Netting a new job

“Your career is like a garden. It can hold an assortment of life’s energy that yields a bounty for you. You do not need to grow just one thing in your garden. You do not need to do just one thing in your career.” — Author Jennifer Ritchie Payette

It’s often said that when one door of opportunity closes, another eventually opens. Two days shy of two months in my case.

As I sit at my laptop, tomorrow, Monday, May 19, is the big day — the first day of my post-journalism career after my March 21 downsizing from my downstate reporting job. After 36 years in the news business and 45 career writing, photography and community service awards, it was a fun and rewarding career, but it had also become evident that it was time to move on in search of new opportunities as I close out the remainder of my working years as retirement nears ever closer on the horizon.

While I continue to keep a few toes dipped in the Fourth Estate with this weekly column for the News-Review and a new freelance reporting and photography gig that I started a month ago with our local daily newspaper, my main bread-and-butter job now lies in the world of professional hockey as an account executive for season ticket member services with our local franchise.

Truth be told, I’m feeling a mix of emotions, kind of like the first day of school jitters, as I ready myself in anticipation for my new job tomorrow, settling into a new workplace and adjusting to the steep first-day-of-work learning curve.

For me, it’s new and yet also familiar, as I transition internally with the team from a two-year part-time seasonal game day role to a new full-time year-round position. The faces are familiar, but the job responsibilities are new.

Embarking on this new career adventure in pro hockey season ticket member sales and service, I’m reminded anew that everyone starts somewhere, often many times throughout their lives, and admittedly, I’m no different.

Professional sports is the latest of many jobs over the arc of my adult working career. While the bulk of my career was in journalism, there have been some unique twists and turns along life’s long and winding road from there to here across the Midwest in Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois — special education paraprofessional, entrepreneurial small business owner, manufacturing, professional chef, outdoor power equipment sales, and afternoon drive radio personality among them. All of them, to one degree or another, have shaped me with knowledge and experiences into the person I am today.

As I walk in the door at work tomorrow, I already come to my new workplace at the team office with several leg-up advantages as I step into my new role, including two years of part-time work with the team and a sea of familiar faces ready to greet me as I walk in the door to help the franchise build relationships with the fan base and the community at large.

It’s a different kind of storytelling than I’ve been used to for the past 36 years, but one that will still require creativity, passion, and dedication.

I’m already a part of the larger team, I’ve got this, and tomorrow is just the beginning of an exciting new chapter in my life.

Tomorrow, I’ll figuratively lace up my skates and hit the ice, trading my press pass for a new employee ID as I get to work building new relationships and stories with the team.

As we say at the games, “Light the lamp, boyz.” And tomorrow I get to light the lamp in my own way.

Freelance News-Review columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.