“Talkin’ to myself again, wonderin’ if this traveling is good. Is there something else a-doin’ we’d be doin’ if we could?”
I loved that song line the first time I heard it, on Jimmy Buffett’s A1A album, almost 18 years ago. As it ran through my head again not so long ago during a twilight drive down Government Street in Mobile, and later, shortly after sunrise, as I watched a school of skate swim past the pilings of the boat dock attached to my buddy Bart’s backyard, it still sounde
d just as good.
Traveling always puts me in a reflective mood, and that dock has become one of my favorite thinking spots in the world. I may never sit on it again, though, since Bart will probably have a new place before I get to visit him again. But there I was, talking to myself and asking myself about doing something else if I could.
Tough question. One I’ve asked myself often, knowing the answer each time. The question was as loaded as the one I asked someone during a recent interview: “Do you enjoy what you do?”
“I love what I do,” she said without hesitation. “I think it’s important for a person to be passionate about their work. And it shows. Like with you. I can tell you enjoy what you’re doing.”
“I never wanted to do anything else,” I’d replied before I realized it.
There was a time when I thought I did. The newspaper game, while a noble profession of which I’ve always been proud to have been a part, isn’t known for creating and fostering optimists. I had the privilege of learning the business from some of the last genuine honest-to-goodness newsmen on the planet – skilled professionals who’d spent their lives doing nothing else. And cynics, every single one.
Once, when a new, enthusiastic, idealistic reporter had joined our staff, I asked The Chief, “How’s she going to fit in? Is she already cynical?”
“No,” he said without looking up from the copy he was editing, “she still thinks the world is a nice place. Give her time.”
The cynicism eventually got to me too. Not that I didn’t have a good time with what I was doing. There's not much for which I'd trade those days, but the longer I did it, the more I lost sight of why I went into the business in the first place. The game just didn’t seem as fun as it used to.
So I got out of it. Was there something else a-doin’ I’d be doin’ if I could? I thought so, but couldn’t quite find it. So, after returning to the game a few years later, I discovered an aspect of it that I’d never really explored before. While working for a short-lived
There are similar stories all over The Magic City, too. Stories that need to be told, stories that will entertain, inform, uplift, and inspire. It is the purpose of Birmingham Profile to bring those stories to you. It is our hope that you will have as much fun reading them as we know we’re going to have telling them.
That may sound a bit corny, and maybe it is, but having fun is the reason I wanted to be a reporter in the first place. It just seemed like the coolest job to have. After all these years, it still is.
“If you’re on the road, trackin’ down your every night, playin’ for a living beneath the brightly- colored lights, if you ever wonder why you ride the carousel, you do it for the stories you can tell.”
--John Sebastian.
