Quick update

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm back on my feet from being sick. I've got a whirlwind next two days to get the paper out, including Canso council tonight, so I should have a good entry for Wednesday!

I've been a bad blogger...

...and unfortunately will continue to be one for the next day or two. This lovely spring weather has come just in time for me to be quite sick. I'm crawling out of bed long enough to work on the paper, but lack the energy and creativity to blog. Hopefully I'll be back online soon.

I've hit the two month mark!

Wow. In some ways, I feel like I've been here forever, working really hard, in other ways I feel very, very new as I continue to make wrong turns and appear blissfully unaware of the issues that matter in Guysborough County. Today, we got the paper done by supper time (hurrah, though it did mean we didn't order any food in, which was slightly disappointing).

I went to a really interesting meeting tonight. It was a discussion on immigration, the benefits of having immigrants in the community, the ways to attract them, and the hurdles they face.

It must be really scary coming to a new country with a very difficult culture and then have trouble integrating with the community, that is, not feeling accepted or welcomed.

It also really set me to thinking. I'm very new to this community, and have been facing hurdles of my own. I can't imagine how much harder it would be to have culture shock (I mean, beyond the differences from moving from Halifax and Toronto to here!).

For example, I'm currently living in the basement of The Journal. Luckily, the exterminator came over the weekend, so my bunny rabbit Al and I aren't finding cellar bugs (or sow bugs as they're called here) in our beds. However, I'm still living under my work in a one room apartment, which is slightly less than glamourous, or comfortable.

My fiance can't find work in the area, so he's looking West. It's awfully lonely here without him, as we've spent the last three years attached at the hip. We've always planned to return to Ontario, where he's from and where I fell in love with cbc.ca, but the plan was always to go together. Now it looks like he might be moving very soon. Which leaves me in a tricky situation, as I do really like a lot of the people here, the area is beautiful, and am getting great job experience and portfolio pieces, but at the same time, I want to be with him. And be able to afford a place for us to live.

The final hurdle is similar to what the immigrant community voiced tonight. It's a feeling of not being included. I have no family here. I had to look up Guysborough on the map when I took the job! Luckily, a good friend of my Mom's works at the RDA, so I have a bit of a support net. People are very friendly, but I'm generally out of the loop. I don't know who's who or what's what. I have a loose grasp of some of the things happening here in the last two months, but past that, I'm up the creek without a paddle. Or on my way back from Sherbrooke at night without a map. Either way, I'm lost.

I keep intending to go to yoga, but my job keeps me really busy. In some ways, that's a good thing, as I spend less time missing James, my friends, people my own age, malls, and starbucks, but it also means that I lack real roots. Without an address, a private line, or even a changed cell phone number, in many ways I still feel transient, ready to pack up and go when the work or loneliness gets too overwhelming. These last two weeks have been particularly difficult, as we've been quite busy, Sharon, our office manager, is on vacation in Mexico, and Melissa, the graphic designer, put in her notice for this spring. I've started having nightmares about having to come up with story ideas, do them, edit them, and lay out and proof the paper.

I had an opportunity to move to Toronto this week, and work casually for cbc.ca. The job would have started early May. And, it was quite tempting. James could find work, I could get into the mother corp system, and there are an awful lot of fab shoe stores in Toronto. I could spend hours alone at nine west (and well over my year's reporter salary). But, it's also hard. I'm learning so much working here, and I haven't been here very long so would feel really guilty about bailing. There are no guarantees that this casual work could turn into something, either, which would leave James and I high and dry.

When I moved here, I wasn't sure what to expect. In some ways, everything has far exceeded my expectations, while in others, life here is really hard--for newcomers and long-time residents alike. Across the county, work is scarce. Money is tight. Teens and twenty-somethings are packing up and leaving in droves. The county's in a tight spot, and desperately needs positive things to happen. The RDA and all the councils--Guysborough, Mulgrave, St. Mary's and Canso--are working so hard to make positive changes, but economic renewal is a really slow process.

Luckily, for many of the residents, there are tight-knit support groups in the form of family and friends. People are incredibly active in their communities, a fact I'm becoming more and more aware of as volunteer week progresses. People are able to live happily here because of these things, things that newcomers aren't hooked into.

So, even if it takes a while, even if it happens long after I'm gone, I hope someone acts on the recommendation from tonight's meeting to form a newcomer's group--a way to meet people, interact, learn what's what and get involved in the community. It certainly would help any one new to the community, not just those coming from overseas but even those like me coming from the south shore. I'm sure that if/when the Keltic and Melford terminals projects get going, there will be more newcomers, and they will face some of the same hurdles faced tonight, and may too have trouble setting down roots.

