Journalistic ways
The Ways
Column by
Torrey William Lee
It’s normal to get a routine. We all do it. May it be that you get up, go to your Corner Bakery, get a bagel, and then head to work, or that you wake in the morning lay in bed for thirty minutes trying to motivate yourself to get along with the things that you have to do? Either way you look at it, this is a routine. There is no greater pain though when you wake in the morning, or are in the bathroom mid day, and you look at yourself and wonder, how the heck did I let this happen. When did I become content with my situation that I let myself go. I don’t mean this physically either. It could be that you look at yourself and wonder, what happened between now and graduation that I am not doing the things that I had envisioned myself doing.
I woke up a little worried myself. It scared me even more because I am only in my early twenties, but here I was looking in my bathroom mirror, worried about everything about myself. Why didn’t I still have the six-pack that I use to have. I’m not fat, in fact I am far too skinny, there should be no reason that I can’t look like the media’s version of an urban professional. Then I started to wonder, why my hair isn’t flowing in the right way. How did I let my beard grow so shaggy, and why did my skin look so bad? Before I knew it, I was no longer waking up at 7:30 as I usually did to get out of the house by 7:50; I was now waking up at seven. Making sure all my nails were neat, each strand of hair went in exactly the right direction, and I’ve even taking habit to drinking nearly two gallons of water a day to make sure my skin looked healthier. Out of all the things, I hold as my staring perfection, I know have six-pack again.
It wasn’t long that I started to realize how I let myself slip in other fields. I no longer read the newspaper as Much as I wanted to. Whatever happened to that drive to be a well informed journalist that could comment on anything? In reality, I hadn’t picked up a paper in near two months and it could be safe to say that if you asked me about the outside world I would have been lost. It’s what happens when you grow too content with your job. You think that you will be working there your whole life and because of that, you find yourself submerging yourself in it. My personal library was a mess as well. All that I had in it were books that my co-workers would read so that we would have something to talk about. My urge to stay current with my studies of the Japanese language were lost. I know worked with a Latin friend, and now my focus was to learn Spanish.
Waking up though, it was the greatest feeling in the world. I woke up, and knew what I had become and course I needed some aid in this, as all this didn’t come from some small inspiration. I work in a very relaxed office. I come into work each day with a smile, because my co-workers and I could laugh about things. They could spin a joke to me, and I could would either take it or even flow with it. We were a light-hearted bunch were even profanity wasn’t a taboo in our office. We through out all of the rules because we were all comfortable with each other. The comfort even went to our supervisors who didn’t care as well because they knew of this new batch of light-hearted workers that they had under them.
Of course there were times were we would have to speak to other departments, and all those departments envied us as we were the ones that showed how a team worked in perfect cohesion. I remember on one day I had to actually contact another team about some information that my team needed. I chose to write them an email in a very light-hearted manner. Though when I say this, I took regard to the fact that it would be inappropriate to use profanity or make any offensive jokes. So I wrote this email accordingly. OF the two people that I wrote the email to, only one of them had found it offensive. The other thought that it was funny and a nice change to have such a light-hearted email sent to them. His partner though, he was a fresh professional out of college. To him, to receive such an email was an insult to the work that he had to do, and that I taking time to be humorous was an offence to him and his work. He promptly wrote my supervisor about it. Of course my supervisor, who was use to our office shenanigans and most likely not offended in comparison to the things that we would usually say, reluctantly wrote me up. Well, maybe I make myself feel better in thinking that it was reluctant to do so.
Either was, this hit me in the right way. I realized that maybe I forgot how to be a professional. Of course I sat there thinking about how comforting it is to be in a place where you could say what you wanted to, but it also made me realize how other people who didn’t share this same luxury hated you and envied you for it.
So with that, I changed myself, and for better or worse, I realized what I was and what I become. In a strange way, I thank the person who helped me in my first write up at the job, because it made me remember that this was not going to be my job for life. In that I decided to make myself better.
