Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Work Stoppage

So yes, it's very true that I haven't posted in almost two weeks. That can be attributed to a couple of factors that have been making my life a lot more hectic than I generally like it to be, but given time, I have confidence at least one of them will clear up...I hope.

Earlier this spring, long-time sports reporter Ben Larson left the company in order to have more time to do his thing as sportscaster for the Madison Mallards. Ben held down a significant shift at the station as a news anchor as well. Then, a few weeks ago, the management let Wisconsin radio veteran Jamie Westpfahl go. This leaves Morning Drive guru Tim Morrissey, force from the north Erik Greenfield and me to field all the news anchoring there is to be done at the station. Our news director, Tara Arnold, can occassionally step in if really needed. It's good exposure, but more time at the anchor desk means less time in the field, which is where a working 80% of my best inspiration for writing comes from.

That's the way it sounds like we're going to roll for a while, too. God forbid the day when Morrissey's on vacation, Erik is sick and Tara is tied down with management meetings. (For those of you keeping score at home, we do live and local programming 12 hours out of the day... which would equate to a 12-hour shift at the anchor desk, not counting prep time).

But in a completely unrelated stressor I hope to have cleared up soon, finding housing in Madison is downright next to impossible. I'll admit, someone else did the legwork that found my first apartment, and the one I live in right now, in hindsight, was a damn lucky strike early in the game. Maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time of it now, because I have unrealistic standards and expectations. But it's beginning to seem like my options can be lumped into two categories: living in a closet or going broke.

At any rate, I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently. There's plenty going on, and I think plenty of outrageous things about it, I'm just up to my eyeballs in stuff. For the meantime, I'm going to try and stick to a bi-weekly post schedule, and when I fail at that, I'll post as I see fit.

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