Member-only story
A history of quitting: My life in journalism.
You asked for more detail. Here you go.
In my first real journalism internship, I wrote and reported pieces for a local alternative weekly. I was paired up with the features editor as a mentor.
This guy was great. He was a great writer, and was actively working to be better all the time. He was actually conceptualizing a book when I arrived, which I thought was awesome. I was too young to know that “conceptualizing” a book usually means that you’re thinking about writing a book but not actually writing. That would have tipped me off about the nonsense yet to come.
A young budding journalist needs two things to succeed: Encouragement and regular reality checks. The Guy was visibly exhausted by my enthusiasm for writing. And my ambition — I was once compared unfavorably to Nicole Kidman’s character in To Die For. That’s more than a little messed up, considering he was supposed to be nurturing me to go out and conquer the world one day.
