As someone who has had one primary employer, the Star Tribune, since before the start of this millennium — forever by today's job-wandering standards — I get asked fairly often how I have stayed in one place so long.
The simple answer, aside from the fact that it's a very good place to work: The employer has stayed the same, but the job has changed often enough to present new challenges and keep things fresh.
General assignment writing. Beat writing. Offbeat features. Stories big and small. Editing. Video. Digital writing. Those have been all or at least a part of my job duties in the last two-plus decades.
And, exactly one year ago, this one was added: daily sports podcast host.
We launched the "Daily Delivery" podcast on Feb. 1, 2021. The idea came before COVID was a thing. Much of the planning came during the pandemic. A year later, I'm still recording 95% of it in the basement of my house because, as you might have noticed, COVID is still very much a thing.
I remember doing test podcasts in the middle of the summer of 2020. I remember waking up the first morning to do the first real one and feeling sudden terror. It's one thing to conceive of a new project. It's another thing entirely to actually do it and release it to an audience.
I'm a writer. I don't … talk for a living. What was I thinking?
But here we are, a year later. The terror, which was always mingled with the giddiness of creating something new five times a week, has faded. I at least sort of know what I'm doing now, and the greatest teacher will always be trial and error anyway.
