whatever skills I have to tell my own growing up story. The story ends as I leave my family to begin serving my LDS mission. I hesitated for a long time to write the story, because I didn’t know what kind of hook I could have that would make the autobiography. Eventually I just started writing some of the stories I remembered in hopes that one day I’d stumble upon a theme that would work. Early on I considered the main theme being one of walking in two worlds, caused by my family’s conversion to Mormonism when I was 11. That may still be the overall theme that generates whatever may be interesting. But also in telling stories verbally I’ve found it not as difficult as I once thought to make the tales fun. I’m still writing the first draft. The next piece of work will be compiling a mountain of stories and weaving a tale that remains engaging throughout. It means I’ll have to throw out a lot of what I’ve written, or save it for some future project.

A few weeks back I came upon the idea of doing some research that can only be done in California, since that is where I grew up. I won’t give too many details, because it is, from what I can tell, still a unique way of weaving the story together. It does involve newspaper archives. So sometime before summer’s out I’ll make a drive down to Southern Cal. I hope to crash on someone’s floor for about a week as I make daily visits to the Los Angeles County Library in West Covina. I had thought about going as early as May, but that doesn’t look like it will work, because that butts up against our wedding anniversary and because the library will be open one fewer day than in a regular week.

I’m going to make several pitches to go get an agent or a publisher, but I’m also open to self-publishing. The process is much less expensive these days. I can find someone to edit for me so that I’m sure it’s a quality project. Designing a cover shouldn’t be difficult, especially for Diana. And I believe I can make the book sell well enough that writing books will be a worthwhile second career until it becomes a first one. After this book I want to do the same for my father, which would mean making another trip to Los Angeles and to Denver. Besides flattering my own ego and that of my father, doing these books will teach me skills in gathering historical evidence. With that experience it could make me even better suited for taking on more expansive projects, the kind of work done in The Devil in the White City, or American Lightning.

This was done to add value online to this story about the guy in the video below.

Sometimes I experience the lament of what I might have accomplished had I stuck with journalism for the 10 years that I got out. One movie I didn’t learn anything from was that one where Jim Belushi wishes his whole life he could have hit the home run in that game instead of striking out way back then. He got to see how his life would have been different and, boy howdy, did he want his old life back. I don’t care enough to look up the name of the movie. One of the two or three of you who read this can do it for me.

When I get over those thoughts, which happens the moment I realize any changes would mean those things that are good about my life (There are at least four of them and they live in my house.) probably wouldn’t be here with me right now, I rely instead on the idea that I’m what you call a late bloomer.

Truly, it has always been so. I married at 34, became a dad at 36, started slowly in all sports, and in what is probably the most telling way, I won’t see “The Dark Knight” until it’s out in the video store.

My goal for a long time was to be a columnist and book author. I did get a book published once but that only turned out to be a good experience, because the publisher I settled for did not perform as a traditional publisher and I did not stand up for the work enough to demand better performance. So now I know. In the end I’m kind of glad that book didn’t sell well. But hey, if you’re interested, Amazon is still selling it.

Well now at the age of 46 and seeing Barack Obama’s speechwriter is 27, I can get a little down.

Alas, there is hope. Malcolm Gladwell writes of late bloomers in a piece, Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity? in The New Yorker. In it he compares a couple of authors, one who took about two decades to hit it big, another who got it done almost by accident on his first attempt without anything related to reseach. He also compares Picasso to Cézanne. The pieces that fetch the biggest prices for Picasso are those that were painted early in his career. For Cezanne it’s the stuff he did when he was older.

Far from being a result of luck or just not getting discovered until later, there was a depth and skill in Cézanne’s later work, whereas Picasso’s strengths were best displayed at a time when his youthfulness played to his creative process. Gladwell, in a six-page article, sums up Cézanne like this:

Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn’t master it until he’d spent decades practicing.

So that’s the reason I spent much of November writing a novel. When that first book was finished and the experience was complete, one of the reasons I did not venture to write another one was that I was not all the impressed with the first effort and didn’t feel confident I was the kind of writer who could come up with a solid story that would sell. November’s experience convinced me otherwise. It wouldn’t have happened without the last decade in journalism and it probably wouldn’t have happened without the 10 years that preceded it. Funny thing, perspective is.

