Re-write your stories
The door to the newsroom clicked shut behind me, and I choked back tears. Feeling a wave of regret immediately wash over me and turn my whole body cold. What had I done?
Being a newspaper reporter was all I ever wanted. It was the compass guiding all of my life decisions; The only thing I thought about during college, sacrificing a normal social life for the thankless late nights hanging around the student newsroom. My dreams were the stuff of leads and kickers. My spiritual practice was reading the Sunday paper cover-to-cover, making notes about how I could get better, thinking about impossible interviews I might just land.
So now, how could this be, just four years into my post-college career as a journalist, leaving of my own accord for the kind of bureaucratic PR job that was so antithetical to the wild, stick-it-to-the-man spirit that I’d spent my adult life cultivating?
Today marks 10 years since that day. Ten years since the turning point. Ten years of trying to understand it, to make sense of it, and to make peace with it. Ten years of growth. Ten years of un-becoming, and, ultimately, of re-becoming myself.
This is a story about perspective.
When I decided to leave journalism, it wasn’t a best-laid plan. I was 25. I was restless. I was mostly happy, but I started feeling the seductive whisper of “more.”
One afternoon, at the end of a phone interview with one of my sources, he cold-offered me a job that would double my salary. I was speechless. My mind screaming, “no,” I told him I’d think about it. The job would mean moving to another city, not to mention an identity shift. Even as I heard myself agreeing to an interview, my feet turned to concrete, planted firmly beneath my moldy cubicle desk, the din of the newsroom carrying on obliviously all around me.
I can’t explain why I said yes. Maybe it was impulsiveness. Or ambition. Or that rebellious spirit, aimed in the wrong direction. Whatever the reason, I jumped out of journalism and into PR and never looked back… except for every day and every night when “what if?” haunted me relentlessly.
Actual excerpt from my journal at that time:
Here comes the first real pangs of buyer’s remorse, when some other really good reporter puts out her first story on your beat -- no, her beat. You start writing in a journal to burn off the frustration of feeling useless, copy-editing it as if it matters. You read books on marketing. You perform a SWOT analysis. You allow yourself the rare indulgence of thinking, “I don’t like this,” but then quickly get back to getting good at this thing that you don’t like.
You break up with your college boyfriend in an unpremeditated huff of irritation. He would later say: “You cried more when you left the newspaper,” and you thought, “Well… yeah.” You only knew him for eight years, and journalism was actually who you were.
For years, this was the version of the story I told myself. That I’d made a mistake, and I’d never find the same kind of professional purpose as I did as a journalist. That it was too late to go back, that I’d have to find fulfillment in some other way, or settle and try to forget what it used to feel like.
Until I just stopped.
One morning not that long ago, I woke up tired of the loop in my head. Like most mornings, I was awake before everybody, before the sun came up, hunched over my journal and my coffee. I decided: it’s time for a new story.
I started to write.
I wrote a story of a young woman insatiably curious, who wanted to grow and stretch and explore new directions. A story of jumping into the deep end of a pool and learning to swim. A story of finding a new calling to leadership, mentorship and development of people. A whole new world of work that is meaningful and aligned with my values. Exposure to a host of different challenges and opportunities. A pathway to a life that is better than I could have ever imagined – a pathway to my husband, to my children, to myself.
I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and thought, this is all true, too.
So often, it’s not the choices we make that bring us regret or satisfaction. It’s the stories we tell ourselves about those choices. The selective memories we play on repeat that become a part of the background noise of our life; so familiar that we barely notice them. Until they stop.
That is - until we stop them. Until we re-write them.
Today I am celebrating an anniversary, to be sure. Ten years since I took a leap of faith, betting on myself and building something new. Ten years since I faced fear, doubt, and did it anyway. A beautiful chapter I wouldn’t change for the world.
And ten years from now, perhaps I will look back on this moment and see all the success and possibility that was just ahead – as long as I knew how to look.