Don’t Let Inertia Tie You Down: Adversity Leads to New Opportunities

Posted on | March 17, 2010 | No Comments

By Mar­cie Eanes

March 17, 2010

Recent upheavals in jour­nal­ism have left peo­ple scratch­ing their heads at this unprece­dented level of uncer­tainty. All the hard work of build­ing a career can eas­ily dis­ap­pear with a pink slip. After pack­ing up your desk, com­mis­er­at­ing with col­leagues, and try­ing to put on a brave front, the ques­tion of what to do next is one that’s not eas­ily ignored.

I know. I’ve been on the path of jour­nal­is­tic redis­cov­ery because of resid­ual injuries I sus­tained in a near-fatal car acci­dent in 1985. I was phys­i­cally unable to return to the news­room. At that time, there were few resources, sup­port groups, or even the Inter­net to help me.

It would have been easy to hold pity par­ties for myself, espe­cially since my acci­dent hap­pened only six months after grad­u­at­ing from Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity in Mil­wau­kee, but unyield­ing sup­port from fam­ily, friends and even my doc­tors kept me moti­vated to prac­tice my craft.

The fact that I love being chal­lenged has served me well. In col­lege, pro­fes­sors labeled me as “unfo­cused” because I took intern­ships in pub­lic rela­tions and mag­a­zines. I even free­lanced instead of just con­cen­trat­ing on school and news­pa­per report­ing. Now I have the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I did the right thing. I am apply­ing nearly every skill I learned from those expe­ri­ences to cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties. I’ve done copy­edit­ing, writ­ten for antholo­gies and pro­moted authors. Not every­thing resulted in rev­enue com­pa­ra­ble to what I made as a reporter, but the expe­ri­ences have kept my skills current.

I’m not afraid to say I’ve failed, either. Ghost­writ­ing is some­thing I won’t do again. After work­ing with three dif­fer­ent clients, I found I didn’t have the patience to han­dle the details required to do it. Dif­fi­cult clients who didn’t under­stand the mechan­ics of edit­ing pre­sented a chal­lenge at first. I would get them to hire me by telling them to do their own com­par­i­son shop­ping before con­tact­ing me again. I lost a few, but most returned with few com­plaints. Still, ghost­writ­ing is not for me.

Explor­ing related tal­ents that are not news­room skills has brought me much more sat­is­fac­tion. After expe­ri­enc­ing the deaths of sev­eral close rela­tions, includ­ing my par­ents and youngest brother, I began writ­ing poetry.

Ini­tially, I balked at the idea because I didn’t think I could do it. But a friend’s per­sis­tence helped me put into words my intense grief. This genre has led me to unex­pected places: I’ve been a poet-in-residence for a cable tele­vi­sion show and I’ve made appear­ances on col­lege cam­puses and other venues around the country.

I recently pub­lished my first book, “Sen­sual Sounds,” which explores love in var­i­ous forms. I’m also prepar­ing for sev­eral book sign­ings – the most spe­cial of which will be at my home­town library in Racine, Wis­con­sin. I’ve also con­nected with for­mer jour­nal­ists who are now play­wrights, actors, and chefs by join­ing sev­eral groups out­side of the jour­nal­is­tic arena.

My advice to any and all dis­placed jour­nal­ists is this: Don’t be afraid to try. All those skills you used to per­form your job in tra­di­tional jour­nal­ism set­tings are pre­cisely the ones that will help you find your niche again.

It’s easy to be skep­ti­cal, detached and cyn­i­cal, but it won’t help you pay the bills. Nor will it bring last­ing mean­ing to your life. So widen your social cir­cle. It’s great to have friends in jour­nal­ism, but myopic think­ing will keep you locked in iner­tia. So many peo­ple today are expe­ri­enc­ing career upheaval in one form or another. If you have the time, give some­thing back through vol­un­teer­ing or men­tor­ing. Or just breathe. It feels good.

New oppor­tu­ni­ties often come in unex­pected packages.

Our Com­mu­nity mem­ber Mar­cie Eanes explores love in var­i­ous forms in her new book “Sen­sual Sounds,” which is now avail­able on Amazon.com.

Category: Archives, Books, Commentary, Layoff, New Ideas, Solutions, Writing
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