New beginnings

My name is Jennifer Aquino and I used to be the ME at the San Mateo County Times and then moved over to the Merc as the NCE. In July I was laid off from the Merc after only three months. To boot, I was seven months pregnant. The week I started at the Merc the layoffs were announced. I wasn't one of THOSE women who planned on taking a maternity leave and never returning. I specifically chose to work nights at the Merc because it would make daycare far cheaper. For the three months after the initial announcement about posible layoffs, I fretted, but thought, "Surely, they won't be cold-hearted enough to pull me from the Times and then lay me off seven months pregnant." Uh, I thought wrong. I remember the phone call from Carole Leigh Hutton that last week of June. I was eating cereal and watching my daughter kick my rib cage. Hutton told me the week before that she highly doubted I'd be laid off. She ate her words that morning. I felt like I'd been shot in the heart. After 10 years of receiving deplorable pay, working on computers from the '80s propped up on phone books and getting very little respect, I felt defeated. How was I going to find a job now? Who in the Bay Area was even hiring? More importantly, would my soon-to-be-born child, husband and I end up on a street panhandling? For weeks I wondered whether knowing my destiny in advance would have helped me prepare. In the end, it wouldn't have made a difference. I would have just spent more time worrying and then even more time wondering what was wrong with me. I spent a lot of time feeling quite worthless and thinking that my evaulation card read somewhat like a rap sheet of all my imperfections. We were given the option of viewing these and I decided against it. Some things, like your destiny, are best left a mystery. Fast forward seven months and one healthy baby later and I have incredible perspective on the episode. Am I homeless? No. I fell into a freelance gig lauching a new real estate magazine covering the Bay Area. Hutton also recommended me to help write the Mama's Guide for the Bay Area. Work just seemed to find me. Maybe I was lucky, but I like to think it's because I finally laid to rest an industry that I'd been trying to keep alive because I'd invested so much of myself in it. I didn't want to let go because I sacrificed moving to exotic locations, having fancy things and a personal life. But, in the end, I decided that there was little left of the industry that resembled the passion and energy that originally excited me. I decided that as painful as this may be, I had to rethink my career and reapply my skills. Also now that I'm out of the daily grind of journalism, I realize just how unhappy I was. Let's face it, we journalists prey on devastation, and it can affect you in ways you might not realize. I also began to read newspapers again as a true consumer and found that, in large part, barely any of it applied or interested me. While I've picked up some freelance work, I know it won't last forever, so I'm considering my options. I have no idea what will be next, but I know there will be a next. And to daydream about what that is, is exciting. To think that I'll be fired up about my job again, like the first day I worked for the Stockton Record and spent five hours in 110 degree heat covering a propane fire, is refreshing. I suppose I could still end up homeless. But I know that I survived the worst part, letting go. Sorry that this is somewhat rambling, but I wanted to let those on the brink know that there is life after this industry. Whether it's now or six years from now, journalism in the traditional sense is on a road to nowhere. You are going to have to pull off at some point, so, I suppose the question to ask yourself is: Is it more painful now or later?