Job status update

A quick post (OK, maybe not so quick) to let those who care know how my job situation has changed:

We had been told last month that Aug. 15 would almost certainly be the day Scripps would make the changeover to outsourcing the copy desk to Corpus Christi and therefore ending our jobs.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, they brought into the conference room and basically said, they ain't ready. Apparently, we don't yet quite have the technology and they can't make it better than it was before. The computer gobbledy-gook needed to transmit all this stuff back and forth between California and Texas isn't going as smoothly as they'd hoped. The only paper that's online with this thing is a considerably smaller paper in Redding and they're having a lot of trouble.

They didn't give us a new date for our demise, but I figure it has to be at least good for another month or two. On one hand, it's nice to still be employed for a while longer. I like that idea. So does my wife; it's the very thing she and her friends have been praying for (in fact, they're praying it gets so bad, they give up on the idea altogether and just keep the lot of us). On the other hand, this is making "leading us on" into an art form. It's hard to function well with something like this looming over you. It's nearly impossible to think about looking for another job until this one ends because if we leave early, we forfeit whatever severance package there may be (another thing they won't tell us much about).

I like what I do. I want to keep doing it. I like where I work and for whom. On many levels, things are very status quo. On other levels, they're anything but.

In the meantime, we have a great bunch of copy editors. The other night, when the news about the death of John Wooden broke at about 7:15, all of us plunged right in, ripping apart and rearranging not one, but two sections of the paper. I had already written an appreciation column the night before and two of our writers were able to get great local reactions. I told our news-side editor, only half-joking, that our coverage looked so good you would have thought Wooden had died much earlier in the day.

We are incredibly professional in a very trying situation. Nobody beats us on that. Our copy desk rocks.

And there are even things that have gotten better lately. I'm writing more than I ever have and getting more compliments about it, too. I'm going to get to cover the baseball All-Star Game in Anaheim next month, assigned to it by the managing editor (which means he has to be reading my stuff, right?).

And just when I think no one cares, I'm proven wrong. At church on Sunday, no fewer than three of the pastors asked me about my situation. Just out of the blue. Even when I'm not faithful, God is.

Waiting for God's timing is incredibly hard to do. God wants us to be patient while at the same time not making us that way. We have to fight our impulses in order to follow his. It's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time.

Which I continue to do, with His help...