Rodney Curtis

I’ve always slightly feared you Brenda Starr, you and your journalistic zeal with your drop-dead good looks. Your story-at-all-costs made me worry I wasn’t living up to newsroom standards and I looked at you with a combination of awe slash uneasiness. It’s a bizarre mixture, for sure, but now that you’re officially retiring I think you should know the truth about that little peccadillo.

Having worked in a dozen newsrooms during my career, then being dumped by journalism like I was a bad lover, I know a little about what you’re going through. There’s probably a little anger, a little sadness, a lot of nostalgia and tons of worry. The furloughs you took this year eased you into the afterlife surely. But Brenda, there’s nothing to prepare you for the first time a big story hits your former beat and all you can do is sit there in your sweats, sip some coffee and maybe tweet 140 characters. It rips you apart, so be prepared sister.

But life as a recovering journalist isn’t as bad as it may seem. That very story I just mentioned also carries with it a sigh of relief. You don’t have to throw everything on the back burner, brave the elements, contact people who’d rather not be contacted, deal with idiot editors (like we both became in later years!), and tumble home late, exhausted and not knowing how you’ll do it all again the next morning. Add a family to that equation and you feel like you’re letting both sides down, including yourself.

So enjoy that part Brenda. Enjoy it with as much oomph as you enjoyed chasing the story. But do more.

Try teaching. You’d be amazed that somewhere, some administrator will be asleep at the wheel and allow you to come in and teach a course or two. Once you con them into thinking your credentials are valuable, you may find a massive number of students — high-school and college — who are looking at new ways of telling stories. It’ll blow your mind Ms. Starr.

Yes, go ahead and blog/tweet/Facebook and the like. You’ll be telling stories and getting your spin out there no matter if it doesn’t feel the same as it did with ink and dead trees.

But mostly, my hennaed hench-woman, you need to become three dimensional. For 70 years you’ve lived in a two dimensional world and that needs to change immediately. Stop looking at things linearly and begin to see yourself acting and reacting with the rest of society. Come off the printed page, poke your head around and you will discover there are other systems or paradigms you want to be part of. You’ll find they want you too.

Let go of fear, Brenda. Force yourself to smile. Embrace today and right now. You really don’t have a choice in the matter anyway so let the future happen. I have to say, the future is as fun and bumpy as the newsroom was.

Welcome to it.