The 12-Step Program for Recovering Journalists

Hi, my name is Jackie. And I was a journalist.

If not in those exact words, that's how I start off every introduction to a new person at 1011 1st Ave. (gotta come up with a better nickname for it.) If I don't explicitly throw the J-word out in the first meeting, it comes out in conversations of all sorts: politics, economics, crazy people on the street, etc. Everything I do is in relation to a single fixed point, or two-and-a-half years to be exact.

I need help with assimilating back into the real world.

There are many things wrong with carrying around my reporting baggage, not the least of which is the getting off on the wrong foot with people who annoyed by the references to a past life (L, you know what I mean.) But I'm also beginning to realize that few people actually understand what it means to be a reporter always on the go, always under pressure. It truly is a bizarre world if you think about it.

And I'm not just talking about the drinking and the refined sugar consumption.

So far the hardest thing to assimilate into is the change of pace. My first five days were some of the most boring, and the most isolating, of my life (see past post.) I don't necessarily blame the management, however. In retrospect, my total one-track mind when it comes to work (get assignment, report, evaluate and synthesize, write, file -- often times multiple stories at the same time) does not necessarily match most other work environments. There are an infinite number of things I could be doing, but it's incumbent on me to come up with them and then complete them. It's a matter of finding my own way.

There are other major changes, too, like the drastically decreased amount of interaction with my office-mates, much less the outside world. I never thought I would miss the calls of random PR people pitching me stories about companies from Kalamazoo, Mich., but hey, it was someone I could yell at. I miss the sound of tens of fingers pounding keyboards on a Tuesday afternoon and the thrill of having it all come together at the very last minute.

But what I miss most of all is Friday morning, when I could pick up the paper with whichever hand wasn't holding my Starbucks cup and see the physical manifestation of my work for the week. There's nothing like that at God Inc.

I'm sure the longer I'm outside the asylum the more comfortable I'll feel. But I don't know if I'll ever get over seeing my name in messy black ink.