In February of 2008, the week Mitt Romney suspended his campaign and threw his support behind John McCain, the Arizona senator and would-be president came to Washington. I got to ride with other reporters in a van that took him from Boeing Field to a hotel in downtown Seattle. The other reporters did most of the talking. I held a video camera for a while and listened. I got one question in, a follow-up question.

Today I wrote about the event on my work blog, Kitsap Caucus. Go there to see my recollection of that day.

For weeks I’ve participated in gallows humor about the company’s annual Thanksgiving budget cuts. Surely the company isn’t trying to dampen the holidays, I know. But the two previous years were marked by announcements of layoffs. In 2006 we were told 10 had to go. Buyouts were offered.

Last year we got the same announcement, only cut in half, if memory serves me. More buyouts were offered, but only to certain employees. I didn’t qualify and wouldn’t have considered it if I had.

Yesterday we got the e-mail that we would meet about the budget today. In the last few months our editor announced his end-of-year retirement and I had some hunches about three other people. All of those hunches were educated ones.

A few minutes after 3 p.m. we gathered in the conference room, just as we did the previous two years. Six and a half employees had to go from the newsroom, and they had already been notified.

While the fact that there are not two months of mystery hanging over us is comforting, that comfort is equalized by the sinking feeling about an industry that is in the dark part of transformation. Someone will be providing news online years from now. It will probably be the Kitsap Sun, among myriad print publications that become online-oriented, offering print products as a niche. I just don’t know if my future includes being a reporter well into the future. I have enough seniority to believe my job is safe for a while, but it’s very easy to imagine an opportunity to do something else being extremely tempting.

I’m making no plans to leave my job. I have no offers to go elsewhere and I haven’t really been looking. For a few years, though, I’ve thought it would be cool to do something else and report on a freelance basis. And personally, the downside of having the good year I’ve had is that I can say I’ve done all I ever wanted to do as a reporter. I still love this job and when I stop being so tired I‘ll really be looking forward to the upcoming legislative session. On July 31 I’ll have 10 consecutive years in the business. I’d kind of like to make it to that milestone.

Yet it would bring me more joy to provide more for my family, to be home with them more than I am. Part of my intention in getting back into journalism back in 1999 was that a few years in the business would make me more marketable as an employee in some other business. I still have the goal of writing opinion for a living. So I guess I don’t really ever want to leave journalism. The business is going to change, though, and I have to be prepared for the idea that what I want might not match the reality in the industry.

When I got into journalism and did a couple of D.C. internships, this year was pretty close to what I envisioned. I got to cover the presidential election this year. I also covered local politics, but I’ll be honest that local races weren’t really the dream all those years ago. It was the national stuff. In reality I envisioned being a reporter in D.C. and living in Virginia in some two-story house in the woods. We’ve got the house in the woods, more or less, but we’re in the other Washington. I couldn’t be happier about that now.

This past year I got to attend campaign events by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, all in 24 hours. Later I wrote stories about national issues focusing on locals. Then I went to the Joe Biden event.

I feel so lucky to have been able to do this. I don’t know if I did it well, but so many thanks I give for getting the chance. Should I get a chance to do it again in four years, I’ll do it better. But even if I don’t, I’ll have always had 2008. This isn’t written without the knowledge that for many people 2008 was a downer year, despite the election. My only answer would be that while others were riding high in the late 1990s, I was struggling. And this year was not a major biggie for me in terms of money.

No, this year was rich because I was lucky enough to spend my year studying and immersing myself in what I think is the most interesting thing in the world, American politics. Whatever my career offers in the future, I’ll always have this, and it will have made me better in what I do. I don’t want to be too much of a sock-sucker (the Chilean equivalent of “brown noser”), but my bosses deserve thanks for giving me this chance.

Four years ago, the day after the election this wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be writing editorials by the next time an election came around. That didn’t happen. Again, I couldn’t be happier.

As I mentioned a day ago, I’m participating in the annual National Novel Writing Month, the challenge that is exactly what its title suggests. You write a novel in a month. There is no judging of the work, only the word count, and an acknowledgment that a lot of what will be written will be crap. As I said previously, the magic is in the editing.

