As someone who now writes for a living, I’ve found that the hardest thing to write about is myself. It’s not because I have nothing to say, in fact the people who know me best will argue I have plenty to say. It’s because the key to good writing is naked honesty, and it is very tough to be that honest about yourself. But, for you the reader, I will try.
In 2022 I graduated from university and for a whole year I was left to answer that uncomfortable question that every graduate knows all too well. What was I going to do next? In my heart I knew the answer. I love listening to and telling stories, and I love writing. Naturally, I figured journalism was a great career path, and once I figured that out I had to set out upon the seemingly insurmountable challenge of finding a job. It was, up until this point in my life, the most draining and stressful thing I have ever done.
The journalism industry has undergone some pretty seismic changes in the last couple decades, and for someone on the outside looking in there is an appearance of a shrinking job market and fewer and fewer opportunities. There is, of course, a greater demand for constant news to be pumped through the cycle than at any point in our history, but that demand has outpaced the ability to cover it the way journalists of old would have done. This is just an observation that I’ve been able to make, and at the time I thought it would be the nail in the coffin of a career that never got a chance to start.
To make a long but simple story short, I couldn’t find a job out of school, and after a year I was beginning to think I had made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I needed to shift my focus and find something else to do. Perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be.
Well, when this opportunity at the Airdrie City View was presented to me, I couldn’t believe it. The feeling was incredibly surreal, in fact it still is. I can begin to describe my excitement and enthusiasm, but I’m told that I only have so few words to work with in this column, and I don’t want to make blowing past my word count a habit.
What I will say is that I’m excited to tell stories that matter, and to serve communities that deserve good and honest reporting. I hope I can continue to add to the great work being done every day on these pages.
