Some habits are too easy to lose

For nearly 29 years, I went to work five days a week.

Except for illnesses, vacations and a seven-week break in 1985 when my employer declared bankruptcy, I always worked. When it came time to transition from one job to another, as often as not I had choices.

In addition to the places I worked, I was offered the chance to go to Washington, D.C., Charlottesville, Va., Anniston, Ala., McComb, Miss., Columbia, Mo., Syracuse, N.Y., and San Rafael, Cal.

I didn't always like the places I worked -- Gastonia, N.C., really is one of the armpits of America -- but I always managed to respect the work, the readers and my employers enough to do quality work.

At most places, I really enjoyed working. In 1987, when I was sports editor of the Tribune in Greeley, Colo., I committed myself to working as hard as I could for one full year to see what I could accomplish. I averaged 70 hours a week and won a ton of awards, both for myself and for the section.

As I write this, I haven't worked for pay one day in the last five months. I lost my job in late January because I refused to toe the line on a policy change and wouldn't tell irate readers what our management wanted them to hear.

It's actually amazing that I lasted as long as I did. I had worked for my employer for nearly a decade when Donrey Media sold out to Dean Singleton and his Media News company, and it didn't take long for me to start despising my new employer.

Honestly, it's tough to keep your heart in your job when you have no respect for the people signing your paycheck. I did some good work for Media News, but overall, the quality and particularly the consistency of the work I did the last seven years of that 29 wasn't as good as what came before.

What bothers me is that people will think my work suffered because I got older, but if I was burned out as a journalist, it was because I had seen too much and was too disillusioned by all we were having to go through just to cover the news.

Since I lost my job in January, hundreds of good journalists in the Southland have lost theirs as well. There has never been a time in Southern California journalism -- maybe anywhere in the U.S. -- where the job market has been worse.

If I'm ever going to work again, it's not going to be in newspapers. The jobs just aren't there, especially since my wife and her job keep me tethered to the Los Angeles area.

That's a shame.

I never considered myself a media personality. I was a newspaperman. I'm not ashamed to say I bleed ink, even if it's possible I'm going to be part of the last generation that does.

I used to love working.

That habit is gone, though. If I work again, it will be for money.

Just money.