Journalist, a career and a definition

A new year, like a fresh set of notebooks on the first day of school, makes me think about a lot of things. I wonder about choices I’ve made, choices I make and choices I will make in the future. Am I going down the right road? The forks are many, but I have, thankfully, always seemed to choose the right path for me.

I like to believe that everything happens for a reason, even though that sentiment makes me quite angry at times. What reason lies behind children starving, animals being abused and people being tortured? What reasons could possibly be relevant enough for all the ills of the world to occur? Perhaps these terrible things happen to make us grateful for what we have, or perhaps things don’t happen for a “reason” and they just happen because they have to. Either way, I have always found a certain thrill in recounting these stories.

Now don’t think I enjoy writing or reading about horrible things, I don’t, but if it isn’t written down, did it ever really happen?

Of course events happen all the time, but if no one recorded them, how would future generations know about them? We live in an information age and my thirst for “why” has always led me to seek out information on every topic. I am a journalist. Journalism is a career many laugh at — you don’t make very much money, you’re always put in horrible situations and newspapers probably won’t even be around in five years. Sounds like a solid choice, no?

While it may not be a solid choice, writing and story telling is something that has defined me my whole life.

I moved a lot as a kid and was always the “new” girl — I loved every minute of it. As much as I dislike the “get to know you games” played at camps, orientations and on the “first day” of school, work, etc; I love the thrill of sharing my story with others, AND the opportunity to learn theirs.

Any time I’m asked to describe myself I always start with, I’m a journalist, I’m a writer. Before I identify myself as a woman, a New Yorker and an Italian-American, I always, always, start with journalist.

And I always wonder what that says about my personality; about who I am.

Take a minute. Make a list of ten things about you. What’s at the top? Many of you will start with woman/man, child, husband/wife, brother/sister, or some other non-Job characteristic. I can’t tell you what it means, but for me, I think it means that this is not something I chose, but instead it chose me.

I live, breathe and eat the news; every time I read a story about journalists or watch documentaries I yearn to be in their position. I want to be Woodward and Bernstein, I want to be working at the New York Times. I want to be the one who makes, breaks and shares the stories. Life is full of exciting people, places and things and I think in today’s connected world we forget that. We forget how disconnected we truly are.

The reason I am thinking about this today is because of this article in the Washington Post. This man, Robert H. Melton, was a journalist at the Post and then he suffered a stroke and a brain injury. Before he remembered his family, the article said, he remembered that he was a writer, a reporter.

The article goes into great detail about his life, and that of his family, after the stroke, but to me, that particular point was most poignant.

When my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2010, I made a slideshow of photographs of their life and set it to music. My nanny cried, my poppy laughed and I sighed. A life is not made up of the sum of your bank account or how many times you go on vacation; a life is the people you share it with. A life is the moments you capture, in photographs and memories; a life is what we put up with all the other garbage for.

And yet this man, this brilliant man, who created a whole family before his stroke, could only remember that in his life he was a storyteller, a writer, a reporter.

What does that mean? Is there something special about this path I’ve (and perhaps you’ve) chosen that makes us forget everything else except the essential fact that we tell others’ stories for a living?

I like to think it is the “chosen vs. chose” argument — journalism, for some of us, is so deep in the very core of our being that we can’t separate from it. It’d be like forgetting that we have teeth, or arms, or hands. It’s woven into the fabric of our being. Maybe there’s a journalist gene, maybe not, but either way, I want to always, always, hold on to the “giornalista,” no matter where life takes me.

To be passionate about something is a gift, one I am never willing to take for granted.

Are you?