Writing is a huge part of my life but not all of my writing is penned in pursuit of column inches or coinage. It occupies another, harder to define subsection of my existence. Writing adds to my sense of self-worth and it gives me pleasure. Some of what I write is just for me. And if anyone else shows an interest in that stuff, well that to me is a bonus.
Sat here, in the back room of the home that’s become my office since last March, surrounded by the sunny objects that add fun and interest to my child’s life, I’ll readily admit I ignore a great deal of news and its adjoining commentary. I need to. Don’t we all?
Having been required to pay attention to what’s going on around me in a professional sense since I was 19, be it current affairs, local news, business, sport, the arts and so on, it’s not as if I’m ever truly and entirely switched off. But I’m a lot better on that front than I used to be.
During this sense-numbing, socially distant phase we’re all enduring, accessing news through my paid subscriptions (of which I have at least six) is available to me off my phone, tablet and laptop.
I’m a voracious reader, something both my Grandads extolled to my Grannies each Christmas and Birthday time: ‘buy the children books, comics and annuals. They’ll never be bored.’
They were right. I have never been bored. I’ve been occasionally demotivated – what person who writes or a living hasn’t been - but I’ve never, ever been bored. I see no reason to be. And while my career choice has probably meant I’ll never be incredibly well off, I’ve had a very engaging and interesting time as a journalist.
Would I swap all of my career experiences for a mountain of cash and no financial concerns? Such a prospect has given me pause for thought more than once over the years – I’d be a fool to suggest otherwise - but all in all, I’d have to say no.
I enjoy my job now as much as I ever did and I’m enormously grateful for that. I write at least six days a week and it engages me in a way I can’t imagine anything else would and for that I feel enormously grateful.
And now that I’ve got a book to name, albeit ghost written, I feel as if I can be considered as both a writer and a reporter. I realise I’ll always be a newspaper man in the eyes of those who’ve been good enough over the years to spare the time to read what I’ve written – and I’m more than okay with that.
Journalism has been good to me; my job has brought me to places I’d probably never have seen otherwise but I’ve put a lot of myself back into the job over the years. If I’ve had some luck, I’ve been partly responsible for some of it, I reckon.
There’s a routine to some of the weekly tasks I still enjoy. Generally, the only day I buy a physical newspaper nowadays is every Tuesday when both the paper I currently work for and the one which previously employed me are published.
My newspaper stack, which I separated only this week, is now stored in two separate spaces, and while I can go online and return to whatever Waterford story I need to at any given time, I love picking up the paper and seeing it in print. A quiet kind of magic.
There are some things I can’t give up on and this hobby, I suspect, will happily remain one of them even if my working life takes off in some other direction down the line.
There’s a joy in seeing the printed local word produced each and every week and having some input into the weekly reality of the Waterford News & Star nowadays gives me as much pride as my years with The Munster Express elicited.
In fact, I probably get more satisfaction out of the job now that I did during the latter half of my time at The Munster as I get to write more and edit less nowadays.
The days of the printing machine cranking up on 37, The Quay; the literal, industrial element of the trade, are now sadly gone, and feel like a deeper part of history with every passing year. But I’m so pleased I was witness to that oily, grease painted experience at first hand, something a new generation of reporters has been denied of. They’ve definitely missed out.
The swift sorting of the paper and its inserts every Wednesday morning before the latest edition was batched and delivered was always the liveliest few hours of the week on Hanover Street. The word was dispersed and then we began all over again, thinking about the next edition and how we’d fill it. And we did. Somehow or another we did!
Of course, times move on and things change. Newspapers don’t employ as many people as once they did and right now, it’s almost a year since the News & Star staff were all together on our Gladstone Street office.
Yet here we all are, from our kitchens and spare rooms, filing and editing copy and photos, selling advertising features and staying in contact with each other via Zoom, email and WhatsApp.
The miracle (and I’ve always considered it as such) that is the weekly publication of a local newspaper has been maintained, proof that there is more than one way to put a paper together.
Readers and advertisers alike have remained welcomingly loyal while for our part, we’ve made a huge effort to provide the locality with news that extends well beyond Covid’s blast radius.
The job remains just that – the job – but from a creative perspective, the pleasure generated by an in-depth interview, a series of themed news stories and the unexpected novelty of a Winter Hurling Championship, has brought added value to my work. The buzz remains intact.
Having the book (co-written with Enda O’Doherty) published was another huge highlight of the year for me and fingers crossed there’ll be more to follow but what will be will be on that front.
While re-arranging my newspapers this week, I found a journal I wrote only a handful of pages in, words written off the Eastern American seaboard in February 2005 after a brilliant week spent in Boston with my brother John. I was 25 years old at the time.
“Writing is what I do, what I most enjoy, possibly the only past-time that I can equate with running as it relaxes my mind. Now this may seem strange given that writing, at least good, well-considered prose, involves great concentration. But given that I am prone to some odd behavioural patterns (odd, not necessarily bad, mind you), it’s hardly too surprising for me to make such a sentiment.”
Re-reading those words in February 2021, as a 41-year-old, with a lot more miles on the clock now than I did when boarding that Aer Lingus flight at Logan Airport, I’m pleased to say I still feel the same way about writing. I’ve also resumed running with no little relish over the past two and a half years and I’m very glad of it too!
Will I ever be a successful writer, successful to the extent that I’ll be translated into multiple languages? Who knows; it remains a long shot but there’s plenty of years ahead of me yet - I hope! But fame per se was never really a huge ambition of mine in the first place when it came to writing – and still isn’t. Truly enjoying what you do, sometimes that’s enough. And right now, that’s enough for me.
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