It's 6:43 a.m. as I type this, not 6:43 p.m. I have a need to go get toothpicks so I can make a recipe. I feel a need to ground myself somehow in these turbulent times. The act of making food can do that, because I can see that it is important to remember being human while I'm going through the being alive part.
It's now 6:44 a.m. and I glance over at the list of email messages. There are 825 items to respond to, and I'm hoping maybe I can knock that number down.
It's now 6:54 a.m. and I thanked one person for their support on Patreon. I don't really have a good mechanism to make sure people know how much I appreciate their support. I put most of the work into the reporting, and today I want to think about not putting out a newsletter. But it's early.
I also have to put together the bones for a story on trails in the community and seeing them as an economic development tool. This is due on Tuesday for C-Ville Weekly. I could also conceivably write a story about the Downtown Mall, but it is now 6:56 a.m. and I decide to spend a few minutes putting together some ideas.
I look back over at the email list and there are 815 left to go through. I still don't know what I'm going to do today. I do know that I've not made coffee yet, and think that might be a good idea. It's still dark outside, and the process of lightening is murkier than usual because of the rainstorm.
It's now 6:58 a.m. and I am halfway through an email thanking someone for a $200 a year subscription. I usually answer these after I've begun the work day and have never began this work so early. Today feels like a different kind of day because I know the world is scary but I'm making a choice to maybe think a bit more strategically about everything. Perhaps what is needed is a... I forget. The email needs to be written.
It's now 7:14 a.m. and the sky glows now as I listen to a band called Jack the Lad I've not heard before and I've written to the person who sent in the $200 subscription and some of what I wrote is this:
I never begin my day thanking
people for their contributions. I usually do that at the end of the day, after
I’ve written up a newsletter and turn to correspondence. Today I woke up
differently, though. The rain is comforting, the drops on my house competing
with the ticking of the clocks I have set up in the place I work.
I’ve been doing this now for
almost five years. At some point during the early pandemic I felt I needed to
get back to the kind of work I want to do – writing stories about a community
that no one else seems to want to write. For me, that’s a wide array and
there’s still so much more work I want to do! But, in the past five years I’ve
been the only information outlet that consistently covers the beat of local
government. I’m able to do it because at one point, this is the kind of work
that happened all over the country. For whatever reason, the economics of local
journalism shifted and we are where we are.
But I’ve spent my career
trying to do something different, and with support from you and others, I’m
able to keep doing it. I’m not a business person and so I’m still trying to
build more capacity, but I have become quite efficient at getting information
out. From an earlier age, I wanted to tell people what was happening. To do
that, I had to understand stuff, too. So I’ve spent my life writing as much as
I can, and I’m glad to be able to support myself. So, thank you for helping to
make that happen.
Now it's 7:18 a.m. and Jack the Lad has a song I like that makes me want to get up and move around and make that coffee and think about what kind of day it is going to be.
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