re: Are you working your dream job, working somewhere you want to, or just got bills to pay?

Just got laid off from my dream job. Anybody need a Quality Manager that is obsessive about procedures being done by the book hit me up.

My dream job was being a professional athlete. I played C league softball into my late 30's!

I realized I was going to be good enough at any sport to do that my junior year in high school. I loved writing and got a journalism degree, thinking I'd love to cover sports. For 20 of the 28 years I lived in Dallas, I was a stringer who covered Cowboys, Mavericks, Rangers and Stars home games for Sports Network and SportsTicker. I covered NCAA Basketball regional's, Big XII media days, Cotton Bowls and a few SMU games too.

I wrote game recaps that USA Today, CNN, America Online, Yahoo, FOX Sports and MSNBC used on their sites. Newspapers, radio stations and TV stations used scoring updates that I called in. Eventually, I was instant messaging updates every four minutes on the game clock. Yahoo had my preseason previews for a couple of years. For a couple of years the game recaps on the Mavs site were all from what I turned in to SportsTicker. Nobody got a byline on them.

SportsTicker was owned by ESPN for part of the time I worked for them. I got a few paychecks with ESPN on them. Got some from Disney with Mickey and Minnie on them. The leagues all reached a point where they updated games pretty much in real time on their websites, so there was no need for the service for the American pro sports. A British company called PA sports bought them and shut all of the American pro sports coverage down. They were already the world's largest sports media service because they cover soccer worldwide.

I didn't make much money doing that job. The job that paid my bills was selling advertising. I did that for 26 years. The sports reporting job was really just something I did to get a floor seat at the Mavs games.

I moved back to NELA where I am taking care of my 86 & 83 year old parents who can't drive any more. I still go to to a few high school games in North Louisiana. Still don't pay to get in.

ETA: I loved my job selling print advertising too. I loved working on a deadlines every week. I loved going out to see customers. I loved coming up with ideas for my customer's ads. Making up rough ads for my artists, etc. I really loved seeing my clients run their ads for a long enough period to get response. I loved seeing them grow, until they thought they needed TV ads. Lots of times they would come back to me after trying more expensive things. When I left there were over 40 people that had been there for over 20 years. It was a good place with good people. Print isn't what it used to be! Advertising is so different. Everything is online. They can get a lot of hits and not see the proper return on their investment. Just a completely different game.