News

It’s now official at work, so I’m passing on the news here.

I’m quitting my job. (Don’t say "Again?")

I’ve had some good times at the Denton Record-Chronicle, but I’m leaving my full-time job as assistant sports editor in a couple of weeks.

My wife’s family leave time is about up.

Whereas:

• We both work night shifts.
• There is no such thing as late-night day care.
• Meredith makes, like, a bajillion more than I do.

I have to quit my job so she can go back to work. This is not the ideal situation for either of us. I realize this is not the prevailing view right now, but I strongly believe that a boy needs his Mama at this point in his life a lot more than he needs Daddy. (Sam’s Mama agrees.)

And I really wish Daddy had some kind of job that could make this situation possible. But, after about a year of searching, nothing has panned out so far. I even applied to graduate school, but got rejected by North Texas because 10 years ago I made a D in chemistry. I wanted a public relations degree. (With a thanks here to Dave and John for saying they’d vouch for me. I may need you later.)

So we’re kind of left in a lurch right now. It hit me the other day, how I used to make fun of women over the biological clock thing. (I recall bringing one girl to tears just by repeating "tick-tock" until she broke.)

Now I’m faced with my own countdown. I don’t just want a job to eke out a living on the edge.

I’m like everyone else, I want to contribute, be in the center of things, make my mark. The problem is that the older you get, the time you have left to establish yourself in any given field diminishes, the amount of time you have for people to take you seriously when you’re starting off gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

So I’m considering this a short window of opportunity to figure out what I’m going to do.

I’m also looking forward to some aspects of life as Mr. Mom: Teach the boy things, get in shape, work more on this blog and other projects. My wife says the extra time is an illusion, but at the very least I’ll be back on daylight hours, which will be no small joy.

I’ll miss the Record-Chronicle. The atmosphere there is laid back, loud, eclectic. It was almost a college atmosphere, and reminded me of why I thought I would in the very least have fun as a journalist when I graduated.

Still, as an assistant sports editor, I’d stepped about as high up the career ladder in sports as I could go. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of any sport, and I don’t want to spend the next three years of my life learning that knowledge so that I can then graduate to running agate at a mid-major for $45,000 a year.

So, for the time being. I’ll be going to part-time at the Record-Chronicle until they hire a replacement, I find another job, or we both lose interest.

Meredith (God bless her) will go back to work. I’ll be at home with Sam.

And we’ll all be working toward changing things around.