The journalist’s diet

We’re about six-ish issues into the year, and unfortunately, one of the biggest things on my mind each production night doesn’t even really relate to the paper. Rather, it relates to me, and what I eat.

I’m finding it very difficult to eat well on the job, and unfortunately for my body, I’m on the job nearly all the time. I really need to find a way to prepare food ahead of time and bring it in to work, so that I don’t have to order in so much.

Clearly, the paper is the biggest part of my life right now. Still, my health is important to me, and so it’s got to be something that I work on. Anyone in the biz have good tips on eating well while on the job?

09.14.2009 | post | Uncategorized | , | Feedback (2)

As time goes by

WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE.

I’m leaving on a jet plane, back to the District on Thursday. I couldn’t be more excited to get back to school, start really cracking over at The Hatchet, and work my senior year to its fullest, but I do wonder what happened to the last seven weeks I spent in Minnesota.

It would have been hard to ask for a much better short-term summer break – a trip to Arizona, plenty of relaxation, cutting a few strokes off my golf handicap – but I’d be lying if I said I felt like I accomplished everything I wanted to this summer. I had hoped that my time in the midwest would be a digital retreat of sorts – where I would get up to speed and learn everything I could ever need to know about journalism and the web and social media and the like.

That didn’t happen.

In fact, when I make a list of the things I still need to catch up with, it’s a list much longer than I’d like:

  • Figure out how to really use LinkedIn
  • Figure what Publish2 really is and how I can use it personally and for The Hatchet
  • Learn how to code in Javascript
  • Write posts here much more frequently
  • Complete roughly six thousand more minor tasks for The Hatchet
  • Record some music
  • Practice my video and still photography skills
  • Write a particularly important post I’ve been saving up that is essentially the mission statement of this blog.
  • Many more tasks that has wasted away into oblivion

Maybe it hasn’t been so bad. Actually, it hasn’t – it’s been great. But when you follow [read: try to learn from] so many smart people who seem light years ahead, it’s hard not to feel a little lazy.

Here’s to picking up the slack.

08.18.2009 | post | Lifehacking, Uncategorized | | Feedback (1)

What I Never Knew

“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” – Casablanca, 1941

I’ve never seen that movie. But for some reason, that quote seems applicable right now. Maybe it’s because after learning about cutting edge journalism for three years at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs, working for an award-winning newspaper like The Hatchet and working as a web producer for The Washington Post, I foolishly thought I was in some kind of journalism 2.0 mecca. Where everyone west of the Potomac River still chiseled their front-page stories into flint rock and delivered the paper by horseback.

Exaggeration aside, I learned something over the past two weeks that I never knew: Not only are there A LOT of collegiate journalists out there learning the same things, but they’re talking about it and already branding themselves online as people who know what they’re doing. As you might imagine, that’s a community I want to be a part of.

I’m not sure exactly what form this blog/site will take or where it might go, but I imagine it’ll be a big jumble of musings on journalism, health, life, the interwebz, and how each of those fits together.

And so, I’m hoping this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Between me, my future, and people out there who want to do the same thing.

06.07.2009 | post | Uncategorized | | Feedback (0)