The Write Time

It's a quarter after six o'clock... In. The. Morning. Given the choice, I would never be up this early. But a little thing called work draws me up and out of bed at 5 am occasionally, so I must cope. Today, I sit at a desk, scanning people into a building while it's still dark outside. But who knows? Someday I might have to get up this early for a job that's more in my field. And I might even have to write at such a time as this.

Oh boy.

Don't get me wrong. Writing is still one of my favorite things to do. But when it comes to this time of "mourning," I'm not even sure how interested I would be if the Rose Bowl was on. That's something I might have to work on in the future, as I'm well aware of journalism's frequent nontraditional office setting. At any given time, my office might be a locker room, a row of bleachers, a hotel room, or even an airplane.

I begrudgingly admit that this is a little unnerving to me. I've never been one to take a lot of risks or go outside my comfort zone. Being out on the road and traveling and is certainly out of my comfort zone, especially for someone who's never gone outside Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan.Yet I'm still heading on a crash-course for a career that will almost certainly (and hopefully) take me all over the country, doing things I've never done before.

Is this not adding up for anyone else?

While I know that I've lived a rather boring life so far, I don't want to keep it that way. Getting out of my comfort zone may make me choke like LeBron James in the fourth quarter (as if there weren't enough of those), but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try. Because without taking the small risks that I have, I wouldn't even be at this point in my career. So maybe it's time I start stepping out and doing hard things. And hopefully, with great risk will come great reward.