A new year and a new way of thinking
It’s funny sometimes how a child’s words can open your eyes to a perspective you might not see (or want to see) for yourself, but that’s kind of what happened to me a few weeks ago.
I turned 49 last month. I certainly don’t consider that “old” by any stretch of the imagination and (not trying to sound conceited here) I don’t think I look 49. (Big props to my dad for the good genes in that respect!)
However, at my birthday dinner, our friends’ 10-year-old son asked how old I was and, out of curiosity for what he might be thinking, I responded by asking him how old he thought I was.
“58?” was his sheepish reply.
I just stared at him in silence.
“60?” he guessed again, tilting his head, squinting his eyes and raising his eyebrows, seemingly almost embarrassed to ask.
“Dude! I’m not even 50 yet!” I shot back. “Why on earth would you think I’m 58 or 60?”
“Well,” he explained. “You have wrinkles around your eyes.”
And he’s right.
I can look youthful. I can let my hair grow long, but there’s no covering up the fact my eyes are looking old around the edges, and I know one of the reasons why.
I’ve known it for a long time. It’s something I’ve said countless times over the last several years. I just didn’t know what to do about it.
The wrinkles are mostly a product of not getting enough sleep at night, and that’s mostly a product of me trying to do too much when it comes to my job.
Before I go any further, let me make it abundantly clear that I am not going anywhere. I am not stepping away from the paper, taking a sabbatical, or anything like that. After 22-plus years, I still love this job. But, after 22-plus years of trying to do it all, I have arrived at the point where I know that something has to give.
Back in July of 2017, I officially took over as the Sports Editor for both the Catoosa County News and the Walker County Messenger. Save for a couple of months that spring when Catoosa hired a new Sports Editor, I had been covering sports in both counties by myself since that year began after Catoosa’s longtime Sports Editor and my friend, Misty Martin, made the decision to leave the paper.
I knew then that it would be a monumental task to try to cover every team in every sport at all seven high schools and all eight middle schools in the two-county area, plus Georgia Northwestern Technical College athletics (before they were eliminated), and keep an eye on the area recreation departments, and anything else that was happening locally on a daily basis.
Still, I attacked it with everything I had and I’m still attacking it today...but it’s starting to attack back.
It’s one thing to have to stay up until 1, 2 or 3 a.m. (or later) to get game stories put on the website each night. I’m good with that and I still plan to do that if I must because I know how much it means for kids (and parents) to see their names in stories on the screen.
I also know how much it means to them and their families to see their names in articles and see their photos in the paper.
Which makes this next part difficult for me to type.
Starting with the Jan. 12, 2022 edition, you are going to see fewer stories and photos in print. Whereas in the past few years, I’ve tried to include recaps of every single game that every single team played in every single sport for the past 7-10 days, you will only see a handful of selected games in print, along with photos from those games.
The rest of those game stories and recaps will continue to be posted on our website (northwestgeorgianews.com), just as I have done for over two decades now.
Now, if you’ll allow me to pull the curtain back a bit, I’ll tell you why.
Almost every single article that I post on the website each night eventually has to be re-written to some extent for the print edition after grouping them together to create a new single story. I may have to change a few things in the original stories since some things I wrote on a Monday or a Tuesday, for example, may have changed by the time Saturday rolls around. And I may have to re-write upwards of 40 or 50 stories each weekend, depending how on many games different teams play and report each week.
I recently figured it up. Just in the winter sports season alone, with basketball and wrestling as the two main sports, I am currently trying to keep tabs on and write about 73 different varsity and junior varsity squads in both middle and high school in Catoosa and Walker Counties for those two sports alone. When spring sports start up, that number will double at the very least.
Sometimes, I can get a jump on the re-writes on Fridays, maybe even a couple on Thursdays, but most of the time it means that I’m working all day and half the night on Saturdays, not counting any games I might have to cover that day and night. And if I try to go out and have any semblance of a social life with friends and/or family on a Saturday, I have to get right back on the computer when I get home. I know of at least three times already since the start of school when I crawled in bed AFTER the sun came up, just to get everything finished on time.
And if I don’t get everything done on Saturday, I have to finish up my stories and photos on Sunday because the people in Marietta that design and layout my pages are on a fairly tight schedule and I have to have everything turned in so they can get started on time.
Even with all of that, I usually still have to wait to finish up until the last hour or two before the final deadline on Monday afternoon, so I have time to go over every story, every headline and every photo caption with a fine-toothed comb to make sure there aren’t any errors, grammatical or otherwise.
So it’s essentially this. I put in about a 40-hour week from Monday afternoon through late Thursday night, and basically another 40-hour week from Friday morning through lunchtime on Monday.
And less than a year away from age 50, I just can’t keep up this pace any longer.
This is NOT a decision I’ve made lightly or in haste, trust me. I’ve been contemplating ways to ease up on my workload for well over a year now, all the while continuing to push through and I finally came up with a plan just a couple of weeks ago, one that I truly hope works.
The plan is simply to cover only about one event a night, maybe two if I can swing it. While everything from all the games will go online, only select games from the past week will go in print.
I’m going to spread it around and make sure, as I have done since my first day on the job, that every school and every team in
every sport in both counties gets an equal amount of coverage in print.
The print edition will definitely be used for important stories, like tournaments,
championships, scholarship signings, features and things like that, but the game stories and photos will simply be a taste of what happened during the past week — quick snapshots instead of a full panoramic view, so to speak.
I understand that this might not be a popular decision for some of you. You want
to see your kids’ names and photos in print on a regular basis. I get that. I really do. No one dislikes change more me.
But this isn’t change just for the sake of change. This is change that has to happen for my own mental and physical well-being. I’m not asking for any type of sympathy
here. I created this monster years ago and I’ve tried to control it, but I’m finally at the point where it has to get reigned in, at least somewhat.
Know this though. While the sports section will be somewhat smaller and contain fewer articles and photos overall, it will not lack for
quality. I promise to continue to put everything I have into it and to continue to make it the best sports section of any small-town newspaper in the state. And the stories exclusively on the website will also get my full attention to be the best they can be as well.
I truly pray that this plan
works like I hope it will so I can continue to give you all my best because, like I’ve always said, that’s the only way I know how to do my job.