How I ended up at the Telegraph & notes on what I'm doing now...

As I watch the BCS Title game de-evolve into a competitive match halfway through the fourth and final quarter, and realizing I may be stuck inside for the next several days because of blizzard-like conditions that are sure to o'ertake us in the middle of the night, I figured it was a good time to say something about how I ended up writing for the daily paper.

Wheel barrows of money. They filled them up, pushed them up to my door and just started dumpin' dead presidents in piles at my feet.

But seriously, Chris, why did you sell out?

Because I never seriously thought they'd ever hire someone like me: i.e. - a self-taught hack. That's half the reason I made so much fun of them in my time with The 11th Hour. And at least half of the remaining half is because I didn't understand as much as I do already. Before I joined the 11th Hour, all I did was bitch about how much that paper sucked. Did the same thing before Heather started dating me too. I'm a tad insecure, I guess. I'm still afraid to look Joe Kovac in the eye...

Travis Fain, who I've admired for a while, is going to Atlanta to cover the state legislature and I'm temporarily filling in on his City Hall beat.

In 1995, I was a member of the Telegraph Teen Board (then called the Teen Scene). I joined as an illustrator, having grown up wanting to draw pictures for a living. I was decent at that but I had an itch to write and they let me. Specifically, Arlette Copeland let me. At the end of that year, I figured out I really liked it. When I left for college, I tried to major in journalism but I never thought to find a college that had a journalism major and that became just part of my on-going problem with higher education.

Though I only spent a little time inside the Telegraph as a teenager, fifteen years later, it isn't hard to tell how much emptier it is. The tours I've taken of the absolutely massive facility were both fascinating and sad. The press is inactive now that the paper is printed in Columbus, and with it went all the production staff down in the basement. The only living soul downstairs is the head of the maintenance staff. Just memories and dozens of rolls of unprinted paper remain.

My new colleagues, many of whom I'd slowly gotten to know as I worked with Brad and Meagan, are all really nice and supportive, almost suspiciously so. They've kept me from making a total ass of myself as I stumbled my way through three consecutive weather stories. Like I said, they're nice.

In other news, pun intended, we're just six weeks or so away from the second Crossroads Writers Conference and this year we're adding a Literary Festival so there's more to offer the general public, who probably don't care about crafting interesting characters or how to get an agent. We'll release, eventually, the guidelines for our writing contest and tease the contest that Mercer Press is going to announce at the conference itself. Hopefully some folks will get to know some of the bigger name authors that are coming to town and really enjoy what we've put together. (My cohorts on the Crossroads board are amazing!)

This morning, before heading to the Telegraph, I drove to Milledgeville for a meeting with my boss at Georgia College and State University. I've taken a position there to help build a Continuing Education program in Macon. (Think non-credit courses like "Small Business Marketing" and "Facebook for the 55+ Crowd") We're going to add a lot of kids programming and believe that we can lay the groundwork for a lot of the plans for Creative Ruckus Academy, which unfortunately wasn't funded as we'd hoped. And I have aspirations for a DIY Music Business Program and a citywide music showcase... but that's down the road a ways. As De La Soul might say, "Think big, get it big is my motto."

Man, I'm rambling again. I need to go to bed.

Congrats, Bama.