Freedom...horrible, horrible freedom!

Last Friday, I finally said goodbye to my job as a reporter for a bunch of weekly community newspapers.

There. I said it. That's about as close as I'm ever going to get to telling people what my real job was. Frankly, with a little ingenuity, I'm sure people could've figured it out already.

Anyways, last Friday I finally turned in my keys, picked up my single, lonely little box of stuff and walked out of the door after seven years of writing and covering local politics.

Working for a newspaper shows you a lot about the state of news media today and where things are potentially going. While dailies may bemoan their dropping circulation, a weekly newspaper has a unique ability to keep readers -- we're the only ones that cover the mundane meetings, your kids youth sports or the fact that the neighbor has one bitchin' holiday display. We're the ones that make it to the pancake breakfasts, the church festivals and the Rotary meetings.

It's also tough as hell sometimes. Strapped for cash, we're often doing 14 different jobs at once. It wasn't unusual to have someone play reporter, editor, photographer, copy editor and graphics person -- often in one day. Fourteen hour days were normal at times. For awhile I didn't feel right unless I had a late night or two under my belt each week.

I said once that I considered us the Bad News Bears of the newspaper world -- we seemed tougher, scrappier and more willing to do a bunch of different things to get the paper out. There was nothing about "That's not my job." or "I'm not trained to do that." You just did it -- or you learned how to do it. Frankly, it was kinda rough, but fun. I learned a lot about layout, newspaper design, writing as fast as possible and working with a variety of people.

It was kind of like Anthony Bourdain talking about working in the restaurant business. Journalism also tends to attract a certain amount of crazy -- after all, you have to be slightly nuts to be willing to work 14-plus hour days several times a week. It was fun for awhile.

Then BD came and everything changed. While I was on maternity leave, I didn't feel the same desire to write for work anymore. The thought of working from home seemed more like a burden than a blessing. So when the time came to leave, I didn't feel regrets about it.

What I do feel is some fear and trepidation -- I always said I wanted to freelance, and the opportunity is here. But I'm my own boss now. And I have no clue how to go about doing that. I'm a shitty boss. I'm a lazy person. How the hell am I going to hustle it as a freelance writer when I can't even keep my house in order?

But I have to. There's something in my bones that says if I don't continue to write, I'm going to lose my mind. I need to express myself and (hopefully) get paid for it. Jeff has said that money doesn't matter at times,that my job is to keep the house running smoothly and BD happy and healthy.

But really, I do feel better when I'm contributing something -- even if it's just diaper money. I want to feel like my writing is wanted -- that it's a commodity that people will pay for (or at least trade food, drinks or babysitting for).

Above everything else, I want BD to see that her mother had something else she loved to do besides take care of her family. I want BD to realize that there's more to life than just being someone's wife and mother -- which isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't have to be the ONLY thing in your life.

So I guess, here I go. Anyone need a writing mercenary?