This job will take you down every emotional road possible on any given day without hesitation or warning.
The mental battle that television news sends you on daily is not for the faint of heart. I think that's the biggest challenge that I've had to learn to work with during my first few months working in the industry.
They tell you how difficult it is in textbooks, they warn you that you'll have to hold your emotions in until you get home, and they stress that the daily challenges don't get easier. If anything, you learn how to work with around those mental barriers. It doesn't become 100 percent real until you're completely immersed in the business.
There are days when I go home and can't stop smiling because of how well a story turned out or from a positive compliment in the newsroom about my work. There are other days when I go home beating myself up over simple mistakes that feel much larger in the moment.
Oftentimes, it's a combination of the two, with a million other feelings mixed in my brain blender.
"You're only good as your next game," a former boss in the sports industry told me repeatedly. It doesn't matter if I think my story turned out well and if I feel as if I made a legitimate impact because of my work. It also doesn't matter if I stumbled over a word or had a typo in a story. The highs and lows of a normal day are irrelevant when the sun rises the next morning.
I remind myself of that every day, but I can't seem to get the negatives through my head.
The mistakes and shortcomings feel monumental in the moment; they're often not too meaningful. Hindsight doesn't often offer a cure to the feeling that I let my team around me down because of an error.
I beat myself up over the little things; I'm my biggest critic. There's little time to sulk in negativity when an objective needs completed.
I'm well aware that I have a job to do and people are counting on me to effectively and accurately complete that job. When I remind myself of that, I'm able to fight past the negativity in my head after doing something only I really noticed and felt.
Along with the mental highs and lows of my performance on the job comes the actual job itself.
I have had more days than I can count already that have been mental roller coasters and then some. I started one day at the scene of a drowning death and ended it at a gym dedication ceremony. One day last week, I covered a massive construction project coming to I-79, a grant received by a local folklife center, and helped break a disturbing story about a woman who sexually assaulted a 2-month-old family member.
Another day recently, I covered a Marion County Commission meeting that involved two stories regarding "Non-profit Day" and the possibility of a former Gateway Clipper passenger boat coming to a local city. My third story of the day involved a tractor-trailer that went off the road and plowed through a tattoo studio. I showed up to the scene of that crash minutes after talking to someone about going on a boat for a wedding, only to interview people who were cleaning up their destroyed livelihoods. Oh. Then I went to the courthouse to get a criminal complaint regarding two people charged with child neglect after children were found in a dirty and rat-infested home.
That was one day.
Some are easier and lighter than others, but the heavy ones have really taught me how to flip my emotional switches in an instant. I've done that for years at the anchor desk - transitioning from sad to happy stories - but it's another thing to do it out in the field.
I love the adrenaline rush that comes with working in the news business, but the emotional highs and lows drain people out of this industry quickly. What you just read was only scratching the surface of the mental battle faced every day in television news. I hope to touch on others when the time is right.
With that being said, I love where I'm at right now professionally. My station has given me the opportunity to grow in ways that other stations wouldn't at this stage in my life. My co-workers are phenomenal human beings and all watch out for each other consistently. It's been a nice transition. I'm glad this is where I ended up at the start of my career.
Everything happens for a reason. I trust that those reasons will continue revealing themselves through my daily professional and personal highs and lows.
UPDATE
Things happen for a reason, eh? Shortly after I closed out of writing, for some reason, I went to YouTube. I'm trying to go home now after a long day at work. I can't remember for the life of me why I went to YouTube.
With one click, I came across an interview with my first favorite baseball player, Jack Wilson.
He talks about making errors as a shortstop in baseball and the importance of not keeping the mental images of mistakes linger in the mind. I'd say it was fairly topical and relevant after the night I had that triggered this post.
Give it a watch below.
The mental battle that television news sends you on daily is not for the faint of heart. I think that's the biggest challenge that I've had to learn to work with during my first few months working in the industry.
They tell you how difficult it is in textbooks, they warn you that you'll have to hold your emotions in until you get home, and they stress that the daily challenges don't get easier. If anything, you learn how to work with around those mental barriers. It doesn't become 100 percent real until you're completely immersed in the business.
There are days when I go home and can't stop smiling because of how well a story turned out or from a positive compliment in the newsroom about my work. There are other days when I go home beating myself up over simple mistakes that feel much larger in the moment.
Oftentimes, it's a combination of the two, with a million other feelings mixed in my brain blender.
"You're only good as your next game," a former boss in the sports industry told me repeatedly. It doesn't matter if I think my story turned out well and if I feel as if I made a legitimate impact because of my work. It also doesn't matter if I stumbled over a word or had a typo in a story. The highs and lows of a normal day are irrelevant when the sun rises the next morning.
I remind myself of that every day, but I can't seem to get the negatives through my head.
The mistakes and shortcomings feel monumental in the moment; they're often not too meaningful. Hindsight doesn't often offer a cure to the feeling that I let my team around me down because of an error.
I beat myself up over the little things; I'm my biggest critic. There's little time to sulk in negativity when an objective needs completed.
I'm well aware that I have a job to do and people are counting on me to effectively and accurately complete that job. When I remind myself of that, I'm able to fight past the negativity in my head after doing something only I really noticed and felt.
Along with the mental highs and lows of my performance on the job comes the actual job itself.
I have had more days than I can count already that have been mental roller coasters and then some. I started one day at the scene of a drowning death and ended it at a gym dedication ceremony. One day last week, I covered a massive construction project coming to I-79, a grant received by a local folklife center, and helped break a disturbing story about a woman who sexually assaulted a 2-month-old family member.
Another day recently, I covered a Marion County Commission meeting that involved two stories regarding "Non-profit Day" and the possibility of a former Gateway Clipper passenger boat coming to a local city. My third story of the day involved a tractor-trailer that went off the road and plowed through a tattoo studio. I showed up to the scene of that crash minutes after talking to someone about going on a boat for a wedding, only to interview people who were cleaning up their destroyed livelihoods. Oh. Then I went to the courthouse to get a criminal complaint regarding two people charged with child neglect after children were found in a dirty and rat-infested home.
That was one day.
Some are easier and lighter than others, but the heavy ones have really taught me how to flip my emotional switches in an instant. I've done that for years at the anchor desk - transitioning from sad to happy stories - but it's another thing to do it out in the field.
I love the adrenaline rush that comes with working in the news business, but the emotional highs and lows drain people out of this industry quickly. What you just read was only scratching the surface of the mental battle faced every day in television news. I hope to touch on others when the time is right.
With that being said, I love where I'm at right now professionally. My station has given me the opportunity to grow in ways that other stations wouldn't at this stage in my life. My co-workers are phenomenal human beings and all watch out for each other consistently. It's been a nice transition. I'm glad this is where I ended up at the start of my career.
Everything happens for a reason. I trust that those reasons will continue revealing themselves through my daily professional and personal highs and lows.
UPDATE
Things happen for a reason, eh? Shortly after I closed out of writing, for some reason, I went to YouTube. I'm trying to go home now after a long day at work. I can't remember for the life of me why I went to YouTube.
With one click, I came across an interview with my first favorite baseball player, Jack Wilson.
He talks about making errors as a shortstop in baseball and the importance of not keeping the mental images of mistakes linger in the mind. I'd say it was fairly topical and relevant after the night I had that triggered this post.
Give it a watch below.
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