You’re doing WHAT?!

I got a new job.  And it’s not in tv news.

I’ve been working in tv news since October 17, 1988.  I’ve often asked myself if I’d still be standing in the rain, snow, sun, whatever, until retirement.  And the only answer I could come up with was…yeah, probably.

This business doesn’t prepare you for a lot of jobs not news related.  A photog could freelance, feel a little freedom.  Or he could find a job at a video production house, which wouldn’t be too bad, still shooting video without having to deal with the bullshit of the news business.

I’ve loved shooting tv news.  It’s something that just gets in your blood.  The thrill of doing stuff “regular” people don’t get to do.  The adrenaline rush of spot news, rushing to the scene, shooting the video, getting the live truck set up, and kicking the competition’s ass!

But 19 years.  Man, a body gets tired.  The pysche gets beat down.  While tv news allows a person to not have to do the same stuff day after day like factory workers, after 19 years I feel like “been there, done that, don’t want the t-shirt anymore”.

I’ve been offered a job a the local community college, working in “Educational Services”, which is the fancy way of saying I’m going to become one of the A/V guys.  There’s a LOT more to the job than that, but that’s the easy explanation.

I gave my two weeks notice today.  Two more weeks of shooting news, getting up at 2am, rolling the live truck out for morning live shots, shooting two more weeks of stories I just don’t have the enthusiasm to want to shoot.

I’ve been really lax about the blog since the beginning of the year.  That’s mostly because work discovered the blog, and I just didn’t have the NEED to blog.  Maybe that’ll change.  I’ll still be visiting B-Roll.net.  I still think like a photog, and dig reading what other photogs think.  I’ll still be visiting the photog blogs, for the same reason.  I’m just not going to be doing it from an insider’s point of view anymore.