The world stops for no journalist

This has been an unbearably strenuous week.

Sometimes, I forget that the world continues on when I'm in the newsroom. It can be a blessing and a rather unfortunate mental block, too, honestly.

I can't... well I'll leave the personal stuff out of this, but it's strange. When you work at a newspaper, you hear about all sorts of tragedy going on in the community. We're human, though, so it's not as if it's all just a chance for a breaking story, although sometimes it is.

There's something absolutely beautiful about how fleeting our lives are, though. For some reason, I get comfort to know that, if I were to be severely disabled or die, that writing for The News Record has helped some people. Changed their lives, even. Brought some light to some obscured issue at hand that required sitting on at my desk and highlighting numbers and facts and quotes until 3 a.m.

It is a job for us. But, I mean, we're not writing fiction here. Although sometimes I do like to dabble in something a little less cut and dry, the news desk is where I belong. It's a place that I think I'll remain for the rest of my life.

I have no doubt that most of the current staff will catch on somewhere in the journalistic world if they choose to. They're that talented. Our "job" is to change lives, it's just unfortunate that ours can be put second when it happens.

I love journalism more than anything. I don't think I could have chosen a more befitting major for my personality, but, sometimes, after going to Kentucky at 1 a.m. to get some brews and sitting in a screened porch with some friends and bouncing ideas off of each other regarding the future of journalism, life really knocks the wind out of you.

Good luck, everyone! I'm sure I'll see you in the funny pages even after I graduate and end up making $90,000 at the New York Times and blowing it all on Lucky Strikes and Scotch.

-Gin