Column by
Torrey William Lee
It’s normal to get a routine. We all do it. May it be that you get up, go to your Corner Bakery, get a bagel, and then head to work, or that you wake in the morning lay in bed for thirty minutes trying to motivate yourself to get along with the things that you have to do? Either way you look at it, this is a routine. There is no greater pain though when you wake in the morning, or are in the bathroom mid day, and you look at yourself and wonder, how the heck did I let this happen. When did I become content with my situation that I let myself go. I don’t mean this physically either. It could be that you look at yourself and wonder, what happened between now and graduation that I am not doing the things that I had envisioned myself doing.
I woke up a little worried myself. It scared me even more because I am only in my early twenties, but here I was looking in my bathroom mirror, worried about everything about myself. Why didn’t I still have the six-pack that I use to have. I’m not fat, in fact I am far too skinny, there should be no reason that I can’t look like the media’s version of an urban professional. Then I started to wonder, why my hair isn’t flowing in the right way. How did I let my beard grow so shaggy, and why did my skin look so bad? Before I knew it, I was no longer waking up at 7:30 as I usually did to get out of the house by 7:50; I was now waking up at seven. Making sure all my nails were neat, each strand of hair went in exactly the right direction, and I’ve even taking habit to drinking nearly two gallons of water a day to make sure my skin looked healthier. Out of all the things, I hold as my staring perfection, I know have six-pack again.
It wasn’t long that I started to realize how I let myself slip in other fields. I no longer read the newspaper as Much as I wanted to. Whatever happened to that drive to be a well informed journalist that could comment on anything? In reality, I hadn’t picked up a paper in near two months and it could be safe to say that if you asked me about the outside world I would have been lost. It’s what happens when you grow too content with your job. You think that you will be working there your whole life and because of that, you find yourself submerging yourself in it. My personal library was a mess as well. All that I had in it were books that my co-workers would read so that we would have something to talk about. My urge to stay current with my studies of the Japanese language were lost. I know worked with a Latin friend, and now my focus was to learn Spanish.
Waking up though, it was the greatest feeling in the world. I woke up, and knew what I had become and course I needed some aid in this, as all this didn’t come from some small inspiration. I work in a very relaxed office. I come into work each day with a smile, because my co-workers and I could laugh about things. They could spin a joke to me, and I could would either take it or even flow with it. We were a light-hearted bunch were even profanity wasn’t a taboo in our office. We through out all of the rules because we were all comfortable with each other. The comfort even went to our supervisors who didn’t care as well because they knew of this new batch of light-hearted workers that they had under them.
Of course there were times were we would have to speak to other departments, and all those departments envied us as we were the ones that showed how a team worked in perfect cohesion. I remember on one day I had to actually contact another team about some information that my team needed. I chose to write them an email in a very light-hearted manner. Though when I say this, I took regard to the fact that it would be inappropriate to use profanity or make any offensive jokes. So I wrote this email accordingly. OF the two people that I wrote the email to, only one of them had found it offensive. The other thought that it was funny and a nice change to have such a light-hearted email sent to them. His partner though, he was a fresh professional out of college. To him, to receive such an email was an insult to the work that he had to do, and that I taking time to be humorous was an offence to him and his work. He promptly wrote my supervisor about it. Of course my supervisor, who was use to our office shenanigans and most likely not offended in comparison to the things that we would usually say, reluctantly wrote me up. Well, maybe I make myself feel better in thinking that it was reluctant to do so.
Either was, this hit me in the right way. I realized that maybe I forgot how to be a professional. Of course I sat there thinking about how comforting it is to be in a place where you could say what you wanted to, but it also made me realize how other people who didn’t share this same luxury hated you and envied you for it.
So with that, I changed myself, and for better or worse, I realized what I was and what I become. In a strange way, I thank the person who helped me in my first write up at the job, because it made me remember that this was not going to be my job for life. In that I decided to make myself better.