My Communication Journey

I started out wanting to be a cowboy, more specifically a big Texas rancher. One of my cousins and I used to wax philosophic about the joys of living a life of riding the range, leading cattle on a long drive, and sitting arond an open campfire. We were not quite ten years at the time. After that, I kicked around the idea of becoming a secret agent. I am sure the fact "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, had just been released was a coincidence. At this point, I was a "mature" 12 years olf age. That career path did not last long, however. Baseball became my driving ambition. To me, it was the great sport. I was convinced a life of catching flies, scooping up grounders and connecting bat to ball could not be matched by anything.

That desire lasted till my undergraduate years in college. By then, I had accumulated years of experience at all levels of the sport: little league, high school junior and senior varsity, and even a brief stint pitching for a low level Atlanta Braves farm team. It was fun. But the harsh reality is I was simply not good enough to go any further than I did. At the ripe old age of 19, I was faced with the challenge of deciding on other career options. It was then I revisted something else I enjoyed doing: asking people questions and then writing about what they said. I thought back to my time on the high school newspaper and decided journalism might be as good of a major to declare in college as any other. Besides, another harsh reality is I could not identify anything else I was even remotely interested in or good at.

So, I joined the college newspaper and started taking classes in journalism and communication. Four and a half years later I managed to graduate and land my first "grown up" job: a general assignment reporter for a daily newspaper. I ended up working for another newspaper before entering into public relations. My age was 25 was my first job in PR was at a local community college . My whopping annual salary was $4,800. While putting food on the table was a challenge, I ended up enjoying the work a great deal. Now, all these years later, I am still trying to be the best I can be in what started out as a fallback profession. And, yes, every so often I still dream aboutr life as a major leaguer.