Stupid career....

As you may or may not now, in the time since I've graduated from college, I've been waiting tables while trying to figure out some career direction. I wasted four years at Ball State, so it feels like I should be putting my Telecommunications Production / English double major toward something as opposed to a job that doesn't even require a GED, but I don't know what the hell I want to do, and at least for now waiting tables, drinking to excess, writing comedy, making cartoons, and gorging myself on TV shows on DVD has been more than enjoyable.

But then I discovered from random googling that Brian "Boom Goes the Dynamite" Collins is working as a reporter at the ABC affiliate in Waco, Texas. Brian went to Ball State and studied in the same department as me, and I realized that if he can get a "real" job in the field, I could easily do the same. While taking a shower I thought about being a reporter and all of the exciting and interesting people I would meet, the fascinating events I'd witness, and even the status of local celebrity, and I decided right then and there that reporting is what I truly want to do, even if it means moving far away to some random corner of the country.

Then out of curiosity I googled the average salary of a reporter. It comes out to something like this:

• $26,000 for a daily newspaper
• $22,880,for a weekly newspaper
• $23,400 in radio
• $21,840 in broadcast television
• $25,012 in cable television.

My pathetic server job that anyone with a GED can get has broadcast television reporters beat by ten thousand fucking dollars. Then I thought about how many long hours I'd be working, staying up all night at the station editing and writing. I thought about how cultivating my own leads and sources and expecting me to find my own stories to cover is more responsibility than any sane boss would give me. I thought about how including any of my trademark creativity into my stories would immediately get me fired. I thought about how slow news days would probably make me resort to fucking making shit up about restaurants charging money for ice.

I thought about how many achingly dull and occasionally asinine stories about pig contests, book stores opening, and quiz bowl competitions I'd have to spend long hours putting together. I thought about how I already meet hundreds of local characters over the course of a week while waiting tables, and how torturous it is just to ask them what they want for dinner, and how talking to them and getting to know them would be even worse than the level of interaction my current job requires. I thought about how reporting for the Ball State Daily News blew so much ass that I quit after two weeks.

And then I thought to myself, "Back to square one on this career bullshit..."