Climb Aboard The Funship

I've been thinking a lot lately about the paths we choose in life--probably because I recently underwent a career shift and am also going back to school for the first time in more than four years (scary).

In college, I majored in journalism. It's hard to remember now whether I chose that because I deeply wanted to be a journalist, or because I wanted to get paid to write and reporting seemed like the best way to accomplish that. Either way, that's what I did and eventually--after a prohibitively expensive undergraduate education, a few non-paid internships and a brief stint of unemployment--I landed a real reporting job at a newspaper in Southern California.

Journalism is one of those jobs that look extremely glamorous and interesting on television and in the movies, but which in reality consists of more drudgery than you could possibly imagine. I'm sure it's quite a fabulous life if you're a New York Times columnist or spend your days in the White House press room, but I was a city reporter at a mid-size regional newspaper, and therefore spent most of my time at city council meetings listening to officials harangue over land use zoning and whether to allow another Wal-Mart in town.

Not to say that the job was all bad. Even the most ordinary lives and places have extraordinary moments, and occasionally a story would come along that was truly interesting and inspiring. But after a while I just burned out on it--the long hours, the crappy pay, the nightly deadlines, living in the burbs and wearing my car into the ground by chasing down stories through two counties.

So a few months ago I took a new job and went in a different direction. I still work in media and still write for a living, but it's a totally different experience. Now, my days are structured and relatively low-stress. I work with great people who promote a healthy work-life balance and bring in a salary that keeps me above the poverty line.

Day-to-day, I'm so much happier and less bitter than I used to be. But there's this small, nagging part of me that wonders if maybe I've robbed myself of something by taking a path that's smoother and, in some ways, less challenging.

My friend Susannah has this great word for experiences that suck while you're going through them, but which you remember fondly once they're over. She calls it "funship," which I assume is an amalgam of Fun and Hardship. Funship is the trip you take where everything goes calamitously wrong, but which provides you with the best stories to laugh over and share for the rest of our life. (And really, who remembers the trips where everything goes swimmingly?) Funship is the battle scar you end up being grateful for, even thought it hurt like hell at the time.

I realize, in hindsight, one thing that I do miss about the daily news grind is the funship--like the time shortly after I started the job that I was sent into the mountains to cover a wildfire while wearing open-toed wedge-heeled sandals. (What I learned from that experience is that a reporter always carries jeans and an extra pair of sneakers in his or her car). Or the afternoon I spent staking out a goat farm where the father of a wanted man was purported to be living. Or when, as a lowly intern, I was sent out in the middle of the night to investigate the reported appearance of the Virgin Mary in a hospital window.

At the time, I cursed the job and the gods of news for putting me in such ridiculous situations. But now that I have a little distance I'm grateful for those years at the newspaper, even if I have no real desire to go back to them. They challenged and shaped me; at times they pushed me out of my comfort zone and tested my limits.

It seems like sometimes we try so hard to insulate ourselves from funship--not just in our jobs, but in our lives as a whole. I guess it's natural to crave security and a life free of frustration. But why is it that, when we look back, it's the unexpected adventures and the minor catastrophes that enrich our lives and make us more interesting dinner conversationalists?

Whatever path lies ahead of me--whether it's straight or crooked, rocky or well-paved--I both hope, and fear, that it's full of funship.