A Day Late and A Line or Two Over

The big break in journalism I waited a year for came to me this evening. It just came two months too late.

I had been eying a job at the Concord Monitor for at least that long, either as a business writer or a general assignment/jack of all trades reporter. From my perspective (and supported by my colleague at the time) the paper was just what I needed to accelerate the growth trajectory that would one day take me to a major metropolitan daily. It's one of the best small papers in the country, with reporters leaving there to go big places, in one of the great small cities in the greatest region of the country: New England.

It also happened to be where my best friend lives and would have required a relatively short move.

Unfortunately, my covetousness coincided with one of the worst recessions ever for newspapers and subsequently turned off the spigot for any hiring except at the highest and lowest of levels. So I sat put, waiting for things to improve. And then New York happened.

So when someone approached me with the FYI that the Monitor was looking for a reporter, I felt a twinge of jealousy. The sadness could have been brushed off if I hadn't just learned that another interesting opportunity to write for a Boston-based public policy magazine was available, or if I hadn't received a phone call from a New York-based financial website looking for my services (which I cannot provide now since I am currently under contract for the next 10 months.)

John's sarcastic quip when I told him about the Monitor position: "Well if you want it that badly, we could invest in a plane because that would be a real bitch to drive every weekend."

I laughed, but it was true. All of these opportunities are out of the question now.

It's hard to know what the appropriate emotion is. I'd be foolish and deceitful if I said I wasn't the slightest bit bitter about the situation. Journalism is a nasty, grueling job, but there are parts of it I definitely miss and I know I could still do it and do it pretty darn well if I had the right opportunity. There are days when I'm confident I'll be back in the saddle again sometime soon, but there are other days like today when I wonder if this layoff will erase some of the gains I worked so hard at an early age to earn.

My frustration with my current job and the lack of intellectual stimulation does not help the situation.

(Just as I wrote that paragraph with my butt on the couch and my feet on the ottoman, John crawled up like a kitten and laid his head on my shoulder. "Whatcha doin?" he asked in his funny four-year-old tone.)

Bitterness changes to melancholy with an anxious tincture, though, when I remember my mother's signature saying modified by my cynicism: True liberation is about the ability to make choices, but for every choice you make to do something you choose not to do something else.

I chose long ago to be in a relationship with someone for the rest of my life. Economists agree the emotional, mental and financial stability associated with a serious, monogamous, long-term relationship provides benefits that far exceed any other single life decision, whether it be personal or professional. This I would never give up. Yet I acknowledge this choice therefore rules out other choices, like going for things on a whim and living the vagabond life I might have imagined as a wide-eyed teenager. I could have my cake and eat it too, like the women's lib folks would have me believe, but in my mind the consequences would be unacceptable.

Wondering what life could have been, or should be, or will be on my current path is one of the more frustrating parts of living a life ever-examined. If I have sacrificed greatness for contentment, so be it, an exhilarating and exhausting lifestyle for dirty dishes and trips to Bed Bath and Beyond, all is well. For when the fame and success and money fade -- as it always does -- I know I have someone to come home to.

The best laid plans of mice and men

... come to naught or no end.

I promised myself I wouldn't do this. I was going to scramble what shards of self-motivation I had left and would force myself to blog at least twice a week. It would be good therapy and keep my fingers fast and flexible.

The last time I wrote on this page was nearly two weeks ago.

Of course there are plenty of excuses as to why this page has gone dormant, most notably a 6'5" excuse. It just is so much harder to sit in front of a computer screen pounding out words and turning them into witty phrases when you have sad puppy-dog eyes looking at you wanting to watch a movie or go out for a run.

Yet a writer that does not write is just dust. It doesn't matter if you have three freelance stories pitched out there waiting for a response or a half-dozen seeds of a story in various stages of concept development; it's all about the words. And to get those words on paper, you need some inspiration. Or discipline.

Lately, I've found neither.

It's a slippery slope, not writing. The practice is labor intensive, terribly inefficient and simultaneously mind-blowing and brain-busting. But at is best, it is one of the most relaxing and exhilarating experiences one can have. In some ways the latter was beaten out of me by too much of the former as a professional writer. My greatest fear is one day I stop writing for a week and that week becomes 10 years. Maybe that's a bit irrational, but if you know my personality you know my compulsiveness goes both ways.

I promise to be better on the discipline side of writing for my benefit, and maybe with a bit of inspiration, it will turn into your reward.

Summertime and the Livin' Is Easy

All good things must come to an end, particularly summer in April in the Northeast.

Wednesday was arguably the best day since I moved to New York. Walking out the door I could feel the warm breeze on skin that hadn't seen the light of day since October and hear the birds heralding the start of hopefully 5 long, easy months. I actually had an intellectually stimulating project at work, even though it kept me indoors and blocked from viewing the scantily clad youth walking Midtown East. And when I got out, my favorite pain in a Republican's side had ID'd a bar on the Upper East Side with outdoor happy hour.

$3 Yuengling draughts + Yankees/Red Sox + a warm evening breeze = heaven on earth.

But the sudsy glow I felt after my fair share of beer for dinner slowly faded on the LIRR home, foreshadowing a rough (and hungry) morning today. The sun still shined, but with not nearly the power it exhibited 24 hours prior. This weekend, we slide back to what is typical for April in New York: a chilly rain.

But at least a little bit of sunshine will peek through on Saturday -- John comes back from the Old South.

