50 for 50: 1995

YEAR: 1995

AGE: Turned 25 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Miwaukee's East Side; then Madison's far west side, Harbor House Apartments

CUBS' RECORD: 73-71

SONGS I LIKED: "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrisette; "Machinehead" by Bush; "1979" by Smashing Pumpkins"

MOVIES I SAW: "Circle of Friends"; "Die Hard with a Vengeance"

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "Friends"; "ER"

MUSIC VIDEOS I ENJOYED: "Only Wanna Be with You" by Hootie and the Blowfish; "You Don't Know How It Feels" by Tom Petty

CONCERTS I SAW: Pearl Jam; Hootie and the Blowfish; New Rock Fest (Violent Femmes/Duran Duran/Bush/Faith No More/Letters to Cleo/The Ramones/Collective Soul)

VIDEO GAMES I PLAYED: Final Fantasy III; Donkey Kong Country

In early 1995, I had worked at the Milwaukee Sentinel for more than four years. I was coming so close to full-time -- working more part-time hours than I was probably supposed to, getting plenty of extra stringing assignments that were paid at a flat rate, a six-month temporary full-time role for which I worked two nights a week on the news-side copy desk -- but it still hadn't happened. I was turning 25 that year and going off my dad's insurance. And I was coming up on three years out of college. Something had to change.

Up to that point, I figured I just needed to be patient. Other part-timers my age had been moved to full-time, as well as other sports department employees from years past. My time would come. But then, the long-rumored merger of the Sentinel and Journal was announced, and all bets were off. The new paper employed fewer people than the two old newsrooms did total, so I was lucky to keep my part-time position. However, I began to wonder if the promotion would ever happen.

So, I started applying and interviewing for jobs outside Milwaukee.

The first interview was my dream job in eighth grade -- working for TSR in Lake Geneva. TSR produced Dungeons and Dragons, and I was more than excited at the opportunity to work there, even if it didn't pay that well. I came away from the interview so excited, but I didn't get the job. I think they might have thought I wasn't geeky enough after working in sports for so many years.

The next interview was at the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill. The Herald was a huge suburban paper that heavily zoned its editions, so it needed many copy editors. This was a job in news, not sports, and the interview felt a little rushed. Again, I think they thought I was too much sports, even with my stint on the news desk. 

I drove out to LaCrosse for an interview that I thought went well. The paper there was good for a small town, and LaCrosse is a gorgeous city. I'm not sure what went wrong, because by the end of the interview the sports editor was teaching me the pagination system. Yet, no offer.

On a whim, I applied to a magazine publisher in Iola, Wis., that printed a few sports-themed magazines including one of the original fantasy football and baseball magazines from a few decades ago. I'm pretty sure they were looking for someone more entry-level, and even if I was offered a job, I would have said no.

That's four interviews with no luck. My next opportunity was in Jacksonville, Ill., west of Springfield. The newspaper was small -- it essentially was a three-person sports department and I'd be designing the section every night -- and they liked the experience I was bringing. The interview occurred on the night Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games record. The editor drove me around town and for some reason took me to the one block where there was drug traffic. I was offered the job on the spot, but I didn't take it on the spot and wasn't going to.

I was running into two problems on the job search of 1995. First, I sucked at interviewing -- I was too nervous, didn't say the right things, and lacked confidence for a job that needed it. I had the confidence on the job, just not in convincing someone of that during the interview. Second, I was making more part-time in a big city than full-time in some of these smaller opportunities. Jacksonville was going to pay me only $15,000 a year. The math just wasn't going to add up. 

While driving home from Jacksonville, I stopped at a gas station and called Lori from a pay phone. She told me that the sports editor from The Capital Times in Madison had called while I was away. Another application and another potential interview -- but this was a job I wanted. Madison wasn't a podunk town, the paper paid somewhat well, and I was more than experienced after helping produce so much Badger content over the past three years. 

I called the sports editor from the road and said I was interested. He brought me in for an interview a couple weeks later, I took an editing test, and kept my fingers crossed. My immediate boss in Milwaukee told me he heard a rumor at the Badger football game that The Capital Times was about to offer me a job. A couple days later, I got the call and the job offer. I was ecstatic. I met picked up Lori for lunch, brought her flowers, and celebrated finally getting over the hurdle. (We ate a La Fuente in Milwaukee and watched from the restaurant as O.J. Simpson was acquitted.)

The news had already gotten out at my current job, and the executive sports editor wasn't happy. He said he tried to get me full-time, but it just didn't work out. But he came around -- he knew this was the best move for me. In Madison, I'd be in charge of the section a couple days a week, paginate like crazy, and get more focused experience in a short period of time than I would as the low man on the totem pole at the Journal Sentinel. I could possibly come back in a couple years as a much better journalist.

For a couple years, I did want to come back, but eventually we were looking to get out of Wisconsin -- and did when we moved to Utah. All the failed opportunities might have been for the best, or at least would have taken us off a different ramp on life's tollway. The Lacrosse job could have kept us stuck in Wisconsin (or maybe Minneapolis?), and I think we would have been miserable in Iola or Jacksonville. TSR evolved into Wizards of the Coast and moved to Seattle -- that might not have been so bad, but it still wouldn't have paid well as a newspaper job would. Arlington Heights would have put us in Chicago, which might have worked out OK, though I think working the news copy desk would have been boring.

If I had stuck it out in Milwaukee, I probably would have been moved up to full-time in a year or so. I'm glad we didn't stay -- Lori and I both needed to figure out a path of our own than what was most obvious. The patience wasn't in staying but in trusting that the right opportunity would come along. It took a little while, but it came, then would again five years later.

We moved on a Saturday, with the help of my dad and sister (and some friends in Milwaukee), and after they went back to Chicago and Lori and I had unpacked for a little while, I took the car out to find us Chinese food for dinner. I didn't wander, but as I drove around Madison, I felt like I had arrived, finally. I've experienced dozens of happier moments than that evening, but 25 years later, I can say that reaching a destination has perhaps never been so satisfying.

Our time in Madison was just as great, but I'll get to that soon.