I look out the window, the view I have had for so many months. The tree that I memorized with my head on my desk. I showed it to my news editor at the time. “Erin, put your head on my desk and look out the window and tell me what you see.” Three news editors later, the tree is still out there, though naked but for tiny buds of leaves trying vainly to exist in the fluctuating spring weather.
Spring is classically the time of transition. Kittens, crocuses and baby chickens all come to mind and the chokehold on my job begins to loosen and I look bravely forward into the blinding sunlight of the summer and my post-Free Press existence. Recruitment for next year is in full swing. I watch next year’s executive board begin to accept more responsibility and leadership. Of course, in some capacity, I will still be around, but it will be different, and different is difficult.
I have been thinking a lot about transition recently. There are a lot of different things transitioning in my life, and of late they have been permeating my thoughts. I wrote a good handful of strong letters from the editor, and I think I blew my load. Now all I can think about is what happens next in the great beyond of After The Free Press.
With only two more issues ahead of me I consider the content and the strength of the staff working on these last issues. For some of us, this will be our last chance to put our best work out there. For others, it will be the first step towards new responsibilities and new positions.
Last week’s issue is the physical manifestation of countless hours of effort and teamwork. The Free Press worked as a team on that hefty volume like we hadn’t done before this year. The bittersweetness of this lies in the fact that despite our magical cohesion, we only have a few more issues left to express it.
The difficulty in this for me extends beyond that, as well. Soon enough I will be passing the wheel to the next captain of the fair ship Free Press and however liberating, I meet this coming event with sadness. For me this transition into the next phase of my life feels like an amicable breakup with a long-time boyfriend, painful yet accepted as I find out who I am through being on my own, experiencing the life void of this part that has been so significant for such a long time.
At the same time, I feel myself holding my position here in a deathgrip. The staff for next year has been effectively established, and so people’s attitudes about their current jobs are changing. They are excited in anticipation of their new, better positions. After investing so much of my life, I am sort of apprehensive about moving on. I sort of picture myself as Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt.” Instead of writing countless letters to a starving child overseas, however, I plan to spend my retirement at home and get a dog.
It is interesting to watch the transition of others outside my immediate sphere. Friday I saw newcomers to the Student Senate, accustomed to sitting in spectator seats, allowed to sit at the grown-ups’ table. A senator who has been around forever whispering into the ear of a fresh-faced youth how to bring a motion to the floor. The shifting of chairs and seniors bringing new chairs from the gallery up to the table, squeezing space for the inclusion of the new generation.
I’d also like to know when the Red Sox are going to transition into having a closer instead of this closer-by-committee garbage bullpen situation. My faith in the front office is dwindling and the thoughts of this actually being The Year highlighted by Derek Jeter being irreparably injured for most of the summer are fading to happy memories of long ago.
For now, though, I will concentrate on these last few issues training those to come after me, and finalizing my mark as the executive editor of The Free Press. I will lead my team through a month of very important stories to come. Hopefully these last issues will be filled with the promise of good news instead of many of the grim things we have had to cover of late.