Perhaps when you pour your soul into something, you leave it there
Regular readers might have picked up on it: I love my job.
Being a data journalist represents the perfect blend of scientific inquiry and journalism; it's about providing numeric evidence and having room to explain it; not relying solely on human sources laden with their own interests. Most importantly, for me, it's about feeling like I've built something good and useful.
I also recall the first time I built something for the web. It was driven by a desire to tell a story that resembled The New York Times' Snowfall more than the forgettable text I might use to clean my windows the next day. A simple animation felt like magic. A basic scatter plot with points fading in convinced me that the web could rescue journalism from its self-imposed ennui.
Regular readers might also be aware that it's been a particularly tough year. In a few months, I lost consciousness from hitting my head, faced a serious health issue, underwent heart surgery, and then experienced a car accident. It seemed as though all the odds were stacked against me. As always, my coping mechanism was work. Not in a workaholic sense (I guess?), but more in a belief that if I stopped, I'd perish. I needed to keep moving. Everyone is moving (fuck you, Fugazi, again?). Perhaps I should have taken more time to grieve my losses and embrace the pain.
But I was fine. Truly, I was! My therapist was surprised at how well I was handling everything. And so was I.
Then I stopped for one week. Took my vacation, saw the stars in a pure dark sky, and watched the moon set over the sea.
When I returned, things felt different. There was an email hinting at layoffs by October. I don't think it will affect me - I'm too inexpensive to be included. Then came the micromanagement. Foolish ideas from people I don't respect. And not a single project that sparked my interest. That made me want to challenge myself.
Suddenly, I woke up to the realization that, for the first time in my life, I would rather be doing something else. That maybe I no longer want to push the boundaries of what's possible in journalism.
Yesterday, for the first time since I finished college and wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, I updated my CV in English. Partly because I'm naive enough to think that the problem is this mediocre country where people are underpaid and the media is run by those who know nothing about the business.
But there's something darker in my thoughts. Maybe I'm just making excuses for what I'm feeling. Maybe it's not the hard year, or the micromanagement, or the uninspiring ideas I have to work on. And not even the financial state of my workplace or the lack of interesting new projects here.
Maybe I am the problem. Maybe the joy I used to feel when I published a major international investigation or created a beautiful interactive page with engaging charts is gone.
Maybe I'm burned out.
Or maybe - and this is probably what hurts the most to write - it's time to move on from journalism.
Perhaps when you pour your soul into something, you leave it there. I don’t want to be a soulless body.