News blues

Bud Elliott and Catherine Mylinh
KSEE NBC - Fresno, Calif.
September 2006

News blues
by Catherine Mylinh
May 12, 2007

It's 8:40 on a Saturday night. I am, once again, sitting in the newsroom. My eyes are red and aching from reading all the wires and news flashes that have been coming down since the ambush in Iraq. Several U.S. soldiers were killed this morning, several more are now missing.

In between reading the doom and gloom that is my profession, I am surfing the Web. I am looking at my friends' photo albums. Pictures of them with their wine glasses raised, cheeks stretched and pink from laughing too hard. Pictures of them on vacation, sunburned and happy. Snapshots of the moments we live and die for. And I lament.

It is, after all, 8:40 on a Saturday night and I am sitting in the newsroom.

When I was eight years old I was sure I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted to talk to people. I wanted to write stories about their lives, be the first to know something important and to relay it to the rest of the world. It's true what they say: be careful what you wish for.

It is, after all, 8:40 on a Saturday night and I am sitting in the newsroom.

I am going through a quarter-life crisis. It is a little late in coming but make no mistake about it, it is here. I love my job. The eight-year-old in me, the one who's chasing down a story and pounding on the keyboard, trying to gracefully make deadlines, is thrilled. The 20-something Cat is torn.

I am working long hours. Weekends, holidays, you name it. I cannot take two weeks off at a time because news never sleeps. Some months I can't take time off at all. For the last five years, I have given up everything to be where I am now. I have packed up my bags, moved to wherever I could find work, said goodbye to those I love too often.

Is it worth it?

My family is having dinner tomorrow night for Mother's Day. I won't be there. My boyfriend is throwing a housewarming party tomorrow afternoon. I can't be there.

Tomorrow it will be 8:40 on a Sunday night and I will be in the newsroom.

I love my job tremendously. I feel very fortunate to be working in this fiercely competitive business. I feel blessed to be a mere three-hour drive from my real home. But I no longer own my own life. At what point do you weigh the scales and make a decision?

My biggest fear is I will wake up one day, in my 40s, alone. I'll have a big house and a kick-ass career but I won't have anyone to share it with. I am too far from all the people I love. And when I do get to see them, it is for snippets at a time because they all have 'normal' schedules and 'normal' hours. I am missing out on all those moments now. All the Thanksgiving dinners and weddings and baby showers and birthday parties and Christmas recitals and lazy Sundays. All the frolics on the beach and dancing until dawn. All those moments that will become inside jokes you all will laugh about for years to come. I am missing out on all of that.

It is, after all, 8:40 on a Saturday night and I am sitting in the newsroom.

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