Reporters have to keep their emotions in check. It’s our goal to be objective. And most of the time, it works.
But it takes a toll. You can only keep your feelings and emotions in check for so long before something has to break. And for me, it broke two days ago.
The catalyst was small. I got mixed up at a couple city council meetings and wrote some stuff that was wrong. It was corrected in print and that was that. But it was enough to really kick my butt. It absolutely destroyed my confidence. This was stuff I’ve done a million times and I’m screwing it up now? That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
Like I said, it really messed with me. I had been cruising and all of a sudden I’m screwing up routine stuff? If I can’t handle the day-to-day work, how am I supposed to handle more in-depth stuff or more important stuff? Confidence = gone.
The problem is that I’ve spent six months trying to keep my feelings and emotions in check in the pursuit of doing stuff perfectly. And it was working, but the side effect is that I started to forget that I’m human, as well as a reporter. I’m a person with an ego and emotions and all that good stuff. And by suppressing them, they just built up to a breaking point. And it only took a small thing to make them break. And the result is that I was very harshly reminded I’m human.
So what now? Well, I’m not sure. I just have to be careful, I think. I need to make sure I allow myself to be human and understand that I can’t pretend I’m not affected by things. It just doesn’t work. Much as I try to pretend that I’m a reporter — objective and balanced and unemotional — I have to be human first.
1 Comment
March 23, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Claps.