Why I was never a good fit for TV news, or perhaps TV at all
When I was going into high school, I was on a journalism track. That’s what I was good at, that’s what I was excelling in, and it was just assumed that I’d go from having been an MVP in journalism in junior high and high school to doing pretty much the same thing in college. There were a few factors that no one really could have predicted, however: starting with my mother’s death in 1987, home became anything but a welcoming place, and more and more I was concentrating on opportunities to work, because work was a bulletproof excuse for escaping the hell that was home. I flamed out as a college student in 1992. I’ve never set foot in a college as a full-time student again. And before that happened, I had surprised everyone by opting out of the journalism track I was on in my freshman year. I had an instructor who was challenging; any other time that would’ve been fine, but I was being subjected to daily doses of full-blast adversarial at home. In my mindset at the time, anyone who was even slightly challenging toward me was reading as adversarial. My failing, not my instructor’s. It was probably a good idea to drop out of school when I did – actually, I still think to this day that my life would’ve turned out very differently if I had spent a couple of years trying to make it in “the workforce” (of which, as a part-time radio DJ, I was barely even a part) and then gone to school. I probably would’ve had a much better idea of how hard it is to eat and keep a roof over my head with no degree, and I probably would’ve worked my ass off for it.
But that only happened to Bizzaro World Earl. I never got a degree. In anything. Now it seems I can’t get a job because of it. Which is how I have all this time to write stuff for you fine folks out there lurking in the blog fog.
So you can imagine my surprise when I later found myself working consistently in a professional field which made use of that truncated journalism training. … Read more
