It was a typical sunny day in the city of Lincoln, county of Logan, state of Illinois. I was sitting in an English composition class, wishing I was elsewhere, just as I sit in my holding cell at the present moment, wishing I was elsewhere.I never did appreciate people in charge, people who claimed they knew what they were doing; of course you they really don’t know what they are really doing and the way they climbed the ladder was not through hard work and skill, rather ass-kissing and who they knew to get that good job.
Back in my 20s, I understood injustice, I understood unfairness and I also understood the need to want something and to work hard for it. In politics, the same logic follows. If you want something bad enough, you work at it, earning the respect of the people, getting them to put their trust in you.
But it’s not always like that as I learned later in life, that the same people who believed in truth, justice and the American way sell out. They want to get ahead and win the rat race.
They prefer good meals like steak and cheese as opposed to ramen noodles and mustard sandwiches. They prefer family life over a plethora of girlfriends or boyfriends. They prefer stability, wealth, material possessions, and status and power verses living on the edge with or without trinkets to make them happy.
At some point of my life, probably when I was high school or perhaps earlier, I aspired to be all of those factors and more; I aspired to have a family and work at a great metropolitan newspaper. I also aspired to be a U.S. Marine, but when I found out my shoulders dislocated frequently, that aspiration dried up very quickly.
I've always worked at being a journalist from my senior year in high school until now, letting it take on various shapes and forms. Officially, I ended my regular writing gig with a Jewish newspaper that I was freelancing for in autumn, 1995.
I already had a full time job that was, um, just okay, just a job that paid the bills until something else came and that broke me in two. And with that in mind, I decided to find my way back into the journalism business and to be quite honest; it still seems like a great and laborious task to get to where I need to be.
I’m not sure where it is I belong, but one thing is for certain, I have jumped back into that great big newsprint ocean head first. Sure the water is cold and tepid, but once I get used to it, the water will be just fine!
