Blog

I’m 40 years old, and I just got offered an entry level job that pays almost $10,000 less per year than my previous job, in which I had spent more than 15 years developing skills and talents and establishing myself in the local media community, and I’m sitting here toasting with my husband and celebrating.

We are legit excited that I get to stop sweeping floors at Shady Brook Farm – my in-between job, that pays $9 an hour – and report to a corporate office every day.

That doesn’t really matter, though. There is no, has been no, flow chart for my professional life for a really long time. I spent 16 years at my previous company, treading water, doing what I loved, but in a negative atmosphere that offered no room for growth or advancement. Continue reading “Employment Chronicles: I GOT A JOB!” →

Get a load of that pic. No, that’s not the “Vintage” Instagram filter; I’m really that old, and this was taken at Northwestern University Softball Parents Weekend, circa spring 1997. Twenty-one years ago.

Wow.

Anyway, that was my one and only season with the team, and probably one of two total pictures that exist on this planet to prove I existed in that community.

My college career followed right along with my entire life of loving the underdog. I was a timid freshman, a walk-on, a glorified cheerleader and batting practice pitcher on a team full of scholarship recruits from California. I had one, or two, shining moments before quitting – with only a broken jaw, a mug shot in the media guide and a 4+ ERA to show for my efforts –  to pursue a career in sports journalism by finally getting myself a newspaper internship.

I’m nostalgic about my own Northwestern athletic exploits (loose term) because my alma mater’s football team is about to play in the Big Ten Championship Game on Saturday night against THE (Evil) Ohio State (Empire), and I’m all in with the underdogs.

We are probably THE biggest underdog to be participating in any of the conference championships this year. We are probably looking at a 52-to-10-ish drubbing in Indianapolis, which is why I won’t be witnessing the game in person, but on my couch – if I can stay awake that long (8 p.m. kickoffs can go to hell.) Continue reading “Go, U Northwestern!: In appreciation of underdogs” →

If you haven’t seen the movie referenced in the title or don’t recognize the above Slinky-fondling characters, or hear the song “Stay” by Lisa Loeb playing in your head right now – for the record, my favorite songs on the outstanding “Reality Bites” soundtrack will always be “Locked Out” by Crowded House, “Tempted” by Squeeze and  “When You Come Back to Me” by World Party, but I’m pretty sure “Yooooou say, I only hear what I want tooooo,” is the echo this iconic 1994 Gen-X coming-of-age flick sent bouncing through the ages – well, I’m not going to tell you to stop reading. This blog isn’t about the movie.

Do yourself a favor, though, and at least download that soundtrack.

I’m just sitting here unwinding on the night before another job interview. It’s my third actual interview in three months of applying for jobs, and those are my first three months of being without a full-time job in journalism since the year 2000, when I was probably as old as Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, et al, were supposed to be in the aforementioned movie. And I’m agreeing that, yes, REALITY BITES. Continue reading “Employment Chronicles: Reality bites” →

Assessing Gretchen Cammiso’s level of devotion to Bristol Township right now — or, to be absolutely accurate, assessing it on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 11, not even 48 hours after the winningest football season in the history of Harry S Truman High School came to a heart-jolting, gut-wrenching, tear-soaked end at Downingtown West in the District One quarterfinals — you would never believe for a second that there ever was a second that she wasn’t all in.

You’d never believe she ever felt overwhelmed by the demands of her job, coaching, training and mentoring students and athletes in a vibrant, diverse, and yes, challenging Lower Bucks County school community. Because Gretchen Cammiso circa 2018 is about as immersed in Truman culture as a non-Truman grad (she went to Pennsbury) who’s only been on the planet 38 years, and working for BTSD for less than 15, can possibly be.

Her heart is so tied to the Tigers that students call her “Mom,” and she has, in fact, become a bona fide foster parent to current and former athletes who needed a home. She’s so proud of what the football team was able to accomplish this fall, going 10-2 and winning the school’s first playoff game under coaches Mike LaPalombara and Galen Snyder, who were hired in 2017, Cammiso’s second year as athletic director, that she gets choked up discussing it.

