Professional blues

There were days when cold sweat forms and drips down my forehead, hands soaked with perspiration while my mind wades through mental fatigue and disorientation. It’s the pressure of newswriting, a profession I knew nothing about initially over 40-plus years ago.

Driving home after work, I’d seriously ponder if I should go on learning the requirements of the profession or quit and slide into another less strenuous vocation.

There’s no shelter anywhere nor is there anybody around to assist in my dilemma other than the three people I know best: Me, myself, and I. I’d slip in and out of it, still unable to make a decision with finality. Meanwhile, I kept writing as a staff-writer for the Micronesian News Service, a Micronesia-wide news network.

I immersed myself in journalism books trying to pin down what the beast entailed. Learned later that no matter the materials you read or lectures you’ve attended, the way to becoming a good writer is to write! Journalistic writing is a discipline in itself.

As you pound on stories as a “cub reporter,” some of your hard work end up in the trashcan. Disheartening, but it comes with the territory. A year into the news writing business and you start building professional confidence. But you’re still bound to fall flat on your face.

It pays to research your materials so you are fully “informed” of the primary, collateral and peripheral issues before you. It took a lot of interviews with fully poised people in their field to understand, e.g., law of the sea in terms of their larger meaning (control and disposition of resources) and why it matters to the regional economy. I was dealing with leadership with gravitas and vision who were the cream of the crop in the Micronesian region.

Regional issues are much larger in magnitude from law of the sea to a Micronesian Constitution or what entailed the final bilateral agreements between the U.S., the FSM and Republics of Palau and Marshalls.

Dealing with these issues was an experience I’d relish for a lifetime, though there’s a certain sense of sadness when somehow we missed the boat of securing our own 200-mile EEZ or a semi-independent relationship with the feds. Even as I exited the larger issues there’s still the heavy pounding on the door where Mr. Quit is waiting for an answer.

Exhausted, floored and literally reduced to the marshland of professional frustration, I even asked myself if I should open the door for Mr. Quit to come in. By then, I was done with my stint at the Congress of Micronesia and journalism school. To open the door would grant my sole desire to exit this hellish hole. But then if I did, would there be greater opportunities missed because I chose the easy way out?

Well, one day as I was pulling out of the house headed to work there were four kids all drenched from the heavy rain running from San Antonio to make it to class that morning at CK elementary school. It was in the beads of water flowing down their faces that I saw the beams of hope.

In other words, if they can run under the rain from as far away as San Antonio to get to class, their conviction to secure an education simply dwarfed what became an embarrassing immersion to quit. Well, amidst the journey of confusion there’s lucidity and clarity at the end of it all. Thanks, kids. A difficult journey it may be. But I’m still writing!

Where’s the sunshine?
Had a wonderful time doing a soulful hum of You Are My Sunshine until I happened upon a PDN news item that GovGuam retirees are getting $2,000 in cost of living allowance.

“Retirees also will receive $4,238 each in supplemental annuities—the same amount as last year—which will be included in their retirement checks over the course of the year.

“The annual payments, which are appropriated by lawmakers from the government’s general fund, aren’t part of retirement benefits and are instead an annual gift from taxpayers to GovGuam retirees. Lawmakers have limited the payments, which total $6,238 per eligible retiree, to retirees who earn less than $40,000 a year.”

What about NMI retirees? Any sunshine threatening to brighten our days or are we back to 75 percent again? Well, the truth will bear itself out in the end. Perhaps trust should be parked in my back pockets for now until January of 2015.

Communing with nature
There were heavy squalls ready to unload any second now. There’s no room to run to the lanai so I hid underneath the banyan tree. I listened to the sounds of heavy rain crash landing and quickly flowing down the large branches.

The swishing sound eased when it landed on smaller branches and leaves heading down the grassy knoll. Downstairs, it turns into teeny river gone wild heading into the roots of grasses nearby, long torched by a recent prolonged drought.

Reconnecting to the disposition of nature once more brought home the beautiful surroundings only found on an island. The large banyan leaves of green and purplish red is sheer beauty in itself. Mirrored against the rainbow upstairs that formed before the wind-driven rain came down like heavenly tsunami is a picture-perfect view of things that many of us hardly see anymore.

Take some time out and see the beauty of nature’s dome. Let the mist from the rain land on your face and smell the vapor of the ground as the rain sprinkles it. Hell, you might even find out how lucky you are living on an island named “Ladrones.”