No Passion

"Passion Lives Here!" That was the theme of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. It also used to be the theme for my work life. Not anymore. The passion is gone.

It used to be I loved everything about the news business. Even when I hated it, I loved it. Weird as that may be.

And on Breaking News Days. Wow! I would get so high, that's the only way to explain the feeling, on adrenaline I could dance for a week without sleep. Not so much anymore.

I've been noticing a slow trickle of passion leaking away over the last couple of years. The big serial killer trial last summer really drained me when historically it would've energized me.

Yesterday was the final clencher. Cut-ins throughout the afternoon covering a grass fire that consumed 10,700 acres in a single county. Plus what we refer to as Breaking News Newscasts. Which means changes throughout the shows and constant updates.

Traditionally, an event like that would've had me floating. Exultant. Exhilarated. It left me cold.

All I could think about all day was getting home to JBP, my son. My passion now is my son and the other children I know I will someday have. Who they are and how they'll be related to me I don't know. But they're who I care about now. Not the news.

Don't get me wrong. I cared about the folks in the path of the grass fires. My best friend from elementary school had to evacuate and later lost her home to the fires. I'd have done just about anything to have been able to go out there and help her and the firefighters.

But sitting in the newsroom, even providing the public service we were providing, did nothing for my soul, which at this point desperately needs some feeding.

So, starting Monday the job search is back on, full force. Here's just praying I can find something that will feed my soul and let me have time with my boy.

--Nimitz' Lady

On a sidenote: I'd much rather just become a SAHM but Der Deutscher doesn't think we can afford it. It comes from being raised in completely opposite economic situations. Based on the way I grew up, he makes more than enough to support all of us, easily. Not so the way he was raised. So, it's off to work I go.