But Gretchen Cammiso circa 2015 did up and move to California, taking a yearlong leave of absence from her job as a Truman physical education teacher/varsity softball coach/department chairperson/senior class advisor/big sister/mother figure/you get the picture… Continue reading “Coffee Convo #3: Investing heart and soul into AD job yields historic success for Truman’s Gretchen Cammiso” →

One of the bartenders at The Stone’s Throw at Shady Brook Farm on Friday was wearing a Christmas sweater with a “Home Alone” reference stitched into it, and since the two-mile course for the annual “Dashin’ Thru the Lights” run that I “took the night off” to partake in was marred by mud puddles due to Thursday’s weather debacle, I decided the title of this blog was clever. I’m sure you agree.

Except, here’s the thing (and we’re just going to gloss over the holiday greetings, given that Thanksgiving is still a week away): I’m, technically, not that much of an athlete anymore.

In fact, as I sit here writing this, I am supposed to be competing in a CrossFit event in Phoenixville. I registered as a team with my husband, mostly to support my friends who are organizing the thing, and not because we are competitive CrossFitters anymore, but I decided to pull out after pulling up lame — get this — trying to catch a football out in the yard last weekend. I tweaked a muscle in my back, or something. I can’t roll over in bed without yelping in pain, so I clearly am not going to drive an hour to squat clean barbells and push weighted sleds through parking lots all day.

Nothing like a dumbass Weekend Warrior injury to make you confront your mortality. Continue reading “Merry Christmas, ya filthy athlete” →

It can be difficult, if not impossible, to see ourselves as others see us. But the other day, before starting my shift at Shady Brook Farm, I was milling around in the eating area with a few friends, and I laughed at something humorous that passed between us. I might have slapped the table for emphasis…the details are fuzzy. But I do remember for certain that a woman sitting nearby turned her head and gave me a look, as if I’d disturbed her lunch.

I had an epiphany in that moment: Girl, you have a loud, obnoxious, annoying laugh. You are one of those people.

It’s not really surprising that it took me until age 40 to figure that out. I mean, I’ve always had a sense of humor coded into my DNA (thanks, Dad!), but as the Type-A, overachieving, successful-at-everything-until-I-hit-the-real-world, deathly-afraid-to-fail firstborn daughter that I am, I did not loosen the #$%^ up enough to let my wacky side truly run wild until middle age.

THANKS, DAD…

I take after him as much as any child ever has taken after a parent, so he can’t deny the credit and/or blame. While he made me an artist, musicophile (it’s in the Urban Dictionary so it’s a WORD!) and occasional misanthrope who’s brutally hard on herself , my father is also one of the funniest people I know. Finds a joke in everything and everyone. Looks at any situation and sees the absurd or the ridiculous. Never takes himself, or the world around him, too seriously.

That’s me right now. And boy, am I ever thankful for that. Continue reading “Laughter is the only medicine” →

The other day, while training to work at the bar at Shady Brook Farm, I heard Tom, the regular weeknight bartender, say he was planning to give up drinking because he was tired of feeling tired, and a bunch of complicated memories came flooding back.

I stood there in ill-fitting jeans, which had been loose on me about six months earlier, and now were only a wardrobe option because I HAVE to wear jeans to work and don’t own anything larger, and I had a major gut-check moment.  Continue reading “Wanna make a bet?: Going sober for what’s left of October” →

I’ve been working at Shady Brook Farm for two weeks, and I have, without question, worked harder overall than I did in a month at my previous job. On this precious off day, while trying to avoid watching the Bears-Dolphins score on the crawl — we don’t get games like this on TV in Philly, and apparently, it’s looking like my football team’s “Super Bowl run” (eye roll) could suffer some high-degree burns in the Miami heat — I thought I’d write a little about my vocational experience thus far.

Long story short: Holy shit. 

As the cliché goes, if you had told me 20 years ago, or even much shorter ago, that I’d be pouring draft beers, and doing mental math, at a patio bar at age 40…I would have given you the stink eye. (Ha, wait, I mean, I’d give you my normal facial expression.) But that’s not because bartending/cashiering is a dishonorable pursuit, but because I pretty much thought I’d found my lane on the highway of life and was going to ride it, all night long.

Admittedly, I was driving all the way to the right, stuck behind a beater with blinking hazard lights, given that I was a local journalist making less money in 2018 than I did in 2002. But it was what I knew, and what I was good at — had made myself good at, because that’s how I roll — and WHAT THE HECK DO YOU DO WITH YOUR LIFE IF YOUR WHOLE CAREER PLAN LOOKS LIKE A DEAD END? Continue reading “Things will (finally) never be the same” →