Students remind me of life's calling

This week, I participated in a panel discussion before a crowd of middle-school students about jobs and careers. We panel members were supposed to impress upon the impressionable students what our jobs were like and how we came to do what we do. The discussion led to something more for me — a reflection on just how I ended up at this time and place.

When I was their age, I told the students, I wanted to be an astronomer. Enthralled by the excitement of what was called The Space Age with its frequent breathless rocket launches, I read every astronomy book the county library had to offer, and I memorized minutiae about the planets, stars and galaxies. It was only when I discovered that astronomy had more to do with math than with peering through a telescope's eyepiece that I became disenchanted with that vocation. Soon after, I discovered, as I told the students, the magic of assembling words together, and I set my sights on being a writer.

Then came the admission: "I still think of myself as a writer." I had the good fortune of being paid to write every day for more than 30 years, but newspapers are going through a wrenching transformation with no certainty what the final outcome will be. The career path of writing for a newspaper or other news medium holds no promise these days. This blog and some unpublished fiction are my only outlets for exercising my writing muscles, with the exception of a few routine letters and speeches.

But if I do, indeed, still think of myself as a writer, I should take that appellation more seriously. When you work for a newspaper, I've told aspiring writers over the years, you have to write every day, or else you'll soon be out of a job. Writers need to write daily, just as athletes need to exercise and practice daily. That's not an easy thing when your time is being absorbed by so many other appointments, interests or obligations. "Life is what happens when you're busy doing other things," another writer (John Lennon) said. If I still do think of myself as a writer, I must set aside priority time to do the work that calling demands.