To end on a happy note, my school-related work is done! Now I just need to wait on the marks, and hit up the ceremony on May 17. James is packing up our Halifax apartment and selling off our furniture, so things are progressing and my to-do list is getting shorter. And, even better, I have nothing on my calendar for tomorrow. I will get to work on some stories, make some calls, and hopefully have an early night--especially necessary since I'll be at volunteer ceremonies Friday and Saturday nights!

Week seven--and the blogs are still coming

So, school is technically over for me. I mean, graduation isn't until May, and until the webmaster puts up my new stuff on the journal website (from two weeks ago) I may not feel done. But, it's basically over.

It's a weird feeling. But, I actually felt like a working journalist today when I got an unhappy phone call.

You see, a local school had a health day, and distributed pamphlets to the students about sex. It explained sexual acts pretty explicitly, and at least one parent was unhappy that her 8th grader received this without her permission. So, she wrote us a letter about it and cited some descriptions of sexual acts in detail.

After some talking around the office, we decided not to print the descriptions. We have a lot of older and very religious readers who were going to be offended by the letter anyway. We decided it would be best not to cause any further upset, and replaced the section saying the pamphlets contained graphic descriptions.

Today, the author of the letter called. She was not impressed that we didn't want to print it, saying the point was that she didn't want to read it, or have her daughter read it. I heard her out, and explained that all letters to the editor are subject to editing, and we didn't feel comfortable printing one section of the letter, so either had to omit that part, or omit the whole letter. I then encouraged her to write another letter, if she felt strongly about the omission, explaining how upset she was that The Journal didn't want to present that information to its readers but her daughter was given it at school.

She seemed much calmer when she said goodbye, so now I'm just waiting to see if I get the letter.

I feel like I handled it pretty well, even though my stomach is still is knots every time I have to deal with unhappiness.

Speaking of unhappiness, Guysborough Council last night was wild. Everyone talks about how crazy Canso Council can get, but it really had nothing on last night! The Save Lincolnville Campaign showed up at council and issued its demands for changes in representation, and council adjourned before it was finished. I'm still working on the story for next week's Journal, but it's definitely going to be a hard one. It's a very emotional issue, and I don't think last night went particularly well for either side. Nothing was resolved either, so this may be opening a can of worms with allegations of racism becoming quite prevalent.

Heading into the home stretch

School ends Friday. I've spent thousands (and thousands and thousands) on tuition and rent, devoted hours and hours to classes and homework, studied myself stupid (believe me, it happens. Days when you couldn't find your keys if your life depended on it, but you can list all the sub-acts of the British North America Act in chronological order) and now it's ending.

It's definitely nice to not have to worry about schoolwork anymore--or at least it will be, if the web designer puts up the up-to-date content and my latest round of changes! But, I'm reluctant. This is my sixth week of working at the Journal, and in many ways I'm still stubbornly clinging to my Halifax and student life. I sleep rarely. I eat at weird hours. My cell phone still has a Halifax number. I don't even want to think about paying back my loans.

But, as of Friday, I won't be a student any more. I'll be a full-time, working journalist. I should be happy, right? This is what I've been working towards for the last four years! It's just scary.

I've learned so much in my time here so far, I've made contacts, I've written stories on everything from Elizabeth May to a giant poinsettia and everything in between, I've edited, wrote an editorial, attended every council meeting I could (and regularly managed to get lost), taken pictures, considered lay out options (though luckily my graphic designer is brilliant, so I just have to say what page things should go on and she makes it fit), and received my first complaints.

The worst part, and probably the most valuable lesson, has been the complaints. J-school has not taught me to have a thick skin. As a student, you often try to avoid those iffy touchy situations, because you can. Now, I've got to follow up on them, and sometimes when people are upset and stressed, they say things they don't really mean and call unhappy. Also, people call with complaints that have absolutely nothing to do with you and you have to take it in stride.

I've received two complaints, and 10 or 12 thank yous, so I'm averaging out pretty well, but for some reason the complaints seem to stick. The one was directly concerning an article, where someone later decided (the week after the paper came out) that they would have rather not spoken to me. The second was a change in status for the Keltic project between 2005 and two weeks ago, which aggravated one community member who decided we lied to him in 2005 or now.

I've learned to just listen to complainents and hear them out, because that often seems to be what they want, but it still gets to me. There was no real feedback during J-school, and you could sometimes forget that you had readers (if in fact you ever did!). I don't know if there's something the program could do to help with this or if it's just a harsh wake up call when you enter the real world, but it's certainly hard.

Other challenges I've started to be able to take in stride--empty pages (thanks kids for holding penguin day yesterday!), letters to the editor, unreturned calls, even corrections/clarifications. It's just the complaints that get to me. Even though I'm soon not going to be a student anymore, I still kind of feel like that young, naive, change the world kind of person who wants everyone to like me--qualities that may not be negative, but also don't always float in the real world.