I guess I should explain the long hiatus...
Despite what people say and all those heart-warming movies which tell us that anything is possible as long as you can dream it, I guess I'm (again) putting the journalism dream on the back shelf... and I had been for a while, at least as a career option.
I'm gonna be a doctor now. That's the new idea. It seems like it still may afford me the opportunity to do some good, get out on some more adventures and possible even write about it all someday, plus I really loved my EMS days. So, I've got a long road ahead, but I do know that: one must do something. As much as I love journalism, I don't think it's wi$e at this point to keep pressing the issue as a career choice... not enough money there to keep me off of people's couches. Oh well. So for that reason, I guess I felt like the blog (which at one point was intended as some kind of clip portfolio) was too much trouble to maintain, especially given how infrequently I get to a good internet connection. Then add on top of that the cracking of the screen of my pretty pink laptop which I bought and later discovered... was pink. That's true, ask anybody.
The New Plan
So instead of writing sample articles employing all of the fine journalistic principles and techniques which I have learned, I will succumb to the 'new school' of any idiot can say whatever he/she wants whenever he/she wants and what's more crazy is that other people sometimes even read it. In this case I really only expect family and close friends to 'read it,' so I guess that's not so crazy.
And one more thought on the death of journalism... It seems to me that as long as we're all going to be 'journalists' now. Reporting via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, phone-cams, etc., why not teach more journalism in school, right? Are they already doing this? I live in Morocco, I don't know... Teach kids how to blog. Make them responsible journalists early on, then even if there's still no money in journalism, perhaps some more quality material will rise up from the gutters of the internet.
The Lost Nav
So I wasn't really lost after all... I was just changing directions. Now I'll just carry on like every other clown writing about what he saw or did that day.
Guess what everybody! I just taught my first two ambulance driver training sessions with my buddy Andy out here in the Peace Corps! Woo! [Really Big Smiley Face!] [Winking Smiley Face!]
The program is developing as we see what these drivers really know and don't know, but they, as well as some of the docs and nurses at these rural clinics seem to dig our scene. [Winking Smiley Face]
We gave them some backboards and collars and set them up with some equipment they should be carrying like, gloves, tape, blankets and jazz like that. [Smiley Face with half-note in background as a play on my use of the word 'jazz' to mean: stuff Face]
This project had been in the works for about a year and a half which sounds like a long time, but is really only about a week or two in "Peace Corps condensed time." So it's not that bad. Those few days or months, depending on which calendar you use, were spent convincing my supervisors this was a good idea, confirming the interest on the part of these drivers spread throughout my province (Azilal), finding a supply company for the equipment, writing a grant, getting grant approved by Rabat, by Washington, waiting for the money to arrive, paying the Casablanca supply company for the backboards and collars, waiting on the delivery of the backboards and collars, distributing materials, and finally scheduling and executing these training sessions. [Smiley Face with Sweat Flying Off It's Face, Face]
Also, I'd like to mention that in early September I helped teach a little journalism clinic in the city of Ouarzazate. I met a really good group of kids who are actually show some enthusiasm for journalism and using it to improve their lives and their communities... Imagine that. I'm also a little jealous, I gotta say, that they come from a place where journalism may not quite be dead yet. Go crack heads!, I say to them.
And for me it gave me a little motivation to get back writing again... even if it is in this new, modern, everyone's-a-reporter now way.
So I will sign off here:
"This has been the Lost Nav blog, from Morocco, Lost Nav reporting."
