Opinion : Monday night philosophizing

Whether it’s a quirk or a benefit, a curse or a blessing, I often find myself thinking about things that would never occur to anyone else.

When I got my first job at a newspaper, I spent a lot of time about the guy who left the vacancy that became my opportunity.

I don’t mean the man I replaced at the office in downtown Independence. I knew who he was. I knew where he went.

But I wondered about the newspaper where that guy went, and who left the vacancy there. Did someone there leave for a different job? If so, where? Did someone there retire? Die? Move on to a different career?

Then I asked myself that same question about that unknown location. And the next location. And the next….and the next.. and the next…

I wonder how many people changed jobs in the chain of events that led to my first full-time journalism job. A handful? A hundred? More?

I don’t know.

I only wish I could have met the man or woman who started that chain, and said “Thanks.”

I thought of that first job in journalism on Monday, when I visited the building that had been what seems to be the home of my last journalism job.

It was a Monday night 18 ½ years ago, when I contemplated my first day at the new job, in a new career full of possibilities.

It was a Monday night a few months ago, when I realized that the world as I knew it was changing, and that it was time for me to make some changes – not in what I do, but how.

I wished, on that second Monday, that I could have found a way to delay those changes. Now, I wish they would have come sooner.

Life’s like that.

Sometimes, you look back on changes that seemed not-so-good and realize they were not so bad. Sometimes, after a period of seemingly endless guessing, you look back and realized that you’d guessed correctly. (Yes, and sometimes you look back and clearly see how thoroughly you screwed up.)

On this most recent Monday of memories, however, I could look back at the room where I stepped to make a phone call that Monday night. From that room I began the journey that led here.

As I stood in that room, one of the people who was involved in the early days of those changes said, “Dean, you got a minute?”

He was not there to talk about the past, but the future, and a project he’s been working on, and the effects of writing a story about it.

So, quickly on that Monday, my attention changed from focusing on where I’ve been and what I’ve done to thinking where this career is going and what it means for the future.

And, sure, there are still lots of unknowns.

But the first few steps of this journey have led me to believe that I’ve begun the best one since that first Monday.