When midnight struck on Nov. 1, I was in the middle of watching a movie. Once that ended I took to writing my first bit. To get to 50,000 words, the target for those doing this, you have to write about 1,667 words every day. I broke 2,000 the first night and went to be around 3 a.m. Before bed on Saturday I broke 4,200 and tonight I surpassed 6,300. So I’m about 1,300 words ahead of schedule.

I think I need to be. For one, fear of not finishing has overtaken me. I’ve got an idea that’s going somewhere and I’ve got a deadline. Second, I want the certificate and Web badge you get for doing the work. Third, there’s an election Tuesday and I’m aware that on that day it might be kind of tough for me to carry on with this project. So when I start again I don’t want to be behind.

The odd thing was, today I knew that even if I wrote nothing, I’d be ahead of schedule because I had technically done more than two days work on the first day. And yet later in the evening I decided to pick up the laptop, because I had thought of an ending and I knew where the story was going next. So I decided to write at least the ending. I did so and found out I had added about 600 words pretty easily. That was enough to get me going back to where I was in the story to continue on.

Tonight I had little intention of writing and no expectations about where I’d end up once I started, yet when I did so it was the most enjoyable chapter of this whole experience. I guess that should tell me something.

Friends at work convinced me to join the NaNoWriMo project this year. It’s where you write a novel, 50,000 words, in a month. I’m keeping pace after day one, keeping ahead of the count you need to finish. I’ve noticed a few things, though.

1. When they tell you that your stuff will include a lot of crap, that is so unbelievably true. I think anyone reading my novel would fall asleep, or decide to get off the toilet, within about 37 seconds.

2. That there’s crap is beneficial, because it reinforces my long-held belief that the magic will sometimes come in the writing, but it’s more often in the editing. I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year in spite of the other two projects I had in mind because the first few sentences of the fiction piece struck me from out of the Washington gray skies. I liked those lines. Everything else since has been really bland.

3. I put my book in the “Satire, Humor & Parody” category, but so far it’s not very funny. I’ve got a decent premise going, but I like the humor I find in writers like Steve Martin or Lewis Grizzard. They go along telling you a story and drop in lines here and there that strike you. I’m not funny in the first draft very often.

4. Editing is the beauty. Writing this novel will be fine. Editing it will be hard, but if this thing is to be worth a read at all, the editing will be necessary.

5. Come the end of November my intention will likely be to go back to my other projects and work on those with at least half the intensity I’ve demonstrated doing this work. My rationale for doing the novel was that it could spark some creativity that will benefit those works. On Dec. 1 I might change my mind.

With the industry I work in ensconsed in the depths of what one co-worker called a “death spiral,” I have concluded that finding extra work in addition to my day job would be a good idea. And what better avenue to pursue than one related to the one I’m on anyway?

Many days on the social networking site Facebook I see this catchy little number:

I had clicked on it before to see the basics. It looked pretty interesting and possibly useful, so I set it aside for a while.

The thought many of us who write have is that there will be opportunities for writers at newspapers for some time, but that papers like ours are moving more and more to having freelancers on contract. I don’t anticipate that happening to me soon, but the day could come within 16 years. Why 2024 matters is that’s when I’d be eligible to retire on full benefits from my company. We recently received statements showing what our pensions would be if we retired at 62. It’s not great money by any means, but joined by Social Security and whatever other income I can create, it’s not poverty. That I would be able to work that way for the next 16 years, full time with medical, is the big question.

One day a co-worker took me to lunch and we talked about what we want to do with our lives, a constant conversation among journalists. What used to be understood as wanting to do what we’re doing in some capacity is now a wide-open question. I concluded I want to write books and blog for a living. The book part is doable. Blogging maybe even moreso.

So I thought it was time to get serious about the ad on Facebook. On Monday night I went to update my status to the latest clever thing and the ad wasn’t there. I did some searching and found another company advertising for bloggers. That company wanted 25 submissions a month. That’s not out of the realm of possibility, but I wanted something a little less demanding. I finally found the suite101 ad, found out the company wants three submissions a month, then provided the information sought, including two news clips, and waited.

I got rejected.

