2004-07-19 @ 10:54 p.m.

im emotional and angry about everything these days. and just when i think im happy. you know. im cool. im alright. with one thing. ill just find another career path. ill just do something else. and ill be okay with it. just when i convince myself that ill be fine doing something else. i have times like this. i have days like today. i have weekends like this last one. and i want so badly to start shooting regularly for a newspaper again. so badly. i fucking love what i do. and you know what? i am really fucking good at it. just have a look at todays paper. and have a look at the queue in newsphotos right now. the photos from today, waiting to get in on tomorrows paper. thats right. i am good at it. and you know what? this is the first thing in my life. ever. in my life. that i have been able to say that i am good at.

i may not be a fabulous documentary photographer. and i may not change the world with my photographs plastered all over national geographic and time and newsweek. but i can change my little piece of the world in my little piece of this county. and its called community journalism. and its just as important. and honestly? i think its more important. and i am so all over it. ive been doing it for over three years. and ive got it covered. i fucking love it, there is nothing else like it. and guess what. i am good at it.

and i want my old job back. or i want a new job at another paper where i can make my closest friends and laugh my way through ninety percent of my day. like i have now.

and to me. you know. there is no greater feeling than seeing a photo i took the day before sitting there right smack on A1. i love waking up in the morning and driving downtown and the first box i pass on my way to the office is the one in front of the sub shop and i can see. right then. as i drive by. whats on the cover. and it always makes my eyes shine. still. almost four years later. it always makes my eyes shine and my heart warm. i still get these tingles. when its my photo.

and its days like today that remind me how much i love this job. its having the ad director come over to complement me on two photos on A1. and talk to me about that other job at the vermont paper. and hes going to talk to martin. and he just doesnt get what is wrong with those people up there and thinks talent like mine is going to waste working fill-in.

i want my job back. i almost called the full time photographer today and just left her a message and said i want my job back. tell me how to make that happen. and as much as i know she wants me back there and so do our editors and reporters. i also know that isnt fair. i left on my own free will to pursue new things. and the new photographer sucks but that isnt my problem. and i get all tense every time i see a paper with his photos in it. because theyre horrible. theyre just so goddamn horrible and i feel such a responsibility to this community because he is covering these events that last year and the year before that and the year before that i was covering. and i watch him like a hawk if i am at a baseball game or something and he is there shooting it. i seriously cant even watch the game. i really need to let it go. i know. its just. in my view. he is just doing such a disservice to this community.

i really need to let it go.

and as much as i want to idealize. the reality is that things are falling apart there anyway. the brilliant editor left a few months ago. two of my friends got other jobs and have left in the last two weeks. and another may very well be leaving soon for a job at a prestigious college nearby. and he told me today. if only he had gotten the editors position, he would have fired the full timer in a heartbeat and given it to me. if only.

its just that what i do is so inspiring. this is the perfect job for me. i love learning new things. i have the attention span of a gnat, but an eye for detail to the nth degree. i love the little burst of adventure that every new assignment brings. the creativity that you have to bleed when youre taking your seventy ninth portrait of the week. i absolutely love meeting ten new people every day and experiencing ten new things that i never would have experienced if i didnt have this job. and i love going to an assignment. like i did today. and seeing a woman whos events i used to cover all the time. and spending thirty minutes catching up with her. and the excitement of the ill be six years old on thursday girl spinning her umbrella when she asked me why i had a camera and found out she was going to be in the newspaper.

i love what i do with so much passion that i cant even put it into appropriate words. i feel such an affinity with this community. these towns i cover. and this job expects so much from me. it demands so much from me. and that demand and expectation. i think. i am realizing. that is exactly what i need in my life.