I used to be a really good quitter.
I don’t mean that in a negative way. I just mean that I always knew when to walk away from something that was no longer right for me.
When I was 21 years old, I was made managing editor of a small daily newspaper. Although I soon turned 22, I was still the youngest managing editor of a daily paper in the country at the time. (My technical skills were fantastic, but I was a terrible manager. I didn’t have a clue how to manage people at that age.)
I had been offered a full-time job as managing editor of a weekly newspaper at the end of my junior year at the University of Alabama. I first turned it down, but then I became intrigued. I took the job, thinking I’d spend a year getting experience and then I’d go back to school. But after about eight months at the weekly, I was promoted to sports editor of the daily owned by the same company. Just four months later, I was promoted again — to managing editor of the daily.
After nearly a year in that job, I started feeling that it was time to move on. One Sunday morning, I was driving to church when I realized it was time to quit.
How does modern culture escape ‘little boxes made of ticky tacky’?
Tuesday’s Senate vote reminds me of German ‘Enabling Act’ of 1933
Biases teach us what to expect, but we often turn out to be wrong
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
Economic Man needs no heart, because love and God are dead
Midlife becomes big crisis when our self-deception stops working
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world