Some interesting things...

It's interesting being a journalist sometimes. I get the oddest sort of interactions, and I get to do things as a journalist I don't get to do as an average Jimmy. Conversely, as a journalist, I have to refrain from some things I'd do as an ordinary human being.

In three separate interactions with school age kids, I've been "adopted" as an uncle, group hugged by a drama class (yesterday) and had an entire class say thank you for an article I wrote about them. I've also had people try to sway me into writing stories about them, or sway me to write about them in a certain way.

I've also gotten very kind, and heartfelt, handwritten notes about articles I've written - two of those notes came when I wrote narrative obituaries about a couple of people. Those were among the most touching, particularly the one from a soldier's mother. He had died in Afghanistan. I wrote about him, his family and his time of service. After the articles I wrote about the soldier (three for one issue), I had people I barely talked to tell me how those articles had moved them to tears.

When that happens, I feel as if I'm just God's conduit for telling a story, and that He gives me the means to be more eloquent than I could possibly be by speaking. Just ask my wife or anyone who listens to me talk; I'm not that eloquent.

I get bogged down in the routine, day-to-day, meeting stories, but I love finding the personal stories, the offbeat stories, the ones that go against what everyone else is writing about - the one about the black cemetery that's getting moved to build a truck climbing lane, pay phones that won't quite fade away - or interesting stories I can tell fairly well, like the effect of high gas prices on truck drivers and the residual effects they have, or the ongoing plans for a city's redevelopment, or trying to bring a sports team to help that process.

Many days I wish I could stay in bed; it's too long a drive to work, and speaking of gas prices, my wife and I spend more per month in gas than we do in rent. How's that for sick? But some days it's not too bad. Some people say a kind word about your writing, even when it's undeserved, or your wife reads your wedding vows to you over the phone (our first wedding anniversary is coming up at the end of the month).

So I think about these things as I go to collect my first-ever awards in journalism this coming Saturday. I know I've gotten one first place award, and perhaps a few more, though I don't know in what category or whether I finished first, second or third. Awards aren't supposed to be important; they're subjective mostly. But even with the few pats on the back I've described, they're long in coming sometimes, and sometimes it's just nice to win something.

But I know I'm a first place winner where it counts - in the heart and soul of the woman I wake up to everyday, the woman I'll always love and treasure. Beyond that, praise and accolades are nice, but nothing, and no one, compares to her.