I watched The Wire first thing in the morning

I know this will change once I go back to work – I still have one day off for the sukkes holiday – but for now, doing something every day that is for my own selfish enjoyment is just so easy. With the hours yawning out in front of me – with plenty to do, but also plenty of time to get it done – I woke up, made a cup of tea, sat in my favorite chair that’s been in storage for 2 years, and watched the season 5 premiere of the Wire. By 8 AM, I was in a new Wire world (MILD SPOILER ALERT) ……………………………………………………………………………………………................... the Baltimore Sun City Desk.

I grew up in a newspaper family. Not a city paper, but a weekly rural paper. What the daily people do, well, daily – my mother and her colleagues did weekly. My mother was the editor, and also wrote everything from features to obituaries to news stories. Wednesday nights were late nights when I was growing up; before computers they’d often be at work til at least midnight. If he was home, my dad made our dinner. Sometimes my mom came home to eat and then went back write headlines, do final edits, and stick stories on the layout boards. I loved her work, and know it laid the groundwork for me to become a writer. In fact, my first writing job was as a sports stringer for a Worcester paper – covering high school soccer and basketball.

I never thought about it before, but the first year I wrote the Never Done blog was the first time I’d ever had a daily public writing deadline, and now that I’m doing it again, I feel the same mixture of pressure, responsibility, exhilaration, and by-any-means-necessary – to get the story out every day, no matter what. And it turns out that I love this work too.