Life is busy in Guysborough County

I am exhausted. Like sit in my chair staring at the screen dozing off exhausted. Exhausted enough to rediscover naps. I have to admit, when I took this job, I was expecting to be busy, but not this busy--after all, Guysborough's supposed to be pretty sleepy! In the last week I've been to six meetings and a hockey tournament. I've been lost in St. Peter's, Port Hastings, Melford, and Mulgrave. In the last 24 hours, I've written a dozen stories, and am waiting on more interviews and tonight's council meeting.

When teachers said that cutting your teeth at a community newspaper was a good idea, we were always a little sceptical. Sure it looks great on a resume and you'll get to do quite a bit of writing, but the real lessons to be learned when you're covering elections for the Globe. Until then, we're just all biding our time.

Or, so we think. Until we step into that community newsroom and find ourselves flooded with community news, issues, press releases, advertising, complaints, letters, layout, photography and so much more. Files upon files of stories we've only heard of in passing but are of the utmost importance to the area. Places that don't make it on to any map I've owned up until now. And, the pressure of fostering meaningful and trusting relationships with sources. You, the journalist are an outsider and need to prove you deserve to be trusted. I never came across that with those smooth talking politicians while at the CBC. I learned so much during my internship, but every day here I feel like I'm doubling or tripling that knowledge. And, am constantly reminding myself to overcome bad habits like commas (oh, how I miss thee) and super short paragraphs (from my love of online journalism.)

And, who ever thought that there would be big scoops and important, life altering stories in small towns? Multimillion dollar deals and heartbreaking tragedies are covered in the same day, and I've had to teach myself to switch between and comprehend the two.

And now, I must move on to story 13. The people here are friendlier than in Toronto and Halifax, the roads a billion times worse, and the social life for a twenty-something pretty much non-existant, but one thing remains the same no matter where you're working in journalism--the deadlines.