Spread Joy

I walked into the newsroom of the?Knickerbocker News?in Albany, N.Y. for my first day in a new job as a reporter. Within an hour, I had resolved that I was going to find a new career.

It was Monday, April 6, 1987. I had just moved from North Carolina, where I had been working at the?Winston-Salem Journal, to take this new job. It was exciting! Back home in New York; better pay; and I knew I was joining a team with some really great writers.

The news editor saw me as soon as I came in the door and said, “Oh, Dieffenbach, you’re here. We need you to get on this story.”

The task was this: Four friends driving home from a bowling tournament were suspected victims of a tragic accident. I had to call their families and ask how they felt knowing that their father/husband might be dead.

The “story” was much bigger. I was just handling a piece of it. I don’t think I had even taken my jacket off yet, and I was already poring through the phone book looking for numbers. This was my job.

The first three families I called hung up on me. When I called the fourth family, the victim’s wife was willing to talk, and I got my quote. I also knew I had to get another line of work.

As a pre-teen, I wrote stories for my local newspaper on Long Island. In high school and college, I wrote for the school newspapers and was editor of each in my senior year. After college, I got a masters in journalism. Despite all the time I had invested in the newspaper industry, I was ready to bail out less than a year after landing my first professional job. What happened?

In all of those roles I had considered myself a writer and, frankly, that was my career objective. To be a writer. Being a “reporter” was different. The primary responsibility of a reporter is to “get the story.” The challenge is that “the story” can run the emotional spectrum from inspiring and uplifting to deeply sorrowful and disturbing. Writing the former was a pleasure; writing the latter was not for me. I can’t imagine how news reporters can cover any one the multiple stories of mass shootings (so common they are now known as “another”) and not suffer long-term effects.

All this to say April 6 has always been my day of epiphany. Though only 23 at the time, I was fortunate to have enough self-awareness to know that whatever I was going to do professionally, I had to enjoy it, or I would do something else. We spend about a third of our lives working, and to not enjoy what we’re doing for a third of our life is a terrible waste of our existence.

I recognize that I have a level of privilege that allows me to make these choices. Many people do not have flexibility or opportunity in choosing what they do to pay the bills, and that’s a legitimate discussion to address.

My only point is this: if you do have the ability to choose, choose happiness. When we find satisfaction and personal growth in what we do, our joy is infectious. When I turn off the alarm on my phone each morning, I am greeted with the words, “spread joy.” It reminds me to try.

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