Off Topic: Knowing When It’s Time to Move On

When do you know it’s time to move on?

When you’re a kid, you simply graduate to the next grade or college level. As an adult, sometimes a life event or organizational change pushes you to pursue a new career path. Sometimes contracts end. Sometimes change is not your choice.

But sometimes the time for change isn’t so obvious. For me, it was a complicated decision.

We work in an industry where the norm is to let your career dictate where you live. You climb the market ladder with a few years in each stint. That didn’t work for me: I didn’t get farther than Cedar Rapids before Lake Superior called me back to Duluth. I was fortunate to find jobs that didn’t always feel like jobs, and that still allowed me to sneak into the Northland wilderness on the weekends.

I enjoyed the work despite the well-known challenges of working in TV news. Until a couple of years ago, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Then came political turmoil.

Then came the pandemic.

Then came the staffing challenges facing not just our industry, but every industry.

While this was going on, the personal losses began to mount. First, a treasured aunt taken by cancer way too young. Then two grandparents, plus Grandpa’s sister and Grandpa’s cousin. A third grandparent who I never got to know. On the other side of the family, the uncle who encouraged my interest in broadcasting. All gone in three years.

It’s not just family, either. Some colleagues didn’t get much time to enjoy retirement. Some didn’t make it to retirement. Two died of cancer in their 30s.

All of that loss really makes you think about what you’re going to do with the limited time we have on this Earth.

Working in small-market TV for 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of colleagues move on to cities across the country, from the Pacific coast to a national cable channel in New York. I can watch any of the Minneapolis TV stations to catch up with former colleagues. A half-dozen others somehow all ended up at the same station in Madison. Many others have taken the valuable skills they’ve learned as journalists to respected jobs in communications and other industries.

Yet here I am, still doing the same job. The thought of continuing to do the same thing every day for the second half of my working years just became depressing.

I could continue to occupy a chair and collect a paycheck, counting down the minutes to lunch every day. But staying in a job just for the paycheck is not only bad for me, it’s not fair to my colleagues or to my employer. They need someone who wants to be in the chair.

It’s my turn to move on. Now, I’ll be watching WDIO to catch up with my former colleagues.

Friday marked the planned end of my time as assistant news director at the Duluth ABC affiliate where I’ve spent more than half my career. I’m grateful to the station and to the hundreds of people who I’ve worked with over the years at WDIO and other stations.

What’s my next job? I don’t know! It may or may not be in broadcasting, it may or may not be in journalism, and it may or may not be in Duluth. I need a break to decompress before I decide how to begin the second half of my working years.

My summer “job” will be to work on the ever-growing bucket list of places I’d like to visit. The list just seems to keep getting longer — way too long to fit into regular vacations or to save for retirement.

Still, I love broadcasting, I love journalism, and I love to write. I’m not about to stop creating content here on NorthPine.com. In fact, I plan to write a lot more, and I hope you’ll enjoy what I write!