No gripes with newspaper

There hasn't been much activity on my site for the past few months and for good/poor reasons. I've been going through what is called slow fuse but total burn-out. Working 10-14hrs a day with few off will apparently do that and yet I had few complaints.

Despite the bizarre work schedule and writing time-lines, I enjoyed it and come out with no regrets. I put so much time and effort into my articles that it was occasionally depriving me of sleep and sanity. It didn't drive me crazy, just made me wonder why I tried so hard if next week it was going to be in the recycling bin or buried online. Completely worth it though to find and break my limitations and find out what I didn't care for or really enjoyed about the business of writing.

Short list of non-good times:

Fire & collision scenes = Not excitement or drama, only cold, icy & scary to hope it wasn't someone I knew.
County meetings and local politics = more interesting than I'd think and straight out of Leacock's writing.
Local swim meets = splash zone and worse on a cold camera lens and CMOS sensor, but 200 kids -- track a dozen?
School/community fundraisers = nice philanthropic attempts, but came up disappointingly short sometimes.
Economic development committees and a conference or two = exceeded my expectations entirely, but still dry.

Worst part, interviews going hostile or confused, or not even happening for lack of call-back leaving me with half/no article to write on a subject that needed sources to fly.

Most unfun was sleepless nights, away from my lovely lady and close friends, finishing up articles for a few days before deadline. There was always one with notes from a source didn't make sense, or wouldn't be good to quote as questionable facts, even less fun to salvage.

The good parts? When I was told I made a difference in someone's life or non-profit cause, it made up for the rest of a long haul. I wrote about exciting local sports and fun hobbies, tournaments and charities drives. It was an intrinsic reward to hear that I got it right about little known subjects like fur trapping, medical sonar technician, or martial arts training.


Free local sports games and fun concerts, more than I could race between the arenas, pools and community halls on a weekend before Monday deadline. Meeting and interviewing intriguing people was amazing -- more than a few of them shy/humble, but really interesting once they uncorked their hidden passions.

It was half frustration in getting let go because I finally admitted I wasn't cut out for the long hours, short deadlines of a small weekly newspaper, and hard to get to that point. It felt like I had no life even though I was doing an amazing amount of work out in the community and adrenalin high. Yet if I went out for a beer, someone would frown on it.

If I said something controversial, ignored a lobbying interest, or wrote unpopular truth, I would hear about it loudly.

What I did learn the most and enjoy was when an interview turned into something more than the 15 minute special news spot and a feature worth profiling something out of the ordinary. Those were the best parts when I could pitch something to my editor that was more than basics. For the record, editors have a wry sense of humour, wealth of experience and seem to love still learning new subjects.

When what I was writing clicked and I got a rare great response. When what people were doing was out of the ordinary and they didn't realize it until they read the article and went wow, that was too kind of you to paint us in that light, but thank you.

After writing nearly 250 articles and three car oil changes over the last six months, I saw my share of action -- moments of disbelief that I was having so much fun, or there lack of. Going through articles for scrapbook and portfolio, I had grown as a writer. So I can only hope writing independently and freelance will be just as amazing a journey.

If I get another shot at a newspaper? Great.

But the best part? My own desk and a press badge. Mission complete.

make every day an earth day, not just a fancy slogan

Is there only one day where we recognize the earth and all its environmental massive diversity might have some unresolved issues? I'm not even who to believe has the most inconvenient truth or who is the most right about what happened to climate change, good or bad, hot or cold, unseasonal or not. The planet probably goes through cycles of good days/centuries and bad just like everything else in life.

So take time to enjoy a walk in the sun poking through rain clouds. Notice how light is beautiful and everything sparkles on a glistening sunny/cloudy windy day. And likely there will be another one to follow this one.

Either way, here's hoping it's not going to be some brutally ridiculous end of the world as we know it tomorrow. Maybe it's accelerating spiraling downwards, maybe it's getting slowly better. All I know is that there's a lot of planet to absorb all that pollution and guess what, it's not perfect, but at least things are changing.

It's like learning to ride a bike, our knees are take a lot of punishment. Yet they heal and we learn to balance. It'll take a while but the earth will balance out as well.

So haul out and tune-up the old bike instead having to drive everywhere for small errands and simple pleasures. Traffic jams and stress are unheard of when you're cruising along a bike path or bike lane. It's all about habits and cultural shift of mindset when trying to make the place better.

The planet isn't doing well for all the industrial progress. At the same time, people are making a small dent here, a huge dent there.

Take for instance that 11 year old (likely with help from her parents, teacher, marketers & publishers) who painted a book's worth of birds. Olivia's Birds is a simple idea of fund-raising. It seems to be making a fair sized dent from a small effort and snowballed into over $200,000 towards helping sick birds from the BP oil spill in Florida. That is one little girl who cared. Good on her and isn't she just a media darling of a poster child.

What if her whole class pitched in? The whole school? Exponentially that's a lot of children who are aware something is wrong and they have an solid example of helping fix it. Maybe a few of them will stick to it and make a huge difference when they're older. Maybe they will figure it out a little quicker like around the Alaskan ship-wreck that is still not growing anything today or the Ukrainian radio-active mess 25 years ago.

Maybe it's simpler when you're young to have less cares and want to help out sick birds but why stop when we grow up? There's some pretty small things to do and give back to the planet for all the resources we take from it.

So don't just fill, but over-flow the recycling bin for what it's worth. Or at least try to reuse stuff when you can. Or you could always make your building sustainable -- Small dents, big dents.

Ever heard of LEED? It's a honourable award for an architectural firm to make a large scale building project eco-friendly. It isn't anything special after the building is opened, just a plaque at the front of the building.

Yet from saving trees on the lot and reusing materials from the old building and proper disposal of toxic materials, to recycling gray water, energy efficiency and skylights, it's an ambitious idea. It might be more expensive to build; such a building likely pays for itself in the long run in energy savings and sustainability.

It's just a wild guess that those architects around the world who decided to do this, probably hugged a tree once in a while, or at least respected it when they were young. They probably rode their bikes through fields too. If you can learn from that and make your own home a bit better, great.

If they can also make a huge difference in how buildings are making a smaller impact on the environment, why stop there? It's a ridiculous balance of legislation, grants, co-operation and innovation but doable. It just takes longer than learning to ride a bike. Some people get all excited about ecological impact, foot-prints and consumerism.... yaddah yaddah until deaf ears it falls on. Kinda like losing inner equilibrium and balance.

That LEED thing didn't happen over night. It probably took tons of planning, problem solving, and raising of standards. Huge building projects aren't exactly the best thing to experiment on so designing probably went slow. Some super smart people are trying to plan out and make the earth a better place too.

Those people just need some encouragement and patience. In the meanwhile, hug a tree. A tree has seen decades and it's still here. Those crazy iPads or PDAs or whatever, they come and go. A tree can grow for centuries.

So take a moment and hug a tree. It sounds like crazy hippies' talk, but remember when you were a kid and could stare up into a huge peaceful tree? It's worth protecting for the amount of animal, plant and soil life it supports. No wonder environmentalists thought it was a good analogy for the planet.

Why not notice the earth every day? It's like smelling the roses once in a while, noticing the small stuff.