A Sprouting Tree

For the second time in three years -- and the first time as a married couple -- John and I were not able to celebrate Easter together. This is always a tough holiday to be apart, the most important holiday of the year and the one where our couples fashion style (what little we have) can shine. Easter is also a time to celebrate life and take joy in what gifts we have been given.

So it is fitting that this Easter weekend was one that evoked much thought on the concept of my family life: past, present and future.

This four-day weekend was the first time in years that all three Noblett children resided at 53 Magnolia Circle. In many ways it evoked old times: playing card games and trivia till I got sick of losing, playing taxi cab and delivery service, speaking in shortened verse with references to Disney movies and bodily fluids, and making sport out of my mother's idiosyncracies. Yet it was apparent that times had changed.

For one, I camped out in the spare bedroom/den to avoid the war zone that was my former bedroom. It was my one place that I could crawl into when normal goings on got under my skin. My brother bopped in and out of the house more than I did, also something out of the ordinary. But the biggest difference in this weekend compared to past Noblett family functions was not physical. It was emotional.

When I first walked through that green door, I knew I was home in my head. Yet in my mind and heart, it didn't quite feel right. I never was completely relaxed when I sat on the couch, and the sound of the sump pump turning on and off in the middle of the night jostled my sleep -- despite having lived with police sirens and honking horns outside my window in Boston. I loved spending time with my family, but I had the sense (and I believe it was mutual among my family) that we'd be just fine going back to our own homes at the end of the weekend.

This weekend was the first time I distinctly identified myself as having branched off from my family tree. Living in Boston, from college to that liminal time between getting married and John leaving for Long Island, always had the feeling of summer camp (all 5+ years of it): fun to be away but nice to return to the creature comforts of home. Now home is in Valley Stream, if only temporarily in the physical sense. Home is with John and our crazy adventures to Costco and the Catskills.

The paradigm of marriage has finally set in.

Easter was also a chance to peer into the family of the future. John's oldest sister broke the news of her pregnancy, the first of a new generation in the Thompson clan. My in-laws, of course, are over the moon and I could even hear a bit of excitement in John's voice in being the Funny Uncle. While I didn't see and leafy trees while I was home, the news was like seeing the first bud of spring -- the promise of new life sprouting.

God willing, no new branches will be sprouting from my family tree for some time. Yet the holiday was a perfect reminder that home and family, like life, is both ever changing and everlasting.

Waiting in Line for Forgiveness

To Christians, Good Friday is a day to remember what was done on behalf of our sins and shortcomings and to seek forgiveness and mercy. Catholics believe the way to receive forgiveness is through Confession. It is a time to privately express your regret for those times you turned away from God and a commitment to be reconciled through some act of charity or penance.

While the experience can be quite liberating, going to confession, as many Catholics can attest, can evoke the same kind of dread as going to the DMV. But Monday night going to confession and going to get your license renewed became a much more similar experience.

(You didn't think I was going to go on a spiritual treatise, did you?)

Let me explain, every Catholic church on Long Island opened their doors on Monday from 3pm to 9pm for people to go to Confession. With that wide of an invitation -- and the promise of going to a homemade soup supper afterward -- the Catholic guilt set in and I walked straight from the train station to the church after work. I'd been to past Holy Week confession sessions, usually sparsely attended and extremely efficient. You could get God's mercy faster than a Domino's pizza.

My past experiences combined with the plethora of priests my church is blessed with (3 plus a Hispanic minister) I thought that I would be able to do what I needed to do, eat my soup and be home for whatever comes on TV at 8pm.

To give you the lede, I waited for two hours to have my 5 minutes with a priest. As soon as I walked in, I knew this wasn't going to be a drive-thru service. There were about a 15 people on each priests line. A kind older woman explained to me the matrix, Father so-and-so's line starts here, Monsignor so-and-so's line is here. I didn't really care who the priest was, being new and not knowing any of them well. So I sat in line for the young associate pastor.

And sat. And sat. I looked across the way and saw some of the other lines moving a little quicker, but sat as quietly as I could where I was. "Good," I thought. "People are telling their sins and being forgiven. Not the most convenient time for me, but good for them."

But the longer I sat there -- half-hour, 45 minutes, an hour and 15 minutes -- the more I realized EVERYONE was in there for 20 minutes each. Some people sitting next to me started complaining. A couple of people stood up and left (I guess they only had an hour allocated to salvation.) But I didn't want to add to my sin list and hold everyone up, so I bit my tongue and tried to people watch as much as I could considering the circumstance.

At 90 minutes, things changed. I realized, like the DMV, that this had turned into a game of survival: do whatever is necessary to get the job done. I saw a gap in the line of another priest. It was like I was in the grocery store: do I jump ship now or will karma bite me and suddenly the line I'm in speed up? I went for it; it really didn't matter except that my sins are forgiven and I can get home in time for reruns of 16 and Pregnant.

I looked over to the Hispanic minister's line which was empty. "I wish I spoke Spanish," I told the woman sitting next to me, "because I'd go see Fr. Fernando. He's got no line."

"I'm sure he speaks English," she said.

"Yeah, but it's kinda like using the handicapped bathroom. The one time you go in there is the time when someone else needs it," I said.

At a quarter to nine, I finally received my penance. I did it, and moved on to soup and home to sin no more.

I didn't realize the population density issues of Long Island extended into the Confessional. But sometimes forgiveness takes a little bit of effort and a lot of patience.

Happy Easter.