This morning I received a response saying it was for one of the following reasons:

So, like many of the greats who’ve made it big as writers, I’ll have this rejection story to tell. Some Canadian company I’d never heard of with a stable of writers I’ve never read on a Web site I never visited thought I wasn’t suitable for the company’s audience. Time will tell whether I share being great and making it big in common as well.

Years ago I didn’t report an incident to a woman’s liking and she called one of the local talk shows and ranted about my coverage. As I heard it, I was incensed, coming unglued over the phone with my boss. I’m sure that was good move. Fortunately my boss wasn’t one to carry a long memory. Besides, he’s retiring soon, so even if he does remember it he can’t do anything about it come 2009.

Since that moment I learned how important it is to not let what readers think affect how I feel about myself. Read the criticism and see if it’s correct. If not, either try to correct or let it go. Sometimes that depends on the person making the criticism. We’ve got one reader with whom it’s just better to never communicate. There’s someone else, though, who I have in the past had a lot of respect for who is convinced I unfairly singled him or her out for censoring on the work blog. No matter what I do, nothing seems to be persuasive. Anymore I don’t think this person is willing to even talk about it, fine to just take random shots at me in e-mails or in the comments on the site.

I admit it bothers me. I offered today to meet over lunch or a hot beverage to talk it out. I’ve yet to hear back. Again, with some people it wouldn’t bother me. for some reason this one does. It’s proof that I’ve yet to overcome my codependency.

This morning, Sunday, I made the drive from Bremerton to Tacoma, about a 40-minute ride, to take in what will probably be the last major visit by a presidential or vice-presidential candidate to this state. Barack Obama is likely to win this place. The real question, as it was four years ago, is the governor’s race. Joe Biden, who would be Obama’s veep, came to Tacoma today mostly to tout his and Obama’s candidacy. But there was a strong message in support of Chris Gregoire as well. I got to cover it for the paper. Here’s the story on Sunday’s Biden event. And here’s the story I wrote about our governor’s race.

What America’s facing economically is something we reporters have been facing for the past few years. There has been a real uncertainty in the ranks and major exits from bigtime reporters. Well, bigtime for this state. At least four of the biggest players in Olympia have taken PR jobs, two with private companies and two with the state. I don’t blame them. Sometimes I envy them. Today was not one of those times. For someone who loves politics, at least most of the time, today was like ice cream. So this year I got to see Hillary, Obama, McCain and Biden. I even got to participate in an interview with McCain. You know who would be so proud? My mother. I wish she would have lived long enough to see this. I have faith she is seeing it and that it matters to her. Probably not as much as those grandbabies, but still. I mean I got to ride the bus with McCain. No matter what happens the rest of my life, I’ll always have 2008.

Go to 20:55 to hear my part.

Thanks to a post on Jim Thomsen’s blog, I was inspired to create a list of cities (which you can see by clicking the “continued” button below) I stayed in because of a job I had for two years not long after college.

American Business Seminars sold books and tapes for hundreds of dollars, mostly to people who were desperate to find their way out of their 9-to-5 lives. The company would send about 20,000 “free” tickets in the mail and if 200 or more showed up it was considered pretty successful in terms of attendance.

Each presentation would last an hour to 90 minutes. The major portion was used to describe how the program; such as making money on real estate notes, bonds or 900 numbers, worked. Then the hook would come. If you ordered these things on the phone, it would cost $495. But because they were there at the seminar, they could get it for $295. Oh wait, how about I give you $100 toward the program. That meant coming to the back table where the speaker would hand us each $100 to go toward any person’s purchase of the program.

It was schlocky as heck. I wanted to believe it was legitimate and probably should have quit long before I did.

It’s a period in my life that is the definition of a mixed blessing. I loved the travel, but wished I’d had another way to make that happen. I was no salesman. I hated being around the sales environment and genuinely felt bad for some of the people who bought from us. A couple of people I felt so bad for that I dissuaded them from buying some of our stuff. One woman told me she had so much to spend and asked for a recommendation. What I recommended required her to return something else. Another woman would cry as she bought every book and tape we had. At the end of the seminar I tried to talk her out of some of the programs she had, but she was resolute that day. I’m sure she spent more than $2,000 that day, most of it borrowed from other people. It wasn’t one of my prouder moments and was one that haunted me for years afterward.

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